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A problem resolves itself in proportion to the quality of its description.
The Person I Saw From Afar
I have seen a person from afar. Or rather didn’t ‘see’, as it often is these days.
All these great leaders of nations you see on TV – you will never see her be.
She is in the realm of magic, but since magic went out of fashion, she exists in no realm.
I have seen a person from afar. Or was she near? It’s hard to tell these days.
All the songs that sing of beautiful things, they didn’t sing of her.
Once there were ten millionaires – inexpensively, she gave something to expensive for money to buy.
I have seen a person from afar – when people spoke of technology, science and new things – their minds were to small to gasp her into view.
A person who can’t be seen.
A person who can’t be heard.
Would you believe me when I told you I once saw a person from afar?
Da Vinchi’s Art
0. Warning, confusing post ahead.
1. The artwork of Da Vinchi is not his pretty pictures.
The genious of Da Vinchi is an idea that there are things to be understood from nature that can be applied to other things.
For example:
We take a black box, which contains one amazing characteristic, which can be found in nature, e.g. the flight of birds, or shortly, flight.
Then we take an object, for example something easy to make (like a wooden stick) and apply the black-box characteristic to the object.
Hence, a flying machine is developed.
Here, we took a characteristic of a bird and applied this characteristic to wood.
It is the generalization that any characteristic of a natural object can be applied so that it becomes a characteristic of another natural object.
2. Examples of this have already been know in mathematics for a long time. For example:
What do we need to add to 1, so that that the result will have characteristics of the number 8.
Possible routes to solve this would be would be:
So, 1+x = even number
1+x = a number that can be evenly divisible by 4
And possible solutions would be: 7, in the first case; 15, in the second case.
In the same way, Da Vinchi came up with many possibilities of how the machine would be constructed.
The Rich and the Poor
1. All people have needs, and they are quite consistent across different people. We need about 2000 calories of food, some clothes, shelter and water. We have a spectrum of medical needs.
2. I knew a person who would immensely despise anyone that would have an unfulfilled need and ask for help. She would also despise people who would have, or seem to have, little money. She would have and extensive mental list of jobs which, according to her, made a person unworthy of respect. Examples of it were being a cleaning lady, elementary school teacher, or being a representative for a company or political group. She found certain jobs – cleaning, for example, so despicable, that not only would she never take such a job, but would actually prefer to live in a filthy place and eat off dirty dishes when she couldn’t make other people do it for her. It seems she felt like doing something like that would damage her somehow.
3. When you think of it, if you acquire anything you want or need in a way that is in accordance with your own morals, everything else really shouldn’t matter.
4. The person i wrote about came to value only money. She found it worthwhile to hang out with those who had enough, and avoided anyone who she didn’t consider ‘rich’ enough.
5. Greed for money seems to be based on the belief that – if you acquire something indirectly, you are therefore a more valuable person.
6. Money has become a culturally accepted way to clean your hands of blood. Compare the following scenarios:
a) A person walks down the road, shoots a stranger, takes his money, and walks off.
b) A person, knowing the consequences of smoking, works in a cigarette factory.
Another person buys the cigarettes they make. He and his daughter die of smoke-related illness.
Except for some numbers being calculated, the scenario is the same.
7. People who are greedy for money believe that when they will acquire enough money, it will make them faultless and divine – after all, they will not have those desperate, human, carnal needs anymore.
But humans are of the same human nature from life to death.
A Lovely Afternoon
Walking up a hill for the view is such a nuisance.
I saw a lady drive up the same hill last time. She seemed fat and sick.
We try to buy ourselves freedom and convenience, but often, what we get is just plain illness.
I Hate School
1. One reason why I hate the current education system is because it often punishes with no reason.
People without external support (or people whose supposed support – teachers, parents, classmates are even abusive) may get punished by bad grades or being expelled for something that they actually wanted and tried to do right with their whole heart.
I think teachers should be mindful that one instruction that may look to be the same for all pupils is actually perceived quite differently by each of them, and is of different difficulty for each of them depending on their capacity, background and interests and environment.
This is why it was deemed impolite to keep asking people around you for small favors that don’t mean much to you, from the beginning of time in our culture already. It is assumed that the school system is not subject to this, but i want to argue it is.
Something that seems small to one person may actually cause a big hassle to another. This is why many cultures evolve into praising behavior that is helping, and frowning upon behavior that is needy.
2. Let me close this by a story i heard recently, maybe some readers may link to the correct story; i will tell it as i remember it.
A monkey one day decides to organize a race. All animals are invited, and there is a big price to be gotten by the winner, for a small fee to enter the race. The rules will be known in time, and will be the same for everyone.
Animals from far and near gather for the race – hippos, horses, dogs, snakes..
Then the rules are announced: “The one who shall climb the tree the fastest will be the winner”.
Consumption
We are a generation of men raised by women, I wonder if another woman is what we need.
by Fight Club
I have a comb yet my hair is tangled.
I have wall paint yet the walls are full of horrible graffiti.
I have a full fridge yet I’m hungry.
I have cleaning supplies yet my dishes lie dirty in the sink.
But all I’m thinking about is that i really need to buy a pencil sharpener. After all, my pencils are not sharpened.
We are a generation suffocating in stuff. I wonder if more stuff is what we need.
War and Peace and Health and Disease
Us people, we like to have enemies. Don’t believe me? Check any news. Look at any movie. Play nearly any game. While many of them are not of the “slash around with a sword type”, surely you can find an enemy to your liking.
Well, it may be that you are at peace with the world – but still, shouldn’t we at least get rid of that corrupted politician? He is just destructive to society.
As society, we function way more cohesive when we have common enemies, and politicians love to offer people of other nations, colors, hairstyles, whatever, as enemies.
Enemies help define us, and make us stop flowing in that kind of uncertainty that we would find ourselves in in circumstances of perfect peace.
Most nations have a defense and a healthcare budget. They are usually paying for different things though.
A sensible defense minister would probably arrange the funds to target the enemy that is the biggest threat to the life of its citizens. For us living in developed world, this enemy has a name, and it is called vascular disease.
Wait, what?
War and disease are considered totally unrelated in our culture. Both take lives and in both we need to understand the enemy. We should take untreatable disease with the same serious consideration as a threat of a strong nation. We research and make weapons. Then charge and kill.
If the rationale that enemies that require applications of guns require their own budget, we could as well have huge, separate budgets for enemies requiring statins, the enemy requiring chemotherapy etc.
For the one who kills the most – disease, not war, we need to step together, not just leave it to the individual. If another nations army killed your neighbor but not you, wouldn’t you still be outraged? When disease kills someone, why do we prefer so much to ignore it?
It would be outrageous to just let someone kill another person. Whole communities have risen up through history for such unfair cases. In the case of a rare disease, the world is silent. The people and their families silently weep, while nothing some rare random people are making slow strides to some resolution.
Teams
I was with a bunch of idiots again, or so it seemed. The project we were about to do would again be a contest about whether our mind’s will get numbed more then the ones of our audience, out of sheer, thick, suffocating, boredom. We heard it before, we were going to tell it again, and they are going to hear it again. None of us even wanted to be there. It was as fun as death.
Then i threw my ideas in. I was stunned. Not about what i said (it was just a hair-width away in terms of boredom, still a bit better, as i thought at the time), but what people started coming up with in reply. The whole thing started to become interesting and engaging.
All of a sudden, there was a flood of ideas that i found not boring, but just amazing.
What did just happen? Was it me that did something?
zacione 