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Report | 12/14/2006 10:27 am

OMFG you are being attacked by a random commenter!

Cool avvie!

Report | 12/13/2006 2:26 pm

Why are people so obsessed with "The Man"? This is something that tends to urk me, by the way. The "Man" isn't some faceless guy up there just jerking us around. No one can be totally evil. Uncaring, perhaps, of the consequences of their actions, or maybe ignorant, but it's not like everyone in a position of power is out to screw those who aren't. Maybe it's the facelessness that people ascribe to it. I don't. But yeah, this is supposed to be your question. ^.^U

Report | 12/12/2006 6:55 pm

Ace of Blue Spades

Well, I meant that stasis can be good to keep us from going to fast too far, and sometimes keeps us from going backwards. In the right times, social inertia is caution keeping us from needlessly destroying ourselves. The problem is that we usually either have too much inertia or too much revolution; rarely do we have a healthy balance of the two anywhere.

And, the purpose of faith? At its best, faith is hope; we live on hope almost desperately a lot of the time. Faith at its worst is fatalistic, leading us down a dark road. (I am of the thought that perhaps depression is a faith of its own, a faith in one's inherent worthlessness. Not a good road to go down, that.) And as for the purpose of faith? Well, doesn't faith help give us purpose to live?

Now, I could go into all the various religions and whatnot, but I'll keep it simple. We operate daily on faith, taking little leaps of it in everything we do. We have faith that the world we wake up to will be much the same as before, or that it will be better than yesterday. We have faith in the basic tenets of whatever our religions teach us; or what we see in our lack of belief. We have faith in ourselves, and that we can accomplish what we set out to do. We have faith in the constancy of the behavior of the people around us. Faith, perhaps, is nothing more than assumption. (Although this thought doesn't entirely agree with me, but when we have faith we do assume things will be alright in the end.) Faith is the mechanism that keeps us going through the mundane and the difficult. Faith is what allows us to deal with the world around us in a sensical way. And perhaps the purpose of faith is just to give us a reason to wake up in the morning.

Report | 12/11/2006 11:57 am

Ace of Blue Spades

*poke* Question?

Report | 12/08/2006 10:48 pm

Ace of Blue Spades

XD I liked your initial answer. That pretty much sums up a lot of the human race.

I'd like to point out that there are times when being in stasis can be a good thing. For example, all the neo-Nazis and white supremests are calling for change. Granted, it's a backwards change, but they're calling for it as doggedly as abolitionists did before and during the Civil War. But, our previous changes as a country has led us to a better way. (At the very least, we hope it's better and live as if it is.) And because, by and large, we like it, we've developed this stubborn complacency. Therefore, unless some drastic changes come to our country, we're not reverting back to slave based economics and treating people like they're property. (At least from a legal standpoint. I can't speak for individual situations which defy the norm of this country.) So, our complacency can be a good thing in the right situation, just as our need to be ornery cusses and revolutionaries.

Report | 12/07/2006 8:23 pm

Ace of Blue Spades

Finally thought of something. For every person who says something is impossible to do, there's someone doing it. For every person who says an action shouldn't be taken because of the risks, there's someone who ignores that. For every person who says there is something forbidden or that humans shouldn't do it, there's someone willing to risk the possible damnation. What does this duality say about us, as people?

Report | 12/06/2006 9:59 pm

Ace of Blue Spades

I.... don't know what solipsistic means, but the way you put it reminds me of the question about the tree falling in the woods. Of course it falls, but is there anyone to witness that, but how do we know it makes a sound if we didn't hear it ourselves? Similarly, if there's no one to replace us as a sentient species and eventually find and remember our remains, do we really exist? It's a philisophical answer to which there really isn't an answer, mostly likely, and I was speculating earlier anyway, assuming there wouldn't be anyone coming after us. It was the logical assumption my mind led to with the question.

Now, it's probably hubris, or religious faith, that makes us think that we're the only ones out there. And it's particularly religious faith if you believe the Rapture or something similar is going to happen any time soon. That aside, I'm thinking there's about a fifty/fifty chance there's someone out there. Whether we'll even understand them is another thing. (Also a great point brought up in that article I mentioned. I have to find them.) We may not recognize them as sentient because there might not be anyway for us to bridge a communication gap.

I'll fall back on the absence of proof isn't proof of absence argument, since it goes with my beliefs. In any case, it is unlikely I'll ever see any sentient aliens. And no, hubris tends to get us into trouble. With just about everything we can be hubristic about. But, one has to admit that there's plenty of room for logical doubt of alien life. So, it might be up to us to make our own aliens. We've got plenty to work with, and I don't doubt there's someong both crazy and stupid enough to do it. (The stupidity is, of course, depending on the conditions of said crazy things. Either way, they'll always be crazy.)

Report | 12/05/2006 9:49 pm

Ace of Blue Spades

This reminds me of an old National Geographic issue that came out at or sometime around the Y2K thing. I tried to find it, but it's lost somewhere in my room. I damn well better have that still, because I absolutely love that article.

The relevance comes in because at the end it said (and mind you, I'm paraphrasing from an inaccurate memory) that there's a possibility that there aren't any sentient aliens out there, and perhaps we're all that there is. It indicates that we're going to be the aliens in the future, branching out to inhabit the universe and thus change in unpredictable ways. Well, I'm inferring possibilities in that last part. But, if we're all there is to inhabit the universe, that's pretty damn amazing, because apparently the odds are that we shouldn't even exist. This is taking the mere science of it all into account.

If we are the only sentient people out there, then this fact alone lends itself to the argument for God's existence. Who knows, if we reach out into space and find no one, we as a whole might find a stronger faith. That we exist is the product of someone wanting us to be here, for whatever reason. Either way, if it comes to light that we're all there is, maybe as a whole we'll wise up and start treating things better. Or we could become even more arrogant and consume our planet and others because we're all there is.

As for if we dissappeared, well, that's the end of it all, isn't it? If we're the only sentient species, then there's no chance that any one will come along and find what we've left behind. There's just nothing, good or bad. Emptiness like we can't imagine. We dissappear, everything is good as ended, even with the things left behind.

Report | 12/03/2006 9:41 pm

SaKuRa_pInK_06

nice profile... o.O

Report | 12/03/2006 6:02 pm

XxFAYEtalityxX

Thank you for your purchase!
<33

Report | 12/01/2006 9:14 pm

[ Pyrite ]

*whew* You changed your hair back!

Report | 12/01/2006 7:11 am

Ace of Blue Spades

Okay, I finally thought of a question.

Why do we choose to believe in an afterlife? (This is, of course, assuming for argument's sake that the one reading the question does believe in an afterlife.)

Report | 11/30/2006 2:58 pm

Ace of Blue Spades

There's always the genetics that can tell us we're human, but that's a facetious answer, I think. To try and quantify what makes us human would just give a man a headache, I think. It's pretty much impossible to measure what makes us human, because we can't measure a soul. We just assume we do or don't have one.

There is, of course, the fact that we're utterly convinced of our humanness, thus making it a fact of our lives as much as our assumptive beliefs that there is or isn't a higher poweror that we have souls. What we don't like to admit about being human is that it means we're all capable of really bad things. We say "humanity" often to mean "kindness", to have the quality of being kind or understanding of someone's suffering. But it's also in human nature to be selfish bastards, and sometimes it's the selfish bastards that make the most spectacularly unselfish sacrifices.

What we, as a whole, need to realize is that being human means more than our best traits, that we're all capable of being on the wrong side, that we've all got a little evil in us. And that doing the gritty, hard things doesn't make us evil persons. It just makes us who we are, no more, no less, and more than the sum of our actions, choices, and beliefs. Maybe, once we realize we're capable of doing harm, we can understand how others come to do harm, and how we can stop that. But, to be human also means being incredibly dense and stubborn, so who know when this will happen or if it will? Maybe human nature has just locked us in conflict because there's no other way we can be or grow. Kind of depressing, but it might be true.

To have "humanity" should mean more than kindness. It should mean to have flaws, quirks, to be a human capable of understanding that others suffer as much as yourself. To be better than one's worst moments. But it doesn't, does it?

I'm afraid I can't define the words, only what I think they should mean.

Report | 11/28/2006 7:09 am

~evesunshine~

Ohhhhhhhhhh I see that makes complete sense. biggrin
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Hehe glomped, and i'll share my peanut butter cups with you also.

Report | 11/27/2006 6:52 pm

~evesunshine~

Endy dear you keep wasting your money on the black hair. I may not glomp you anymore lol..

Report | 11/25/2006 12:06 am

Jinxy_Doll

Just stopping by to show da love lol.
Hugsssssss

Report | 11/24/2006 7:36 pm

Ace of Blue Spades

Man, that was one long-a** comment I made. O_O

Anyways, the new question: Why is it that we write about the future? About worlds that cannot possibly exist? Do we see something in ourselves that we need to reflect somehow in order to see it clearly?

Feel free to tell me if my questions are getting too vague or whatever. I'm totally pulling this crap out of thin air.

Report | 11/24/2006 6:08 pm

Ace of Blue Spades

Jeez, that's a tough one. First off, I'd have to say that that's an individual determination, since self identity in inherently personal.

My second thought is that my memories go a long way in telling me who I am. Not just the memories themselves, but how I remember them, the context in which I remember them, and why. All of that, which is my experience, determines my current choices, and my choices define who I am in the here and now. Like say, my having rarely had positive reinforcement (or reinforcement of any kind, really) would lead me to not really care about my current state, and me making choices that determine I'm a lazy bum who sees no significant future.

But then, we sometimes make choice contrary to all previous choices, like if I decided to go off tomorrow and become a professional ski racer. Does that then make me an entirely different person? I wouldn't think so, but others would be very surprised to see that in me, making me seem an entirely different person. So from that hypothetical (or real event, since I know some people suddenly do unexpected things) one could draw that it's our choices that determine who we are. I for one think that choices are just reflective or indicative of who we are.

So memories, which are often inaccurate and contradicted by recorded facts and other's memories, or choices? Which is it? I lean towards memory, but I also think it's a lot more complicated than that. Although, this probably won't be too much of a concern for me unless I become an amnesia patient.

Give me a bit to think up your new question.

Report | 11/24/2006 5:22 pm

[ Pyrite ]

Your old hair was way cooler! gonk

Report | 11/24/2006 7:34 am

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