STONER MONOLOGUES CH. 2

The Stoner Monologues Ch.2
Nature in My Own Backyard:
This is the view from a footbridge where I smoke all the time with the ducks.
I just watch them, they don't care about me.
Every now and then one of them quacks, but in vibrato
a drawn out quack-quack-quaaaaaaack

It always reminds me of someone laughing.
So the ducks are having a good time too.



The bottom picture is a drawing I did from memory at home of the mental snapshot I had meant to take. Clearly, 10 megapixel cameras have the advantage.

Why go to the wild?
Well I just saw Into the Wild which,
despite its horrid length and unbearably Vedder soundtrack,
had an affect on me.

The beautiful nature shown in the movie is inspirational,
set so closely to contrast with man's
individual struggle for survival.
Helps you feel how you were made.
Viewing the behavior of modern humans
can be much more meaningful if one remembers
how we are all hard-wired,
what evolution has taught us over the years.
Our own psychology.

I got to China on Wednesday!

~the Twentysomething

The World Lately

So I think I may not feel
so damn lonely anymore.

I think I know I can make friends now.
Even in the city.

All your feelings,
your thoughts and perceptions...
everything you are,
is a series of binary neurons with two positions,
on or off. Firing in tandem and in an observable way,
Create a fabric, an OS, a Windows program,
on which you run your body, using your brain's impulses as commands.
Constantly receiving and exchanging information with the body as well.
It is just electricity. Pleasure is just electrical stimulation of the right part of the brain.
We know how to do that.
We can hook you up with a pleasure button directly to your head.
For science. We've done it on monkeys.
They will push the pleasure button,
and ignore food,
until they starve to death.
Brain pleasure center stimulation is what its allllll about for them.

I'm recently coming to terms with the fact,
that I live towards the upper end,
of one of the richest countries
in the history... of.... the... world.

I am one of the luckiest human beings ever to exist,
out of all the homo sapiens to ever walk the Earth!

Just lucky I was born in a year further along
in the development of my species!

Nature has created us.
It is really the Mother,
something sensed by Man since time immemorial.

Evolution shaped us,
and evolution is about adaptations to the environment.
Evolution is about growing into the Earth,
reconnecting, and yet,
it is also about growth.

We have grown out of the Earth,
We are dark haired for hunting reasons.
Our Brains are ye big for survival purposes.
One day a brain was born and realized it could remember and transfer ideas,
using a newly developed communication system,
and our modern society was born.

All products of our society,
our art, our media, our music, our literature,
our time off, the fact that we like swimming,
and hamburgers, and berries and whipped cream,
Its all because the Earth shaped us that way. And so
Sonic the Hedgehog, a lightning fast blue hedgehog (?)
who looks nothing like a hedgehog,
fighting robotic impersonations of nature,
a clear illustration of the uncanny barrier and fear,
built deep into the psychology of modern man.

The Earth also bore a creature like us
who like horror films. Roller Coasters,
skydiving, football, the church,
could the church not just be a gut reaction
to the seemingly perfect cradle
the Earth affords to all life, an attempt to praise nature,
deify it. All religions start with the same problem.
How did I get here.
This is just too perfect.
And it is.
Because we don't have the memories of the 1.7 million years of homo erectus pain and suffering in the name of evolution to give rise to us, modern man. A species all its own.


With Love,
~The Twentysomething

Philosophy: Are Genes+Experience all I am?

I've been having this discussion a lot lately and I would hate for my readers to miss out.

Mainstream psychology has long ago accepted that the Nature vs. Nurture argument ends in a draw, ie both apply. The Nature argument says however you are raised, your genetics are what matters when discussing who you are and how you will behave. Nurture says it is how you are raised, instead of genetics, that matter. But it's a draw. Accordingly, any idea you have of your identity, personality, attitude, heritage, or "me", can be summed up like this:

You = Your Genetics + All Your Life Experience

But is that all? Are those all the factors that apply to each new decision you make? But what about morality? Isn't there some thing not included in that equation that isn't accounted for?
Some call it the soul, others call it a mind, or just "a me." I don't think it exists.

1. This magical "other thing" cannot be sensed or experienced itself
2. The above equation can account for all variance and randomness in any decisions or thoughts you have...
3. Since nothing is actually affected by this thing, and it is un-sensable so it's existence cannot be proven, the idea itself is meaningless and unimportant.

This raises serious issues with the ideas of morality and punishment, which I won't deal with here.

Yet how can this be? Are my genes and experiences really enough to determine EVERY reaction/action I will take?

What if I am thinking of picking up my bag of potato chips, but just don't, just because I am trying to NOT be predictable. Yet, somehow, you had an urge in you not to be predictable. You also had an urge to be defiant and perhaps you weren't actually that hungry, but if you had been, you wouldnt have been thinking along these lines and would just have eaten it.

Every minute detail about your present physical existence affects your action in a situation.
How cold it is, what you had for breakfast, how many girls said hello to you when you were emotionally vulnerable in the sixth grade, when the last time you smoked pot was, who you've seen that day, what you are wearing...all of it.

You're actions = Genetic Predisposition + All of your experience. Thats it.

If you could know every last detail about a given situation you would be able to predict its outcome. This is not a new idea. But people have issues with it.

Just a thought.