Who we aren't
We define ourselves, in part, by who we aren't.
We define ourselves, in part, by who we aren't.
Our opinions are powerful. They affect others, sometimes more than we realize, and no one can take them away from us.
#Belief #Communication #PersonalDevelopment #Philosophy #Wellbeing
“It doesn't seem to conventional-minded people that they're conventional-minded. It just seems to them that they're right. Indeed, they tend to be particularly sure of it.”
—Paul Graham in Orthodox Privilege
I subscribe to the daily Mutts comic by email. A recent message included a quote by Marc Bekoff which resembles something I wrote in Saying goodbye to Taggy.
I wrote the following:
All animals are conscious. All animals feel comfort and pain. In that way, we are equal.
Bekoff put it differently:
Although other animals may be different from us, this does not make them less than us.
I don't know which version I prefer.
I dreamed about Taggy last night. Taggy was a beloved cat who passed away recently. It feels wrong to call her a cat, really. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call her a friend or a non-human person. In any case, I shared the longer story earlier.
I don't remember much about the dream, except that I was so relieved to see her again. I also remember other black cats approaching me, to my annoyance. I find it beautiful that, even in my dream, I was able to tell the real Taggy from the impostors.
Do we really connect with other souls in our dreams? I don't personally think we do. I would like to believe it, though. I'd like if Taggy had really been there with me, making her true self known.
How do things change? Slowly, then all at once.
This paraphrases Ernest Hemingway and Cory Doctorow.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I love that phrase.
Here's a new one. Many working clocks are wrong infinitely many times per day. How can that be? There are infinitely many decimal numbers between 1 and 2, and unless a clock has a sweeping second hand, it can't correctly represent any of them.
“If our goal is to live in a shared reality with our neighbors, what if our current approach isn't bringing us any closer to that?”
—Peter McIndoe in a TED talk about his satirical conspiracy theory, Birds Aren't Real
#Belief #Communication #Philosophy #Politics #SocialMedia #Technology #Wellbeing
“Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.”
—Sophocles
“What are human beings without animals? If all the animals ceased to exist, human beings would die of a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the animals will happen soon also to human beings. All things connect.”
—Chief Seattle, from an inscription at the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport