They were blue,
The blue of the unsullied sky of yore,
the blue of unattained barony,
the blue of loyalty and truth.
They were blue,
the ironic blue of lust,
the blue of the scourging flame,
the blue of the scorching star.
They were blue,
and then they were gone,
back into the sea of the faceless ones.
And I was alone.
he asked, as the numbness from his recent retrenchment wore off and brutal reality came to bear.
Extract from article “How to control a herd of Humans”, New Scientist Online: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126945.300-how-to-control-a-herd-of-humans.html?full=true&print=true
Neurological evidence seems to back this idea. Vasily Klucharev, at the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, found that the brain releases more of the reward chemical dopamine when we fall in line with the group consensus (Neuron, vol 61, p 140). His team asked 24 women to rate more than 200 women for attractiveness. If a participant discovered their ratings did not tally with that of the others, they tended to readjust their scores. When a woman realised her differing opinion, fMRI scans revealed that her brain generated what the team dubbed an “error signal”. This has a conditioning effect, says Klucharev: it’s how we learn to follow the crowd.
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We are a race of mimics. Our evident mimicry in our infancy does not disappear as we inevitably age, but merely disguises itself in a myriad of different forms. It is no surprise that our stereotypical view of success is derived from the same instinct. In our enlightened meritocracy, we strive, like everyone else around us, for the material success that we’ve been trained to covet. Is this wrong? We, after all, are a race of mimics.
This mimicry extends to all aspects of our lives, be it in our political beliefs, our ideas, or even our “faith”. Trained to parrot, we can regurgitate an ocean of recycled opinion in a heartbeat. Even our piousness can be born out of fear of being labeled a non-conformist. Truly, we can have a form of godliness, but deny its power. Is secondhand godliness wrong? After all, we are a race of mimics.
So what does this mean? That we can be excused for exhibiting materialistic covetousness because everyone around us hold the same forsaken view? That we can be excused for exhibiting increasingly godless behavior in this secular world because we have a hardwired proclivity to be mimics? Clearly we are beings that can and do exercise free will, not mere numbers on a statistic. Just because 99% of the population does X does not mean that you have to follow in their foolishness. Does your non-conformism make you an anomaly? In our statistic-driven world – in our statistic-driven nation – sure, it does. Does it matter? It’s up to you.
Don’t live your life conforming to what the majority say or do. Make your decisions based on your own rationale, your own convictions. An overrated poet once wrote: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.” Don’t take the road less travelled by just because it is different, do it because you have come to the conclusion that you really wanted to take that road, and that will make all the difference.
It all started with a faulty Iphone jack.
Try as I may, all earphones would not fit into the jack, rendering all music produced a muffled cacophony of bass beats and backing vocals.
Annoyance gave way to grudging acceptance, and soon, I was reveling in the uniqueness of every bass beat, every hidden nuance I had not noticed before.
There is truth behind the noise.
Splashes of technicolour painted the night sky red, blue and gold. The effervescence of hopes and innocence slowly evanesced into the silent horde of observing constellations, each ephemeral hope called by name and sealed with friendships that bind.
He saw all this and recalled a time long past where hope sprung eternal. And as he reminisced, a flicker of hope like a newborn baby sprang to life behind his brown eyes. Alas, it was stillborn – and the darkness returned to envelop him like an old friend.
Landed safe and sound in Hong Kong.
Saw graffiti on the way to my house.
It said:
God is Great
It’s a good start.
Work in this band responds sensitively, perceptively and personally to the question set; is often subtle, concise and sophisticated, with a style that is fluent and gives economic expression to complex ideas; at the upper end this work may be elegant and allusive
Allusive, yes. But it’s not just the writing.
The daily dichotomy of thought and action ensnares me between the now and the everlasting. These ropes that bind were cut two millenia ago, why, mind, hide what the heart doth know? We profess love for something greater, far greater than our mortal transgressions, why doubt the timeless, and in doubting regress?
Perdition catch my soul,
But I do love thee;
And when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.
I recently stumbled across the Harvard Moral Sense Test, and it asks many questions that question your responses to direct and indirect intervention that might save the many at the expense of the few. Contrary to the expectations of the hoi-polloi, completion of the test does not give you your morality in percentages (such a concept is absurd, yet the proliferation of frivolous quizzes breed this expectation). Rather, completion of the test allows you to question the “morals” upon which you live your life, and hopefully precipitate self-discovery.
Below is a sample question:
Ethan is returning from a Kayaking trip when he sees that the dam has broken upstream and is about to flood the river where he’s been Kayaking. Anyone who is still on the water when the flood comes will die. There are five people downstream on a large raft. However, there is a floodgate nearby that can be opened to divert the flow of the water into a drainage canal nearby where one person is fishing. The drainage canal normally loops back to the main river, but because of a large rock, any water entering the canal will stop at the rock. If Ethan does nothing, the water will flood the main river and the five people on the raft will die. If Ethan opens the floodgate, the water will be diverted into the drainage canal and the one person fishing will die, but the water will back up behind the large rock; consequently, the five people on the raft will remain unharmed.
Opening the floodgate is:
Forbidden , Permissable , Obligatory?
What would you do?
fragme/ntsofme/mories 