Is it not important that a person’s life is filled with love? It seems to me that love can be of two types : love for people (including oneself – without which, life fails), and love for the civilising and edifying aspects and products of the world, since these give us comfort, pleasure, and reassurance that existence contains more than enough to make us happy – although we may need to cultivate our senses in order to appreciate what is fine and reject what is coarse.
心理学研究人员说自信和能力有很有意思的关系：自信高的人能力最低。自信低的人能力最高。
最可能的愿意是因为不聪明的人不能看自己的不对，不明白什么是对什么是不对。还有不聪明的人其实干的事和结果看不清楚。可能性也不明白。有的人怕被批评所以不懂时候就装懂。这样人想自己很聪明但是很傻。很多这样自高自大。我见有大自信的人就小心。
Consider the human experience without social amnesia or ignorance. How much would our humanity change if we had perfect, albeit technologically facilitated, recall? Have we not evolved useful forgetfulness?
"Bleedback" is my name for a peculiar phenomenon that is well documented. Dramatic events are often prefigured in art and literature. There was a book published in the early 1900s that described the sinking of a mighty ocean liner called the Titan. The story featured many uncanny similarities to the Titanic incident a few years later.
Many balk at the idea of embracing the artificial, but how artificial are we already? How much of our outer selves is enhanced by bolt-on bits and pieces? What becomes of a "self" when it is a composite of commercial components, be those medical or cosmetic, off-the-peg or bespoke?
If you can reconcile these statements, you are closer to enlightenment than you know:
<> When I was born I knew nothing of where I came or who I was.
<> When I die there will be longer exist a me to know or experience anything.
The ego is a puzzling phenomenon. When I was living overseas, every expat I encountered was richer and more fabulous than I could ever be. Every one was embarking on amazing new business schemes (the specifics are a trade secret, sorry), was ex special forces (can't tell you too much, sorry), had friends in high places who owed them favours (better not say who, sorry), or was an ex professional sportsman (shouldn't say which teams, don't want to brag, sorry).
You might have noticed. In life, risk is guaranteed, but safety never is. Risk is part of life. Risk is natural. Safety might be desirable, but assuming that safety is always preferable and consistently deciding in favour of safety over any risk will lead to insularity, fear, conservatism, and, ultimately, stasis. No oceans would ever have been crossed, no engines designed, no skies navigated, and no satellites launched if risks had never been taken. And, of course, high risks return high rewards. Heroes are risk takers. Pioneers seek risk and places bear their names for eternity. History forgets the cautious.
A few years ago, I watched a great movie: Safety Not Guaranteed. The name of the oddball genius character gave me a wry chuckle: Kenneth. Strange to hear my name said so often by Americans in a movie, and used on a very interesting character - whose eccentricities are all fully redeemed by the way! I always thought my name was a dreadful handicap, a relic of the 1940s that never had a moment of cool to its credit. Although the Kenneth in this movie isn't much of a philosopher, several of the movie's themes touch on existential issues: the fallacies of assumption, the value of recognising the transient nature of our being, and the need to live our lives in the eternal present, wringing from them every drop of joy we can and even savouring the notion of our demise for the quality it gives those moments.
The brilliant psychonautic author Robert Anton Wilson spoke about an information source deeper than Freud's subconscious, something that he described as external in sensation. I wonder whether he was experiencing what the ancient Greeks called "the muse". He said it was the power behind his creative productivity, powering his hands over the keyboard deep into the night, spewing information into type with hardly any cognitive awareness on the part of his daily consciousness.
