First, here are links to essays I've written that are too long to reproduce on this page. Each essay has a correspondent link in the Agora.
Searching for a third agency - In addition to genetics and experience, is there a third agency that has an effect on behavior?
Neuroscience and philosophy - What can the neurosciences tell us about the debate on free will?
8/1/2008 - I recently attended an AIGA meeting in Atlanta, the subject of which was green design. Currently, the field of graphic design is focused on profitability only. It is my belief, as well as the belief of many in the field, that this graphic design could become more sustainable without affecting the profitability of the firms doing and / or receiving the design.
Allow me to illustrate with an example: graphic designers are often called upon to do direct mailings. Now, response rates to direct mailings vary, sometimes being 1-1.5% and other times higher, but since even direct mailings with response rates of .5% tend to break even, as much as 99.5% of what is sent out becomes trash.
Thus, according to green design leaders such as Brian Dougherty at Celery Design Collaborative, an extremely important task for designers asked to make direct mail designs is to increase the response rate.
If, for example, the response rate is more like 5%, then 10x less material can be used to produce the same number of respondents. It also means the budget per one piece of direct mail can be 10x as great, so long as 5% actually do respond. This increase in budget per item gives the designer the freedom necessary to actually be able to produce a much higher response rate...given the right creativity.
If you have any insights into sustainability in this field or another field, please post them under the sustainability heading in the Agora.
In The Odyssey, the author or redactor implies that he who lives alone must be either beast or God.
I agree. I contend that people, whether or not they identify themselves as misanthropes, in fact live only because other people live. Ask yourself, after all.. If you were the last person alive, would you want to keep living? For how long? Only if you had a dog? That's what I thought.
First, let's deal with an objection:
Of course, I am very willing to listen to those would live on, but I don't think there are many. Those who do defiantly assert they'd be happy without people (even if they could survive easily, which they couldn't) may suffer from a lack of imagination.
There are, however, recluses, who choose even without a sort of postapocalyptic impetus choose to live lives mostly or almost entirely devoid of human contact. But the very fact that these people are considered to be strange highlights that they are different than most humans..which brings us back to where we started. Also, many recluses only stay recluses for a certain period of time (psychoses like schizophrenia are likewise of varying but often short duration), after which they once again seek out human contact.
Last, even to a recluse the knowledge that he / she could NEVER meet anyone again would probably seem more depressing than uplifting (if it were all of a sudden compulsory rather than voluntary).
So? So what Vince? You call that vInsight?
So this: the above entails that the purpose of life lies in our relationships to other people. It also implies that the other things we seek are sought merely as means to the end of relationships with people. In the case of money this is pretty obvious (because money is never an end in itself but only a medium of exchange to get other things), love is of course impossible without other people..but there are other things sought that are quite surprisingly not ends in themselves. Hell, some are even subversively not ends in themselves. What about I myself? That's an interesting one. Is it possible that I love myself only because my fellow humans exist? I think the answer is yes. And I need to start living like that.
Your thoughts? Would love to have them at brutuscassius@gmail.com or posted here as guestbook or forum responses.
There is plenty in American politics that does more than raise an eyebrow. We're torturing people now. Our debt is in the trillions. We decided to create a needless war that costs a billion a day, but can't seem to deal with crime or education here.
But none of that is what surprises me most about politics here. What surprises me is the fact that about half the population believes that Democrats are idiots, and the other half the of population believes that Republicans are idiots. Allow me to explain.
Benjamin Franklin, not less experienced than brilliant, said the following,
"I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error...[and] many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect..."
It seems that very little has changed. What Ben Franklin said about human beings' estimation of their own opinions is just as descriptive of us now as it was of us then.
The age of the most prevalent thesis in the world, namely, "I am right and you are stupid" has gone on long enough. Allow me to suggest a new one to supplant it.
"We are all fallible, and there's nothing worse in the universe than someone convinced he's right."
This startlingly simple thesis, if adopted in deed and name by every person in the world, would stop world conflict in a day.
I believe that one of the most powerful drives that people have is the need to justify their own behavior. Instead of this, a better course of action would be to treat people as important ends in themselves.
Part of what going abroad teaches you is to unlearn the prejudices of your country, and of the particular situation in which you were raised. It may be difficult for those of you who are very immersed in one ideology or the other to grasp that no one, no, not even you is infallible. But please try. And let's not blame other people or groups for problems. Ever. Let's just fix them. There's a whole world at stake. Not to mention an entire universe of ideas.
I'd love to have your comments, questions, etc. That's why I wrote it.