Of Contamination

The thing I love about people is how we are always contaminating each other, spreading our Selves, and how paths are always made unique by all these contaminations we receive throughout life.
It's indeed intriguing how at any moment a person can show up out of nowhere and change forever our path.

Sometimes someone influences everything about me, and I feel addicted by these new things in life that person brought me. Pretty much like when I get addicted to a series and I like knowing everything about it.
But sometimes most of these contaminations are more subtle things. I feel I was contaminated by most people I've ever met. At least all those I admired somehow, or those with whom I've shared even the lowest level of intimacy. In my body language one can see the idiosyncratic signs of people I've met during my life. That's why I love imitating whatever fascinates me in someone, but I don't even know if I really do that consciously. The way they talk, the way they gesture themselves, I keep accumulating those little things. In my amalgam of influences, there'll always be subtle signs of people I admire in the words I speak. And I always end up having that good feeling when I notice how I've been contaminated in the moment I see them in my own actions. A drop of their essence poured into me. It's... awesome because I feel these people are already part of me.


Maybe I lack identity, but I think we fool ourselves if we're going to think identity is something unique, uninfluenced. No, (hey, I like saying this kind of "no" like the one Gandalf says that the One Ring can't stay in the Shire, I loved how Ian McKellen delivered that) I think my identity is unique for the sheer fact of being overinfluenced, of having absorved - of keeping absorbing - into myself all things I have ever seen.

And there's one even better thing in all of this.
It's seeing things being contaminated by you. It's seeing your Self being spread into others. Making a difference to someone else's life. I think there's nothing this rewarding in life.

Of (In)aptness

There are things I find myself innately incapable of doing just as much as there are things I do naturally.

There are somethings I do with ease and I don't even bother exercising them. Maybe I do them just unconsciously. It seems entropy doesn't seem to affect these skills, after all. I don't have to control myself from getting late to places or being gentle to other people, that's something I do just naturally. There are some things people have a hard time bearing, but I can live with them without much effort.
On the other hand, there are things people find easy to do, and I struggle to.

There are certain skills I don't have a tendency to own. But with hard work, they can be mastered. And even then, I must constantly practice them to prevent them from going rusty. And they seem to go rusty with an amazing speed. It's like if I'm not keeping an eye over them, they'll run away in the first chance they get.
Cool, I'll call them Slaved Skills. They don't want to work for me, but I'll force them to.

One of these skills is memorization. Ok, it's not like my memory actually works at a harmful level, but I always practice to keep it extremely sharp, as, damn, is there any doubt of useful is that?
And I exercise it in every chance I get. What were all the items in that Cracked article I read earlier today? It's hard for me to remember them, and often I fail and I feel frustrated with that. But it is a skill I have to keep always sharp, so I have to keep exercising it non-stop.

I guess there's a price to keep these Slaved Skills running. They overload my mind, I guess. I trade energy for keeping them. Like paying a load of money every month for guards to do their guarding.

If only there was a way to convert them slaves to work for me willingly...

Of Metalogy

This is the beginning of a specific journey.
This represents my fascination with how things usually face themselves. That paradoxal thing I've accidentally runned into several times in previous entries... Isn't weird how going against subversion is a subversion itself? Isn't weird how sometimes the lack of inspiration can inspire you?

This short entry represents how underveloped this concept still is, and how I must dedicate more thinking to it.
Hopefully I'll eventually have the whole body of  the system clearer in my head and will be able to understand how those things can go under different categories and... eh, I'll need to give them more thoughts before going any further.

Of Loosening

We constantly limit ourselves during our lives. Out of fear or whatever, we always brake ourselves from doing certain things. Morality, instinct, paranoia, insecurity, I don't know. We all brake ourselves for one reason or another. Some of our brakes sometimes become vices, and being able to loosen that brake is just reinvigorating.

I know, for example, that sometimes I feel an overwhelming fear of making mistakes when drawing. An overwhelming fear of having proportions wrong. And then one day I realized how relieved I felt when I've done exactly what I feared: I started making everything wrong on purpose. Giant faces to a normal body, unpaired members, asymmetry.

But here we go with that paradoxal thing again: as much as loosening can unvice us, it can become a vice itself. I find that a dangerous drawback. I know that I've loosen myself when it comes to my academic stuff, not being paranoid all the time with not making it, and now I'm reaching a point of nearly not giving a shit anymore.

Of tagging

Ok, I'll start tagging these posts. I didn't know how to do it in an interesting way before, but I've got one fine idea. As I go learning Names, I'll be tagging posts where the idea is present.
Mindtraps are going to be everywhere, so I won't bother tagging it in every post except in the most glaring ones.

Of Tasting

There's one good thing this blog already brought me: to notice a pattern in my thoughts by looking at the posts, which will hopefully increase my thinking process.

For example, I've written about how I like to walk, and to taste the ground I'm walking on, or how I spend hours watching the world through my window. Then I felt like talking about how great it feels to feel the sun touching my skin, or how I love paying attention to the way people deliver their words, with their amusing accents and everything.
From this realization, a name was born: Tasting. It's certainly going to be a very useful name, as I can categorize some thoughts into this definition.

When I think about it, it definitely describes a good part of my identity. I love feeling the world. Tasting everything with all my senses. The temperature in the air, the scents in the wind, the sound of the world, the composition of colors in a landscape, the spices in the food, the taste of the words, the gentle lips of a girl.
I guess increasing my sensory skills makes me me feel like enjoying being alive and experiencing the world better.
It's quite relaxing, even when going to extremes. Really, laying my hand on a car hood in a hot day and seeing how much I can stand the heat (after it reached it's highest point, it becomes easily bearable) or inside a cold body of water early in the morning and see how long it takes for the cold to burn through my flesh and bones is somewhat rewarding. Sometimes I do some sick stuff, like seeing how hunger, revolving my stomach agonizingly, feels, or how the acute pain strikes through my skin when I accidentally hurt myself, but really, there's nothing unworthy of being tasted.


Ok, actually there are, but forget them for the sake of poetry.

Of maturity

Sometimes I wonder if maturity and intensity are opposites sides of a coin.
No, wait, no. I don't really think it's like that. At least not simple like that.

From the few moments in my life where I felt truly mature, the last thing I could relate to it was having things out of control. But maybe intensity doesn't have anything to do with lack of control. Feeling that mature confidence can be a really intense moment. The difference is that it's not overwhelming.

I've felt it before. Not too many times, so I find it fascinating when it happens to me. That feeling of sudden strength arising from a hopeless moment when strength is needed, when a firm hand is needed to make firm decisions. It's a very steady feeling. It feels like spiky things can be handled without pain. It's not like feeling invincible. You don't feel like you can fight the whole world. You realize you can't. But you feel the energy to give it a shot. You feel like giving hope to people who need it. You feel like protecting others, and making them feel safe by your side, sharing with you some needed peace and comfort.
It is one of the most amazing things I could ever experience as a human being. It's an experience that makes me proud of being human.

Huh...

I feel weird when talking about pride. I feel it's not appropriate. We can't be proud of being human. Mankind is nothing but a virus in this world, right? We've got to feel shame. A self-destructive pessimism. Sure that will change things for better!

Of intensity

Maybe we have to trigger our intensity in order to let things touch us.
But it's something risky. That world outside is a powerful motherfucker.


Just try it.

Try experiencing it, the world. Try bringing it all in. Try knowing all the ways the world can marvel you. Try knowing all the ways the world can put you down.
Try experience them, people. Try getting intimate with someone and bathing yourself in their essence and letting them bathe in your essence. Try to bear with the realization of the limits of that connection.
Try experiencing yourself. Pushing yourself to your limits. Displaying all your potential. Trying unleashing all your love, all your feelings. Endless flow, unrestrained. You're bound to unleash the agony of getting a whole world trapped inside of you without any chance of most of it ever making its way out. Our body is a cage much too little for a beast much too big.
The world inside is a powerful motherfucker as well.

But what should one do?
Be afraid of the journey - the pressure of the journey?

Of Realization

I've been talking once with a friend of mine how we don't realize things.
We know things, but we don't realize them. We don't always get their full meaning.
Maybe we get insensitive to things until they punch us in the face (or maybe we get insensitive because of the punches, dunno). Maybe we have to trigger our intensity in order to let things touch us. It's something risky. That world outside is a powerful motherfucker.

I think it's fit to talk here about another thing I've been realizing.
We live by shallow realizations. We have a shallow grasp of the things that circle us. We have a shallow grasp of what prejudice means, for example. We only think about the most superficial aspect of it. And that's why some people fool themselves into saying don't have prejudicial thoughts. Prejudice is much more than calling a black person a nigger. You are displaying prejudice by every conclusioning and quick assumptions you make about everything.
I'm with those people who go all "I'm soo against reading e-books because you have to touch the paper to experience reading". But I know that's sheer prejudice. You know, that's displaying the same logic that homophobics use. All that "It's not how I like the world. It's not how the world should be".

And the moment you realize what it means, for example, to do what they tell you (as they say them sheepy people do, like they are all amazingly stupid people who follow explicit orders like "I want you in the US Army") and you realize how it can mean always being tricked into following trends and biased opinions, even the most underground ones, you understand how we have always been as sheepy as the next person.

Some people will find this all just too obvious because they didn't realize the importance of it.
But I hope that being more of a Realizer can shrink our intolerance towards others.

Of Dexemplification

It's been a while I've been noticing that I examplify my concepts with the very thing that originated my idea. And then I start to realize... hell, if I can always find things in life that fit perfectly as examples for concepts to the point of them eventually growing into fullfledged concepts themselves, why can't I just optimize this process? And why haven't I ever realized that giant obviousity before? There's so much for us to see in life, and to learn directly from it! I'm always only one look away from finding answers.

And then I named that realization: de-examplification. Growing ideas out of little things I see in life. Every little display of patterns and cycles, rules and exceptions. Comparing different systems, overusing analogies.

Of pressure

I've missed one important word in my last entry: pressure.
I've grown too weary of being under pressure, even when it's not really too hard. I guess the word intolerant was the right one in the end. It's like when you're too pissed off with someone and even the most harmless misusing of a word boils your blood. Anyway, I should've said that in in the proper entry. My point here is a different one: we love the pressure.

There's some redeeming thing about some things that we can't bear, right after they are over.
I remember once playing this game, Psychonauts, and getting extremely upset with the insane increase of difficulty towards the end of the game. I've cursed every person related to that game for being such assholes who allowed that great game to become a great pain in the ass (especially that circling net catching fire). And I've almost given up, but in the name of Pride, I've made it. Soon after I've finished the game, though, all the harsh memories almost disappeared. I feel too cautious to use the word rewarding, because it sounds like it's more than that. That was the moment when I truly realized how our memories aren't to be trusted.

Anyway, same goes for every little thing that has ever stressed us to the point of making our hair fall. That relationship that was the very incarnation of hell suddenly becomes memories of things that were worth living. How could it not be? All the frustration when you're working so hard developing a skill and get desperately stuck once in a while... we'll all remember it with a smile.

I guess the pressure makes our lives more interesting. It changes our perception of time and reality and makes everything more desirable. The thought of food and sleep makes us crave for them. It makes us be more... well, I don't know, alive. We feel life more intensely, I guess. Maybe that's why we remember these moments with fond.

And then, after enjoying the relief of having a huge ammount of stress disappear in the glory of an accomplishment, we'll eventually miss that sweet challenge, even though sometimes it wasn't really sweet. Eh, maybe we're doomed to keep going through hell every once in a while and then forget the painful side of it, just so that we'll accept the next journey to experience life again.

Except, huh.. what if there are traumas?

Of academic learning

I've been growing too intolerant towards academic learning. And I don't mean it like I've got my complaints against it. No, it's more like I can't go along with it anymore. No, it's not like I'm about to start a revolution in my campus. It's more of a personal matter, actually. I feel like I won't make it.

I've been growing too tired of making researches and studying and learning and writing.Which doesn't make much sense, because my spare time is spent basically on making researches and studying and learning and writing and thinking and practicing skills (seriously, this is the time of my life where I least watched movies or played games).

I guess I've developed a barrier when it comes to forced learning. I don't know why, but the thought of having to read one small essay already overloads my mind to a point where I instantly feel like going outside to breath some fresh air. I've been feeling it building up, year after year.

Having to write some five paragraphs of an introduction to a paper already burns my mind like a torture. I didn't used to be like that. I've always procrastinated stuff I need to do, but I don't remember them feeling like such a hellish burden. It's not like this semester things are tougher than ever before. I don't remember getting so stressed by having to write one stupid text every once in a while.
Yet, in the mean time I've probably laid some thousands of words on this blog in the last week alone. Yes, it seems I've been avoiding my academic writings to cheerfully practice my writing skills on some blog. I've even told myself it would be a good exercise because it "would make me used to writing, and make it easier for me to write academic stuff". Ha.
Why can't I direct my sincere desire to learn and be productive towards something that pretty much requires from you a desire to learn and be productive?

When I get my degree I'll spend like one whole year away from UFSC. It's not like I don't like it. No one forced me to spent my whole week there. I find the whole setting rather pleasant.
No, my point is that I just want to be free to learn.

I hope that when I go back for my master's degree this unsettlingness will be gone. I really do.

Of Spider Solitaire

You know you live in a fucked up society when you are afraid of showing prejudice against the black cards by completing several red stacks.

Of Hymns

It's weird how sometimes we create a deep emotional bound with songs...
Sometimes the song isn't even that awesome, but for a reason I choose to always listen to it in a certain situation, to a point the song becomes the bearer of my feelings in that situation.
It becomes then something like a memory chest, that I can open and retrieve the memories, like an old piece of clothing I wear to relive the past.

Those songs I'll call Hymns.
They become the musical symbol of my ideas and feelings.

Of derailing thoughts

I suffer from a terrible curse.

Sometimes my thoughts vanish, completely, mid-thinking.
It usually happens when I am thinking about something and then I, usually unconsciously, try to give it this different look, like looking at it from outside. And then I realize I'm thinking, or something.

And from that moment on, everything happens instantly. Everything crumbles down. I only have time to grab a few pale elements of the derailing thought. I seriously forget everything I was thinking. And then I keep still, holding on to the elements left so they don't leave me too, all while trying to recover the core of my lost thought.

As my mind is busy trying to keep the clues from escaping, I find it hard to search around. Sometimes I let the clues go (and they disappear instantly as well) as an attempt to focus on remembering the lost thought. I've always failed. I have this frustrating feeling like when you die in a game and you have to restart from the previous save point, some twenty-minutes ago.
But I remember once succeeding at recovering a derailed thought. I have to keep in mind how I've done that. I think I've tried to give the piece a different point of view, like, literally.

Anyway, that things terrifies me. I hate to think of it happening during some important speech or something.

Of Celtic Crown

The Celtic Crown is my ultimate project, where all my ideas relate to each other. Together they create one huge network of ideas, systematically organized.

The idea was based on this picture:

Eh, no, it's nothing something really serious. I just made that up for fun.

Of Efficiency and Nuclear Aim

Take a look at the first sketches of this sketchbook. She started that thread around January. You noticed how people were overly careful to teach her ways to improve? Anyway, now look at her last updates around now, April. There was an evolution there from what most of us draw when we were 6 (what, let's be honest), and now she is seriously getting better than me (and I thought I was improving).

If anything, this was the most impressive display of progress I've ever seen in my whole life. It's very clear she worked upon her most harmful defficiencies. She worked on their very Core. The accuracy astounds me. Her efficiency astounds me.

I'll call it Nuclear Aim.

Sometimes we have a problem we are having a hard time to solve, and that's because we are not working exactly on where the problem lies. The moment we find that crucial point where the fault lies, the efficiency rises critically. The cure is found. The structure can now stand upon itself.

But there's more to it than problem-solving. You can apply it to anything where efficiency is required. For example, one can voice his thoughts more efficiently when the core, the very essence of their thoughts stands clear to him.

Of hands

It fascinates me how our body, something this personal, can carry the results of a whole species.
Sometimes I keep watching my hand, playing with all the moves it can make, with all the possible tools it can become. And then I wonder of all our evolution, the movements our ancestors kept doing to make it slowly become what it is now. I wonder how much effort and time was need for every detail to set down like it is today. I wonder how much times someone had to hold a rounded object to make it perfectly easy for my hand to hold one.

I wonder of the role hands, they all like mine, played throughout History. Whole lives spent holding swords, hoes, writing tools. All the delicacy of the art, the violent strength of the war, all made possible by our hands. Every building built by working, scarred hands. Every building climbed secretly by nervous hands to meet the pale, soft ones. Hands attached together in a moment of passionate intensity. Every building, destroyed by vicious hands. All lives hands slashed, all lives hands healed. Hands used to denounce, hands used to hide. Honest and false handshakes, mostly a political agreement.
Hands that, with an added amount of prideful strength, push up your fallen, shamed body. Stretched out hands claiming for one helping hand. Faithless hands falling down in abandon. Hands lying silent. Hands forever unable to change the world.

Of vices

Have you ever tried to walk at different paces?
One of these days I gave a look to the sole of my shoes and they pointed out conclusively that I take steps much too long, as both the very front and the very back of the soles are extremely worn-out, and everything else just ok. As I love these shoes, I wanted to extend its lifespan by wearing out the nicer parts of the sole. Since then I tried to walk slower, taking smaller steps. Unexpectedly I felt it brought some difference in my life.
I had more time to enjoy the wind riding my hair, more time for my feet to taste the ground.

It was not something uncommon to me. Sometimes I have that frustrating feeling I keep doing the same thing over and over again until it loses its groove. Do you know when you listen to too much music and one day it doesn't do you any good anymore? As I rely on music to catharse burning feelings off my chest, the sudden uneffectiveness of music (no matter how diverse I try to keep it) is something that brings me to almost panic, and I look around me looking for things to distract me. Pretty much like a drug-addict who desperately looks for something to pour into his veins.
And then I lie back having to rely on silence when it's not being really helpful. And I blame myself for wasting precious music-listening hours when I didn't really need it.

When you start playing a musical instrument, it's noticeable how we slowly develop a, say, vocabulary of techniques. When you're just starting you feel extremely limited. Further on, you'll have learned some new things. Things you'll be able to play quite well and you keep playing and repeating them over and over, because, hell, that's the only thing you know. When trying to learn something new, though, ourr fingers will struggle to learn the new techniques. Our fingers are viced.
Hopefully, eventually, when you've learned enough techniques, your fingers will grow out of resisting against new things. They will get, huh, Fluent.

Of unexpectedly long titles out of a sudden

As much as I like to listen to music 24/7, there's nothing like some profound silence once in a while.

Of routine and health

I'm not too fond of our common recreative activities. I don't know if there's any trauma or what (probably there is), but I am not your party or beach guy. Actually, most social activities somehow drain me. When going to any event where I'm going to meet people, I end up enjoying the journey there like it's the time of my life, and when I'm arriving at the place I start feeling an agony like they're depriving me from the place where I am happy! No!
Ok, I'm exaggerating it, but it has already happened like that. It was someone's college graduation. Argh, all that fancy academic procedures, all that proper way to behave and stand up and everything.

I don't like huge events. I honestly don't feel good at those places you have to behave differently than the average day. And I don't think I like any event noticeably bigger than average daily events. Yes I'm lazy and coward and I don't like taking risks, but I'm that guy who simply loves the daily routine. I enjoy simplest things of life. I like everyday going to the restaurant at my university while listening to the same podcast every evening. I like to think the memories I'll have from this time when I listen to that podcast some ten years from now.
I enjoy having time to sit quietly by a window and watch the world for hours and hours, and reflect about every little thing that makes the picture be so attractive. Also, I enjoy walking. I really do, don't you too? That single set of movements, taking one step, feeling my foot touching the ground, pushing my leg backwards, the other one forwards and dragging it backwards again. I like noticing the compass of my steps. Sometimes they match the song I'm listening to. Have you ever noticed the how much more confident you feel when taking a steady striding? Or trying to walk at different paces? Or try to get the rhythm steady as you start climbing a flight of stairs and push yourself up while jumping a few steps at once and having the risk of misstep and embarass yourself?

Routines are usually seen like a bad thing, and while I understand the point, I also see the good side of it. Sure the idea of walking is not something makes people excited, but there's so much to enjoy of the mundane life, when nothing special is happening. Have you ever stopped during an average day, like you just awakened from stupor, and noticed that in that moment nothing is actually preventing you from being happy? All average events make me happy, like watching the sunset when you're commuting home or seeing people going home as well, seeing everything flowing. These are moments that are also going down into our memory lane just like other blockbuster moments.

You see, people value being healthy. But have you ever noticed how feeling healthy means not feeling a thing? You just know something is not right in your body when you start feeling things. We don't notice things as they are flowing accordingly. If everything is happening nicely, it's promptly ignored. We don't pay attention to our health, as we don't feel the health. If something breaks that flow, we awake from stupor and start paying attention to it when it's not working properly.

Maybe that's why we get the impression everything is always so wrong.

Of pleasant people

tThis entry is dedicated to all those people I know whose company refresh my batteries. All those good-humored people out there who lift up my spirit with their amazing capacity of making one always smile and have a hearty laugh.

These are people that, despite of their self-esteem, are able to sport an amusing silliness and unharmfulness that makes you just feel wholly comfortable by their presence. These are easy-going people who are able to always make fun of themselves and their mistakes, and don't spoil great moments with serious business like their ego. Most important of all, you don't have to be afraid of how they may react to every one of your words or actions. You don't have to worry about what they are going to think of you. You don't feel like you have to bother trying to look smart and cool to attend current demands. With those people you are comfortable enough to swear at them unafraid of them ever mistaking the joke as an actual offense. I miss people who can blame me and make fun of my mistakes head on, as we know it's just plain honesty, and I really appreciate that. It's how I know I can trust someone. It's much better than those who think I may be offended by all these silly things, and then grudge things up until everything falls apart out of a sudden.
Except the swearing and blaming, it's not much of a matter of intimacy. Some of these wonderful people I barely know. Some of them are just market attendants and public servants or simply people you stop by to ask for a piece of information.

But they sport these very essential things I need to call them Friends.

Of art and nature

Everything can be art.

It's not really uncommon for us to see things like "art of cooking", "art of driving", "art of seduction", "art of war", "art of politics". Pay attention to it and you'll see every area of human expression can be labeled as art. And that's what I think of what art is, any means of human beings expressing themselves. It's leaving the marks of your existence, of what you are, what you see and what you think of the world.
It's the attempt to silence the fear of being forgotten, of being left in the Unexistence.

And then I started to realize... we don't usually see nature as art. We may spend our lifes enjoying the view of mountainscapes and majestic trees and colorful flowerings, but all we usually see of actual art in nature is in a manner connected to the hands of man. You don't see a forest as art, despite how it moves your feelings when you're walking inside one. However, when you walk through a paved path sided by cypresses, you are seeing humans expressing themselves through nature. Maybe you are reading a poetry describing a vicious sea storm, or watching a painting of a cold, silent lake in a winter night, and the art you are seeing there doesn't have much to do with nature itself as with the artist and the viewer, the human beings touched somehow by that scenario.
So, you ask, if any form of human expression is art, then even youtube commenters are making art? Eh, you're the one to judge. I, for one, don't really like most modern visual arts too.

In my opinion, what makes all these forms of self-expression become art is a matter of mastering them. And that's one thing that no postmodernist questioning is going to change. I don't care if my view is so totally outdated, that's something I can't help. I don't think that playing with words as if they were a perfect extension of one's mind, or taking the simplest musical notes and make them become truly alive, or being able to create believable imagery with the fewest pencil strokes is something that could ever become outdated.


Sure, everybody can be an artist. One can go deeper into the discussion and say that not being able to express yourself properly is a very common display of the human existence as well. And, damn, I can't really say you're wrong (these haunting paradoxal things are chasing me lately, aren't they). I, who still have my sentences meeting frustrating dead-ends, who play musical notes as inexpressive as a scratching nail, who strike the paper with the innacuracy of a drunkard, could call the right to be an artist.
But I praise them true artmasters.

Of Mindtraps

Mindtrap is the name I created to identify fallacies, biases, partialities, inconsistent thinking, conclusionings, generalizations, sensationalism, understimations, hypocrisies and prejudicial thoughts all into one (I could go with Bullshitting, but, eh). It was fundamentally important to have a name that would take the role of being like one huge red button.

It was created mostly for trying to prevent myself from being mindtrapped. I try to keep constant vigilance over mindtraps. They're like the criminals, there inside my mind. And who are the cops, then? Reasonability, of course. Sheer reasonability. Years ago I've unconsciously started doing more tangibly something I've been calling Antithesis Thinking and just lately I've learned it was also called doublethinking. The main idea is to hold two opposite views in your head, like those Angel and Devil on Your Shoulders discussions. Another obvious thing that works wonders after you realize its fundamental importance. It might be a little stressful as there'll always be a voice telling you might be wrong wrong wrong, but it's worth it.
But still, like real crime, one can't be too careful. Neither 100% safe. It's like our natural behavior to go bullshitting all over the place. It's amazing. You know it, you know the internet. Mostly, you know yourself. You should, at least. You know our tendency to fill the gaps with incomplete information we have.

Ignorance and arrogance fuel mindtraps. Have you tried complaining about something you don't really know nothing about but you assume you have because IT'S TOTALLY WRONG? We all do that. Even today, even when we are constantly trying not to.
I'll go with an example of myself: once I had to slow down the car to half the speed in front of the police station and I was all like "This is outrageous, this is sheer hypocrisy! How dare them to make us slow down like obedient sheep right in front of them when less than one mile from here everybody is going to be rushing like the devil all over again?" And my father, by my side, just said "They do it to have the cars visible for identification", and that day I learned my lesson. Yeah, this big boy here just fully learned this lesson this year. Sure I knew how important it was before that, but, yeah, we need the punch to learn it. The worst thing is, I'll probably keep doing this same kind of mistakes.


And that's one big drawback to mindtraps: the paranoia. Anything could be a mindtrap. Identifying mindtraps could be a mindtrap itself (see the paradox lurking over again?). One could go insane and shut his mouth forever out of fear of saying any kind of bullshit ever again. We can't avoid them bullshits. We can try, but we will always be ignorant, misinformed people (or do you think that avoiding the evil mass media is the only thing you have to do to avoid misleading information?).
I don't want to make generalizations and go all "everybody is like that nowadays", though it would be amusing to end this very topic that way, but, seriously, I have to shut off my anti-mindtrap system, for I feel like I have to leave a message for us, here, now. We need to be more tolerant. Let's not get into an unnecessary rage for every dumb thing we see being said. So what if there's a lot of bullshit being said on Youtube comment sections. We probably hate it more because of the trend telling us they're all stupid people, more than they actually are. A little more patience, I ask.
Let's not understimate and just stop talking with every person we meet because this or that bullshit they say, lest it happens to you. We can try being less sure of the things we think. It doesn't really hurt. Let's stop pretending we know everything. Let's stop thinking we can criticize and doubt everything.We can't. What we are forgetting to do first is to question everything. There's one world of a difference there.
Yeah, I know the paradox and hypocrisy of being too sure when talking we can't be too sure, or criticizing people who criticize everything, but fuck, that's too much for my head to think of a way to overcome this circle of doom.


This topic is far from over, but I'll stop it here for now. My head aches.

Of Naming

I'll start posting my most relevant thoughts first to get them off the way for once.

Recently I've been paying a lot of attention to the necessity and importance of us humans to name every single thing we ever met or known. It's quite easy to spot this, really. From a extremely logical scientific study to an intuitive learning, you can always see how people value naming. It's vital for us to name things as a mean to develop our own perception of the world.
And, indeed, the moment you recognize something, a name for it is already born. There are things everybody knows, like catharsis, but not everybody knows it by that name. Some think of it like "That Thing I Feel When Luke Skywalker And Darth Vader Fight", for example. The name "I Have To Develop This Paragraph Further" was just born as well. And then another one was born "No, There's No Need, Just Connect The Next Paragraph With This One With Another One In-between".

The thing with names is that they are supposed to be shortcuts to ideas and concepts. Like what you just saw, there's no point in being a name when every detail is present in it. Like bringing your whole company building when you can just show your card. Names are every form of symbolism and representations of one bigger thing. Maybe that's why we tend to make generalizations, because naming is also a tool for simplifying things as a way to deal more efficiently with them.

Names allow me to make everything more tangible, and when you have control of the thing you tamed by naming it, you have access to areas beyond it. Names are steps on which I can walk deeper into the unknown, into the Unthought, and map things out.
No wonder one day just I started noticing how giving my thoughts names was exactly the core of what turned my process of thinking a thousand times more efficient. Well, this is all too obvious, yeah I know, but sometimes our minds do not spend enough time thinking of Things That Are Obvious, because... yeah, ok, I'm getting into that paradoxal thing again. Alright, my point is, sometimes a concept has to grow on you, right? You have to fully recognize and realize things by yourself, despite how obvious they may seem. And then names will actually be fully meaningful. The name comes after the realization, after all.

Of birth and distress

I think sometimes I think more than I should.
And my mind, just one more wandering piece of conscience around billions of other wandering minds, is filled with an ocean of thoughts and feelings and ideas and dreams and frustrations and love and hate and all of these very human traits that, sometimes, are too much for the feeble human mind to bear.

I keep thinking... it's tricky to have thoughts organized up there in your mind, as ethereal as they are in nature. One can think of several ways to tame his thoughts, but, even so, the things you think just turn out to be more ethereal thoughts. Like them humans, judging other humans. So if one doesn't find a way to break through this paradoxal, limiting thingy, this person is doomed to get things lost in the way. Maybe sanity.
This blog was born out of my need to store the products of my mind. And maybe I can keep it sane and organized. Hopefully no more precious ideas will be lost. Hopefully I'll be able to stop swimming in these same thoughts over and again, like bathing in the same pool of unrefreshed water every day, so, in an attempt to refresh my mind, this is the place I want to store them thoughts. No, not like a prison, I hope. Not like a disposal station either.
Maybe more like a museum.

However, something about this project gets me worried, and, as consequence, has been making me postpone it for months. There's this fear I have of making mistakes or simply not having my ideas crafted as perfectly as I intend to. This project is, after all, too important and dear to me. As a father to a child, I feel worried about the consequences of exposing it to the outerworld.

But I just need to stop being so perfectionist all the bloody time. I'd better think of this blog just as an exercise, not a test of any kind. I want, in a long term, to use this place to write things down as a mean of developing myself and improving my writing skills and ways of expressing myself more efficiently, without leaving important things unsaid or scattered uncarelessly around the text. I want to create a better connection between my thoughts and my words, my mind and my writing hand, as the latter one looks too limp in comparison.
So my greater goal is to develop a method of crafting well-structured and meaningul texts, but, as far as now, my main goal is simply to attend the urge to make my mind feel relieved. To unload the overloaded.