Update

Started working on the history project. Tis taking up a lot of time...

The music goal has been on a standstill... I cannot get into the music lab. I have been looking at getting my own equipment though. Might take some time.

Non-stop errands and goal-working everyday!

I love summer. :)

More food - 2

Ender, speculating on Qing-jao:

Qing-jao, I know you well, thought Ender. You are such a bright one, but the light you see by comes entirely from the stories of your gods. you are like the pequenino brothers who sat and watched my stepson die, able at any time to save him by walking a few dozen steps to fetch his [medicine]; they weren't guilty of murder. Rather they were guilty of too much belief in a story they were told. Most people are able to hold most stories they're told in abeyance, to keep a little distance between the story and their inmost heart. But for these brothers--and for you, Qing-jao--the terrible lie has become the self-story, the tale that you must believe if you are to remain yourself. How can I blame you for wanting us all to die? You are so filled with the largeness of the gods, how can you have compassion for such small concerns as the lives of three species of raman? I know you, Qing-jao, and I expect you to behave no differently from the way you do. Perhaps someday, confronted by the consequences of your own actions, you might change, but I doubt it. Few who are captured by such a powerful story are ever able to win free of it. (pg 307)

She buys so wholeheartedly into a story that she cannot free herself from it. How many people, groups of people, or entire sects do we know that believe so completely into something that they could not see the truth even if it were presented directly to them? How much of what I believe has become such an ingrained prejudice that I am not even aware that I believe it blindly?

What does this mean for religious faiths? Often I wondered, if I had been born into a Jewish family, or one of Islam, Hinduism, etc etc, what would I believe? As the years passed my faith in Christianity became one of reasoning and logic rather than blind faith, but even still, how much of my rationale was already skewed by the story by which I was so enraptured? Can we truly ever be objective of ourselves?

:) Have a good day.

Food for Thought - 1

(conversation between two other sentient species)

You spoke a moment ago as if you believed that human beings had actually achieved intelligence.

Clearly they have.

I think not. i think they have found a way to fake intelligence.

.

.

.

They think they're rational through all those [life] stages.

Self-delusion. Even at their best, they never, as individuals, rise above the level of manual laborers. Who among them has the time to become intelligent?

Not one.

They never know anything. They don't have enough year in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudoknowledge as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.

While collectively...

Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by the people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.

So you're saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individuals--and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with.

Exactly.

If they're so stupid and we're so intelligent, why do we have only one hive, which thrives here because a human being carried us? And why have you been so utterly dependent on them for every technical and scientific advance you make?

Maybe intelligence isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Maybe we're the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all.

-Excerpt from Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card