The whole moving and searching for a better job thing is going slowly, so even with school work, there’s been time to write. Maybe I should not say, write, precisely. I have had a bit of time to pound out some new ideas and wrestle with some old ones, and I am coming to an agreement with myself about what I wanted to...
A good scare is like good sex. It is gripping and all consuming for an eternal moment, but once it has washed through you and you catch your breath, it evaporates. Like smoke, it unravels, curling in upon itself and expanding into nothing. Before you know it, only the memory remains.
As true as it is that some people are incapable of valuing things they have not paid the price for, the fact is that free money is never free. There is terrible cost for being on the public dole, that is immediately evident when you walk into a welfare community. Being on public assistance or living on a reservation,...
Even with the best intentions no one has the right to impose a system of thought or action on anyone against their will. Ironically, that is exactly what has happened to all of us as we were born into this world. It is in some ways no different than being born into slavery, in the sense that we come into the world...
Grouping is an activity that comes instinctively and automatically to people. It is part of a filtering process that allows us to make sense of our universe. Anything can serve as criteria for grouping, but because this is a perceptual-interpretive process; differences and similarities in physical characteristics are...
I never imagined that I had a monopoly on being at odds with life. It is simply a state of being with which I am much too familiar. I have spent most of my life struggling with things that most people take for granted, stumbling and falling in places where most people stride with confidence and conviction. Strangely, I...
Hello, Lindsay. I don’t know you and you certainly do not know me! That said, I do not really expect you to actually read this letter, and if you do, I really do not expect anything from you. Still, it is an open letter for you, and regardless of who else reads it, it is meant only for you. I don’t have a very clear...
What is a society, what is it made up of and how does it work? The simple answer is, jobs. Society is all about jobs. Living in the wild, surviving on their own, human beings had no jobs. Their lives were defined by the tasks that needed to be done in order to be able to survive. A bunch of people living together and...
In order to understand time it becomes necessary to ask if time is an objective or subjective medium. To be clear, by considering time subjectively I do not mean simply in terms of our subjective perception of time. The question asks if time is absolute, and thus events at different points in time persist in their own...
It seems that the itch to start working on a book has come back to me. It has to be an insane impulse, because with school and work I have no idea where I’ll find time to actually write anything. Then there’s the fact that I’ll be moving in the next few weeks and looking for a new job. I know I must be crazy. Of...
There is a line in “The Matrix” when Morpheus confronts Neo about a wrongness in the world, “like a splinter in your mind.” It was caused by an instinctive apprehension of the artificial reality he was trapped in. It is similar to a feeling many people have about our own reality. There is a wrongness in the world,...
In my bio on Helium, I confided a history of GID. That is Gender Identity Disorder, for those of you who did not know. There are a number of problems with that particular label for a condition that is poorly understood at best and entirely subjective at worst. Other terms that can be used are Gender Dysphoria or...
I normally avoid the first person when writing an article or essay, but in this case I need to begin with a personal story A year into my studies at Humboldt State University a mutual acquaintance showed up at my friend’s apartment while I was visiting and regaled us with his synopsis of a lecture on dimensions he...
I’ve been scratching out ideas since the writing bug first bit me in grade school. Somewhere in the back of my mind I always had this notion that I was going to devote some part of my life to writing. Of course, I’ve spent much more time thinking, while trying to find time to get anything written! Inevitably, when the...
Is there really such a thing as time? That is a question it is helpful to ask in order to address what we call the present. That is because our experience of time is completely subjective and because everything we are is dependent on that peculiar subjectivity. Time is what we derive from the ceaseless transformation...
Those moments in life when we are confronted with a new concept or idea can be life altering, seemingly setting the mind free to roam a new and undiscovered country or even knocking the world completely off its hinges. Sometimes that can happen even with just a new word or concept for something we’ve had an inkling of...
Among the features not provided for contributors on the now-defunct Helium writer’s website was a way for readers to respond directly to the writers. While it was active, the only way for readers to respond on Helium was by posting their own thoughts on the topic at hand. Those who were so inclined were welcome to do...
Posted on Helium under: The fundamentals of self-awareness The mind is an inherently fascinating and difficult subject to pin down. Philosophers have been musing over the mysteries of the mind for thousands of years but it is, without doubt, the scientists who find it the most frustrating to study. The subjective...
In asking about the purpose of religion, it is necessary to ask first if religion is not simply a product of our own search for purpose? The answer to the primary question depends on whether we perceive religion as having a divine origin or if we see it as the origin of divine thinking. Either way, religion comes to us...