Parts of the brain

No comments whatsoever hahaha! Pinky and the Brain, presenting, well, the brain!

Dance!

I just love the choreography in this video. And the song is not bad either haha!

Rainy Day

Kinda fits the mood.

Walk down memory lane

I randomly stumbled upon these videos on youtube and I felt the compulsive need to share them since they are some of the songs I grew up with (no wonder I turned into such a fucked up kid hahaha).

To exist or not to exist (under previously specified and known conditions)...

What is reality? What is real? Is it something that you touch? Something that you feel? Something that you know? Something that you remember? When I touch the handle to open the door, when I see my room as I walk in, when I feel my bed as I sit down, when I think about my day, when I remember the people I saw at school, is that real? Did it really happen?

I just saw Shutter Island which is a movie about an institution for mentally ill patients that is located on an island and about its inhabitants, and at one point you really start to wander what is reality and what is the delusion. I know that in an earlier post I talked about how our personality and our senses limit our perception of the world and our ability to think, but this movie actually made me realize that everything, EVERYTHING that you know, see, want, smell, believe and are willing to die for are basically fabrications of our brain. We ARE our brain. If our brain works correctly, then this screen in front of me actually exists. If not, well I'm just hallucinating.

But what is a hallucination? The phenomenon of seeing something that isn't there? But then again how do you know what is there and what is not? Because other people tell you? How do you know then that they are right? Is there such a thing as an objective reality or is the world just a conglomerate of socially accepted concepts? Take 1984 for example. If you can say that there is a Reality, somewhere out there, independent of us, then it is possible in extreme cases to have one sane person in a society full of insane and delusional individuals. So in that case, you can't count on others to tell you what exists and what does not, what has happened and what has not.

And if we really want to push things, then how do you know that the PEOPLE around you exist? For all I know, I could be making them all up and they are not here. They are just ghosts that only I can see and that populate the world that I have created for myself in my mind. But in that case, you might think, it is impossible to ever know anything for sure about, well, anything. Precisely! It's like a bacterium on a microscope slide trying to study itself. Our brain gives us the freedom to shape the world around us, to try to understand it, to try to make ourselves comfortable within it, but at the same time, it is our prison. We never realize just up to what point our brain is irreplaceable and how much we depend on it until we are faced with mental diseases (or have seen a movie like Shutter Island in my case. Memento is also a very good example of this).

And that brings about a very important and somewhat ironic point. In western societies and in Europe, we place an extremely high degree of importance on reason and the scientific method. But, as rigorous and as precise as the results coming from this methodology might be, their starting premise is an assumption that has never been proven and never will be, and which is that our brain's functions can be trusted to lead us to the truth. I know that this might sound nihilistic and relativistic to boot, but the truth is that we have no way of knowing whether that which we are experiencing is real or not. Some delusions (like the one from this movie) are so realistic that we have no way of telling the difference between illusion and reality. It's like The Matrix, but the program is our brain and the wiring within it decides what we will see, believe or act upon. Everything is just a chain reaction starting from the same stimulus, but depending on what reactions are actually happening and how they are interpreted, we can basically have an almost infinite number of variations of the same event. And I think that might be the reason why mental diseases are so frightening. Because they strip us of our last source of certainty and of control over our environment, and they leave us blind.

Have you ever had that dream where you are doing something and all of a sudden you become blind and you try to open your eyes as wide as possible, but you still can't see anything? Imagine being blind, but not being aware of it, and going through your daily life, bumping into things and hurting yourself, without knowing how or why this is happening. Wouldn't that be confusing? But if the world were so ugly and horrifying, wouldn't you rather choose to be blind and blissfully unaware?

"If you had a choice between living as a monster and dying as a good man, what would you choose?"

Edward Daniels - Shutter Island

The face behind the mask

Things are not always like they seem to be...



Richard Cory

by Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1869-1935


Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him;
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

All you need is a suitcase

Sometimes I wish I could just get away. Leave without looking back. See the world. Experience new things. Eat weird food. Dance around the fire hoping for the rain to come. Leave my inhibitions aside and jump naked in the water. Sit on the backseat of a car for days on end, just looking at the scenery passing by. The Alps and their never ending tunnels. The clouds in the sky. The waves crashing against the shore. Feel the sand under my toes and the breeze in my hair. Run in the middle of a storm with the drops splashing against my skin. And then feel the sun drying them one by one. Take a walk on Maisonneuve at 8 in the morning on a Sunday. Experience silence and utter peace. The world is overcrowded and suffocating. And the funny thing is everyone feels the same. While I feel repressed by the people around, I am also part of the crowd that suffocates someone else. Isn't that ironic?

Pessimism

You know you're a pessimist when everything's going great in your life and you're just waiting for the kick in the ass to come.

Plato in Sex and the City

Harry Burns: You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Sally Albright: Why not?
Harry Burns: What I'm saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
Sally Albright: That's not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
Harry Burns: No you don't.
Sally Albright: Yes I do.
Harry Burns: No you don't.
Sally Albright: Yes I do.
Harry Burns: You only think you do.
Sally Albright: You say I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry Burns: No, what I'm saying is they all WANT to have sex with you.
Sally Albright: They do not.
Harry Burns: Do too.
Sally Albright: They do not.
Harry Burns: Do too.
Sally Albright: How do you know?
Harry Burns: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally Albright: So, you're saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
Harry Burns: No. You pretty much want to nail 'em too.
Sally Albright: What if THEY don't want to have sex with YOU?
Harry Burns: Doesn't matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
Sally Albright: Well, I guess we're not going to be friends then.
Harry Burns: I guess not.
Sally Albright: That's too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York.

When Harry Met Sally

Philosophical question that has been plaguing me for some time: is there such a thing as a platonic relationship between a man and a woman? My initial and immediate answer was, yeah of course, what a question! But I'm starting to wonder now. I have to admit that most of the time I tend to be quite innocent and not see the motives behind people's actions. So far, I can say I have 2 cases proving the phenomenon and around 6 cases disproving it. So does that mean that in those 2 cases I just didn't look far enough to see what was actually there? Is it just my wishful thinking? Are those guys just better able to hide their feelings? Maybe it's a mix of both. But life doesn't always have to boil down to sex. Why is it that you should always want more? I mean isn't the difference between friendship and a relationship just sexual attraction? Ok maybe that's a somewhat simplistic way to put it since when you date someone, you should preferably choose someone that you could stand seeing everyday (if seeing the person two or three days in a row makes you want to run away and hide, then there's a problem...at least that's the milestone I set for myself). But sex still plays a big part in this. And I simply cannot bring myself to believe that every man on this planet could potentially be attracted to every woman on the planet in such a way to avoid a friendship. And the whole "a man would sleep even with a woman that he finds unattractive", I don't really buy it. Unless you're desperate, you still have some filters.

So then what is the problem? Why is it that women can be just friends with men, but that doesn't work the other way around (except in my two exceptions to the rule and thank god for them...and actually you can say that they apply to the rule or not depending on how you look at it, but anyway). I've heard the you're-so-amazing-that-I-don't-want-to-be-just-your-friend tag line and, seriously, that really doesn't cut it. If my personality is so amazing (pfff yeah right!) then let's hang out more often, but that's not an excuse for not wanting my friendship. Blah, in the end, I think I'd rather just keep my innocent outlook of life and that way I'll have an excuse to ignore this inconsistency in perceptions.

Acuarela

In orasu-n care ploua de trei ori pe saptamana
Orasenii, pe trotuare,
Merg tinandu-se de mana,
Si-n orasu-n care ploua de trei ori pe saptamana
De sub vechile umbrele, ce suspina
Si se-ndoaie,
Umeda de-atata ploaie,
Orasenii pe trotuare
Par papusi automate, date jos din galantare.

In orasu-n care ploua de trei ori pe saptamana
Nu rasuna pe trotuare
Decat pasii celor care merg tinandu-se de mana,
Numarand
In gand
Cadenta picaturilor de ploaie,
Ce coboara din umbrele,
Din burlane
Si din cer
Cu puterea unui ser
Datator de viata lenta,
Monotona,
Inutila
Si absenta...

In orasu-n care ploua de trei ori pe saptamana
Un batran si o batrana -
Doua jucarii stricate -
Merg tinandu-se de mana.