Whats up? The updated and condensed version of this book is at the beginning of the page "the meaning of life". My art is on the pages "link", "my self, my art", and "poetry". Drop me a line. ------ Tom

Living in the modern world is like walking on a sidewalk instead of on a trail. It seems easier, but if you still walk until you can't walk anymore, your feet will be even sorer. Our artificial creations are not as well tailored to our soles as to the outside world. We are empowered but it is impossible not to take for granted what is granted.

People dread a lull in the conversation except with their best friends. When you have known someone long enough they know the real you, so you can let your guard down and admit you don't always have great things to say. Letting down your guard is the result of being intimate but can also cause it.

Brain atrophy caused by passive thought is a vicious cycle. The worse people get the more they prefer passive thought. People who watch a lot of TV are as bad for you as TV itself. Spending time by you is important. Develop your friendship with yourself.

Daydreams should be taken to the extreme. Be very thorough about what you would do if you found the perfect companion or became rich. Often what you really crave is already within your reach or you find that you don't really want it that much. This allows you to move on, just as getting your ideas on paper gets them off your mind by organizing them, giving you room for new ones.

Your moods are cyclic. They build up behind the scenes and are triggered by small occurrences, which disguises their cyclic nature. Enjoy the negative feeling, it is your resistance that gives them force. Things that trigger sadness are generally bad, but the feeling is suprisingly yummy. Sadness is more a consolation than repentance.

I would say the most important thing right away, but it is surly some phrase like "learn to be as happy as possible" which only means as much as you bring to it. Points must drift to you, so I will jump around like a cocktail conversation and not support my ideas for now, stating half-truths and assertions as facts to save time.

Once you've heard enough, you will decide by deduction whether you like my ideas and will not care about my reasons. Besides, it's the active process of assembling the data that makes you think about it. Its just like how you can never find a place if you did not drive there yourself. One problem though, which occurs to everyone, is that people over-emphasize your interest in the first topic you bring up.

You can read books by the greatest minds of history. They are monologues, but even if you could converse with the authors, to your questions they would say; "If I knew any other important things they would be in the book also".

Our lineage includes at least 50 million years spent in status organized societies. Status is perhaps the biggest human motive, and the highest motive if you seek the highest approval, but if you seek approval from your friends you are following their values. If they are following you also, no one will get anywhere except by chance. However, leaving the herd means fewer people will relate to you, so its good to bring some with you.

Effecting the world significantly usually involves creating something that is better than what is out there, which you can not do by following others. If a new idea has value and is recognized, its essence will be replicated and it will have a big effect, even if it's a little thing.

Dressing and acting weird will help make you more original. It's like how smiling can make you feel happy. People think the sole is steadfast but it is a chameleon; don't show it false colors. Doing things which are dumb, false or meek will make you more that way.

Walking and talking fast makes you think faster.

Earning a lot of money is often a sign of real ability, which are worthy things. Because most people see with their eyes rather than their brains, and because ability can be hard to see even with the brain, we equate the appearance of wealth with ability, like a rule of thumb. However, appearance is fakeable; that is the fuel of ornamentation. To disguise the falseness, ornamentation is alloyed with real beautification, skill and art.

The line between art and ornamentation can be blurry but it is real. The purpose for creating art is usually to increase ones status also, but it relies much more on real value.

Ornamentation is a trick to get status by exploiting peoples shallow sight. It is everywhere but often is hard to spot.

Refusing to play the fashion game will cause you to be ostracized. People do not like to have their lifestyles and major beliefs challenged. People have a "vested interest" and sub-concisely resist and attack change because they don't want to admit they were wrong for so long and mis-spent time. Vested interest in beliefs is what accumulates over generations to form traditions, customs etc.

Because fashion and other types of ornamentation are deceit, communication is damaged. With everyone being as deceitful as possible it balances out morally, but it keeps people from seeing the real you. Some people wonder why they don't meet deep philosophers with out thinking about how they disguise those traits in themselves.

We who were store bought fashion are acting like we are just someone’s billboard and someone else’s easel. Fashion surlly tells you something about a person and their tastes, but taste is not artistic expression. taste is a reaction. Being in fashion is a public display that a person has not fully embraced the germ of art, which is action, newness, and contrast.

Your ideal companion is out there but it is not reasonable to imagine they are much better than you are, because if they were, you would not be able to hold their interest. Your accomplishments and vices are reflected back at you as what you can except from your friends. On the other hand, when you meet your match, no extra effort will be necessary to impress them.

Education and work have taken on a religious quality. People are so sure that they are good that they made them symbols for goodness. Because work must proceed product, there is sense in projecting the value of the product to the work. However, even the truest seeming associations can be false, partly because cause and effect are so interwoven. Associations are like generalizations, categorizations, and statistics. They must sacrifice detail to bring you their wide focus, making you prone to error when conditions change. Using associations without checking to see if they are true is statistical freeloading, which can't be done forever.

Survival of the fittest can't keep things too nice, because it doesn't act in times of plenty. This is why many people have bad vision. Governments, laws, beauracracy, curriculum, language, traditions etc. decay, but individual books, mechanical designs and some procedures do not. The atrocious decay of logic in English spelling is a visible example of how bad things can and will get in a working system.

Survival of the fittest kicks in when something gets bad enough, but the fixes stack up like patches on patches. Brain layouts must have as many dead ends, unused areas, redundancies and nonsense as language. City layouts and human appearances are kept at a lower level of decay because they are not symbolic and are comparably more visible.

Evolutions many patches left the brain full of many contradictory or opposed system. Opposed systems lend themselves to control by feedback. Insulin tries to lower the blood sugar level; appetite tries to raise it. Fear makes people careful; anger and ambition make them bold.

People improve their ability to lie to themselves by not analyzing things like birthdays in a logical manor. Pretending your birthday is special seems harmless but it, and the hundreds of other little lies, dulls your ability to recognize falseness and truth. The more practice you get, the better you will be able to believe that you like to exchange gifts, you love your girlfriend's dog, and your kid should stay away from sex and study algebra. The importance of the errors that caused WW2 is brushed over while people feel concern for simple things that are too often trivial. Letting yourself believe what is easy and accepted is how so many scientifically minded people can be religious, among other reasons.

People who make fools of them selves, but are not fools, put at ease the people around them. Being foolish loses its stigma.

People will tell you things in a way that thinly disguises what they really mean. When you think about it later by yourself and it unfolds, your defense mechanisms will not be on guard. Also, you will be more susceptible because you will think you came to the conclusion yourself.

Travailing can be a great way to see that there is a better way of life. However, if you feel customs and traditions are a hindrance to communication and you already live in a great place, travel is little more than entertainment. Much of its attraction comes from the sub-conscience. People feel the distance gets them "away" from their problems. Also, because their routines are broken, they must explore and do new things. However, many new and unexplored things and cultures are right in your own city. Also, don't underestimate the language barrier.

Emotions alone will not steer you to justice and value, it is complex and requires logic. You might get out of the way of trucks because they have such a big load—but it causes more stuff to be shipped by truck Vs rail etc. When you drive extra fast for the sake of those behind you, it causes people to feel they can live that much farther from work. Good deeds do some good, but rarely as much as you would think sense the system adjusts to compensate. Even a major technical or social advancement is merely hacking at the branches of discontent. Biochemistry could reach the root, but would only show hyperbola.

Wearing a $30 tie makes as much sense as wearing fruit on your head. Anything could be in fashion. Most people could learn to respect anything. If people liked to display symbols of their good deeds rather than their ability to consume, their vanity could be put to good use. I saw a person with the right idea; his ratty car had a sticker saying, "you can tell I'm investing my money up above".

Ornamentation and other skin-deep things are "small" or "false" versions of something better. Many things with this "miniature" quality trick simple parts of the brain and make people feel satisfied.

Problems with TV, movies: 1) knowledge from mass media is so commonly known it is poor material for original thinking. 2) Too passive- causes brain atrophy. 3) Mellow drama causes callousness? 4) Too much detail- uses up brain processing. 5) Satisfies emotional needs, but in a thin way, lowering your motivation for real satisfaction. 6) Rather than getting more info, most people should be trying to make sense of the info they already have.

Another example of spending too much time getting information and not enough processing it is how little time people spend thinking of which path is best and experimenting. Most of their time is spent working and preparing for work (school). Or like money: spend one hour thinking of how to spend 10 hours pay.

People think, "that only costs a days wages" without thinking that much of their money is necessary to maintain their lifestyle. Figure out your descretionarey daily income. Money is time and time is thought, which is everything.

Similarly, spending an hour of time is a lot if it replaces what would have been your most productive hour. Distractions are worse than indulgences in this way.

It is hard to know what you want. Once you know what it is, you will find it is easy to get. Doing nothing and thinking about whatever is much more productive than mis-guided action.

Motivation, creativity and the ability to process information are renewed over time and can be increased. This misleads people into thinking that they are unlimited. No matter how much you can muster, that's how much you have to work with. This is why trivial things must be avoided. i offen park in the same place, which seems like being in a rut. However, im just saving my cereosity for other things.

Talking fast and using complex sentences or reasoning is almost proof of intelligence. A big vocabulary can also be a sign, but not for sure.

The value of anything is increased if you know how important it is. Often knowledge is worthless without this ingredient.

Knowing that you are smart is very important. Believing you are great will help you do great things, which will make you even more confidant, thus even more great. Say, "I am great" over and over. At first it seems embarrassing, which indicates lack of subconscious conviction.

Laughing is a reaction to an incongruity. Surprise, confusion, dumbness, mistakes, impossible, embarrassing, belittling of self or others can be funny. It is the brain's way of shutting down to keep illogical trains of thought from being remembered in a serious area. Say "dumb" when you see something really dumb to make sure your brain puts it in the right place.

People naturally fear and avoid confusion and rule breaking. This must be overcome to pioneer, which is the most valuable thing. Success fuels enthusiasm, failure poisons your drive. Failure in childhood leaves a permanent drag.

Control, like failure, will damage a child's drive. The less the better. Less control would be necessary if kids were raised in an environment that allowed them and there parents more space. No surprise there are problems when people drag their kids into stores and other adult places. Most of the actions of kids that seem to call for control are really them dragging you into a power play. A mature, friendship type relationship without any forced control is important.

The greatest experience might be overcoming great obstacles and danger to win the day. The evolution of the human emotions mostly occurred in the hunter/gatherer stage. In those conditions such experiences may have been common. In this day and age things are too abstracted and drawn out to give profound satisfaction. A fake reality could be created for a group of kids in which they believed great events were occurring, allowing the fullest possible development.

The 4 main motivators are comfort, ego, entertainment, and a future supply of the 3. Memory don't mean too much to me. Dreams seem like a world unexplored but they can only be remembered, which is not compelling.

People will subconsciously forget things at your house to give them a reason to return.

I still find myself phrasing ideas in my head in a way that would appeal to one of my old friends. I don't see him much anymore, but his effect is lingering.

Meeting people by chance is rare. Like chemical reactions, people need a catalyst like work or friends to bring them close enough to connect.

Also, if you only talk to one one-millionth of the population, that is your chance of finding your best match. Even if you met 5 people a day that is only 1700 per year; less than .1% of San Diego. However, the people you do meet will be more like you than average assuming you go to places that reflect your true interests and have friends you really like.

On the other hand, you don't want to overestimate the difference between people of a similar type. Differences due to environment would be erased over time as you affect each other and share experiences.

Don't let your friends see you seeing them in a bad light. They look for their own value through your opinion of them. If they know that your opinion went down you will be of less value to them.