waking life. interesting movie.

"Everyone wants to understand art. Why don't we try to understand the song of a bird? Why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people think they have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only an insignificant part of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world though we can't explain them; people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree."
-- Picasso

True. But I think people have wondered why they love the night, the flowers, and everything around them.
Doesn't someone wonder why we feel happy when we make other people happy? If it's because there is some God and a force that creates good and evil, where good brings some kind of inner joy in us, and where good can be done by spreading joy, then that might be one explanation. And if there is no God, or if there isn't such a simple divide between good and evil, if those concepts don't really exist in an absolute form, then why should good be more innate that we should be happy to smile at someone else? Or maybe we're not only happy that way. Some feel happy when they watch someone's downfall too. Why should doing good feel good? Just as why should we love the night?

my parents are getting ready to go for a function. My father is dressed up in a shirt and will wear a tie. He is thin but relatively tall. His glasses look clearly and the gold frame seems accented though I doubt he spent much time specifically polishing them for this. He sits on the chair in the room by the front door, seemingly thinking of nothing but not being absent minded. It is as if he's is preparing himself for something, though there really isn't much he to prepare for. I don't think he's preparing for anything. He is waiting. My mother will put on a nice dress. A woman enjoys dressing up. Without functions and events to attend, when will she have the chance to put on beautiful clothing and articles? Everything must go more right than usual. There is less casualness. Once dressed up, there are things I don't like to do. I don't want to sweat. I don't want to touch my glasses too many times. My finger oils might affect this feeling of formality I have. These events are one of the banes of my memories. A reminder of me being in a middle class family. Not even middle class. It reminds me that the ones I love aren't getting what I want them to have. The feeling is romanticized in me. The feeling is stronger in a memory than it would be in reality.

The ones who matter won't turn up at such functions. When they do, they either flaunt their extravagance or come dressed more shabbily than unspokenly required, exhibiting a sense of independence of the social constructs around them. The social constructs that my parents follow. A thorn in my side.

It's a cruel world. Although maybe it's all in my head. Then it's a cruel world in my head.

Why do we have to suck up like that.
The hypocrites, even in the church. The pervasive social constructs. My poor vocabulary.

http://www.svf.uib.no/sfu/blombos/pdf/11.%20FDE%20et%20al%20Origins%20symbol%20JWP%202003.pdf

"Archaelogical Evidence for the Emergence of Language" article

Such lapses in memory, according to this new research, could be blamed, at least in part, on rising blood glucose levels as we age. The findings suggest that exercising to improve blood sugar levels could be a way for some people to stave off the normal cognitive decline that comes with age.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081230072238.htm



Language in humans has evolved culturally rather than genetically, according to a study by UCL (University College London) and US researchers. By modelling the ways in which genes for language might have evolved alongside language itself, the study showed that genetic adaptation to language would be highly unlikely, as cultural conventions change much more rapidly than genes. Thus, the biological machinery upon which human language is built appears to predate the emergence of language.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/ucl-ldb011909.php
Hmm...so no innateness hypothesis?
No, wait, this is referring to how we don't have "language genes" whereby I might have "Mandarin language genes" and you "French language genes". Does this also mean that a child of purely Chinese descent, if born in Turkey and brought up in a Turkish environment, will not (on the basis of race) be disadvantaged in learning Turkish [SOV] and not advantaged in learning Chinese [SVO]? This fits with the Crain-Lilo reading regarding immigrant children.