Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science” (the gay science refers to poetry) was the book that I picked up in college  that attracted me to philosophical thought.  His brief aphorisms encouraged me to challenge conventional thought by looking at the world from the perspective of different philosophical paradigms.

Psychology-There are three traits that are common to all men. All men are self-interested, loss averse and insecure. If we look to cognition and behavior we can see these traits externalized in all human relationships.

Self Interests- The reality that human beings are self-interested complicates all interactions.  What do we value, who do we serve, self or society?  The manner which we balance our actions between “self” and “others” manifests the manner which our essence is externalized into the world.  We live in a society that has moved on from a collective model where there is a balance maintained between self and community to one based on self and selfishness.  Our societal slogan has changed from  “do the right thing,” to “do as you wish as long as no one gets hurt.” 

Judgement- To achieve wisdom one must cast off judgement: it is indeed unwise to judge.

Perception- Your perception, your pain conflict emanates from your  brain. Knowledge is concealed when contradictions appear real. They are the chaff distracting us concealing us from our inner light. We are all fatefully unaware of this corporeal plight that muddles our cognition shielding us from the light.

Our only true entitlements are birth and death. Fate alone our greatest friend or foe. Neither Faith nor hard work can overcome the the weight of our historical reality.

Reason- To be the voice of reason where there is no reason is akin to being a teacher with no students.

Candor- At what the cost of candor? To avoid commentary for the sake of frail ears is to deny reason. Reason is the axis on which knowledge spins, elevating us above other species.

Alan Turing-  With all of the focus on math and science, isn’t it peculiar that strings of zeros and ones would take the world on its greatest journey yet: a salute to Turing.

Of Rabbis and Priests- Interesting how so many great minds descend from rabbinic lineages and no one descends from a great line of priests. (That we know of…)

The Past- The tighter that you hold onto your past, the more indefinite your future.

Wisdom is only achieved when you go from being a reactor to an observer.

The Human Paradox- The human being is the only animal capable of creating contradictions in their habitat.

History- The best thing about history is that it is in the past. Learn from it, repeat only the positive and grow from the negative.

Oppression- Childhood is the first form of oppression that we all experience.

Men?- If the world was ruled by an insightful female megalomaniac. Men would be shuttled off to gas chambers for their destructive capacity in personal and societal relations due to the inability of most men to control their primal instincts, drives and channel them into positive behaviors that benefit society.

Adulthood- You don’t really become an adult until you stop whining about what your parents did to you and move on.

On Hope- Solomon said where there is no hope the people will perish. Hope requires possibility and potential. Neither of which has any value if you lack the vision to see them and are not willing to do the work to see them through to fruition.

Equality- All of the attempts to unify and equalize race, religion and gender in this country have served to increase polarization geometrically. Altered values, altered identities a society with no unified identity cannot direct itself in a positive direction for we are too distracted by the dissonance and factionalism.

Poetry- I have pondered whether society has cast off the romantic sentiment found in the gay science. Romance requires vision that extends beyond the individual: a view of a world where beauty and possibilities abound. An equivalence between heart and mind that few truly ever find.

Society- The world is so polarized by beliefs and thoughts that are unwise. Schemas built on fairy tales, myths and beliefs twist our tails. Contradictions rule the stage they take such a costly wage. Feeding conflict between mankind as they blurry even noble lines. Take my eyes you queen of lies as we can no longer empathize with the plight of the righteous misled by your lies. Reason is our only path so virtue can be unmasked. Laying waste to the lofty tales of societies awful fails. Honoring our thoughts and minds truth can’t be blind to the realities we unwind when guided by our rational minds. Lay away your emotional rant, don’t let anger guide your path. All it does is polarize and make you appear so unwise. Few have told this lofty tale, philosophers of many scales, seeking wisdom to be our guide and reason to light our mind. Their arguments  lost in false light in a world where passions set your plight. Perception flawed is your fate! Untested thoughts stiffen your gait. You are pursued by imaginary flames that distract you from the truth. Upset and anxious are your plight when reason is not your guiding light. Humanity is an interesting lot… I wonder if there’s a numinal plot. Does creation have a plan that sets forth the path of man? Perhaps this all is meant to confound and leave us in a perplexing cloud. Some have said reason shall guide our path. If that were so… we all would know: I assure you this isn’t so. The noble lead most lonely lives this is what reason does provide? Set apart from those who fail to see the errors that prevail. Look at society silly girl, what flag does it unfurl ? Greed and narcissism rule the land spoiling our best-formed plans. Of men who saw a better fate than the corruption that rules our fate. A republic born of noble cause, should conceal our human flaws.

The chains that bind us exist only in our minds, limiters drawn by flawed perception and information. It is not what I was told it is what I believed and accepted. Gigabytes of programming driving our neural networks carrying flawed and biased data forces our realities. Objectivity a myth, a dragon slain by our inability to process free from our biased cognitive realities. The masses trapped in simplistic renderings of reality, accepting beliefs that oppress and lacking the creativity to change. One must first recognize light from the darkness: to be blind is to be oppressed.

The masses are concerned only with the trivial and mundane that surrounds them. Trite shall always define their corporeal plight. 

Man is inexplicably trapped in a historical reality that is unknowable to him. “Man is in the world,” locked in a temporal, geographic and cultural reality, blind to the history that brought us to the present and the other realities that exist along side our own.

Man only exists within his own contextualized limits. Time, geography and, culture are assumed to be universal. Being in the world only requires us to attend to the “here and now,” ignoring the history that brought us to the present and the knowledge needed to better our existence. The truths that we hold holy are for the most part temporally grounded in the here and now and are for the most part irrelevant or misunderstood in the context of past and future. 

Our biases permeate every aspect of our cognition, driving both reason and emotion and blurring the lines between both. 

Division of labor is necessary in a society. Nonetheless our modern narratives on equality undermine and contradict our ability to achieve a balance.
(Locke- a good man knows his place in society pp)

Some of the keys to oppression seem to be hardwired into our neural networks, societies have learned to utilize our own brains against us at times, giving us what we believe we need, while keeping us further away from the level of freedom that can be obtained

A problem of linguistics: “truth” maybe the most dangerous word in our lexicon. It implies perfection and infallibility that is rarely found within social constructs. When it is used broadly to describe constructs that are untestable, it often is polarizing and can be used as a means to deliberately shape our thoughts and can be dangerous and oppressive.

Artificial Intelligence- Man has thus far failed in causing his own extinction, though he has developed the tools that make it possible. Can an AI be the tool that helps him to succeed?