Training

Re: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke


If you experience any wonder at a technology—no matter how fleeting—you are of the generation before the aliens arrived.


If you experience frustration at the technology for not doing something (which previously may have been unthinkable) you are of the generation to whom the aliens will be revealed.

Photo by lyacadajar

Start Making Sense

Book Report - The Spell of the Sensuous

What an incredible book this is. Abram begins by stating that any sort of experience we have is at its very base, derived from us being embodied experiencers. This goes beyond just experiences, then, but also to any concepts or thoughts or ideas we can conjure. Everything, really, has its basis in our bodies. We have developed the ability to think from our experiences with the outside world, and then this ability to think turns itself backward and makes us believe it’s the only real, true part of us, and the rest is stupid meat.

Not at all, writes Abram. This is only a trick of our thinking that can occur once we have separated ourselves from the land to such an extent that

it no longer speaks to us; or better yet, that we no longer understand its language. If somebody talks always but we do not understand a word they say, 1 of two things will happen. Either we’ll begin to understand them, or we’ll tune them out. If we continue to listen to them, we’ll begin to understand. But if we’re surrounded by a person always speaking that we never come to understand, it’s a statement that we’ve stopped listening.

We’ve stopped listening by doing exactly what I’m doing right now.