IDEAS ABOUT JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING © ARCHIVE
Three random thoughts and three wisdoms
THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMAL COMMUNICATION
One wonders why evolution sometimes selects for deviousness and cunning, qualities which should not help a species to thrive, at least not if there is anything like a principle of progress operating in nature. Deceit should have no sanction in Paradise. Yet dishonesty is so widespread an adaptive device--look at all the camouflage going on--that one could become thoroughly cynical about the existence of any moral fiber in nature. But when one considers that deception wouldn't work if it were universal, if no creature believed anything another creature did, then the whole kit and caboodle would collapse. What sustains nature is that honesty and openness are the norm--I want to eat, I want to mount, I am dangerous. Deception is rampant only in human society where, as we see, it leads to universal cynicism, one of the most maladaptive states of social organization.
WHOM WE KNOW BEST
I am just now fully cognizant of what a great mystery each individual is. None of us knows the mystery of any other. We know just a fraction, a trickle, a taste of anyone or anything, no matter how intimate or beloved. Reading, not direct contact, is the open sesame of the dark interior of individuality. So it is authors, not our friends and loved ones, whom we know best, better in many ways than authors know themselves. Maybe it is this gratuity of free entrance, the unintended exposure of the mind and soul of the "other," that draws us to novels and poems and memoirs--not the entertainment or knowledge about life they offer. The book or story strikes a match that discovers the hidden mind of the writer. We know the mind of a writer, I believe, better than we know anyone in our lives.
A QUESTIONABLE IDEA:
Is the music in Mozart's head more, or less, beautiful than the music played.
Wisdom 1: One person's ceiling is another person's floor.
Wisdom 2: Healers attract the sick.
Wisdom 3. Wherever you go, there you are.
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