Monday, October 20, 2014

Tangents: Demistified.

Here is my attempt to solve the mystery of tangents (most likely I am the only one who thinks of them as such) using what limited knowledge I have about the physiology of the brain.

Brain is made up of little nuggets that store all the information we receive via our senses called neurons.  We have a lot of these neurons, though this article is not concerned with the actual number.  This neurons are all interconnected in various and mysterious patterns by another part of the brain called dendrites.  Please refer to the exciting picture below.




Sunday, October 12, 2014

How I Care.


The news representative tried to put the surfer on a guilt trip by saying that the money he was using to buy food came from hard working Americans.  Shouldn't he feel guilty using such money if he himself as an healthy individual with functional arms, legs, and a head could go out, get a job and pay for his own food?  The surfer didn't seem to care.  Even I, as an Ex-hard working American, current hard working global citizen don't care.  I can't care about this.  It simply isn't relevant enough to my life.  I think it boils down to the fact that I don't care about money enough to care about this.  Let me explain.

Money never belongs to anyone (relevant to me).  From the moment it is minted until it is replaced by a new form of paying for goods and services it is constantly moving in and out of peoples hands and bank accounts.  This means the money I receive from a company was never mine and therefore when some of it is taken away from me for taxes before I ever see it - I don't care.  How can I care about something that is taken from me when I never owned it in the first place?  I didn't make the money.  I didn't put my hard work into creating money.  Therefore I can't place value in it.  But I do place value in the service I provided for which I received the money.  I provide a service and am paid money according to how valuable it is considered to be.  I then adjust my lifestyle according to what can be afforded by the amount of money I receive for the services I provide.  If the lifestyle I have under these circumstances is enjoyable then I continue this process with happiness and joy for all mankind.  If it is not, I continue to be happy me but I take my happiness elsewhere.  Some people choose to bite the hand that feeds them...that is good.  We need those kind of people.  They do stuff I don't care to do.  I am sure it is important.  I would rather find a place the already appreciates the service I provide and demonstrates this by providing enough money to allow for me to live comfortably.  If said place does not exist, then I will create it.  A comfortable life is contingent upon what I do, what I create, with whom I create, with whom I do.  Some people like my friend Chris like to do and create big projects with many people so they of course need a lot of money to support it.  Currently I do and create with my fiance Amy, my brothers Jonathan and Joseph, and myself.  That is a total of four people.  The projects we are doing are not huge and therefore we need a minimal amount of money (mostly just time) to support them.  As these projects grow in size, more people may get involved and as such more money will be needed.  This is all part of the growth of the things we do and create.  At no point is the focus more on the money than the lifestyle.  So when I see a news article trying to scare me by showing some stranger taking advantage of a system that takes in money I never owned....I simply don't care.  Here is how I could care.  I put many hours into a project with Jonathan.  We create a wooden bicycle that makes babies dance.  It was very difficult but satisfying to make.  Then suddenly this stranger comes and destroys it.  I would gladly care at that point.  In order for me to care about that surfer taking advantage of the foot stamps system, I would have to care about money to the point where I actually thought it was mine, then I would be concerned that some of it was being used to support this stranger, and then I would care.

I wonder if there is a correlation between how much value people place on money as an object and how much they care about things similar to this news report.