The Beauty in the Brain

     After a year or two of internal conflict due to my inability to be decisive in regard to my future profession, I have finally settled on a profession that I am completely satisfied with. For years, I played with the idea of being a writer. I decided to take a creative writing class, which convinced me that I did NOT want to be a writer. Sure, I enjoyed the class, but the career was not for me. Next, came being a lawyer. This idea was my goal for quite a while until I realized that lawyers are generally quite boring people that have to deal with people and their greed day in and day out. That idea was shoved out along with writing. Next, came the dream of being a classical violinist. I refuse to even go in to this, but let's just say that I got out of that one as well. Then there was philosophy. What a wonderful dream it was, I do believe it was the one that I loved the most out of all the aforementioned careers. I was completely prepared to pursue my Ph.D and become a professor of philosophy at some renowned university. However, that dream came crashing down when I realized the limited amount of positions in the workforce for a philosophy major.

    I arrived at cognitive science by accident, to be honest. I was browsing the majors offered by a few Ivy League colleges (and that is another dream in itself!) and I stumbled upon cognitive science. I am looking for a career that has an ever-expanding hiring rate, and includes the fields that I have interest in. I am pleased to say that cognitive science has all of this. With a degree in cogsci, I can become a research analyst, or even lead research projects myself. I look forward to discovering new things about the brain in my studies. I love the thought of thought. It is an enigma to me, a beauty that can only be discovered with the help of science. Human thought is the result of a chemical process that is beautiful in itself.

In Search Of Truth

     In a search of all things good and true, one must face the inevitable question that seems paradoxical in context. What is truth? It seems paradoxical to me, for one can only reach this question while in search of its answer. For example, my recent religious and political research has led me to question some of the things that I had so avidly believed as a child. I still believe in God as my Savior, and I still believe certain things about the government, but I have come to define my religion and political beliefs in my own terms. However, it would be extremely vain of me to say that my political views are truth, merely based on the fact that they are mine. So, where does one find the absolute truth? This question has been posed countless times throughout the history of man and the answer is still as elusive as Big Foot himself.
     This question leads me to yet another, why does man insist on the truth, when he doesn't even know what that perceived truth is? Do humans have an innate tendency towards a specific 'truth'? Are we pre-programmed to believe certain things, or to act a certain way? To answer this, one must have knolwedge from God himself, and I do not pretend to have the answers. I'm merely allowing my thoughts to flow freely.
    

A Russian Romantic

"The characteristics of our romantic are to understand everything, to see everything and to see it incomparably more clearly than the most positive of our thinkers; to refuse to take anyone or anything for granted, but at the same time not to despise anything; to go round and round everything and to yield to everything out of policy; never to lose sight of the useful and the practical (rent-free quarters for civil servants, pensions of a sort, decorations)-and to discern this aim through all the enthusiasms and volumes of lyrical verses, and at the same time to preserve to his dying day a profound, and indestructible respect for "the sublime and the beautiful," and, incidentally, also to preserve himself like some precious jewel wrapt in cottonwool for the benefit, for instance, of the same "sublime and beautiful." Our romantic is a man of great breadth of vision and the most consummate rascal of all our rascals, I assure you-from experience. That, of course, is all true if our romantic is intelligent. Good Lord, what am I saying? The romantic is always intelligent." -"Notes from the Underground, Part II - Chapter 1." Written by Fyodor Dostoevsky

An Introduction of Sorts

As I was reading "Notes from the Underground" (Dostoevsky), it occured to me that perhaps I take "the beautiful and sublime" for granted. In my efforts to become a culturally well-rounded indvidual, I have embarked upon a personal journey of sorts. I want to experience the world and learn new things every day. Ideas are everywhere, they are the fabric of who we are as 'man'. I plan to explore the ideas of the past, present, and future, while learning about the world around me. So this blog will basically be a place for me to organize my thoughts, and keep links that I would like to remember. I really hope this doesn't become as cluttered as my desk is.

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
— Albert Einstein