Things have been a little crazy around here lately so I haven't been able to think about my previous posting too much... but I will post about that soon. Here are a couple more quotes for you plus a bit of commentary:
I think this is a wonderful quote. I also think it is extremely accurate... Most people that are actually smart are, in my opinion, smart enough to know that doubt doesn't make you any less wise. By acknowledging that you may be wrong, may be in the minority, may not be able to accomplish your stated objective, or whatever else the doubt is, you are signaling that you have had an idea and instead of blindly pursuing the idea, you have reflected upon it, found it worthy of pursuing, and have the courage to be wrong (etcetera). I think a lot of people do not do things simply for fear of being wrong, but imagine how the world would be different if people didn't mind being wrong...
"It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow." -- Ralph Ellison
Again, spectacularly insightful in my opinion. I think everyone would acknowledge that change is difficult and it requires a lot of effort and determination. But change isn't growth. The most obvious example of this, I think, is education. Changing from one field of study to another is difficult and requires you to spend time thinking about what you are doing and analyzing the benefits associated with it. But actually to graduate... now that is growth. You are saying you have decided upon a field of study, have pursued that field for a number of years, and are actually intelligent regarding this field (to an extent). Please don't take my example out of context and think that I am saying change is easier than growth because growth requires you to not change... What I am saying is that I think change is easier than growth because it requires you to make an effort to do something differently whereas growth, true growth, requires dedication and stick-to-itiveness to analyze how and the extent to which you are changing. Any other ideas about this quote??
"All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone, everything is in relation to everything else." -- Buddha
This reminds me a lot of the post-modern view of the self... It also brings up a good point: without a, how could we know -a? Of course, this type of logic would only show us the extremes, but I think it is very useful to look at the extremes because they give you a limit to what is possible... a bounded rationality if you will. Now, of course this quote isn't just talking about a and -a, but it is also asking how could we know a if it wasn't for b? I think one way to look at this is to consider a bird. If we look at the bird, we know we are looking at a bird (and if you are an ornithologist, you could probably tell us what the bird is that we are looking at). That bird is a. If we look at the rest of the world around the bird, that is b. With b, we can say not only that there is a bird, but that there is a bird whose feathers are colored so as to allow it to blend in to the brush of the small berry bush growing on the ground behind it and to the left. I think that it is the way that things relate to one another (people included) that allows us to have a rich picture of whatever it is that we are looking at. People say that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at his/her friends... same idea to me. If someone were to try to divine information about me by looking at the way I relate to the world around me, they would know what kind of food I like, what kind of books I like, what I am interested in, what I like to do to relax, etcetera etcetera. Incidentally, indirect examination of things in this manner can do wonders for understanding the motivation that underlies an animal's behaviors....
