Words For Thought: Ideas and Other I- Words

Before I begin, yes I've missed my week mark once again. In my defense I've been going to school full time, working five days a week and still managing to have a little bit of a social life. Which does preside over the internet. Sorry, guys. I may just have to make my goal a little less demanding. Or maybe manage my time better.
On the plus side, I have so many things I want to post about. I don't think that I'll run out of topics for the next couple of weeks. I have an ongoing list on a little post it note on my desk.

Today, I'm going to start a new segment (Is that a good way to put it? I think that's more of a video thing.) I'm calling it Words for Thought. I never understood why the phrase "food for thought" especially since I'm writing this all down. Not... eating it. Yeah.
Anyways, the whole purpose of this is to put a little more content into my blog besides "Hey guys, I'm still alive. Bye." I have a lot of random thoughts that pop into my head throughout the day. So, I figured I'd actually start doing something with my thoughts. (What a novel concept.) Here goes.

Words for Thought: Ideas and Other I- Words

Today, while catching up on my macroeconomics reading, I started going down a rabbit trail of thought. About thought and why humans are smarter than animals and so much more innovative than animals (I- word #1). And the notes I made in the margins say this: "Ideas (I- word #2) are powerful things. --> Humans are above animals because of ideas?? --> Animals don't have ideas. They have impulses (#3) and instincts (#4)."

I think this was a great epiphany. Because anyone who's studied animals and spent hours watching animals live and interact know that a lot of them aren't dumb animals walking around with surviving as their only goal. They have thoughts. But they don't have ideas.

Dictionary.com defines idea as this: any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity. Also, an opinion, view, or belief. It also defines thought as the product of mental activity. Animals have mental activity. Especially animals like apes, elephants, dolphins, cats, dogs, even parrots and a few other animals. I'm not so sure about things like snakes and reptiles and definitely not bugs.

Animals do not have ideas. They don't sit around and debate the existence of a God or whether they should eat canned food or go hunt something down and eat that instead. They don't have little proverbs and parables to teach their children lessons. There's no ideas and wisdom. There's certainly intelligence (#5). I think intelligence and wisdom are too often considered one in the same. It's like someone being book smart or street smart. Intelligence and wisdom is the difference between something on the surface level and on an entirely deeper, conceptual level.

Anyways, I have class to go to and there's some words for thought. Let me know if you have any opinions at all in the comments or something. (I pretend I get lots of them just to humor myself.)

PS I don't think it's coincidence that all these words start with I. Probably some Latin or Greek thing.

I'm Really Not Sure What This is About

So I have been busy. Insanely busy. Therefore, I actually haven't even made my 1 post a week goal. BUT it was only one week. I didn't miss a whole month or anything.

My life hasn't been very interesting lately. I'm pretty sure all I've done in the past couple weeks is school, job, and work. Valentine's day wasn't even a big thing. I did homework with Byron. Super romantic, right?

I'm getting really close to finishing The Fountainhead (how many times have I said that?), but I really am this time I swear! So, I'll be doing a review-ish thing on that soon I hope.

Also, I've been playing The Sims 3 as a form of procrastination. I'm determined to finish a Legacy Challenge, however I'm not following all the rules this time around. I didn't buy an empty lot. And after taking Macroeconomics, I'm really interested in playing Civilization IV again with ideas of productivity in mind and a few other things. I'm also curious to know if the success of any civ has to do with GDP type stuff.

I really have nothing interesting to talk about though. Nor do I have the time. I have some homework I need to go do.

I'll be back next week!

People Aren't Excited and I Don't Get It

I love school. I'll probably be taking night classes my entire life. Just because I want to. I've been looking at what my schooling schedule will be like the next few years and I have a lot of credits that I want to fulfill, but also, I just want to take all these classes. It makes me wonder why people don't enjoy school.

So, that's what I've been thinking about the past couple weeks. Why don't people don't enjoy learning? Why people don't get excited about things? And why don't people want to know everything?

I don't really know, but I have guesses. Everyone in the entire world gets excited about something. The only problem is, getting excited about anything except for sports and the latest scandal in pop culture is usually looked down upon. And the people that do get excited about things are called nerds, which is for some reason, often considered a bad thing.

I believe the world would be a better place if people got excited about things. I've never been one to care about what other people are thinking. I find everything interesting and get excited about so many things. But I get weird looks, get called a freak a lot or people just nod their heads and smile when I get excited. Truthfully, I don't even realize I'm way over excited about something people don't think anyone should care about. I don't understand why things aren't interesting to people.

What I find sad, is that people don't realize the importance of enjoying things and getting excited about things until they're old. Too old to get a second chance usually. Whenever I talk to older people, 50+, they think that it's great when I get excited about things. They're very encouraging to anyone who is excited and wants to do anything.

There's so many things out there to learn in life. For me, I'm bothered by the fact that I probably won't live long enough to learn everything. (I'm going to try my damned hardest though.) It bewilders me that people can just sit back and let the world happen around them.