I am become determined, fuelled by some fiery desire to change, to truly improve and become something objectively significant. But to be truly better, you must focus
on the aspects of your personality that you dislike. To be able to improve as a person, to grow as an individual, and to get closer to approaching your ideal
of self, you either need to withdraw from other influence entirely and become a completely solitary individual or else use your interactions with other people as
mirrors, to understand yourself through reflections of them, i.e. Lana’s Jim, “cause I was filled with poison, but blessed with beauty and rage."
If you choose to interact with someone, you must never accept incomplete interactions that aren’t completely beneficial to you,
you must consistently refuse stunted connections, and unless you feel that you are actively learning more about yourself through a given interaction - abandon it. It is only
through another’s perspective, an alien reflection, that you can look at yourself in a truly objective manner. This exploration must be intellectual, physical,
and thereby complete and if the Other is not willing or else incapable of doing that, they are not the mirror that can empower your growth.
Indeed, the presence of high art in everyday life has eroded with mainstream media taking its place. Media in the form of small-screen TV shows, celebrity culture, the paparazzi media, bestselling novelists, The Juliet Society, Dan Brown, etc. We are now connected by being disconnected. Facebook is taking the place of conversations, condos the place of nightclubs; it is a universal trend. These replacements are trivial to the main change: the willing exchange of our reality for hyperreality, true existence for a simulacrum.
Both our beginnings and our ends are shrouded in mystery, the middle parts being the only fragments that are at all comprehensible. We are not capable of understanding from whence our opportunities come and we are equally unable to determine whether an open window is an omen of doom or whether it is a blessed opportunity that had just come into being. It is only once we step through the gate of perception that we can hope to interpret the true nature of the essence with which we had come into contact. Windows, both physically manifested and as metaphysical concepts, are pathways to The Other, while the nature of said Other may be malignant or benevolent. Prior to the transformation from potential to the real, both forces are held in balance and are equally likely and equally impossible to ascertain prior to the event of manifestation. It is through openings: windows and mirrors, that we experience both the outside world and ourselves.
This single opens with the lines: "Can you stay up for the weekend
And blame God for looking too old?
Can you find all that you stand for
Has been replaced with mountains of gold?"
This has inadvertently become a rather ironic lyric considering Calvin Harris' later move to exclusively creating music for the masses, simultaneously forsaking his earlier more independent efforts.
This proposed study will investigate the relationship between individual personality traits examined through the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the political values of individuals as assessed by the Eight Values Inventory (EVI). The results will indicate any significant relationships between individual personality traits and political values as well as any interactive effects between personality traits. In accordance with prior literature, it is expected that significant relationships will be found between personality traits and political values, specifically with higher levels of openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism predicting higher rates of equality, globe, liberty, and progress values, and with higher rates of conscientiousness predicting higher rates of markets, nation, authority, and tradition. It is predicted that extraversion rates will not be significantly related to higher rates of any political value. Such a finding would support the existence of personality trait differences amongst individuals with divergent political perspectives.
It is such a common human condition to feel trapped but that one is just one small hurdle away from breaking free. That tomorrow will be the day that we will run faster, stretch out further, and finally grasp that elusive thing that we perpetually chase. We are all fighting against the current, we are all trying to escape our present confines and yet we remain stuck in place. It feels like there is no escape, like every minutia of our day-to-day life is just repeating endlessly like the playlist of an unbelievably lazy DJ. I look at all the changes I’ve made, but yet nothing I change changes anything. There is no resolution at the end of the night. We perpetually feel that we are missing something. “I don't wanna be what I'm becoming.”
Numerous past studies have found that individuals have a limited ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. Moreover, a negative impact on memory has been found when subjects engaged in divided attention tasks at time of encoding. This study examined the effect of device-delivered notifications on the accuracy of memory through the use of a word recognition paradigm. Two groups of students were presented with the same word list and following this were tested with a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test consisting of previously presented and novel words. One group of students received numeric notifications during presentation which they were instructed to note down while the other group received no notifications. The results showed that false alarm rates were significantly greater and hit rates were significantly lower for the group which received notifications, demonstrating a mirror effect, and showing that notification-derived divided attention had a negative impact on memory.
This study examined whether a false memory effect could be demonstrated for categorized word lists. It drew inspiration from previous studies in the field of false memory, most notably in replicating and extending the Roediger-McDermott study and utilizing the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. In this study, students were presented with word lists of 2 sizes: containing 4 or 8 studied exemplars per category and were then tested on recognition with 2 types of words: words previously presented and novel words. It was predicted that the false alarm rate would be higher for new words from the studied categories and that the false alarm rate would be greater for the categories containing more exemplars. The results showed that false alarm rates were greater for new words from the studied categories as compared to new words from unstudied categories and also showed that the false alarm rate was greater for the larger categories.
This essay explores the topics of linguistic determinism and linguistic relativism. These topics are the subject of some scientific debate and the two theories can be viewed as being in competition with one another. Linguistic relativism is an idea related to how language is structured and is used by people; the theory can be viewed as a weak form of linguistic determinism. The central idea of linguistic relativism is that the language spoken by a given person impacts the way that that person views the world. On the other hand, linguistic determinism is a stronger form of the same position that agrees that language affects the way that a person thinks and perceives their surroundings but also states that language is determinant in forming how a person thinks. Therefore, both theories attempt to demonstrate that the way that individuals think is influenced by the language that a given individual uses.
I am afraid that I have some seriously bad news. Free speech is a choice and an admirable one but not one without consequences. Why? Simply put, one has to choose between being inoffensive and thus producing a safe space for all, including even the most easily offended, or instead to truly stand for the preservation of the value of free speech.
Sexual perversion is to be defined as sexual behavior that is not practiced by the clear majority of humans in a given culture that is differentiated from sexual exploration by the reoccurrence of the behavior, the extremity of the deviation, and the harm resultant from the performance of the perversion. It is recognized when a certain individual expresses certain sexual desires or urges that are uncommon, unrelated to typical sexual interactions, and/or are somehow outside the two categories entirely. Perversions are many and varied, diverse in their characteristics – varying from sexual attitudes towards non-sexual objects, to frotteurism, transvestitism, and voyeurism.
There are many differing definition of justice – but at its most fundamental – justice is the concept of fairness, that all individuals receive what they are rightfully owed. However, there is a major debate between the political right and left on what is owed to each person. Stemming from this debate is the question of whether capitalism is just. Far from being an empty, meaningless debate, the question does indeed have an answer and that answer is a resounding... yes.
The view “that anything that we can successfully interact with by treating as if it were rational, and as if it had beliefs, desires, etc., has the very same claim to be regarded as having beliefs and desires” as humans do is one that is put forth by Daniel Dennett. This view is implausible for a multitude of reasons. It is important to note the contrast between faux beliefs and desires, and genuine beliefs and desires of rational beings. There is also the issue of conflation between metaphor and reality, the unique nature of being human, and finally the fundamental difference between non-rational things and rational beings that are able to control their impulsive and immediate pseudo-desires and pseudo-beliefs in favor of real desires and beliefs such as a human’s life purpose in the existential sense.
The money's running out and the whoosh of the upcoming ground is getting deafening. Am I running forward or am I collapsing? Am I still getting away with my risks or is this The Great Reckoning at long last? If I was given another chance would I do anything differently?
The Void is calling and so I enter it, à la Gaspar Noé. In the town that I have spent the last three years of my life (God has it been so long?!), I still feel trapped alongside the music of Tim Hecker, which like other ambient music, is fuller of emptiness than the ethereal. More numinous than ominous, more lonely and gossamer than New Order’s Movement, and more ill-defined than my own movement forward. Why wouldn't Icelandic and ambient music be fitting in a place that feels so empty? It’s only natural.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s declaration that “existence precedes essence” is a multifaceted statement that is invoked in order to defend existentialism against its critics. In order to understand and analyze the phrase, all three words within it must be analyzed and then assembled together to comprehend its full meaning. The declaration reverses the status quo perspective, but simultaneously allows mankind freedom. The statement is accurate, and is universally applicable to man, the author himself included.
America’s yellow media had first completely missed the phenomenon of Trump and called him all kinds of names, eliminating the possibility of a Trump victory even when he had become the nominee of the Republican party. To their credit, they have nominally apologized profusely for their mistake but now this very same media is exclaiming how impossible a Trump victory would be in November. These are very much post-modernists, those that believe that feelings matter more than facts. Their personal bias and their insulation is preventing them from seeing the light, what the true American patriots want for their formerly great nation.
Music to stare at the pale full moon to while watching the wispy elusive phantom fumes come off your cigarette.
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche, following Schopenhauer, characterizes our experience of individuality (principium individuationis) as an illusion. He makes use of the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus to personify both sides of our humanity. Nietzsche’s ideal in this work was a human being in which the Apollonian and Dionysian elements were brought into some kind of harmony with each other. Is our individuality an illusion? What could it mean to reconcile the Apollonian and Dionysian sides of our existence?
Sensual, sexual, ephemeral but inescapable, Nina Kraviz has created something truly beautiful and unique; something that approaches a numinous experience.
The deepest of house reminds us of our most buried and intense memories and dreams, leading us on, a definite will-o-the-wisp, forcing us to trudge ever onward through the muck, to sail through the mist, a siren's call that leads us onto the rocks.
It's briskly walking through the freezing streets of Moscow at 3am, walking quickly because of the howling gale and the bitter cold, but never running because that would be undignified. To be more accurate, it is likely more Murmansk or Irkutsk than Moscow but the lights are of the boutique stores and the inescapably grim albeit everyday realities that contrast sharply with the dream-like opulence displayed to the public. The contrast of a drunk with a glimmering shopfront: all in this mist, all while actively trying to go somewhere and being purposeful about it but without actually having anywhere to go.
Sometimes things get complicated. It's easy to lose track of what you want or need and it is often difficult to realize that you're not working towards those things that are truly important, instead merely occupying your time with tedious, unimportant, and uninteresting things simply so that you don't feel quite so reclining. It's important to work, it's important to do what society expects of us, so that one may in turn receive what they expect from society - a career, a standard of living, and the ephemera that make up our life: Evian water, a Prada luggage bag, an Audio-Technica turntable, Bang & Olufsen earphones. These things aren't necessities in the standard meaning of the word because they are not necessary for life but these kinds of little extravagances are important in order to take our mind off the true emptiness of it all - a sort of Fight Club-esque indulgence wherein we fill our vacant apartment-cum-souls with IKEA furniture because what else is there to do? In moments of realization such as these, it's important to take a step back and find something that can float you away from all of that tedium and into a parallel dimension where you can be free from all of those concerns. This is what this record achieves.