Saturday, September 11, 2004
Superstring theory and karma
I've had a great affection for superstring theory (aka string theory aka M-theory) from the moment I first read about it; it's a stunning model of how our universe came to be and how the omniverse could be laid out (I posted about that facet of it on 2-4), it does NOT require the existence of mysterious "dark energy" and "dark matter" (aka phlogiston and ether if you ask ME, see my post of 1-3), it would explain pretty much everything, it would allow for multiple universes... it nearly brings tears to my eyes because it's so beautiful and would change everything if it were proven to be accurate. I'd KILL to be one of the handful of people on the planet with sufficient understanding of theoretical physics and mega-math to actually analyze this theory... or at least to be able to get together with some of these guys and get them to try to explain as much as I CAN understand, AND to suggest to them that they study a little metaphysics to get more ideas as to what should be included in the analysis (ie all aspects of karma).
I see the energy of karma as making up the structure of reality, meaning both the physical AND the things we can't see, like thoughts, feelings, psychic phenomena, souls, spirits; using Occam's Razor, it's always seemed like all of these unknowns (the nature of the energy that all matter is made of has yet to be described, making IT also an unknown) should be made of ONE thing, such that we only have ONE unknown, "what is the energy of karma," rather than a bunch of unknowns.
Superstring theory has gone me one better; according to some eye-opening info about it that shows up twice in the September Discover, they're hoping to prove that EVERYTHING, including every kind of energy/force, is made up of the same thing. This is PHYSICISTS saying this, folks, not a METAphysicist. To quote:
"According to string theory, the fundamental constituents of the physical world are not pointlike particles but infinitesimal one-dimensional loops, or strings. All the particles and forces in the universe arise from these strings vibrating at different frequencies."
and:
"Superstring theory, now often called M-theory, looks like the most promising approach to marrying quantum mechanics and gravity while unifying all the forces of nature at the same time. Like general relativity, M-theory is bold: It knits together the strands of physics by describing all particles and forces as fantastically small strings of energy vibrating in 10 spatial dimensions and one dimension of time."
If they show superstring theory to be correct, that would be scientific proof that I've been RIGHT all along, that everything I've always said is made of the same "stuff" IS; the fact that everything ELSE in the universe(s) would ALSO be made of the same "stuff" thrills me no end, as it's the logical extension of my theories, but one that I'd never have dared to contemplate myself.
Even if you deny the existence of any of "the unknowns," you're being left with no way to deny that, as I've said over and over, reality is NOTHING like we think it is. Space, time, matter, energy... none of it works the way we were taught in school, the way our senses tell us, the way science of even a few years ago claimed. Is it such a big leap to go from that to embracing things like synchronicity and karma?
I see the energy of karma as making up the structure of reality, meaning both the physical AND the things we can't see, like thoughts, feelings, psychic phenomena, souls, spirits; using Occam's Razor, it's always seemed like all of these unknowns (the nature of the energy that all matter is made of has yet to be described, making IT also an unknown) should be made of ONE thing, such that we only have ONE unknown, "what is the energy of karma," rather than a bunch of unknowns.
Superstring theory has gone me one better; according to some eye-opening info about it that shows up twice in the September Discover, they're hoping to prove that EVERYTHING, including every kind of energy/force, is made up of the same thing. This is PHYSICISTS saying this, folks, not a METAphysicist. To quote:
"According to string theory, the fundamental constituents of the physical world are not pointlike particles but infinitesimal one-dimensional loops, or strings. All the particles and forces in the universe arise from these strings vibrating at different frequencies."
and:
"Superstring theory, now often called M-theory, looks like the most promising approach to marrying quantum mechanics and gravity while unifying all the forces of nature at the same time. Like general relativity, M-theory is bold: It knits together the strands of physics by describing all particles and forces as fantastically small strings of energy vibrating in 10 spatial dimensions and one dimension of time."
If they show superstring theory to be correct, that would be scientific proof that I've been RIGHT all along, that everything I've always said is made of the same "stuff" IS; the fact that everything ELSE in the universe(s) would ALSO be made of the same "stuff" thrills me no end, as it's the logical extension of my theories, but one that I'd never have dared to contemplate myself.
Even if you deny the existence of any of "the unknowns," you're being left with no way to deny that, as I've said over and over, reality is NOTHING like we think it is. Space, time, matter, energy... none of it works the way we were taught in school, the way our senses tell us, the way science of even a few years ago claimed. Is it such a big leap to go from that to embracing things like synchronicity and karma?
Friday, September 10, 2004
Intermittent reinforcement
If they give a rat a lever it can push to get a food pellet, it'll push whenever it wants a food pellet. If they give a rat a lever it can push that will SOMETIMES give it a food pellet, it will push the lever CONSTANTLY, will become virtually obsessed with pushing it.
HUH?!!
It's counter-intuitive, isn't it? You'd think that the rat stuck with the "sometimes lever" would ignore it in disgust, or only push it if he were REALLY hungry, because the reward to effort ratio is so poor, wouldn't you? That's not the way rat psychology works, though... or human psychology, either, sadly. Something that we only get some of the time in response to our efforts becomes vastly more desirable to us than it should based on its actual value; it's similar to the equally odd psychological reality that when access to something is restricted, whether by limited quantity, high price, or a velvet rope across the door, its desirability to most people skyrockets, even though the actual objective value of the thing hasn't changed.
Intermittent reinforcement is every bit as powerful in humans as it is in rats, and is the reason that the rotten people of the world will be pursued so intensively as romantic partners, and valued so highly as friends, as long as they SOMETIMES do something nice... when people SHOULD be turning from them in contempt as not worth the effort. It's also the reason that people who are nice all the time are NOT pursued intensively as romantic partners, or valued as highly as friends, or as people, as they should be given their records.
If you've ever wondered why people will hang out with "friends" who rarely seem to even be nice to them, or become virtually obsessed with romantic partners who don't treat them well aside from the occasional impressive gestures, this is what's behind it... sucks, doesn't it? If I had a dime for every time I've had to say something along the lines of, "I don't care if he got you a rose for no reason, he's been treating you like dirt every moment for 6 months," or "But WHY is she your friend when she takes from you constantly and can't be bothered to give anything back more than twice a year?", I could pay off my mortgage.
If there's any way to get other people to wise up about this when they're in the middle of it, I have yet to find it; I'm hoping that by warning people, I can help at least a few fend it off. On the less virtuous side... if, like me, you were raised to be "nice" and do everything for everyone, do the right and best thing all the time, you'll find that people will treat you BETTER if you "slack off" and treat them less "perfectly." Contrary species, aren't we?
HUH?!!
It's counter-intuitive, isn't it? You'd think that the rat stuck with the "sometimes lever" would ignore it in disgust, or only push it if he were REALLY hungry, because the reward to effort ratio is so poor, wouldn't you? That's not the way rat psychology works, though... or human psychology, either, sadly. Something that we only get some of the time in response to our efforts becomes vastly more desirable to us than it should based on its actual value; it's similar to the equally odd psychological reality that when access to something is restricted, whether by limited quantity, high price, or a velvet rope across the door, its desirability to most people skyrockets, even though the actual objective value of the thing hasn't changed.
Intermittent reinforcement is every bit as powerful in humans as it is in rats, and is the reason that the rotten people of the world will be pursued so intensively as romantic partners, and valued so highly as friends, as long as they SOMETIMES do something nice... when people SHOULD be turning from them in contempt as not worth the effort. It's also the reason that people who are nice all the time are NOT pursued intensively as romantic partners, or valued as highly as friends, or as people, as they should be given their records.
If you've ever wondered why people will hang out with "friends" who rarely seem to even be nice to them, or become virtually obsessed with romantic partners who don't treat them well aside from the occasional impressive gestures, this is what's behind it... sucks, doesn't it? If I had a dime for every time I've had to say something along the lines of, "I don't care if he got you a rose for no reason, he's been treating you like dirt every moment for 6 months," or "But WHY is she your friend when she takes from you constantly and can't be bothered to give anything back more than twice a year?", I could pay off my mortgage.
If there's any way to get other people to wise up about this when they're in the middle of it, I have yet to find it; I'm hoping that by warning people, I can help at least a few fend it off. On the less virtuous side... if, like me, you were raised to be "nice" and do everything for everyone, do the right and best thing all the time, you'll find that people will treat you BETTER if you "slack off" and treat them less "perfectly." Contrary species, aren't we?
Thursday, September 09, 2004
General relativity
Yes, I'm still wading through the articles on Einstein in the September 2004 issue of "Discover"; the one by theoretical physicist Lee Smolin gives the best explanation of general relativity that I've ever seen... and shows me that my own view of the universe as the engine of karma, in which everything is part of a radiating web of connections, with everything that happens becoming part of everything that follows, and time not working the way we've been taught, fits perfectly with what Einstein envisioned (the asterisks are mine):
"All previous theories said that space and time have a fixed structure and that it is this structure that gives rise to the properties of things in the world, by giving every object a place and every event a time. In the transition from Aristotle to Newton to Einstein and special relativity, that structure changed, but in each case the structure is absolute. We and everything we observe live in a set space-time, with fixed and unchanging properties. That is the stage on which we play, but nothing we do or could do affects the structure of space and time themselves.
General relativity is not about adding to those structures. It is not even about substituting those structures for a list of possible new structures. It rejects the whole idea that space and time are fixed at all. Instead, in general relativity ***the properties of space and time evolve dynamically, in interaction with everything they contain.*** Furthermore, the essence of space and time now is just a set of relationships between events that take place in the history of the world. It is sufficient, it turns out, to speak only of two kinds of relationships: how events are related to each other causally (the order in which they unfold) and how many events are contained within a given interval of time, measured by a standard clock (how quickly they unfold relative to each other).
Thus, in general relativity there is no fixed framework, no stage on which the world plays itself out. ***There is only an evolving network of relationships, making up the history of space, time, and matter.*** All the previous theories described space and time as fixed backgrounds on which things happen. The implication of general relativity is that there is no background."
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH...... :-)
"All previous theories said that space and time have a fixed structure and that it is this structure that gives rise to the properties of things in the world, by giving every object a place and every event a time. In the transition from Aristotle to Newton to Einstein and special relativity, that structure changed, but in each case the structure is absolute. We and everything we observe live in a set space-time, with fixed and unchanging properties. That is the stage on which we play, but nothing we do or could do affects the structure of space and time themselves.
General relativity is not about adding to those structures. It is not even about substituting those structures for a list of possible new structures. It rejects the whole idea that space and time are fixed at all. Instead, in general relativity ***the properties of space and time evolve dynamically, in interaction with everything they contain.*** Furthermore, the essence of space and time now is just a set of relationships between events that take place in the history of the world. It is sufficient, it turns out, to speak only of two kinds of relationships: how events are related to each other causally (the order in which they unfold) and how many events are contained within a given interval of time, measured by a standard clock (how quickly they unfold relative to each other).
Thus, in general relativity there is no fixed framework, no stage on which the world plays itself out. ***There is only an evolving network of relationships, making up the history of space, time, and matter.*** All the previous theories described space and time as fixed backgrounds on which things happen. The implication of general relativity is that there is no background."
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH...... :-)
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Genius=insanity?
This idea first occurred to me in high school, when it dawned on me that every "great man" we studied had either gone overtly crazy, committed suicide, died from alcohol or drugs, or married a teenaged cousin and later died alone in poverty in a garret... not a single one of them had the ability to deal with life, or function in the world. Coincidence?
When you inject nitrous oxide into a car's engine, it greatly improves its performance... but you can't keep pumping it in forever, because it messes the engine up. Is whatever it is that causes genius doing something similar to the brain? What IS genius after all but a hopped-up mode of mental functioning, one that allows the mind to make intellectual leaps, think around corners, and imagine things that have never before existed... and that never gives it a moment's peace, a moment to just cruise in neutral? How many times have you heard a writer say that they "have to" write, or an artist say they "have to" paint, etc; a compulsion like that is by itself proof of skating at the edge of sanity, of a mind that doesn't work in the "normal" way... and that's about as mentally healthy as geniuses get.
I wrote about genius in detail in my post of 2-28, and normally wouldn't revisit the topic, but today, in the September issue of "Discover," I read that Einstein's 2nd son, Eduard, was not only brilliant, as one would expect, but also schizophrenic, and spent a great deal of time institutionalized after his first breakdown at the age of 20. Schizophrenia is genetic; the genes for it are recessive, naturally, which is how it gets perpetuated despite it generally manifesting itself early enough in life to prevent procreation... and that means that the man who was arguably the greatest genius who ever lived carried a recessive gene for a form of insanity. (The multiple articles on him in the magazine show that he was QUITE eccentric, especially by the standards of that period in history-no surprise there.)
Is there a continuum from normal to genius to insanity, one in which the far end has a slippery slope down which all too many "greats" end up sliding? Do the genes for mental instability/illness act like a sort of nitrous oxide to the brain, making it super-charged, able to perform spectacular feats of creativity and insight... but also taking a toll, making it compulsive, or "eccentric"... or worse?
When you inject nitrous oxide into a car's engine, it greatly improves its performance... but you can't keep pumping it in forever, because it messes the engine up. Is whatever it is that causes genius doing something similar to the brain? What IS genius after all but a hopped-up mode of mental functioning, one that allows the mind to make intellectual leaps, think around corners, and imagine things that have never before existed... and that never gives it a moment's peace, a moment to just cruise in neutral? How many times have you heard a writer say that they "have to" write, or an artist say they "have to" paint, etc; a compulsion like that is by itself proof of skating at the edge of sanity, of a mind that doesn't work in the "normal" way... and that's about as mentally healthy as geniuses get.
I wrote about genius in detail in my post of 2-28, and normally wouldn't revisit the topic, but today, in the September issue of "Discover," I read that Einstein's 2nd son, Eduard, was not only brilliant, as one would expect, but also schizophrenic, and spent a great deal of time institutionalized after his first breakdown at the age of 20. Schizophrenia is genetic; the genes for it are recessive, naturally, which is how it gets perpetuated despite it generally manifesting itself early enough in life to prevent procreation... and that means that the man who was arguably the greatest genius who ever lived carried a recessive gene for a form of insanity. (The multiple articles on him in the magazine show that he was QUITE eccentric, especially by the standards of that period in history-no surprise there.)
Is there a continuum from normal to genius to insanity, one in which the far end has a slippery slope down which all too many "greats" end up sliding? Do the genes for mental instability/illness act like a sort of nitrous oxide to the brain, making it super-charged, able to perform spectacular feats of creativity and insight... but also taking a toll, making it compulsive, or "eccentric"... or worse?
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Voodoo and DNA
My most deeply religious friend called me and announced that, thanks to her discussions with ME, she's been thinking about various aspects of the unknown and how they might be explained... and had come to the conclusion that there might be something to voodoo, because the common requirement for things like hair or fingernail clippings, which contain DNA, for the spells could mean that voodoo IS actually allowing the practitioners to focus energy of some sort at, or against, people. I don't know which made me prouder, that this Christian woman was contemplating things that were previously unimaginable to her, or that she came up with something new that a case can actually be made for.
Yes, I know, voodoo seems outrageous to Western eyes, but that's not a reason to discount it out of hand; after all, OUR religions have some pretty wild trappings too, when you think about it. Let's pick on Catholicism, since that's what MY family's religion is; you can't beat Catholic religious leaders in the goofy-hat department, the incense that gets waved around seems a tad pagan, and it doesn't get more extreme than their ritual cannibalism (Catholics believe themselves to actually be eating the body of Christ when they receive communion)... and don't get me started on the abuse of children by the priests. What has voodoo got to shock us with compared to all that, really... dead chickens and such? No comparison.
Voodoo, like any other belief system, is a way for people to feel like they have some sort of say with the powers that control the world, and thus some sort of control over their own lives; they also believe they can affect other people via this system, and they certainly have an impressive record of being able to do so... and NOT all of it can be attributed to coincidence or being able to psyche out their enemies, although obviously much of it CAN. Much of what they do, the prayers and rituals, are common to most cultures; they're just ways of organizing and focusing thoughts, which are energy, and therefore capable of doing "work"... if you have sufficient mental discipline. (It's like learning to juggle an egg, a running chainsaw and a bowling ball all at the same time; nearly anyone COULD learn to do it, but few are willing to do what it takes TO learn it.)
Most items used in rituals are just props to allow us to tune out the mundane world and tune in to our inner eye, so to speak, and you could easily argue that having discarded bits of a person's body to use in the casting of spells is nothing more than that... OR, the DNA they contain COULD be physically assisting or directing the flow of energy onto the intended victim. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.....
Yes, I know, voodoo seems outrageous to Western eyes, but that's not a reason to discount it out of hand; after all, OUR religions have some pretty wild trappings too, when you think about it. Let's pick on Catholicism, since that's what MY family's religion is; you can't beat Catholic religious leaders in the goofy-hat department, the incense that gets waved around seems a tad pagan, and it doesn't get more extreme than their ritual cannibalism (Catholics believe themselves to actually be eating the body of Christ when they receive communion)... and don't get me started on the abuse of children by the priests. What has voodoo got to shock us with compared to all that, really... dead chickens and such? No comparison.
Voodoo, like any other belief system, is a way for people to feel like they have some sort of say with the powers that control the world, and thus some sort of control over their own lives; they also believe they can affect other people via this system, and they certainly have an impressive record of being able to do so... and NOT all of it can be attributed to coincidence or being able to psyche out their enemies, although obviously much of it CAN. Much of what they do, the prayers and rituals, are common to most cultures; they're just ways of organizing and focusing thoughts, which are energy, and therefore capable of doing "work"... if you have sufficient mental discipline. (It's like learning to juggle an egg, a running chainsaw and a bowling ball all at the same time; nearly anyone COULD learn to do it, but few are willing to do what it takes TO learn it.)
Most items used in rituals are just props to allow us to tune out the mundane world and tune in to our inner eye, so to speak, and you could easily argue that having discarded bits of a person's body to use in the casting of spells is nothing more than that... OR, the DNA they contain COULD be physically assisting or directing the flow of energy onto the intended victim. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.....
Monday, September 06, 2004
Your thoughts shape the world
Did you ever think that the opposite of faith is... FEAR? This was part of the message in Joel Osteen's sermon today; that when you have faith, God comes and gives you all the wonderful things he has lined up for you, and that when you have fear, "the enemy" (Satan) comes and brings you the very things you've been worrying about. He said that by the very act of fearing, you create an opening through which "the enemy" can enter your life and do you ill... there's that karmic idea of your thoughts creating openings for "stuff" to fall into your life through again, as well as the idea that the "beings of power" can't take action for or against you unless your mind is focused a certain way (which *I* would of course see as the positive or negative nature of your mind causing corresponding things to happen directly, but the end result is the same).
Osteen made the repeated point throughout his sermon about not fearing, about not letting any fearful thoughts or ideas be in your head, about being careful about what you meditate on (aka think about alot), about disciplining your mind so that you never have any visions in it of bad things happening... because if you DON'T exercise this sort of control, you'll cause those things you fear the most to actually happen.
He described a man he knew who'd obsessed that his young and perfectly healthy wife might die and leave him alone; within a few years, she contracted a rare form of cancer and died. On the positive side, he told of a woman he knew who had spent her entire life sure that she'd have great trouble conceiving, as all the woman in her family had, and she in fact didn't conceive... UNTIL he convinced her that she had to replace the fearful thoughts with positive ones, after which she got pregnant within a few months. What was really fascinating about these stories wasn't the cause and effect he showed between repeated thoughts and strong feelings and what happens to us, which isn't new to ME, but that he outlined all of this with virtually no mention of God... I say that not to question his faith, which I have no reason to do, but to make the point once again that he seems to be talking as much about what he perceives about how the universe works (karma) as about what it says in the Bible.
He also says that, in addition to disciplining your mind to seal out all fearful thoughts, you need to visualize the positive events that you want in your life, such as a successful business or a new baby, actually SEE them in your mind over and over; anyone who's read anything about visualization techniques will find this quite familiar. Visualization, affirmations, meditation, prayer... all ways to repeatedly focus your mind on your goals, all ways that you CAN in fact influence how your life turns out.
The idea that you have to discipline your mind to keep ALL fearful thoughts out, because any "bad" thought in your mind can bring bad things into your life, may sound extreme... but I think Osteen's dead-on. More and more in recent months, when thoughts of things that could go wrong have crept into my mind, I've been reacting with "no, don't even think that," which hadn't been my pattern before, but has seemed more and more necessary the deeper I've gotten into the workings of karma and seen how what I think feeds into what happens in my life.
The universe truly doesn't work the way we were taught, with powerful forces outside of our control moving us around like chess pieces; yes, there ARE forces at work all around us, but we're far from powerLESS ourselves... our minds have so much power to affect what happens in our lives that even the most exaggerated-sounding comments I make are understatements. Try it and see.
Osteen made the repeated point throughout his sermon about not fearing, about not letting any fearful thoughts or ideas be in your head, about being careful about what you meditate on (aka think about alot), about disciplining your mind so that you never have any visions in it of bad things happening... because if you DON'T exercise this sort of control, you'll cause those things you fear the most to actually happen.
He described a man he knew who'd obsessed that his young and perfectly healthy wife might die and leave him alone; within a few years, she contracted a rare form of cancer and died. On the positive side, he told of a woman he knew who had spent her entire life sure that she'd have great trouble conceiving, as all the woman in her family had, and she in fact didn't conceive... UNTIL he convinced her that she had to replace the fearful thoughts with positive ones, after which she got pregnant within a few months. What was really fascinating about these stories wasn't the cause and effect he showed between repeated thoughts and strong feelings and what happens to us, which isn't new to ME, but that he outlined all of this with virtually no mention of God... I say that not to question his faith, which I have no reason to do, but to make the point once again that he seems to be talking as much about what he perceives about how the universe works (karma) as about what it says in the Bible.
He also says that, in addition to disciplining your mind to seal out all fearful thoughts, you need to visualize the positive events that you want in your life, such as a successful business or a new baby, actually SEE them in your mind over and over; anyone who's read anything about visualization techniques will find this quite familiar. Visualization, affirmations, meditation, prayer... all ways to repeatedly focus your mind on your goals, all ways that you CAN in fact influence how your life turns out.
The idea that you have to discipline your mind to keep ALL fearful thoughts out, because any "bad" thought in your mind can bring bad things into your life, may sound extreme... but I think Osteen's dead-on. More and more in recent months, when thoughts of things that could go wrong have crept into my mind, I've been reacting with "no, don't even think that," which hadn't been my pattern before, but has seemed more and more necessary the deeper I've gotten into the workings of karma and seen how what I think feeds into what happens in my life.
The universe truly doesn't work the way we were taught, with powerful forces outside of our control moving us around like chess pieces; yes, there ARE forces at work all around us, but we're far from powerLESS ourselves... our minds have so much power to affect what happens in our lives that even the most exaggerated-sounding comments I make are understatements. Try it and see.
Sunday, September 05, 2004
Does your opinion count more than 10,000 opinions?
Unless your ego is the largest in the history of humankind, you thought "of course not" when you read the title, but if I asked you the question in a different way, there's a good chance you'd answer differently; if I told you that a survey was done and 10,000 people had a certain opinion/feeling/habit that was contrary to YOUR opinion/etc, you'd most likely fire right back with something along the lines of "no, that's not right/true, *I* don't think/feel/do that"... and with that statement, you'd dismiss what 10,000 people said because your own experience is different, which boils down to counting your own opinion (or that of anyone you know well enough to be sure of what THEY would say) as "more than" the opinions of 10,000, or 100,000, or a MILLION people.
If you're absolutely positive that you've never done any such thing, the overwhelming likelihood is that you're male; one of the glaring differences between the genders is that women tend to see the experiences of themselves and those they know as being somehow more significant than the experiences of literally ANY # of other people. I can't tell you how many times I've had intelligent, educated, sophisticated women not only respond to statistics I've given them this way, but, after I've pointed out to them the utter ridiculousness of putting the experiences of one person over those of thousands, reply with a perfect imitation of a 5-year-old's tone "well, I don't care, I just care about what my brother says" (or whoever).
Ladies, if hearing about this makes you feel defensive, be aware that men HATE when you do this, and that this is one of the things men point to as "proof" that women are illogical, irrational, etc; if you want the men in your life to respect you, you need to behave in a respect-worthy manner, which means, in this instance, accepting that one person's opinion only counts as ONE, even if that person is YOU.
If you're a woman and, like me, are in the minority of women who do NOT do this, you've probably been told many times that you "think like a man"; if you ever wondered what men mean when they say that, this should shed a little light.
If you're male and think this way... unless your male friends think the same way, it'll be self-correcting, so I won't comment. ;-)
If you're male and have always been disgusted when women do this, and plain don't understand it... I empathize, as it drives ME crazy, too, and don't have any insight to offer, because I've never done it. All I can suggest is that, next time you want to take your woman to task for her "illogical thinking," keep in mind that YOU probably consider baseball scores to be more worthy of being committed to memory than your anniversary, or watching a football game to be more important than playing with your kids, or keeping up with the WWF to be more important than calling your mother... and your woman, silly creature that she is, thinks that THOSE things are illogical-so you're even.
If you're absolutely positive that you've never done any such thing, the overwhelming likelihood is that you're male; one of the glaring differences between the genders is that women tend to see the experiences of themselves and those they know as being somehow more significant than the experiences of literally ANY # of other people. I can't tell you how many times I've had intelligent, educated, sophisticated women not only respond to statistics I've given them this way, but, after I've pointed out to them the utter ridiculousness of putting the experiences of one person over those of thousands, reply with a perfect imitation of a 5-year-old's tone "well, I don't care, I just care about what my brother says" (or whoever).
Ladies, if hearing about this makes you feel defensive, be aware that men HATE when you do this, and that this is one of the things men point to as "proof" that women are illogical, irrational, etc; if you want the men in your life to respect you, you need to behave in a respect-worthy manner, which means, in this instance, accepting that one person's opinion only counts as ONE, even if that person is YOU.
If you're a woman and, like me, are in the minority of women who do NOT do this, you've probably been told many times that you "think like a man"; if you ever wondered what men mean when they say that, this should shed a little light.
If you're male and think this way... unless your male friends think the same way, it'll be self-correcting, so I won't comment. ;-)
If you're male and have always been disgusted when women do this, and plain don't understand it... I empathize, as it drives ME crazy, too, and don't have any insight to offer, because I've never done it. All I can suggest is that, next time you want to take your woman to task for her "illogical thinking," keep in mind that YOU probably consider baseball scores to be more worthy of being committed to memory than your anniversary, or watching a football game to be more important than playing with your kids, or keeping up with the WWF to be more important than calling your mother... and your woman, silly creature that she is, thinks that THOSE things are illogical-so you're even.
