Life-changing things that don’t matter

“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.” - Plato

To talk only for the sake of communication itself seems pretty unnecessary for some people. Well, it probably is. But there is more to it than most may realise. Small talk is like grooming. Primates form bonds of trust and build cooperation groups. They groom each other to get food, sex or other favours.
Maybe we don’t go that far just with small talk but it’s in a way the best option to start a conversation to get to know each other. The special thing about this form of phatic expressions is that it serves to find a way to communicate. It’s about evaluating the spoken language, style and level. Some do this even only to overcome a waiting time or an uncomfortable silence. Imagine two computers just connecting to say ‘hi, how you’re doin’?’ - sounds a bit pathetic, doesn’t it?

In general, there are the following categories of conversations based upon their involved topics: ideas, concrete objects and facts, people, the self. Their different purposes are: extend understanding and awareness, consolidate a general view, boosting of self esteem, attracting attention. Anyway, to start talking about something with somebody, you might want to consider a topic that’s neutral, without heavy personal information and hard questions. Make the talking part easy by staying simple!

“When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.” - Samuel Goldwyn (assumed)

Language is fun. You can do almost anything with words. Even if they come out wrong they still make sense. When you know how to communicate on the exact right level, you’re able to achieve most things. As with many other areas ‘the more you know - the better you can handle situations’ counts. The better you understand, the more you can make yourself and your arguments understandable. It’s like a pool with waves representing statements. A good recipient takes a wave, balances it, and returns a compensated one back to its sender.

Now, it’s fun when it comes to humorous statements resulting from the use of paradoxes. Some Goldwynisms (Samuel Goldwyn, producer for motion picture studios from the ’20s to the ’50s) I recommend:
I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want everyone to tell the truth – even though it costs him his job.
Tell them to stand closer apart.
You fail to overlook the crucial point.
I’ll give you a definite maybe.
Include me out.
Then there are the Yogiisms (baseball player Peter Berra around the ’50s and ’60s) featuring oxymoronic redundancies.
Ninety percent of this game is half mental.
Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.
It’s like déjà vu all over again.
It ain’t over till it’s over.
Other malapropisms known as Farberisms (after David Farber, IT scientist since the ’50s and lecturer afterwards) are illogical and non sequitur statements.
That solution fills a much needed gap.
It’s the vilest smell I ever heard.
Let them fry in their socks.
You can also have much fun with Spoonerisms (by William Spooner, priest and lecturer around the beginning of the 19th century). That works in various languages and combinations.
Let us glaze our asses to the queer old Dean. (raise our glasses .. dear old Queen)
We’ll have the hags flung out. (flags hung)
Kentucky schreit ficken. (Kentucky Fried Chicken)
Go and shake a tower. (take a shower)

There are numerous reasons why challenging yourself is fun. For one, there is the part where you may achieve something you didn’t know you were able to. That usually comes as a pleasant surprise, which itself is good for your own self-esteem. Another thing is the knowledge new experiences come packed with. The better you know your own reactions, the better your self-assessments are going to work for new situations.
In case of my own last weekend I’d like to note some things about scuba diving. First of all, it’s awesome to move freely around in every possible direction. Anyway, there is this feeling when you turn around in foggy waters and enter this state where you are unable to make out any direction or reference point anymore. That’s my first uneasy feeling. The second one is when you dive lower, let’s say to 20 meters, and imagine the height of water by comparison to the height of some building you know in the same size above your shoulders. That’s just a freaking amount of water and thus, a lot of pressure, if you get what I mean. The last thing is the silence you may experience when you slowly breath in and nothing around you moves or makes any noise.
All of these sensations are not bad, they are just interesting to experience and may take a little bit to accept.

Links:
Underwater Communication ~ How-To Communicate Underwater
Diving Signals ~ Scuba Diving Signals, Wiki Diving Signals
Sign Language ~ NZSL

Have you ever been speechless? Most people are from time to time. There is probably no need to worry about. Sometimes it’s just the numbness of the aftereffects of alcohol or sleeplessness. Or maybe it’s just some small surprise life often offers in the most unexpected situations. There is a saying ‘firstly it comes different and secondly, as you may imagine.’
What’s quite a sophistic attempt that offers a way out in such situations, is to build up association chains. Such procedures are used in some evaluation and creative idea finding techniques. These also called mind maps exist in various places. Language with all its references and reflexions works similar. I’m going to try it with the intention of conveying knowledge.

Long speculated but still an open question is whether life exists on Mars or not. Life on Mars is also a song by David Robert Jones better known as David Bowie which was released in 1973. 1973 again, is a song performed by James Hillier Blount who was actually born in 1974 and had been inspired by the club scene in Ibiza. Ibiza is one of the Balearic Islands located in the Mediterranean Sea, belonging with the island of Formentera to Spain. Spain is a constitutional monarchy like the United Kingdom and has been a member of the European Union since 1986. The European Union has together with Bulgaria and Romania, which joined by January 2007, 27 member states. Originally created as an economic union the unemployment rate for its almost 500 million citizens stood at 7 percent in 2007. The United States are inhabited by about 300 million people with an unemployment rate of about 5 percent. If you’re interested in the rest of the world, look up Kwashiorkor.
Take a look at the lawman, beating up the wrong guy!

3.1415926535897′. Ordo ab chao. Mea culpa - sed omnia dicta fortiora si dicta Latina. How to understand chaos? Maybe it’s all about circles. What goes around comes back around. Try to cry into a room with many edges. Your voice will probably crush. Compare this to places you wander without the will or possibility to share attributes of these milieus. Yo vengo de todas partes, y hacia todas partes voy: arte soy entre las artes, e en los montes, monte soy. Adaptive you have to be. More than ever. Unser Zeitgeist ist unsere immer schneller werdende Veränderung. Der Wandel der Zeit.

Change is irrestistible. Disce quasi semper victurus vive quasi cras moriturus. Lerne Veränderung. So does that straigthen out our confusion? First, we have to find the system where we don’t see it. Afterwards, we make it fit to serve our purpose. With the knowledge of the appropriate patterns and the ability to change them or else our thinking about them, chaos will fade.
Not everything may fit into a sphere. Trotzdem hilft es oft schon einfach Definitionen mehr Freiraum zu geben. Abstrakt zu denken. Think without limits. Eventually it’s about language too. Try to understand. Let yourself be affected. Even if it’s just a mathematical constant with a decimal expansion that never ends nor repeats.
Acta est fabula plaudite!

Unsaid things tend to have little influence on world affairs. This may be sad as many great thoughts are lost within the face of oblivion. Anyhow, for some minds - believe me in that - it really is a very good thing. No doubt, there is always the messenger and the receiver point of view. But what does it matter when one is just honest and the other one is just mad. Anyway, this interface between two minds, may the transmission method be words, signs or smells, is a highly interesting field of research.
If you manage to truly understand what your counterpart is up to, you can probably achieve everything. That’s one of the reasons why rhetorics is quite a profitable business today. Its importance was known long ago as there were great orators in almost every culture. But, for example among the old Greeks, it appears that they shortened their lifespan by expanding their knowledge. Well, you should know when to shut your mouth.

Ever tried to insult someone while smiling by using a language the other one is not able to understand? That can be really satisfying but it’s also a kind of a lie and not what I’m talking about. What I mean is the potential of telling someone ‘I love your work in the way it is contrary to mine, which on the other hand has the advantage of showing the right figures and that’s the reason we should use mine, this time!’ instead of ‘Your work is trash. We’ll use mine, you piece of crap!’
Fight your wars within your thoughts!

In the past I thought that people never change. They stay the jerks they once became. I changed my mind about that. People get even more dumb.
To generalise is to be an idiot. That’s what William Blake said. Within that phrase, the whole idea of knowledge and wisdom is wrapped. It may seem harsh, but it fits so well to our communities nowadays. Obviously, I am no exception. Superficiality we might call it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to know the story of the life of my next waitress. Nonetheless, I also don’t want to know about the current weather, time nor any other smalltalk crap.

People learn through generalisation. They learn languages by building rules of syntax and semantics. Complex programs are constructed by abstraction. Big companies own a management to manage their management. Despite that, true knowledge is when we know what’s going on inside the box. And this is where we get ignorant, lazy and scared. It’s where the problem starts. You take something as granted. You don’t want to stress yourself with little children knitting your clothes. You don’t mind to dismiss 101 employees to keep your job.
On the other hand, we despise too much sugar in our coffee mugs. We yell about too much light green on our prints. Yeah, what the fun! We lost our priorities in wrong perspectives long ago. But who am I, daring to write text nobody reads.
Now I’m going to eat the fourth and evil doughnut!