“Blood relative” now is genetics. Blood used to be mysetical and powerful. In many ways the genetic blood of today can be quite powerful as well. Monozygotic (identical) twins can be looked at genetically to see similarities and differences and geneteics influcence on them.
Tag Archives: culture
fortune
Today’s topic is inspired as most of my other musings by an interesting event. Ok. Maybe not that interesting to someone else but I was amused. I recently got a fortune cookie without a fortune in it. The first thought that struck me was, “huh? did it eat it somehow?” but I only just cracked the cookie like a wishbone.
Then the mind went (over)active. Was my life was going to come to a sudden end? Do I have no future as no fortune was granted me? Or perhaps my life has been blessed by the gods and is going to be so awesome that a fortune isn’t needed.
Fortune cookies, palm reading, divination, astrology/horoscopes (sometimes horror-scopes from some that I have read), zodiac signs, crystal balls, tea leaves, mojo, etc
Where is this belief system coming from? Is it our continued want for an explanation of the universe? Is there any validity in any or all of this?
Why do some aspects carry more weight than others? Many of us know someone or ourselves that half-jokingly will talk about our astrological sign and kinda mean it. I’m in that same category. You could remove the name of the sign and start reading descriptions and you still might pick your own. For ‘research’ I picked a random astrology site and essentially did a n=1 study. Yeah. Pretty much holds true for me. I’m on a cusp and those two signs blended together speak true to me. I did go through each and every sign. There were some that were outright not me and others that got close but just missed the mark. Something to ponder. My element and the stone or actually the color of the stone were accurate as well.
We do the same thing with the horoscopes based on our signs. I think most people would agree that horoscopes tend to be vague enough that they can apply to just about anyone. Let me try… “You will meet someone soon that will have an impact in your life. You may not notice it in the immediate but this person will help guide you on your path.”
What about your biorhythm? I remember having a program (things called apps now) on my Palm Treo 755P (loved the device!!) that would show my biorhythm. I can’t say that it seemed very accurate but then I didn’t remember to use it often and I’m sure at some point I got rid of it to make room for something else.
Do we create our fortune based on these perceptions? If your fortune, in whatever form, indicates to you that you need to step up and be more aggressive to secure a new position and you actually do, then what? You fulfilled a prophecy of sorts because of what you read and you believed and acted, assuming that not acting you would not have gotten the new position. A deus ex machina vs carpe diem paradox? Thought to ponder.
Can lines be drawn? What I believe is true and what you believe is rubbish? Who could fathom believing in something ‘out there’ that has control over the future? Maybe it doesn’t have control and we are on our own. Maybe the future is predestined and that’s why people can make predictions about things outside of themselves. Maybe it is just two universes rippling and in that moment of contact between the two giving us insight (a real idea).
I can be honest with myself that I have experienced events in my life that I can’t rationalize in a logical manner and that I have learned to accept as a part of my past, present and probably as a part of my future. I don’t know where some of these insights came from about the present (at the time) and the future but they proved real.
We believe what we choose. That knowledge can come from others, books, media, our own experiences and anywhere/anything else that can communicate something to us. It all still seems to boil down to one thing. Faith. No. It doesn’t have to be faith in a god or higher power. It doesn’t even have to be complete faith. But at some point we do choose to believe in things that we may not be able to prove on our own. Is time linear or not? Will the sun come up tomorrow? Do UFOs exist? I choose to believe that the sun will shine on my side of the earth again tomorrow and that it won’t disappear before then. Statistically, there is a chance of other life, sentient or not, out there somewhere. I choose to believe a lot of things because it’s just plain easier than to question everything. Pick and choose the battles of faith as it were.
Maybe I’ll have no future because of that cookie. As Worf would say, “Today is a good day to die.” But I’ll believe for the moment that there was glitch in the processing plant and I just didn’t get a cookie with a fortune stuck in it. Stick a fork in me, I’m done.
-Santa’s Fallen Angel
In the end the turkey still loses
Why the following has latched onto my brain I don’t know, but I feel like this is leading to some great epiphany or a great madness. Either could be a fun ride.
Stuffing. Such a simple word. Yet it can mean three different things.
The act, the food, the stuff in objects.
Here we go. I am stuffing the stuffing into the turkey. I am stuffing the stuffing into the cushion.
Language is so interesting sometimes when I actually pay attention to it as I use it but really when I hear or read it from someone else. I have a facebook friend that chooses to write in what seems like a foreign twisted version of the english language. The thing is I can actually understand what she writes, mostly. Even though I had never seen those letters combined in such a way, they mostly made sense. I’m perplexed. I don’t know why I’m perplexed but I am.
Isn’t that somewhat how language works?
You start making your own sounds and hearing from others and you watch people talking and you watch those lip movements. You then start to mimic these. You get feedback and repetition. Then the dreaded alphabet. We have it lucky. If my random knowledge holds, I think the Chinese language has about 10,000 characters. Right? We have 26 to use to make words. 10,000! I think my brain just had a seizure. I can’t imagine someone knowing all of the characters AND the words they make up. But I’m sure they need to know more than 26 characters.
It’s still interesting that the English/American language (I don’t say footpath) is still considered a complicated language. I do get it. I read (present tense) things from people who live here that can’t use basic language skills. Like college level people who are still working on writing a complete sentence and paragraph. Not to say I don’t make mistakes when I write. I do. I also take liberties with the language. I don’t always write complete sentences.
If you get a chance to talk to someone who wasn’t born here or had a very proper education you can immediately tell the difference. The spelling and grammar are usually spot on. Unfortunately maybe because we don’t write so good it can seem mechanical and too precise. Like the way most real-life animated creatures are obviously fake and we’re ok with that but those animated creatures that are getting closer to acting/looking like humans just creep us out. They are on the edge but just not good enough yet. We can still spot the difference.
Getting back…
After the alphabet, we work on combining them into things we call words. C. A. T. = ?
It’s ok if you missed that one. Everyone needs a goal to strive for. But it’s not just how you put those letters together. It’s the other words around it that can give it meaning and how to pronounce it. I have read (red) it. I will read (reed) it. Then there are the words that sound alike. I will right the problems when I write about rites. This is a quintuple doozy since right and write and rite sound alike and right can be to correct, the direction, and a claim. You read the sentence and if you know of the rules you can understand what it means. It’s the rules and the corollaries to the rules and the exceptions to the rules and the exceptions to the exceptions (I made this last one up), that confuse the crap out of people who trying to figure out the language. A perverse reason I wish we could read and write american better as a country.
As this year progresses ponder on the nature of the word and be thankful at thanksgiving that we can communicate. And as I said, in the end the turkey still loses, unless it’s tofurkey.
Yeah I know, I stretched at the end to bring it back to the title. I can’t say it deviated from the intent since this one grew as I put thought to electron.
Hoping for a more educated world.
-Santa’s Fallen Angel