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Hanging around the bachelor pad for a little while resting up, getting food and packing up and then I am outta here.
I think I kinda hosed my psych final, but it really didn't matter. I got enough questions right to guarantee me a C- at the very least, and probably a C. If he hands out bonus points for the missed quizzes, I'll probably make a C+.
I think I may try to shut my brain off for two weeks. I've been thinking so much lately I'm overwhelmed, and starting to sound like a walking textbook, which makes me very unpleasant to be around for people who aren't interested in academic esoterica.
Kinda weird, really. I'm rabid about pursuing knowledge in a lot of different areas because I want to understand more of how the world works. Yet doing so is pushing me further and further to the fringes of ongoing cultural dialogue. And considering how fringey I am already, that's a little disconcerting. I feel like I've eaten from the tree and suddenly I see things most people don't and so I'm running around like a raving lunatic pointing out all the dead people or something.
Which reminds me of a great book by my favorite author called Interlopers. It's about how there are these nasty little bugs of some sort that exist on a different plane, but infest everything we touch, and they cause pain and anger and death, etc. The hero of the book gets infected or something and he can see these things, when no one else can. And everyone thinks he's schizophrenic because of it.
Even though my grade doesn't reflect it, I've really enjoyed my biopsych class. It's cool getting down to the real roots of human behavior, at least in terms of biological origins. It certainly puts things like the Terri Schiavo case in perspective. When only tiny things that go wrong in the brain can cause enormous chunks of a person's--well--personhood to evaporate, the idea that there could be a "person" left inside a body with a brain that has so atrophied it's only a useless gelatinous lump is utterly preposterous. Without cognitive function, there is no person. Without a cortex, there is no cognitive function.
Everything we are rests between our ears. When that goes away, so do we. The physical body without the brain is but an empty shell. Even if that body has basic motor function if the brain stem has survived, everything else we consider human simply does not exist.
And I suppose all this is why science is so threatening to religion--or any other belief system that has nothing to do with empiricism. The more science explains, the less of the unknown there is for religion to step into and proclaim that God did it (and therefore you must worship or he will strike you down. Oh, and pass the collection plate.) It's chipping away at that power structure. Kind of hard to control people once they realize that the big bogeyman in the sky has nothing to do with how they or other people behave.
And with that, I do believe I will turn my own cognitive function to things less complicated for a while. Gotta make sure I'm not stressing my CNS too much. :)
I think I kinda hosed my psych final, but it really didn't matter. I got enough questions right to guarantee me a C- at the very least, and probably a C. If he hands out bonus points for the missed quizzes, I'll probably make a C+.
I think I may try to shut my brain off for two weeks. I've been thinking so much lately I'm overwhelmed, and starting to sound like a walking textbook, which makes me very unpleasant to be around for people who aren't interested in academic esoterica.
Kinda weird, really. I'm rabid about pursuing knowledge in a lot of different areas because I want to understand more of how the world works. Yet doing so is pushing me further and further to the fringes of ongoing cultural dialogue. And considering how fringey I am already, that's a little disconcerting. I feel like I've eaten from the tree and suddenly I see things most people don't and so I'm running around like a raving lunatic pointing out all the dead people or something.
Which reminds me of a great book by my favorite author called Interlopers. It's about how there are these nasty little bugs of some sort that exist on a different plane, but infest everything we touch, and they cause pain and anger and death, etc. The hero of the book gets infected or something and he can see these things, when no one else can. And everyone thinks he's schizophrenic because of it.
Even though my grade doesn't reflect it, I've really enjoyed my biopsych class. It's cool getting down to the real roots of human behavior, at least in terms of biological origins. It certainly puts things like the Terri Schiavo case in perspective. When only tiny things that go wrong in the brain can cause enormous chunks of a person's--well--personhood to evaporate, the idea that there could be a "person" left inside a body with a brain that has so atrophied it's only a useless gelatinous lump is utterly preposterous. Without cognitive function, there is no person. Without a cortex, there is no cognitive function.
Everything we are rests between our ears. When that goes away, so do we. The physical body without the brain is but an empty shell. Even if that body has basic motor function if the brain stem has survived, everything else we consider human simply does not exist.
And I suppose all this is why science is so threatening to religion--or any other belief system that has nothing to do with empiricism. The more science explains, the less of the unknown there is for religion to step into and proclaim that God did it (and therefore you must worship or he will strike you down. Oh, and pass the collection plate.) It's chipping away at that power structure. Kind of hard to control people once they realize that the big bogeyman in the sky has nothing to do with how they or other people behave.
And with that, I do believe I will turn my own cognitive function to things less complicated for a while. Gotta make sure I'm not stressing my CNS too much. :)
