A Man May Make His Words

Around this time people start and stop their resolutions for the new year. I am no fan of largely symbolic and easily forgotten efforts such as "lose 50 pounds" or the like. I am, like most people, disinclined to any major effort outside one's usual areas of expertise and so the few previous attempts at carrying through resolutions have failed.

This is where one expects to hear the usual "This year is different!" but there isn't any such declaration here. More the situation is always changing and different for whatever the multitude of life makes it. Perhaps it is better to say I have now come not to a resolution as a declaration but rather the better term is Beginning of the End.

I have a relatively philosophical disposition and this, mixed with a very unusual childhood, has left me excelling in areas of logic but often a failure at interpreting the signals of most Westerners. The philosophical disposition of Westerners is also a matter of interest and I have found it increasing tied to their emotional states. While this hardly counts as a Grand Unified Theory, it does make a number of valuable connections and makes for a far more stable and coherent idea of why people do and did various things.

These emotional drives seem minor on the small scale but the quirks that result seem to increase exponentially at the higher levels. Perhaps it is because people generally try to put highly intelligent and (theoretically) rational people in guiding positions. What people (and they themselves) frequently forget is that these planners also have emotions and their grandiosity is often the "ghost in the machine" that becomes the unconscious means by which people perceive things.

Also notable is that highly educated people may be no more insightful but are often more articulate meaning that people will accept their ideas even if they are only subconscious rationalizations for whatever the person wants. We live in a serious age of wishful thinking and on such a scale that we rarely undergo a return to reality that we can survive.

While this may be depressing in the overall picture, the foreground is some slight professional achievement.