Saturday, April 5, 2008

Better


I have missed my clouds and sun.


Things are finally being more open, warm, and not so confining. This has improved my study habit which is good seeing how the bio people have a super test on monday.
I was reading through a book when this paragraph stood out to me while discussing the concept of how improbable it is for even the same individual to be able to compare different kinds of "happy" or even of "feeling". Can someone say that they are enjoying their buttered toast be truthful, or do they not know what happiness is because they have never experienced jam on that toast, and then if they DO discover jam, and say that they were not truly happy before, are they right?
Stumbling on Happiness by: Daniel Gilbert, Harvard psychologist

...Studies such as these demonstrate that once we have an experience, we cannot simply set it aside and see the wolrd as we would have seen it had the experience never happened. To the judge's dismay, the jury cannot disregard the prosecutor's snide remarks. Our experiences instantly become part of the lens through which we view our entire pst, present, and future, and like any lens, they shape and distort what we see. This lens is not like a pair of spectacles that we can set on the nightstand when we find it convenient to do so but like a pair of contacts that are forever affixed to our eyeballs with superglue. Once we learn to read, we can never again see letters as mere inky squiggles. Once we learn about free jazz, we can never again hear Ornette Coleman's saxophone as a source of noise.
...
All of his means that when people have new experiences that lead them to claim that their language was squished-that they were not really happy even though they said so and thought so at the time-they can be mistaken. In other words, people can be wrong in the present when they say they were wrong in the past.

1 comment:

Screaming Doubles said...

iknew that once i got you eating cookies for cereal... there would be no end.

it just seemed like such a good idea to me.

oreos are good too... if you can stand some minor mush. lol

those clouds are pretty sweet