War

Don't wage war on the people, but on the politicians who hide behind the armies.

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is a damn good example of not doing something for the money, but just because you're that good at it and you have the passion. Ironically, his job involves making money, and it's not for the money.

Traffic

Leave it to the particle physicists.

Fate

7:15 am - My alarm blares a constant rhythmic beat, almost lulling me back to sleep. How many times will I hit the snooze button today? Once? Twice? Maybe I'll just get up now. Regardless of which option I take, my entire day and life will change as a result of that simple decision. Today, the actions I take, the options I am presented with, the words I speak, will all differ as a result of this focal point. But what moment in life is then not focal? My options and situations will completely differ as a result of my current decisions. Over time, these effects amplify, resulting in a completely different life than had I chosen a different path. So does this mean that life is predestined? I could very easily, with that in mind, choose an alternate convoluted path to avoid such mundanity, but what would that prove? Of course, we each have our proclivities to which we are constrained, and to this extent are we predestined?

STDs

STDs are nature's way of saying, stop screwing around so much.

Existential Philanthropy?

“No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told ‘love thy neighbour,’ what came of it?” Pyotr Petrovitch went on, perhaps with excessive haste. “It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, ‘catch several hares and you won’t catch one.’ Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private affairs are organised in society—the more whole coats, so to say—the firmer are its foundations and the better is the common welfare organised too. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring so to speak, for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbour’s getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance. The idea is simple, but unhappily it has been a long time reaching us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it would seem to want very little wit to perceive it …”

- Crime and Punishment, Ch. 5, Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Center of the Universe

Cosmologically, the center of the universe may be inexistent, while philosophically it may not exist but in one's mind. The mind perceives whether what is perceived is real or not. The mind speaks no language spoken by man, and these words themselves are created by no means of instinct, except that of the purest fundament. Is it possible for one's self to perceive or comprehend thought without formulating it into words? Perhaps this mechanism is a secondary instinct whether to the basic senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch or to spontaneity.