Sunday, December 22, 2013

Fun Experiment: Take an Atheist. Get Him High. Place Atheist Inside Church.

Wow, I thought, bracing myself against the freezing cold wind as I exited the car, I'm really doing this. I'm going to church. Church. I walked in to the same Catholic church that I attended (on a very infrequent basis) as a youth (but never before with the ol mj in the system) and as I passed from the hall to the main part of the church itself, skipping the 'holy' water anointing station and hoping I didn't look like an extra on the set of Half Baked I entered what felt like an entirely new dimension- a sense of deja-vu mixed with a rather strong feeling of I don't belong here and they will know it immediately. I mean, for one thing, the place was packed and so trying my hardest to not feel completely out of place standing in front of what looked like 200 people, all of whom I was certain were all thinking the same thing (*hiss* an interloper *hiss*).

....And then there's the fact that I was stoned. Not exactly the most comfortable place to be when you're high but man did it amplify the experience. I'll get to that in a bit though. My cohorts and I took a seat. I hadn't sat in one of those seats for years, and it was a church of all places, but I did experience a small sense of a faint whiff of welcoming. My ass recoiled and sighed with familiarity at the same time, but I digress.

We were a few minutes early so I took the time to look around and take in the scene. Like most catholic churches, the place is a strange mix of welcoming and foreboding. The architectural design is aesthetically pleasing and it's clear that the workmanship was solid and finely detailed, but I cannot deny the fact that it did strike me as also being intentionally designed in such a grandiose fashion that it ventured beyond "look how grand this is" to perhaps a small (and possibly imagined on my part, sure) hint of "and look how small you are." It could be simple cynicism on my part, but as you will soon read, the mass itself also seemed to be designed with the intention of engendering in those in attendance a sense of less than. There certainly was a lot of prostrating oneself involved in the actual mass itself.


Saturday, December 14, 2013

HILARIOUS!!!! Bill Burr promotes Shari's Berries

Friday, December 13, 2013

The World Would Be a Better Place If We All Studied Psychology

I'll (briefly, for both your sake and mine) present my case and you then tell me if I'm deluded or onto something here (it can't be anything else; I like my thinking black and white, like a coffee made by a supernatural barista):

Psychology as an academic discipline deals with many things. A few of those things are pertinent to this discussion, the first of which is introspection, the art of internal investigation. A process through which we examine our own minds and come to learn about and then manage, if we so choose, our reactions, emotions, thought processes, and even, ideally, our biases and our pride. Our ego. I could spend hours talking about how terrible a role the ego plays in this world on a daily basis, but I digress so let's move on.

Psychology deals with interpersonal relations. How we deal with others and why we do so. How we relate to them- and they to us.

So basically you study psych and you learn about us, humans, and yourself, both as standalone entities and in relation to others. Well, it seems like a good time to ask what it is in life exactly that these things are made relevant by? Hmmm....emotions, biases, thought processes, pride, relations with others....oh ya, how about damn near everything? Relationships with family and friends, dealing with people at school. People at work. Dealing with loss, success, competition, grief. How we handle and react to day to day life. How we assess the, as we see them, motives and desires of others? Hell, how about diplomacy?! And I don't mean as a mediator in a divorce. I mean foreign f'n policy!

All of the above is heavily related to the psychology of humans and their understanding of both themselves and one another. Yet almost none of us receive education in the field of study that deals with this- psychology. I only got the opportunity to do so in university. Now imagine if everyone on Earth that received a primary education studied psychology as part of their curriculum? Ah.....better relations, better understanding of ourselves and one another.....better everything. A better world.

Call me crazy but I really am concluding that I think if we studied psychology throughout our formative years we would be more adjusted and in control of our emotions, our thoughts....our minds. Ourselves. And if this were the case, then it would naturally follow that things made up of people, like say corporations, or even *gasp* governments, might function at a higher level than they do now, with a net effect of more positivity in this world, and consequently, less of the opposite.