The nature of the Beast (the Beast being Beauty, of course).

No, I'm not writing for Disney now.

Today A said to me (paraphrased), "I'm creating beauty."  Something to that effect.  And I (being me) thought, what is beauty?  Because I can never let these things go... sorry, A...

I immediately thought of some possibilties (which have the added bonus of framing my question): Is beauty sort of like energy, something that is imbued upon an object? Keeping in mind "the eye of the beholder," is it something that only exists in the beholder's mind[/perception/reality]?  Is beauty intrinsic in the object (ie a quality belonging to the object)?  And in all of these situations, is finite or infinite or something else (eg spanning space and time and able to exist in multiplicity)?

When I voiced these questions, A (quite understandably) was a bit confused.  I have to admit that I didn't present these questions quite so eloquently then, not that they necessarily make sense now.  But here goes...

I think beauty intrinsic in the object.  But that sort of absolute makes me squirm, so I will quickly clarify that I think beauty is not a quality or a characteristic set in stone (measurable) but a potential.  Of course I'm tempted to go with "beauty is an adjective only, belonging to the viewer," because at first glance that seems to fit best with the whole perception-is-reality-and-truth-does-not-exist theory, but I'm feeling slightly rebellious today.  What's the point of thinking if we don't sometimes challenge our own ideas?

Really, beauty as a potential and inherent in the object makes the most sense, after all.  This is a pared-down version of my idea of beauty: think of beauty as a scale.  Several scales, actually.  Every object, every thing has its own scale; that scale measures its beauty as percieved and assigned by a viewer (a percieved-beauty scale, PBS).  Also, every object with the ability to assign beauty (namely humans) has another scale that ranks all percieved objects by beauty (a ranking scale, RS).  Okay, so I'm back to the perception-reality model; so sue me.  Let's think of three objects: a flower, a tree, and a stone.  Each has a PBS from 1 to 100; however, their 100's may not be the same on an individual's RS (ie the flower has more ability to be beautiful, and therefore a higher max than the stone).  A human (called Bob) percieves the three objects. Bob has a RS in his head.  Let's say that Bob thinks the flower is really pretty, and he gives it a 74 [on the flower's PBS].  He thinks the tree is pretty, too, so he gives it an 80 [on the tree's PBS].  The stone is ugly to Bob (it's green and slimy with pond muck) so he gives it 26 [on the stone's PBS].  Now for Bob's RS; the flower's PBS is lower than the tree's, but on Bob's RS the flower is higher than the tree, say 63 vs 48.  This means that he thinks the flower is fairly pretty for a flower and the tree is pretty for a tree, but as far as beautiful goes they're not as beautiful as other things (for instance he ranks his wife as a 92).  Does that make sense?  A PBS is comparing one object to other like objects, and an individual RS is comparing one object percieved by a person to all the other objects the person has ever percieved.

I'm using "object" fairly loosely, because by "object" I mean "pretty much anything" including humans, other animals, plants, inanimate objects, ideas, paintings, relationships, love, situations, anything you might ever refer to as beautiful.

Ask me questions!  I know I've probably confused a lot of you (truthfully I haven't chewed out all the details yet), but if you are willing to read to this very sentence at the end of the post, you probably would like to understand (I hope).  So ask away!  Ciao!

"Leaving" implies both something being left and something else being reached.

Death.  The soul leaves the body.  The body is a shell, nothing more than a vessel for the soul, the fifth, transient element.  For example, we call your body "yours."  Like a possession.  Not yourself.  Do you see what I mean?  "Self" is personality and thought and memories (not memory).  And what is personality and thought and memory?  Chemicals in your brain.  But not even that.  The way those chemicals come together, with the physical tissue of your brain and its orientation in space and time.  But these things, personality and thought and memory, self, are not physical, nor would we ever presume to describe them as such.  Really, how would we describe them?  Abstractions.  Not matter, but abstractions.  It's a small step from abstractions to energy.  After all, how would you describe energy?  Try; it's really damn hard.  Okay, you can say "I don't know" now.  Self is so amorphous, indescribable, intangible, abstract… you get the picture.

Death.  I keep wandering away from it (intentionally, perhaps..?).  Body is a possession, a vessel, a shell.  Even when you're alive.  But it's a possession like a home.  A house or an apartment.  It's very personal, very you. Still, when the soul leaves, it's just a fallen log, a discarded muffin in a muddy parking lot (don't ask), a footprint in wet sand.  It's the physical manifestation of memory, a dead body is.  I want to be cremated.  I want my body to go to the fire.  Well, actually it's between cremation or just being left out for the animals and the plants and the elements.  Air (the great oxidizer) and water (the great eroder) and earth (the great consumer) and fire (the great equalizer) and life.  Other life: dogs and raccoons and birds and worms and beetles and trees and fungi and soil bacteria.  Either way I am returned; even if I was embalmed and locked in a metal box and buried (*shudder shudder*) I would eventually return to the universe as organic molecules and even atoms.  It would just take longer.  Much longer.

One thing about my faith is that it's not particularly comforting.  But that's the thing: that's because it's realistic.  The world is not "made" for us.  We are not "supposed" to be able to survive, thrive in it.

The "meaning" of life is that it works.  There is no great reason.

The soul is recyclable, but not always recycled.  Yes, reincarnation is in here somewhere, but I've got my own bent on it.

But I do know what happens when you die by a hand or a force other than your own.  Sort of.  Obviously I don't know, really.  I mean, no one does.  If only we could remember…  Think of the first law of thermodynamics; conservation of energy and matter.   Add up all the energy and mass on both sides of the chemical equation and they'll match.  Mostly.  I'm not going there, at least in this paragraph.  Besides, I forget what the principle or whatever is called.  Well, what is a soul but… something.  I mean, there aren't specifics, but souls are like the gods; they have to be made of something.  And there's only two things in the universe (don't you even think about it): matter and energy.  Personally I'm leaning toward energy, and it makes sense/sounds good: heat energy, light energy, life energy.  You know?  But the point of this whole idea is that souls can neither be created nor destroyed (perhaps they can be converted, but not going there right now).  Anyway, this means they have to be re-used, and I think they come out the other side looking pretty much the way they did.  It's, like, hard to change energy, man…

Whoa, I just started making sense!  Like, trippy, right?  Betcha didn't see that one coming, huh?

So, souls survive the journey from one body (the deceased) to another (the newly born) pretty much unchanged.  I have no thoughts on the actual method of the journey at this moment; I will just say that Death is neutral among divines (I'm not even sure he qualifies as a divine) and men, and there are Angels [of Death] and Reapers involved.  What; you thought I didn't have a theory?  Silly, silly; you don't know me yet, do ye?  Actually, have you been, like, paying attention?

BTW: I've been writing this to myself.  Because I talk to myself.  I know, circular, but I get hold of an idea and I'm like a terrier with a bone.  Never let it go.  Just sayin'.

So, I don't really know the mechanism, and the importance of that statement is that I don't know why we don't know who/what we were.  I think that now would be the time to point out that souls are present in all living things, so species, even kingdom, is sort of a nonissue.

The Launch of the "Daily Silver," Frankenstein, and Psychology

So I'm going to try something new, in an attempt to write more often (read: every day).  I'm going to do a daily post.  Don't worry, I'm not going to write some deep, meaningful novella every day; I seriously doubt that I could pull it off.  Actually, I'm positive I couldn't.  Anyway, these daily posts will be short, just a list, really, of my (wait for it...) thoughts throughout the day.  Yeah, I said it.  Bite me.  I'm calling it the "Daily Silver" because, well, it's daily, and argent (as in argentwolfwing) is loosely derived from the Latin/Italian for silver.  Think of the chemical symbol for silver, Ag, which stands for its Latin name, argentum.  So: that's that.

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My next topic is Frankenstein.  I'm reading the book for humanities, and it's not all that bad.  I mean, I hate Victor with a passion, because he's such a little bitch, but I gather from my friends (who've already read it) that this is a common reaction.  He just leaves the poor creature--runs away, in fact (sorry if I just gave it away for you)--to fend for himself, like running away screaming your bloody head off and leaving a giant, hideous, and potentially dangerous two-year-old to the cruel whims of a vicious world.  Victor Frankenstein is more repulsive than his creature, especially with his obsession with physical beauty to the point of ignoring personality traits.  Which is, of course, his motivation to abandon the creature.  His sole motivation.

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And psychology.  I took my first abnormal psych test today, and I am desperately trying to cling to any shred of faith I had in psychology in general, and specifically in my professor.  I mean, he's a nice guy and I don't want to think of him as a dirty lying hypocrite, but sometimes it's hard.  I described my feelings on psychology in another post, and I now have some evidence.  At least, my roommates and I see it as evidence.

On the test today was a question about different types of studies conducted by psychologists.  It read (paraphrasing, of course) "A researcher wants to learn about treatment and anorexia.  She takes a group of women suffering anorexia and divides them arbitrarily into two groups.  One group receives psychotherapy and an FDA-approved drug as a pill, and the other group is given no psychotherapy and a sugar pill (a placebo)."  I couldn't believe it; my professor, a self-professed (ha, a pun!) scientist had written this question, but he had somehow put in two independent variables.  Two freaking independent variables.  Undoubtedly most of you my readers will not feel the same incredulity that I do at this [possible] typo.  This is like trying to tell me that the earth is flat and 6,000 years old or something (which people, btw, do try).  It's like, for lack of a better example, deliberately misquoting my bible.  Okay, better example: it's like saying that the earth is the center of the universe.  Again, people try.  I just shake my head and sigh.

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Not all "Daily Silver"s will be this long.  I anticipate many bulleted lists in our future.  But at least I'll be writing!  That's all for today... Ciao!

What you see when you aren't really looking

Seen from the corner of your eye…  Perhaps something's real-er when you see it out of the corner of your eye.  Because when you look head-on at something, you don't see everything.  Take stars; have you ever been told to look sideways at stars?  More importantly, have you ever done it?  More stars are visible when you're looking just to the left/to the right/below/above the stars.  It has to do with the cornea wearing out or becoming opaque or the photoreceptors at the center of the retina wearing out or something like that.  Well, close enough.

Maybe that's why children can see ghosts and monsters and the like.  Maybe when you see something out of the corner of your eye, it's real and what you see when you look is not.