#321

Taking two psychology courses at once right now, with a lot of overlap--they are both developmental psychology courses at the same level, so there's certain ground they both need to cover. Doing both at once is pretty good for my retention and retrieval, or at any rate, that can be hoped for. All this by way of saying that frankly, I know--deep in my bones--Freud was lying through gritted teeth when he said he's never read Nietzsche. Come the fuck on, man. I don't know how anyone can buy that. 

As for the behaviorists, it baffles me how men can take individual credit just for proving in a lab what their fathers obviously taught them with a belt. Imagine standing up and saying in all possible gravity "I have proved that an animal can be trained, and children taught. It may be argued that animals have been trained and children taught for eight thousand years, but it has not been true until just now, when I said that I proved it. Did you know, sir, that your behavior can be changed in order to...avoid pain? I have personally invented a novel technique."

Shit, I wonder what startling insight I can come up with that nobody ever knew anything about ever. Maybe I can shatter the very foundations of the scientific community by asserting that indeed, the mathematical implications of integer arithmetic have real-world applications in practical fields such as international trade, computer architecture, and countless others. It's an exciting time.

It's true that while we're alive, and the other people around us are alive, and everyone that came before us is dead and gone to dust in the ground, we are doomed to rehash a lot of the same shit with a modern spin. You see it all the time, and it's just how things go. Suppose in general the sophistication of it all generally increases. Anyhow the jargon does. 

Myself, I've never written anything new in my life--it is a great accomplishment merely to sound like myself, which is as much if not more a product of my culture and the influence of my models as it is a fruit of my labor and ingenuity.

So, well, perhaps I'm thinking about it too snark-style. When you're wearing shiny shoes and a fancy suit, standing in a laboratory with flunkies at your beck and call and a state apparatus very interested in what you can tell them about controlling people's thoughts and actions at your back, perhaps it's inevitable to feel like proving your basic-ass idea needs to involve wholly needless torture because it will be worth more than what shepherds and dogs have accomplished together since time immemorial. 

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Yo, I hate the fucking autofill shit in this browser! I'm here to type, shitfucker! Don't try to rob me of typing! You think I got somewhere else to be? Damn!

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Ezra made some pottery, a bunch of pottery really, in a class he took last semester. I like drinking coffee out of a couple of the pieces, and couple more are on the shelves in my bookroom, very much gracing them. This reminds me that I've been meaning to tumble some of my rock collection and I haven't yet. Perhaps I'll wait till the spring, though. 

--JL