Oh my. I coulda sworn you said seeking to be happy was selfishness. So seeking "true happiness" thru your belief in God would just be more selfishness wouldn't it? The goal of eternal bliss in heaven the ultimate hedonistic indulgence?
Happiness is found in God...we do not seek God, He seeks us...it is His happiness we share when we are found by Him.
Many different people believe many different things. No two Gods are alike. Some people believe in your God and some people believe in other Gods. So there are many Gods and many different beliefs. People tend to believe in one specific belief, therefore one specific God. That means if there are 100 different Gods, and they believe in just one God, then they believe that 1% of the Gods are real, and the other 99% are BS! I go a bit further, from 99% to 100% BS!
I disagree - as this definition implies an objective "purpose" to life against which "success/failure" is judged. It is also nigh on impossible to judge... and immediately penalises those who are never really in a position to offer anything to advance humanity as a whole (those born into starvation, poverty etc). Heck, maybe you only think 5% of the population are a "success"? Needless to say I find any view of success built upon a concept of objective purpose to be flawed from the outset. I don't hold to any objective purpose, and thus to me success can only be measured against the goals that we set ourselves. We can certainly judge others against out own goals, or the goals we would wish upon them, but that is our view of their success/failure, not theirs.
Prodigy =/= adult genius You know what an old prodigy is? A smart adult. Lots of adults speak 6 languages, although they didn't do it when they were 1. But prodigies grew up and their specialness doesn't stay a unique thing anymore. What can be an accomplishment at 3 or 5, it is not so much at 25. So what was the expectation of this kid? The he will tell us the meaning of life? Or discover the life elixir? I think society put way too much pressure and expectation on him...
sculptor et al - Hence the song lyric: We're on the road and we're gunning for the Buddha We know his name and he mustn't get away We're on the road and we're gunning for the Buddha It would take one shot - to blow him away... (by Shriekback)
Genius , is the ability to think fast , make connections , fast But to be creative is different To think out side the box
Thinking outside the box is not necessarily a symptom of either genius or creativity. Often it's just a case of the "thinker" being too lazy to learn the box. A genius may just be somebody who understands the box very well.
To your last statement I agree To your first statement I disagree Tesla knew the box very well , but thought outside the box at the sametime
I did qualify the statement with "not necessarily" and "often". I agree that thinking outside the box may be a symptom of genius and/or creativity - in fact, it may be a requirement. And I agree that sometimes the person may know the box very well. However, we also have creationists and other pseudo-science buffs urging us to think outside the box when they wouldn't recognize the box if it sat down beside them in church.
Could inspiration be nothing more than weak spots in the myelin, causing short circuits into other thought/knowledge/memory circuits and/or processes?
How would you stop or control these short circuits in order to make sense of anything ? Wouldn't these short circuits just scatter your brain , hence your thoughts as well ? Genius people bring together unrelated information together and are creative (. although when I took the mensa test there was nothing creative about it )
Learning the box does not require independent thinking. Learning the box is basically monkey see and monkey do. However, some boxes are very elaborate and very intricate and are not easy to copy, with few monkeys able to see and do. This is often why people leave the box; too much work to copy. Such boxes are often for showing off by prima donna. It is not designed for practical utility useful to all. The box of simplicity is closest to perfection. Being simple makes it easy to monkey see and monkey do, allowing more people to participate, use, and brain storm. If the box gets too complicated, the majority have to depend on fewer and fewer people to tell everyone else what to think. The creative opinions of the masses are left out. At the same time, we don't know if the experts are only prima donna dancers who can copy and paste, but may not be real thinkers and applier; intellectual snob with little utility. They can dazzle us with song and dance, but may be unable to write a new song with the steps they have perfected. As an analogy, say before we can eat, everyone needs to go through an elaborate social ritual of action and words that is quite complex and can take hours for the uncoordinated to perform, poorly, but maybe 10 min for the prima donna monkeys to do to perfection. This much song and dance is not needed to eat, except via the subjective pressures of traditions. There are those who really good doing this, become the leaders who get to eat first. Some may asks, is this really necessary in terms of a useful system? Some leave the box in an attempt to make this easier so the rituals achieve the conclusion of eating. The ritual should never become the center stage. When you go to college very little of the song and dance you learn applies to the needs of your real life 10 year out. This learning is part of the conditioning needed to be able to sing and dance in a superficial society. The entrepreneurs like Bill Gates leave that fancy box, narrowing down to what is most practical for their needs ten years down the line.
'twas but an idle speculation. Defining causal factors for creativity and/or inspiration remains problematic.
I think it does. Somebody had to figure out the box in the first place. A Copernicus or a Galileo had to point out the flaws in Ptolemy's understanding of the box. And there's always an Einstein coming along to add a few more details to our understanding of the box. When the purveyors of pseudoscience want us to think "outside the box", they really want us to reject the box that the geniuses and the creative people have put so much effort into understanding. It's true that most of us only have a superficial understanding of the box but that's no excuse for us going outside the box.
