Is it true that man is curious of nature or does he merely crave a scapegoat? Is the diversion of his curiosity onto an authority figure a corrupting influence or is it the willful satisfaction of an urge stated in incorrect terms?

If I say to you "look, a pen on the table, it came into existence". And you express great curiosity about the pen. "But how, where did it come from, how did it come to exist, why did it begin to exist?". Then I say "Bill made the pen." And then you walk away satisfied. "Okay, Bill made the pen." What does your behavior suggest? You really don't care about the pen at all.

You might be thinking "Bill made the pen, if I ever want to know how he did it, I can always ask him later. The question is not urgent."

A person with genuine interest in the pen would say "the identity of the maker is immaterial, I still know nothing about the pen. I want to know how he made the pen, what did he make it out of, where did he get the raw materials, why did he make it?". That is an attitude coherent with the stated thirst for knowledge about the pen.

Does a believer who says they urge to know how the world began really understand and correctly describe their own urge? Is the answer that "someone did it, but you will never know how or why" an answer that such a person should reasonably find satisfying?

If the believer was troubled originally by such dilemmas as "how can something come from nothing?" and "why is there anything?", is he now cleansed from such thoughts? Has the wondering ceased?

What precisely has been gained in the knowledge that Bill is the maker of the pen, if nothing about the making of the pen has become known?

Maybe the urge was never about the pen's origin in the first place. Maybe the urge for answers about the pen was only a misstatement about the the urge to find a scapegoat, an authority. Someone who can take the blame if it turns out that the pen is causing us a lot of problems.

The predicament is, in both cases, of a similar nature. The urge for an answer stems from our human psychology, but for he who wants a scapegoat, science or philosophy, which are not in the business of inventing authorities, will never fill the void. Mythology is thus the last hope.

One of the classic topics for debate among us humans is the dilemma of free will. In a way I'm surprised that it comes up as much as it does, because I don't really think it's that interesting a question. In the sense that I don't see how we're making any progress on it.

It's as if everyone is convinced that we have free will, and yet... there is absolutely no empirical basis to think so. Never has anyone had the chance to go back in time and make a different decision. So why do we seem to think it must be so?

Here's the thing. It's my impression that much of the debate on free will is shaped by an unwillingness to really accept the premise of the question and take it to its logical conclusion.

All too often I've heard people argue things like "well if there is no free will, then people cannot be held responsible for their actions, so we should let everyone get away with it". What do you mean "let"? Here's the problem: our form of expression is basically based on the premise of free will. So to even discuss it without commiting a fallacy one has to be careful.

The whole "ethical problem" of determinism seems to me nothing more than a false dilemma. If the actor has no free will to commit a crime or not, then why are we debating the problem of "deciding" how to respond if we have no freedom of choice? If the actor has no choice, then neither do we, there is nothing to decide, there is no problem to solve. Whatever happens is purely a matter of inevitability, however much it may seem otherwise. If the crime commited was deterministic, then our post-fact discussion is deterministic and whatever action we will take is also deterministic. The only way there is a dilemma is if the other guy's actions were determined and yours somehow aren't. But that's not how the question is defined.

The free will topic also enters the religious domain often, and there too people make the same mistake. As in, if god is all powerful and all knowing, then he knows your future, thus your future is decided, thus "why are you praying to him hoping he will change his mind?" Wrong. If the future is decided then he has *already decided* that you will pray to him and that you will thank him etc, so your apparent gratitude to him is nothing else than him having decided to "program you" (if you will) to thank him.

Amazement is something for a special occasion. It is supposed to be rare. It is supposed to be worth a story. It is not for everyday use.

I amaze so easily, and so frequently, that amazement has ceased to be special to me. It has become mundane. I need to check my standards for amazement. I need to raise the bar. I need to make amazement once again worth having.

I must stop being amazed, for example, when a man rings my doorbell because he cannot figure out the house numbers on my street. "Is this number thirty", he asks. I lean out, in a mock gesture, to gaze at the street number opposite my front door. It does not say thirty. I imagine this gesture will suffice to make him understand. Instead he reiterates his dilemma. "Is this number thirty." No. It is not. I must not be amazed, even if it is a man in his fifties. With gray hair, an elegant tie, and a fancy suit. Who proceeds to reenter his expensive automobile. How does a person like that not know how to read street numbers. I must not be amazed.

I must not be amazed, either, at the communal workers. Who must necessarily have intimate knowledge of such complicated administrative intricacies as are street numbers. Through their work of visiting various addresses everyday. Who still ring my doorbell by mistake.

One wonders how such people can accomplish complicated tasks like air travel, which requires all sorts of documents, procedures, requires remembering important facts and following a timetable. How do they manage it? It seems amaz I'm sure they pull it off somehow.

Ieri all'aeroporto di Copenhagen ho visto parecchi soldati con la bandiera finlandese. Erano tutti in uniforme, non so dove stavano per andare. Non sapevo che l'esercito finlandese fosse così attivo, ma se avessi visto tanti soldati entrare nel mio aereo avrei telefonato a destinazione per dire di mandare qualcuno ad intercettarli prima che potessero reclamare le loro armi tra i bagagli.

Devo anche dire che i loro vestiti mimetici non sono più verdi, adesso sono molto più sul beige. Tuttavia sono ancora perfettamente visibili.

One of the most important currencies of today is time. Of course, people have always been trading in time, paying people to do things for them that they were either too lazy, or "too important", to do. But in today's world time has gone as far as to replace money in the daily rhetoric of many people. I wonder if people in the past spent as much time complaining about not having enough time as it's common to do today. We have more freedoms and opportunities than ever, there's just no time to enjoy them all.

The biggest complaint among people today, once they stop complaining about lack of money, is lack of time. There is a strange kind of contempt for people who have time.
- Look at this cool thing these guys did.
- Yeah they really have a lot of time on their hands (those rich bastards!)

Strangely enough, there are also those who have a sense of pride about *not* having time. They just love fake-complaining to you about how busy they are. Well who decided you have to be so busy? Oh, I know, *you* did. Here, I have the solution for you. Ditch _everything_ that you're doing right now and you'll have more time than you ever dreamed of.

Being busy is also the standard way to lie to yourself when rejecting people. "Oh dear, I'd love to come to your whatever, but I'm just so darn busy". No, you just decided that you'd rather do something else. *I* know what it means, and you might as well just have told me that you weren't interested instead of telling yourself that you're a caring person who never lets anyone down. Because that's just plain obnoxious.

Now, what people seem to forget is that unlike money, time is very much your own choice. You don't choose to be born into a wealthy family, but you can easily choose to be rich on time. Here's a simple test: do you have a tv? Unplug it. You just won hours upon hours of time and it didn't cost you a dime! (Unless of course tv is what you most want to use your time for, but then you shouldn't complain about lack of time, you should revel in all the tv time you have!)