Think!

On my wall i have one of those wall frames that have a little piece of wisdom written on it.
Mine is an old one, it belonged to my grandfather and i found it shortly after he died.
I remember my grandfather well enough, he was the one who taught me how to play chess.
A man with many quirks but i loved him nonetheless.
It has a worn out brown wooden frame, and inside on the tainted white paper is written in bold capital letters just one word :

"THINK"
........and then in small font it says "compliments of IBM corporation"

I'm not sure why i chose to hang it on the wall when i first found it. Old, dusty and worn-out, it was something you kept in the attic.
But it was something my grandfather left behind, it was this one word that he was able to deliver to me from beyond his grave, and it seemed to be beckoning to me.
Short, unpretending and mystical....... it all but revealed the secrets of the universe.
Simply put, i thought it was a good idea at the time (......and we did not have an attic)
I would have liked to say that it has been an inspiration for me, that it has guided me through difficulties, but years it has been where i first placed it and i have hardly looked at it all that time.
Know a thing too well and you become blind, The eye does not waste time on what it already knows.
It became what it really is, a worn out frame on a wall....... Nothing more, nothing less.
Today i came home late, and as i was changing, i faced the wall like i always did and suddenly it grabbed my attention, a relic from my past attached to the wall :
"THINK" it told me boldly "THINK!....."
And i thought....... i thought about this little dirty wall frame that demanded that i think.
"Think about what exactly?" my mental voice beamed back at the word.
I stood there, waiting for some kind of answer but it simply repeated again :
"THINK"
"I AM thinking..." i thought to myself "now I'm thinking"
I thought about the power of a word, the way it could be influential, the power to change my mental state.
It stimulated my brain and a flood of thoughts came rolling into it.
Random thoughts that revolved around nothing, tiny electric charges that sparked... and the current was havoc.
Until they condensed into this one spark, this one thought that said repeatedly :
"Think, and keep thinking!"
"Think, and keep thinking!"
"Think, and keep thinking!".......

Retaliation, retribution and revenge :

“Research shows that while people think of their own actions as the consequences of what came before, they think of other people’s actions as the causes of what came later”

Daniel Gilbert / IHT article

Two from Dune

Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
- LETO ATREIDES II, the God Emperor


Do our enemies occur naturally, or do we create them through our own actions?
- MOTHER SUPERIOR ALMA MAVIS TARAZA, Bene Gesserit Archives, open records for acolytes

Aliens from mars and the man-eating bunnies

“They’ll believe anything.” E. sighed. “No matter what sort of absurdity they are fed, they’ll believe it. Think up the most outrageous lie… They have people who’ll believe it.”

The cousin sat up at this, his interest piqued. “The most outrageous lie? How about that Iraq was amassing aliens from Mareekh [Mars] and training them in the battle art of kung-fu to attack America in 2010!”

“They’d believe it.” E. nodded in the affirmative. “Or that Iraq was developing a mutant breed of rabid, man-eating bunnies to unleash upon the Western world. They’d believe that too.”


posted by river @ 3:21 AM

Riverbend

"I hope Americans feel good about taking their war on terror to foreign soil. For bringing the terrorists to Iraq- Chalabi, Allawi, Zarqawi, the Hakeems… How is our current situation going to secure America? How is a complete generation that is growing up in fear and chaos going to view Americans ten years from now? Does anyone ask that? After September 11, because of what a few fanatics did, Americans decided to become infected with a collective case of xenophobia… Yet after all Iraqis have been through under the occupation, we're expected to be tolerant and grateful. Why? Because we get more wheat in our diets?"

posted by riverbend @ 10:53 PM

War

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only doing their duty, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life.

On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil.

George Orwell, London, UK, 1941