Energy levels: low. Feeling a bit crazy. Spazzy. Can't concentrate even on the words as I type them, sometimes the beginning of the sentence is too far away to go back and figure out in order to help complete the sentence. Here's an idea:
What if ideas are like species in our head. Thinking an idea (or using an idea) (or otherwise incarnating the idea) is like a little animal living its life in the ecosystem of your head. Sometimes the animal is killed brutally during its life, other times it goes on and may even procreate through being spoken or silently reaffirmed to yourself. These ideas of course evolve over time, and are tested with different circumstances. All the laws of natural selection should apply. The environment that you think thoughts within determines the evolutionary path of your thoughts, and therefore your opinions and your philosophies and your beliefs and your prejudices. Everything you think might just be a product of the evolution of your thoughts over time. Growing up in a stable nurturing environment will create a completely different ecosystem of ideas and animals in your head than growing up in a hostile or icy terrain. Seems valid so far, I think... or is it only because it's valid within the ecosystem of ideas that I've grown up around?
To change yourself therefore becomes more of a challenge. You can't just start thinking different thoughts simply as a result of "making yourself", because you'll upset the balance of the ecosystem of ideas in your head. Predator ideas will eat the new idea. The new idea may not be suited to handle the rough habitat that your other ideas have had the chance to adapt to for many years. What you have to do is change the environment of your thoughts as well as introduce new thoughts. If you're a big risk taker and you want to turn into a more thoughtful risk manager, perhaps you should expose yourself to an environment where risk-taking is no longer the soundest strategy. Have a kid or something. Invest your money in something. Who knows. But changing your environment may be the most direct way to change your thoughts about things. Because the ecosystem of ideas isn't something that is easily changed directly. You can't just introduce a new brand of ladybugs into your brain without expecting a bit of competition with the caterpillars. Not to mention the gardener, and the soil, and the weather patterns.
I have a new idea to perhaps consider vegetarianism. But the idea is being rejected by almost every fiber of my brain's ecosystem. I love sushi. I crave chicken. Fish is delicious. And yet I cannot stand the thought of collecting and harvesting animals in order to eat them. It's not that I think it's natural to be a vegetarian, or even a moral obligation, but it's something that I can remove from my current lifestyle and most likely benefit from: being healthier, eating less, etc. But I love meat. And I don't really like the vegetarian attitude of being picky about food... I don't like the idea of being picky about food in general... I love all food, and everything is tasty. So most likely this idea will not survive in my brain. I will continue to eat meat, and be inconsistent and self-indulgent on this one point. Unless I can find a secret way to change my environment so being a vegetarian is actually a more robust and advantageous idea than the ideas that are currently clubbing it like a baby seal upon entrance into my head.
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