The Icarus Website

I don't follow my heart. Instead, I lead my Self.

'An unexamined life is not worth living.'
~Socrates~

For dinner tonight, I ordered a takeaway pizza from Domino's Pizza. I learned something interesting.

My body was quite hungry and I was looking forward to eating the pizza. When the delivery man rang the bell, I rushed to the door and it was at that point that I was happiest. The eating part wasn’t what I had anticipated. The ingredients were not that tasty. Don’t get me wrong it was still nice, but I wasn’t as happy as when I was anticipating the moment.

It required a conscious intellectual effort for me to look back at the experience and realise that it was all rather absurd. It’s almost as if I sensed that I was not supposed to look back. Perhaps we are programmed by nature to forget things that make us question the logic of our existence.

I then started reflecting on this more deeply, and realised that perhaps that is what nature intended. I mean if the highest point of pleasure was at the end, there would be less incentive to continue. By making the climax the anticipation stage, nature is cleverly encouraging a never-ending cycle. Such a cycle is beneficial to the genes.

I’ve also learned that the rawer a feeling is, such as physical pain, the more likely we are to forget it. That is why when we feel a high degree of physical pain, at that instant we tend to be surprised at how horrible it is. Physical pain and pleasure are experiences nature wants us to forget quickly, and there is a reason for it. If we remembered how pleasure felt, there would be no need to seek more. Nature (the collective genes) wants us to continue our lives. Memory tends to be selective and it seems to be there to help us learn from our past encounters so that we are better equipped to deal with future ones. Memory has an evolutionary function.

Have you ever thought why we can be bored of some things and not other things? For example, sitting on a desk all day can be boring even for only one day, yet we eat and drink every day, and never get tired of it. Again, it is because eating and drinking are necessary for the survival of our genes.

My love of humanity is only matched by my hatred of the genes.

'...man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity.'
~Paul Tillich~

I cannot pretend to myself that something is what it is not.