Bertrand Russell on his beliefs (short video).

Knowledge á la Confucius.

What is knowledge? Confucius put it simply - in The Analects - as follows:

"Knowledge is saying you know when you know, and saying you don't when you don't."

I hope you take something away from that - 'nough bullshit, people.

Why should we carry on?

Do you ever feel like everything you say is prosaic and trite? No. Well, maybe it's just me. Every day, I wonder about just what it means to be human. All Britons speak the same language - more or less, and with differing levels of accuracy and understanding. Language systems are here to secure the means to communicate; without a common tongue it would be like Babel. That's obvious. But, what about the things we say; the relationships we lead. Aren't those, more or less, just the same? Do you ever wonder about that?

I do, and I've come to the conclusion that our lives are in no way the same. We say similar phrases, sure, but we say them with different nuances - with different levels of conviction, understanding, love, hate, approval and disapproval, amongst many other things. We may know people who like similar sorts of things and so, naturally, we classify them by those things in order so in some way categorize them. That sounds like a hateful sentiment, but we all do it. It's just in our natures to make connections which don't necessarily exist.

Every person you know has a different story to tell. Where were they born? Where did they first go to school? Where did they first kiss; smoke; fuck; get beaten up; beat someone else up; first realise they loved; first realise they were on the road to maturity? Did their parents ever beat them? Do their parents still encourage them? Are they mislead in any way? If they are, are they reticent to take a deep look at themselves? We're all different. Those tiny nuances and variations make us who we are. But the real test is this: how will our convictions fair given time and experience? We all change, but will we ever become the things we always wanted to avoid? One day, we'll find out.

And that, in short, is why we should carry on. Identity is made of the seemingly innocuous and unimportant; the feeble consequences of the incidences of our births and lives from thereon. Life is a brief stint of madness before eternal death. So fucking make the most of it. Burn the candle at both ends. Think, drink, party, fuck, love, laugh, cry, bleed, heal, change others and be changed. Be ready for the road ahead. Be ready for anything. Be ready to drop all your plans. Be ready to accept that in life one can't plan. Just be. Everything you say may feel of little import but it all will have a bearing on our collective destiny. We can't change it, it would seem, but we sure as hell can try to build the best future possible.

A treatise on the nature of human nature.

Nature: red in tooth and claw. The ceaseless fighting and courting must go on for ever. There will never be a victor. We are merely animals. We fight, but over silly novelities and tribulations. When did we become so pathetic?

Why can't we love with the fullness of our hearts and ply with the strength of all our muscles? We love - as any animal does - and yet we feel human love to be something special; something spiritual. We see with oft-pessimistic and pejorative eyes and yet we feel outbursts of love and affection.

We mostly never consider consequence. We are merely little bundles of egotism and idiocy trapped in the human form. We are merely loved-up creatures unable to feel love. We have hands but we can't touch. We have eyes and ears but we see merely the immediate and the pressing.

We have hearts, lungs, arteries, brains, skeletons, skeletal muscle, blood, bile and other tissues too numerous to mention - like all mammals.

We are holistic-seeing creatures dissecting the world piece by piece. We've dissected the human form - at least in its physiology; its physicalities. When will we be able to leave on the table the very essence of the human?

Never, I say. We are merely pieces strung together and we work as a whole. The eyes and skin and bodily feedback systems feed the brain, the brain feeds the nervous system, the nervous system feeds the respiratory system and we nourish ourselves with the very produce of the Earth - the Earth's earth. We feed ourselves with our animal brothers and sisters 3.9 billion years in the making. We feed ourselves merely to sustain our ability to feed.