Plans & Reveries

I spend a lot of time on campus these days starting and finishing term papers in the solitude (hopefully) of the arts computer lab. And again, here I am, another day looking over research to play the games of university, grades over intelligence, repetition over analysis, regurgitation over creation. Though it does push me to adapt and play by others' rules, and "everyone" knows how much I hate doing that.
Anyways, I'm writing a paper on the negativity bias (the tendency for adults to be more affected by negative information than positive) and there are a lot of interesting things regarding behavior that I hadn't thought about in this manner. For example, one of the findings is that negative memories are told with regard to introspection and a focus on emotion while positive memories are told with more attention to events. It's obvious, it's common sense, and yet I hadn't fully considered the fluid role of memory in regard to our emotions.

Building upon the notions of memory, young children have great memories, 3 year olds will remember with vivid detail the events of vacations and pain for occurrences for months and years. Yet, other than a few distinct instances (some of which are false memories constructed to fit our present 'self', for further reading start with Adler) these memories fade and blur. It's almost like our conscious lives as children is completely foreign to our current conscious state. Like that time spent as kids was an entirely different life, a life that left a great deal of residue in the present, but that is separate, untouchable, nearly alien.

Each brick becomes a permanent part of that structure we call our 'self', but how much of reality of the brick matters? is the core of the event what matters, the "material" of the brick. Or does the sloppy paint job we've thrown over it matter more? Does the metaphorical brick become cement if painted that way?

On an unrelated note, go watch Jacob's Ladder immediately, it's a psychological horror film made in the early 90s, it uses zero post production effects, once you have, come talk to me about it.