Self-awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self-regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart.

Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.

Change is the very fabric of our time.

Indeed, the maligned American pastime of baseball may be by-far the greatest and best sport by one criterion, when it comes to emulating and training for genuinely useful Neolithic skills! Think about it. The game consists of lots of patient waiting and watching (stalking), throwing with incredible accuracy and speed, sprinting, dodging... and hitting moving objects real hard with clubs! And arguing. Hey, what else could you possibly need? Now, tell me, how do soccer or basketball prepare you to survive in the wild, hm?

Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as ‘enlightenment.'