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It's comforting, isn't it? It's comforting to know that when you walk into a CD Tradepost and ask the local vendor where the Neo-Death-Industrial-Metal Section is in the music, she can take you to the exact spot and you can find your favorite band, Necro PileDriver. It's nice to know you can go to the horror movie section and see the latest movie crapped out by hollywood about a 110 pound teenage girl that defeats a 10,000 year old demon in PG-13 form. Being able to dinstinguish some things from other things is pretty cool. Being able to categorize certain obejcts in our experience using just a word or two is pretty useful. In fact, without this ability, it's pretty hard to see the human race surviving for very long. The ability to categorize and label is a tool of the human understanding. The ability of attaching an entire viewpoint around a certain word or idea is connected to the study of heuristics. In psychology , heuristics are simple, efficient rul...

I do not think it to be too controversial a statement to say that there is a proper place for emotions in a life well-lived. The dilemma lies not in getting rid of emotions, surely no one wants to do such a thing, but it is being able to have control over your emotions. A person must be able to (1) pinpoint their feelings, (2) know why they are feeling it, and (3) take measures in order to either keep that feeling alive or attempt to dispel it. If you are able to determine both (1) and (2) , then (3) will come easier. You have to know what the problem is in order to fix it. Pinpointing a feeling involves looking at the situation of which the feeling was aroused. The context of which the feeling exists will allow for the feeling to be properly examined. If you feel tense in a classroom you may be nervous about a test if there is one that day. If there is not, you may have to look at other relevant facts. Perhaps you didn't do the reading for the day, perhaps there i...

There are all sorts of reasons that relationships fail and by relationships I do not mean exclusively those of the romantic sort; friends, parents, teachers, teammates, etc. can all be affected. The causes are usually highly contextual. There is not always one single cause that can be blamed and thus we are left scratching our heads trying to understand just what went wrong. There may be an underlying theme though, and in order to understand this concept you may need some background information. Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha, was attributed to having laid out what is called the "Four Noble Truths." These truths allow for one to see the world for what it is and to escape suffering and achieve for the Buddha what was called Nirvana . It is the second of these noble truths that will be important to this article, that of the truth that our desires are ultimately what cause us to suffer (for more explanation on these truths, visit here ). What did the Buddha ...

Lately, the idea of becoming efficient in all aspects of life has dominated my thoughts. Performing each action with the path of least resistance, getting the most out of the least; those are the ideas that have me hooked. When conversing with a good friend about this topic, however, I came to the realization that I don't want to be "all about efficiency." I don't want it to dominate my thoughts on all aspects in life, and when a feeling doesn't match a thought, we have a problem, so I sought out to find out why. The thing is that as humans, we are purposeful creatures. Everything we do, enjoy, dislike, is for a reason, whether we know it or not, whether it be an active choice or something inherited. So even efficiency itself has a purpose. We use tools for a reason, we try to make more money for a reason, we try to make things easier for a reason. I think the reason is simple: We become efficient in some aspects of our lives so we can take on the big or seemingly...