WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND?

It is incredible just how much rubbish people fill up their minds 
with. I don't just mean entertainment and sensationalism, but all 
of the junk that people need to absorb just to participate in 
society. It seems a waste really - so much information duplicated, 
facts, dates, systems, laws, rituals, languages, all duplicated 
over every human mind, mostly just as little pass-keys into 
individual miniscule little parts of society as a whole. You don't 
earn most of this information either, you don't really determine it 
yourself or in your own way, it's crammed into you willingly or 
otherwise from birth. Schools spend years flinging the disjointed 
thoughts of others at their pupils in the expectation that some of 
it will be useful, and that through sheer persistence enough will 
stick in the long run. At the same time businesses proceed in their 
own endless campaigns of "education" for purely their own 
advantage, with essential services often taking extra care to craft 
enough complexity that only the most decicated individuals learn 
enough of their intricacies to really have a chance at an educated 
decision to use them.

So why do people walk around with this little encyclopedia of 
manufactured human thought programmed into their memories? Simply 
for the hope that on top of it all they can chisel their own tiny 
little notch. One little mark to be, by some unlikely chance, swept 
up into the minds of others. Be they employers, clients, customers, 
lovers, readers, peers, followers, or even the whole of society. 
It's only when pearched precariously on the peak of our collection 
of other people's thoughts, that we have some hope of adding our 
own.

I can't claim to have any alternative proposition. I can dream of 
the purity of thought that might come from a mind concerned only 
with ideas it has learned, earned, through the experience of its 
own actions. Yet it is by a conventional, socially accepted, view, 
a stupid mind. It's thoughts have no hope of impacting others. 
Indeed they could hardly even be accurately communicated. Those 
thoughts are as solitary as those of an animal.

Instead myself, like most people, I embrace it. Leaning history, 
studying technologies and systems, and of course absorbing many 
forms of pure entertainment. That I know the plots of so many 
movies, the tunes to so many songs, does it really achieve 
anything? Perhaps I can learn a lesson from a story, but what do I 
really know of its truth? Just the same as if I learned that lesson 
from reading a poster, or even heard it from a person. Within the 
world that my mind had been taught, built from countless thoughts 
of others, how do you really believe in anything?

I think all that you can really trust are those few rare thoughts 
earnt for yourself from your own experience. Thoughts from your own 
world. A pity it is that they a so easily burried through sheer 
volume of rubbish from outside.



On another topic. The Flying Leathernecks, Memphis Belle, Battle of 
Britain, Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Dambusters, and finally Thirty 
Seconds Over Tokyo. Overall I think The Battle of Britain was best 
- the story, acting, music, filming and effects were really great, 
plus it tackled the combined difficulties of filming so much air 
combat in an engaging way, and writing an action-based story that 
spanned so much time, very well indeed. That said, the scene in 
Tora! Tora! Tora! of the Japanese fighters taking off from their 
aircraft carriers at dawn is absolutely beautiful, and carries an 
excellent sense of scale. I also have to commend The Dambusters for 
having such an authentic script, and of course I loved how the 
development of the bouncing bomb was given as much attention as the 
mission itself. Overall, six WWII air force movies is a little too 
much in a short time, but it was fun and allowed for some 
interesting comparisons. Now I'm on to old hollywood epics, Quo 
Vadis and Ben-Hur will be new ones to me, plus I might re-watch 
Sparticus and Zulu. Putting on movies that go as long as those 
requires a bit more planning and commitment though.

Yes I am aware of the irony here, and it is deliberate.

 - The Free Thinker.