We Humans Can Never be Satisfied – Art De Vany on Line

We humans can never be satisfied. Nor could satisfaction rest on a specific accomplishment or object. I think that it comes from the fact that we humans must be supremely adaptive. That means we must have a kind of generalized, non-specific attraction or yearning for more that can be applied to novel situations. If we were attracted to a few things only, how would we deal with choice and adaptation when we are confronted with something completely new?

Humans must always have a kind of unfulfilled need or yearning for “something more.” Nothing can fully satisfy us or we would not be prepared to make choices in the next novel situation. It is the unpredictable that we must be prepared for and this requires an open-ended attraction or yearning for “something more”. The general feeling that there must be something more to life keeps us open to the next situation. For that reason, we can never be fulfilled.

To be fulfilled means the journey is over. We have to love the journey, not where it ends.

We Humans Can Never be Satisfied – Art De Vany on Line

One of the great strengths of the English language is the number of ways it provides to describe people who annoy us. True, German has the word “Backpfeifengesicht” – “a face in need of a punch” – but English overwhelms us with options, thanks partly to its abundance of vulgarisms. If I call you a “wanker” I mean something subtly different from a “dickhead”. (It can be hard to pinpoint these nuances without resort to further swearing, as demonstrated by users of urbandictionary.com, as they struggle to define a “prick”: “An all around fucktard, dickweed, assrat bastard.”) These differences aren’t just a matter of intensity. We can presumably all agree that Simon Cowell is a bit of a tosser. But his success makes it hard to dismiss him as a fuckwit, while it’s not clear he’s guilty of the malice that would condemn him as a shit.

This column will change your life: don’t let an asshole get to you | Life and style | The Guardian
Source: Guardian

Pedagogy

When Julia was in 2nd grade, I taught poetry to her class, using Kenneth Koch’s Wishes, Lies, and Dreams, and Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?. The kids wrote really great poems for me. I would come in every other day for two weeks. That was actually one of my triumphs of teaching. Kids would come up to me years later and say, “Mr. Mayhew, how about a poem?”

franksantoro:

FRANK SANTORO CORRESPONDENCE COURSE for COMIC BOOK MAKERS. NEW COURSE STARTS JANUARY 1st 2013 – Email me capneasyATgmail for application guidelines. I WILL SEND YOU A LINK TO THE LAST COURSE so you can check it out. Ten students per course. 8 week course. 500 bux. Payment plans available. I will work with you. This is the 6th course I have done and I have it down to a science. Great way to study comics for those who can never find the time to make them. Correspondence method works with your schedule. I will show you. You can do it! Applications due by Xmas – unless we all die on Dec 22… http://www.tcj.com/category/columns/riff-raff/page/10/

5 Open Supersecrets About Bloggers

The “five open supersecrets” about bloggers, as Lee Siegel says in Against the Machine (quoted in Benjamin Kunkel’s review at N1BR), are:

1. Not everyone has something valuable to say.
2. Few people have anything original to say.
3. Only a handful of people know how to write well.
4. Most people will do almost anything to be liked.
5. “Customers” are always right, but “people” aren’t.

I am not sure how these five secrets distinguish bloggers from anyone else, including those who write books. They are worth remembering, though.