Debbie Foster

the cosmos reaches back to trick us and fix a far greater outcome: that the ultimate truth must never be known, because once the knower understands that he is the entirety of all things, the universe becomes fatally self-referential and collapses back into a closed spacetime of zero radius with all values headed to zero and all history annihilated.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path

The algorithm never really "knows" you. It gives you content it thinks you'll engage with, which doesn't initially reflect your identity. Once you consume that content, though, it can and will subtly change you. You may connect more with the niche community in your filter bubble, find that you like certain memes, or start using certain catchy

"Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves."

A central tenet of Buddhism is that the self is illusory. We are more than our conscious minds and we are wrong to think of our autobiographical self as a 'true self'. Freud's 'ego' is also illusory, insofar as it generates a misleadingly comprehensive sense of selfhood, whereas in reality it is only a small part of a much larger, opaque totality.

There is no first-person point of view.

Our access to our own thoughts is just as indirect and fallible as our access to the thoughts of other people. We have no privileged access to our own minds. If our thoughts give the real meaning of our actions, our words, our lives, then we can’t ever be sure what we say or do, or for that matter, what we

In these kinds of performances, the reading and piano improvisation occur simultaneously. It's more than just a combination of words and music. When I'm reading, the area from my toes up to my throat is completely absorbed in and responding to the music; while the area from my tongue to my brain is pursuing the meaning of the words. Or maybe it's

A person … who is willing to flex her personality to meet the demands of the moment, is called a "high self-monitor," according to psychologists. A "low self-monitor," meanwhile, is someone who remains true to themselves, no matter what situation they're in. (The lingo is a bit confusing, but you can think of a high self-monitor as constantly

Confronted with these realities, a philosopher or anthropologist might be tempted to think that the Aztecs lacked a domain for thinking about what we call "ontology" or "metaphysics." That is untrue. They did think deeply about the fundamental character of reality. They merely did so without the use of terms such as "being" or "is." Instead, they