![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Let's see what happened since last post (more or less chronologically):
* Found out we got Canadian permanent residence (after almost two-year wait).
* Got a job offer in Toronto and accepted it.
* Quit my nice cushy job (after less than one year there).
* Rented out our condo. We are landlords now.
* Moved to Toronto and started new job three weeks ago.
* Skewered the superfluousness of priests at a birthday party in front of a priest-to-be (obviously found out about his career shift right after my diatribe against priests).
* Started reading Hofstadter's The Mind's I. Two particular essays struck a cord:
1. Terrel Miedaner's The Soul of the Mark III Beast which is actually an excerpt from his 1977 "The Soul of Anna Klane"
2. Richard Dawkins' Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes which is an excerpt from his famous 1976 "The Selfish Gene". The last two paragraphs hit the nail on the head for me vis-a-vis procreation:
* Read some recent Edge letters vis-a-vis Dawkins' and Co. recent war against religion. I particularly enjoyed his Oct 2006 Salon interview, especially his defense of reductionism from a semantic POV.
* Last but not least, I stumbled upon a book of Taoist maxims and, after a bit of browsing, I found the art of Wu wei a rather interesting concept albeit somewhat foreign to the world we live in.
* Found out we got Canadian permanent residence (after almost two-year wait).
* Got a job offer in Toronto and accepted it.
* Quit my nice cushy job (after less than one year there).
* Rented out our condo. We are landlords now.
* Moved to Toronto and started new job three weeks ago.
* Skewered the superfluousness of priests at a birthday party in front of a priest-to-be (obviously found out about his career shift right after my diatribe against priests).
* Started reading Hofstadter's The Mind's I. Two particular essays struck a cord:
1. Terrel Miedaner's The Soul of the Mark III Beast which is actually an excerpt from his 1977 "The Soul of Anna Klane"
2. Richard Dawkins' Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes which is an excerpt from his famous 1976 "The Selfish Gene". The last two paragraphs hit the nail on the head for me vis-a-vis procreation:
When we die there are two things we can leave behind us: genes and
memes. We were built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes. But that
aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. Your child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you, perhaps in facial features, in a talent for music, in the colour of her hair. But as each generation passes, the contribution
of your genes is halved. It does not take long to reach negligible proportions.
Our genes may be immortal but the collection of genes which is any one of us is
bound to crumble away. Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Yet it is quite probable that she bears not a single one of the old king’s
genes. We should not seek immortality in reproduction.
But if you contribute to the world’s culture, if you have a good idea,
compose a tune, invent a spark plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long
after your genes have dissolved in the common pool. Socrates may or may not
have a gene or two alive in the world today, as G. C. Williams has remarked,
but who cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus, and
Marconi are still going strong....
* Read some recent Edge letters vis-a-vis Dawkins' and Co. recent war against religion. I particularly enjoyed his Oct 2006 Salon interview, especially his defense of reductionism from a semantic POV.
* Last but not least, I stumbled upon a book of Taoist maxims and, after a bit of browsing, I found the art of Wu wei a rather interesting concept albeit somewhat foreign to the world we live in.
