succumbing to a meme

It's widely known by users of the internet that bacon is the best food ever.  While we might consider that something of an exaggeration or joke, it is true that it's a good combo food - with eggs, in a BLT, etc. - so why not with a beer?  An oatmeal stout makes intellectual sense, since it's a blend of two breakfast foods, and a dark beer does have more psychological connection with meatiness.

There is a hint of bacon in the smell, much like other rauchbiers.  The taste is also along the same lines, not surprisingly.  It is smoky, slightly bitter, coffeed as well.  After some time sitting, the taste gets a little sweeter and smoother, channeling the oatmeal maybe.  Something puts me in the mood for breakfast foods while I'm drinking it; it would go well with some toast and jelly, maybe an omelet.  Even more interesting perhaps, waffles.

Most important meal, right?

Poverty and Welfare

I didn't have a whole lot to say at the start of this session.  Mostly, I had questions that needed clarifying: What do we mean by poverty?  What kind of conditions qualify?  What constitutes welfare?

Our Doctor attempted to address the first two questions in his first contribution.  He told us he was always surprised by how fragile his mind is, since he thinks he knows a lot, but he didn't know what poverty was.  After pondering it, he decided "poverty" meant a lack of a needed substance, and therefore something individual (as most of our topics end up being) and with different manifestations in different societies.  Later he took a stab at "welfare" too, focusing on the money aspect.  In his opinion, the availability of welfare may make some people think they don't have to work anymore, but it is impossible to predict where society will go.  Money doesn't exist, like love, he said.  Banks control the money, therefore they also control society, and the younger generations have lost their idealism, he lamented.  He mentioned a patient he had had who had turned to prostitution to pay her mortgage, saying that she had told him that she had sold her dignity to keep her shelter.  Our Doctor did not explain whether he considered her to be living in physical poverty, but his implication was one of poverty of moral and morale.

After a contribution mentioning Spanish children being left without even one good meal daily, our Leader responded that this situation was more a question of making poor choices than being economically poor.  It is, however, another symptom of poverty in that the poor are most likely not given access to the information they need to make healthy choices about their lifestyles.  It makes little sense to compare poverty levels in different countries because each society has its own needs, and those needs determine what may be lacking for each individual.  The lack of a cell phone in a slum in India may not matter too much to its inhabitants level of wealth or poverty, but in the developed West, it has become almost absolutely essential to have that type of access to contact in order to find work, be able to do work acceptably, or manage one's life.  A few do get along without them, but the vast majority of citizens in Western countries would have difficulty maintaining their current lifestyle without that connectivity.  The lack of cell phone is, in fact, poverty and an obstacle to leaving it.  The Leader continued, saying poverty is a political concept, the outcome of poor management and outright oppression.  The essence of it in modern society is the limited access to education even more than simple lack of money.  The Welfare State, in his British opinion, is not meant to simply provide charity or give money away, but to create access to opportunities for people to better themselves; in a society, everyone does better when everyone does better.  His pre-discussion thoughts are in his essay.

The True Philosopher was able to give us a different perspective on the question, although not mentioned in his written thoughts, coming from an East Asian country as he does.  His viewpoint was that poverty is more a state of mind that a physical experience.  The poverty he has seen in his country was of the urban variety, in which people come from the rural areas looking for paying jobs and more life choices (although possibly education too, I would think) but are stuck living in squalid conditions in slums and tenements.  The people he saw living in the country did not appear to him to be impoverished because their basic needs were covered; they had good food, enough of it, shelter, and water.  They might not have the options of city dwellers for leisure or work (or education), but they really lacked for nothing essential.  However, people from the country continue to migrate to the city for a "better life" of higher pay and higher prices.  For the Philosopher, this points to poverty being rooted in the mental state of people, who would leave behind basic physical needs for only vaguely possible emotional fulfillment.  In the end, he worried that the Welfare State would indeed perpetuate a poverty mentality.

As the meeting drew to a close, the Great Yawn Inducer took the floor and refused to relinquish it for 20 full minutes.  Unable to make the useless effort to decipher his heavily accented foghorning for more than 2 minutes, I was left unsure of the point of his oxygen burning.  My best guess is that it was more victim blaming of the less fortunate for not simply having money and being so greedy as to take out bank loans.  I wouldn't be surprised if he attends the Mitt Romney school of financial advice.

from on high

Something about the confidence of Evan Altmighty made me unable to pass it by.

It's a pretty, pale caramel color, slightly orange-y.  Heady, although not excessively so.  It's a fairly stable foam, sitting calmly on the liquid.  Very subtle aroma; unlike IPAs and other ales I've sampled recently, there's no smell at all when the bottle is uncapped, and only the lightest, slightly sweet scent from the glass.  The taste is smooth and malty, with a mild covering of bitter and smoky.  It's a deeper, richer flavor than I expected from the color, so I'm pleasantly surprised.  It's just a bit heavy for a Madrid summer evening, but I could imagine a cool inside table where this beer could be thoroughly enjoyable any time of the year.

Lighter than expected, but looks are deceiving

Is Justice Revenge?

The way the question is expressed leads us to think we should limit ourselves to the realities of justice and its application, which leads me to say that, sadly, justice is undoubtedly revenge, at least in a great number of cases.  I think, however, that we should also consider what justice should be, what we can try to make it, so that it does differentiate itself from revenge.  What can probably be agreed upon is that revenge is private.  It takes place between two individuals, or between an individual and the group (of individuals) that caused offense.  The justice system, on the other hand, is public.  It draws the attention of society to a crime or offense, not just a few, select people.  For this reason, trials are open to the public, more or less, and executions and physical punishments used to be public spectacles as well.  They were meant to convey the idea that the authorities take crimes seriously, society ought to trust them, and individuals ought to avoid criminal activity.  Of course, they were also entertainment because people are horrible, but the structure of the justice system is one of making an offense impersonal.  Criminal cases in the United States go "The People Vs. (the defendant)" and the victims of the crime, or the victims' families aren't even mentioned.  In the eyes of justice, a crime is committed against every member of society, not just one, so not only must the examination and possible punishment be public, it must be impersonal and objective.  Revenge is neither of those things.  It is extremely personal, and enormously subjective.  The "eye for an eye" style of vengeful "justice" cannot even be said to be objectively fair, since the conditions of the "equal" treatment are never the same.

The Thinker agreed that the terms should be separated, saying that while we don't know things and only have ideas, "justice" just sounds like a good thing.  He used the word "vengeance" rather than "revenge", but considered it to be emotional and Shakespearean, a dark word.  Another difference to his mind is that justice requires professionals; the law is often complicated, and even specialists may not be able to absorb the entirety of a country's law code.  He used Spain as an example, saying that since each autonomy has its own code, it's impossible for any Spanish lawyer to practice effectively in a region other than the one s/he studied in.  Revenge, on the other hand, needs no professionals, and is in fact usually "better" without them, given its personal nature.  The Thinker ended his first contribution by saying that justice is an invention to create balance, but later on decided that justice doesn't actually exist.  As concepts, justice and truth should be the most important things for human beings.  Justice, in particular, merits the gaze of a suspicious eye, because where it has been invented, it is meant to protect the power structure more than any one member of society.  Rather than being objective and fair, the justice system drags behind changes in social values because of delays in changing unfair laws, which makes revenge necessary.  It becomes the justice of the people.

The Philosopher provided us with his usual essay on the topic, and in the meeting began by insisting that despite the distance between justice and revenge as ideas, they are always connected.  He commented on the evolution of justice as seen in the Christian Bible, where in simple terms Old Testament justice is more like revenge (in fact, "'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord") and the New Testament instructs believers to turn the other cheek.  By not taking personal revenge, we leave the way open for objective and impersonal justice.  This idea came in response to a question from another participant, who asked the group to ponder why Christian countries punish criminals, given the instruction from their savior.  The Rights Crusader mostly gave examples of revenge being worked into the justice system, in the form of people who physically attack robbers or rapists not being prosecuted, or more disturbingly, criminals like terrorists being tortured in prisons.  The Actress was strident in her opposition to revenge as an activity, insisting that it meant deterioration and regress in society.  Her quote for us was, "Revenge is evil, forgiveness is god."  Later on, this statement appeared to cause some confusion for the Insufferable Clod, as he smugly droned that she must be Christian since she mentioned god, and even if she insists she isn't, other people can only logically draw that conclusion.  After being admonished that there are many faiths and gods, he snidely rattled off some names of Roman deities, leaving his narrow-minded and arrogant interpretation of belief and spirituality unquestionably clear.  This exchanged must have left him riled and unsatisfied, since he started a meaningless argument with the Organizer about house ownership and economic policy soon after, taking the side that buying property is absolutely the best investment ("It worked in Spain for 40 years!") and that US conservatives are absolutely correct in wanting to remove money from the economy.  His feeling of uncoddled Christian supremacy would not allow him to let any disagreement pass.

The Organizer also gave his customary written opinion for pre-meeting analysis, and in his first contribution also highlighted the connection between justice and revenge, but specifying that it was only valid in criminal situations.  In most other circumstances, justice should seek to restore the previous conditions as much as possible.  While tribal societies of only a few hundred or thousand people, justice and revenge can be more intimately linked because of the relationships between all members of the society.  Even in large societies, the social goal of justice ought to be to restore social relationships.  He repeated the idea the justice does not express emotion, although he believed that it still existed in an unstated level.  Revenge will develop from injustice, then, as a sort of "interest" accumulating in the emotional sense.  To bring us to a more philosophical realm, he introduced his opinion that, although justice is considered as related to ethics and morality, it might not actually belong there, but rather with philosophy of mind.  The reason is that justice arises with conflict, and when faced with those conflicts we have the balance of "Kill the bastard" versus "Don't do something stupid."  Choosing the not-stupid leaves restoring social balance up to the justice system.  Another strike against revenge is that not every injustice requires punishment, which is inherent in taking revenge.  Harkening back to the beginning and the public displays of justice, punishment is used to control people, sometimes only as a show of force and warning, sometimes by punishing the good along with the bad.  Another participant disagreed slightly, saying punishment and the threat of punishment are used as deterrence, and really had no connection to justice.

Maybe the concepts of justice and revenge are more closely intertwined than I thought before the discussion.  For sure, taking revenge on people who use an unfair allotment of time to ramble should be justified.

for a little break

Back to Toledo and Domus, but no mention of El Greco this time.  I just can't stay away from stouts!  Take Five insists it intends to provoke feelings of jazz in the drinker, although cocktails seem jazzier to me than black beer.  Maybe I just listen to too much Black 47, but a stout seems to go better with a good rock song to me.

Although the smell does evoke the light fruit touches mentioned on the label, the taste is again like a good bar band - loud, powerful, balancing sweet and bitter.  It seems sweeter at first, but the bitter hangs around longer.  It's also a bit too sour to really be chocolatey, although some figs and plums have a little of that sourness to them.  It's quite a pick-me-up, less relaxing than other stouts in my opinion, but well worth the time to savor.

preparation 1

Once there was a rich man who lived under a curse.  He lived in his family's mansion in the country and everything around was big and beautiful.  But, there was also a ghost.  She roamed the halls of the mansion, leaving little trails of water everywhere she went, which was because she had drowned.  Why did she haunt the rich man?  Well, she was a family curse, the way the house was the family house.  The rich man's grandfather had been her employer in the city, in a big house with an old well in the basement.  One day, the girl had fallen in and nobody found her for months, not until they decided to renovate the basement and fix up the well.  Then, they discovered her poor body - and also a treasure!  The rich man's grandfather had immediately taken the treasure, sold the house in the city and bought the country mansion, and at the same time he had sent the girl's body to her village in a sealed coffin with no explanation.  Nobody claimed her and she was buried in a nameless tomb, which made her spirit angry and restless.

She actually hadn't haunted her master - she didn't know where he'd gone when he left the city house, and ghosts have trouble getting directions.  When she finally came upon the country mansion, attached to a painting commissioned for her master's niece and her first-born daughter, the man was already dead.  Just a month before, in fact.  Her anger did not diminish with this information, but instead boiled hotter than ever.  How dare he escape into the afterlife without having to confront her!  To sooth her bruised pride, she settled into haunting his son, who had inherited the house and all his father's wealth, and therefore his curse, too.  Unfortunately, he had been away when the death and discovery had occurred, and naturally his father had not seen fit to mention a drowned servant girl to his son.  He was completely unprepared for the haunting.

He spent months raging at the servants about the puddles and squishy carpets before it finally became clear that there was something strange going on.  Drawing on all her wrath, the ghost appeared to him one night in his bedchamber and demanded he do his father's duty and lay her soul to rest.  When the shock wore off, the man indignantly refused, saying he wouldn't stand for this slur on his father's character.  Now the ghost was shocked and lost concentration, making her disappear.  The next night she tried again, and a sort of grudge match began.  The man and the ghost glared at each other all night, each expecting the other to give in.  The ghost, of course, did not suffer for lack of sleep, but the man began to show his physical vulnerability.  He started sleeping in a different chamber every night, and when the ghost found him he was often too deeply asleep for her to wake him.  The best she could do was leave the rugs cold and soaking for when he arose the next morning.  It went on this way for years and years.

Eventually, her master's son also died, giving the ghost a haughty snort as his spirit left the house.  The ghost still couldn't leave herself, as she had found no more peace in the last years than she'd had on discovering she was dead and shoved aside.  She was forced to start haunting her old master's grandson.

The grandson knew of his father's troubles, of course.  He had felt the dripping fabric and slid and played on the flooded floors, much to his nurse's dismay.  He did not know the story behind it; he did not even know how the family had come into its current wealth.  One does not discuss those things.  The ghost was part of the family for him, and when she came to him with her demands, his explanation that he couldn't undo what his ancestors had done did nothing to soothe her.  But even more infuriating was that the oaf then just rolled over and went to sleep.  Try as she might, the man was never frightened or upset at her manifestations, falling asleep easily and waking in the morning saying, "Ah, just like when I was a boy," or "It's good the plants don't need watering."

The ghost spent many a frustrating year trying to make a mark on her new victim.  Although he was never perturbed, his servants had an extremely high turnover, his friends never accepted his invitations to spend the night when they passed through the area, and he was never able to work out a successful marriage contract.  When he was at home, he spent most of his time alone.  He was an amiable man, and hardly grumbled about the lack of backbone in servants and well-bred women as compared to his father's days.  Finally, he was able to hire a country girl as a maid.  She was from a poor and desperate family that was happy to place her in the hands any fortune, and the girl herself was not particularly bright.  She had no interest at all in things like ghosts or unnatural events, and thought only of consistently doing her duty.  The ghost ignored her entirely, as she did with everyone who wasn't her target, despite their sometimes suffering the consequences of her watery presence.  It took a remarkably observant day in the rich man's life for him to notice how much they resembled each other.  "She could be your granddaughter," he chuckled to the ghost just before dropping off to sleep.  At first the ghost was in a fury at his words, as she had died before even being kissed, but then her curiosity arose.  She flowed down to the kitchen where the girl was readying things for the next morning's meal.  She hardly seemed to notice when the ghost splooshed through the door.  It had been a long time since the ghost had seen her own face, but here she could compare her pallid reflection in a shiny saucepan with the girl's ruddy face as she sat at the table, squeezing wads of dough for breakfast biscuits.  Grimly, the ghost noted the similarities for herself.

"Where are you from, girl?" she asked after a few moments.

"From the Town of Cherry Trees," replied the girl obediently, without looking up from her task.  Indeed, that was were the ghost herself had come from.

"Who was your grandfather?" she asked next, and the girl stopped her kneading and looked up at the ceiling to think.

"My mother's father was called Carlito and my father's father was Anaclitor."  Heavy thinking completed, she looked down at the dough again.  Then she commented, off-hand, "His family was famous for a time because his aunt disappeared in the city and his father almost went to jail because he accused her employer of having something to do with it."  The girl looked up again, struck with enlightenment.  "Why, he was the man who bought this house, my master's grandfather!" and she went back to her work, pleased with her good memory.  If she'd had a spine, the ghost would have felt a shiver down it.  In all those years she had never considered what her family had done when she died, she had only been consumed with her personal revenge.

"But he didn't go to jail?" she asked softly.

The girl's forehead wrinkled as she tried to remember the story.  "No," she answered slowly, "The mayor in the city wanted him arrested, but the chief of police didn't like the rich man much and felt sympathy for great-grandfather.  But there was no evidence the rich man had done anything, so in the end the case was forgotten.  The family left the village, though."

"Left?"

"Yes, the sorrow was too strong.  My parents only returned because they were left landless when their parents died, and nobody had wanted to buy our old fields in the village.  Enough time had passed by then that nobody was much reminded of the lost woman."

The ghost was now sitting on the kitchen bench and brooding.  "So, my family is on the old land.  Do they not visit my grave?"

"Nobody knows if she was ever found," replied the girl, seeming to ignore the ghost's claim to be her relative.

The ghost slowly flowed out into the hall, leaving a trail of icy puddles in her wake.  She wandered the halls aimlessly all the night and next day, before making her way late the next night to the rich man's bedroom.  He was not yet asleep.  He had recently taken up reading crime novels before bed and spent hours and candles getting to "just one more page."  The ghost had to soak his slippers through the rug to get his attention.  A bit surprised by her solemness in place of the customary rage, he listened carefully to her new instructions.  Once she had finished, his face lit up and he exclaimed, "Oh, what fun!  It's like one of my stories!" and at the ghost's suggestion, he put down the book and tried to rest before beginning his adventure the next day.

In the morning, the rich man hitched the horse (there had been no stable boy for many months) and called his maid to direct him to her village.  She seemed neither surprised nor excited, just accepting the task like any other.  The ghost tried to be discreet and travel in a large vase, but the horse was soon dripping with nervous sweat rather than paranormal secretions.  Upon arrival, the rich man sent his maid to take the vase to the cemetery and then visit with her parents until he came for her, and then he went to the mayor's house to examine the village records.  After receiving the gift of a bottle of fine red wine, the mayor left the rich man to his investigation, which in only a few hours uncovered the delivery of a coffin from the rich man's grandfather and the burial of said coffin in the cemetery.  The man raced to the maid's parents' house to share the news.  At his and the maid's urging, her parents went with them to the cemetery, bringing sprigs of toad back vine, what the locals preferred to decorate graves with.  At the graveyard, they moved the vase to the side of the blank stone that marked the site of the mystery tomb.  The ghost emerged from the vase with water overflowing the lip like tears from a mourner's eyes.  "Great gods!" gasped the maid's father, "How alike they are!"  That was enough for the older couple, and they set about clearing the weeds from the grave, carefully arranging the vines with their dark purple flowers, and planning to have the relative's name painted on the stone at last.  The rich man eagerly offered to pay for the cleaning that the stone would need first, as he was terribly pleased with having solved this little mystery and wanted to celebrate it somehow.  The maid was using her apron to brush leaves and petals from the top of the stone.  The ghost felt all her rancor and spite melt away as her life was remembered and her end was recognized, and she sank into the soil like a gentle spring rain, full of peace.

The Limits of Personal Autonomy

When using the term "autonomy", I'm referring to the freedom to make choices in one's behavior and circumstances and be able to act on those choices.  The limits may be the obvious ones of legality or physical danger, or may be related more closely to politeness, manners, or concern for others.  Where can we reasonably set the limits for our own or others' behavior?  What kind of criteria do we need to follow?

In the most general sense, limits on autonomy are for the protection of all members of society.  They are meant to delineate the acceptable actions that one can take before causing undue harm or stress to other members of one's group.  In many cases, the limits are enshrined in law, explicitly discouraging people from stealing or destroying others' property, as well as using others' bodies without consent.  These limits are generally clear, although some laws can be challenged as unjust or overly restrictive.  However, the limits that govern good behavior in society are often fuzzier and easier to cross, intentionally or not.  How loud can we choose to play music in our own homes?  How many seats can I use on the bus?  Murkier still may be those choices we make on behalf of others, as parents do for their children.  A parent has the responsibility to make the best choices with a child's safety and well-being in mind.  There are times when parents seem to make bad and dangerous choices, such as refusing to have their children vaccinated or rejecting other medical treatments in favor of religious rites or "natural" solutions.  How much can society or its arbiters intrude on the behavior of each member before the oversight becomes unacceptable?

Our Expert began by saying that limits, like everything in existence, are dependent on personal interpretations.  We might measure the restrictions of the limits and the amount of freedom that remains, but the measurements can be questioned and scales can be changed.  He ended his first contribution by saying that limits cannot be defined, and later reiterated the opinion stating that anyone who knows his limits is ill.  The self-control we need to act within the boundaries placed on us is based on the beliefs we are inculcated with, which brought him to issue a warning to us: We are in an age of "light" belief, because everybody believes everything.  The Expert went on to say that this is the beginning of a new fascism, in which the truth is hidden behind a wall of information.  In the end, he spoke of the concept of personal autonomy/individual rights being the product of 18th century French thought.  Our freedom to make personal choices speeds change in society, but is also dependent on the money we have available to defend our choices.  We can do what we want, as long as we are good citizens.  The question he left unanswered, though, is how we know we are being good citizens while exercising our autonomy.

The True Philosopher left us an essay to ponder which focused a bit more on limiting opportunities from even being present than on evaluating reasonable versus unreasonable or anti-social choices.  In the meeting he told us that we have both personal and social autonomy, but it is only the personal variety that has limits.  He cited Wittgenstein and Buber, explaining his view that our personal realities are the sum of our selves, and the limits of those realities are where they brush up against someone else's.  Therefore, the limits of our autonomy are the limits of someone else's autonomy.  I posed the question of whether preventing a suicide infringes on another person's autonomy, and the Philosopher's response was that as long as it is a personal decision by that person, it may in fact be overstepping the boundaries of personal autonomy to prevent it.  Others preferred to remind us that when suicidal people or patients who ask for assisted suicide or euthanasia are given treatment for depression, most of them change their minds.  One participant did say, in no uncertain terms, that we should have a right to suicide.

A rarely appearing participant showed up towards the end of the meeting, and based his contribution on the idea that education plays a large role in setting our limits.  Even more than physical or financial limitations, our upbringing creates mental limitations on what we consider ourselves to deserve or be entitled to.  This brings me back to the question of the criteria, and adds a further issue to ponder: How can we determine where a reasonable limit lies, and are the limits different for different members or groups in a society, and if they are different, is this difference fair or acceptable?

As usual, we reached no conclusion, although a good discussion was had by all...well, almost all, since our Dear Leader was not able to chair this particular meeting.  He did write some thoughts for us, also focusing rather much on closing off opportunities instead of giving different values to the available choices.

Some bizarre misunderstandings cropped up in the form of attempted contributions from the Unbearable Bore.  First he decided that since autonomía in Spanish can also refer to battery life, it simply has to be the same in English.  When it was clear he was going to make no comparison between different languages, he was corrected, not without huffiness.  Later he desperately flailed for an example of irresponsible use of personal autonomy by insisting that driving on the wrong side of the road is an exercise in it.  Again, he was corrected, but he refused to accept the correction, bleating that the dictionary defines autonomy as "self-government", therefore any choice one makes, rational or not, is an example of autonomy.  The Philosopher countered that driving on the wrong side of the road is actually lack of self-government, and an un-orderly decision for reacting to the world.  The Colossal Sloth refused to absorb a new bit of information, in that choosing to drive on the "wrong" side is only an exercise in autonomy when the driver is trying to make a statement about traffic law or something similar, and mistakenly being on the wrong side or taking the wrong side just for the hell of it are not actually under discussion.  He certainly went home wishing he was driving so he could choose the wrong side and prove us all wrong, that's show us, yessiree.

brown, eyed belgian

Rodenbach comes in a cute little bottle, sitting among the ciders at the beer store.  It's not a cider itself, but might have been left there to enjoy the company of its Belgian beverage brethren.  The label styles it a "Flemish Red-Brown" and explains that it's actually a mix of "young" beer and aged beer, matured in oak vats.  There's something about that oaken barrel/vat recently.

The poured beer releases a fruity, almost marzipan-y, smell.  It's a nice brown, with just a touch of reddish hue.  A quick whiff from the glass is sweet and sour, not unlike some fruit sodas, but the taste is all Belgian beer.  Tangy, with an undercurrent of bitter, and a tail of sour, it's a refreshing sort of mouthful.  Not as heavy and smooth as other brown or red beers, more of a summer time drink.  For some reason, the sky has decided to cloud over now that I have my beer in front of me; a shame, since it tastes like a good, sunny late afternoon pick-me-up.  Oh well, small disappointments have never stopped me draining my glass.

What is an Idea?

When considering this question, we realize how much this term is used in the language, and how many synonyms or nuances it can have.  As the Organizer said, this popularity must mean something.  There's something about the word that gives it a special flexibility and character to represent a variety of "mental events", while retaining something that distinguishes it from other types of mental processes.

The Neurologist, probably the best among us to speak knowledgeably about mental processes, began by remarking that anything might be true today.  In his poetic way, he stated that things that do not occur, also occur, in part because we cannot observe everything and not being observed does not prevent all occurrences.  Getting into the mental issue, he reminded us that all mental activity is the result of a tissue doing its job, and all ideas come from the brain.  They are based on memories stored there and associations we make between those memories, adjusted by new experiences we have.  Later, after some discussion of definition for the term, he gave the opinion that an idea must be a solution.  Medical ideas appear for the purpose of curing or treating disease, i. e. solving a problem.  Like other ideas, they should be sought in groups, taking advantage of the variety of experiences and thought processes available, brainstorming to come up with ideas.  However, we should also use common sense to articulate our ideas, since thinking without discipline does not lead to workable solutions.  He also specified that the ideas themselves are not really the solutions, but the very beginning of the process of development.  In the end, though, he warned the group that people with many ideas can be dangerous.  They are inconsistent.  Ignorance is the best protection we have against the perils of existence, and we find our path only through trial and error.  To live well, we must be professional error makers.

The Writer gave us some thoughts to chew on previously, focusing mainly on the function of ideas.  In the meeting, he brought up the concept of old and new ideas, saying that new ideas appear spontaneously, and not necessarily triggered by old ideas since there are always new experiences for humanity.  He presented two philosophical views of ideas - Empiricist and Rationalist - being careful not to take sides himself, at least in the beginning.  The views are not as recent as their schools of thought, however, as the Writer said that even Aristotle was remarking on the nature of ideas in his time, believing them to be impossible without experience.  It seems to make sense.  We might try to imagine something we haven't perceived personally, but something that nobody has perceived and described is exceedingly difficult to conceive of.  After the solution definition, the Writer insisted that ideas do not have to be articulated to be ideas; one can form a mental picture or design without sharing or articulating it to others, and the fact that it is in the mind is the defining factor of its being an idea.

The Organizer puzzled over a number of synonyms for the term, based on the various expressions we use the word "idea" in.  The most relevant for our discussion seem to be solution, as the Neurologist mentioned, and design.  To define something as an idea, there must be a feeling of newness, something that has not been presented before, a connection that has not been made by others.  To aid in his definition, he distinguished ideas from beliefs by emphasizing the flexibility of an idea; beliefs are often rigid and only changed with difficulty or pain, while ideas can be challenged and modified with ease.  He also mentioned his belief (!) that people will die for their beliefs/convictions, but not for their ideas.  After some other contributions, he insisted that ideas are a strictly internal phenomenon, not gifts from the beyond that are sown upon us.  They basically have three steps to their creation: accessing our memories; processing the memories; correct processing of the memories in question.  While we might ask for ideas/suggestions from others, the act of asking implies that we will test the value and correctness of the ideas that are presented, something that in the Organizer's opinion we do intuitively.  The testing process easily modifies ideas, as long as they haven't become beliefs.

Considering the many shades of definition that were applied to the word "idea", I have to pick the newness factor as the most critical.  Although we know the saying "There is nothing new under the sun", what matters is the newness to ourselves or the situation.  Seeing the existence of pyramids all over the world, built by cultures who never had any contact between them, we should be able to believe that the same ideas can occur to very different people.  To differentiate from "belief", the ephemerality of an idea appears to be essential.  As the Organizer said, people might be willing to die for their beliefs but not for a mere idea.  Others might want to kill you for your ideas, however, since they can solidify into beliefs and become a sort of contagion that spreads to other people.  Kevin Smith's Dogma used this perspective, having the 13th apostle say that the trouble with modern religion is that it promotes beliefs when what Jesus had was ideas.

Other participants gave short contributions, saying that ideas are what make each person unique and proposing that we only consider articulated ideas with results as ideas, relegating unarticulated or unworkable ideas to the category of "thoughts".  Well, it was just an idea.  Fortunately, we were not treated to any oral incontinence this time around.

Of course, with the right experiences, our beliefs about ideas could change, if we are correct in our ideas.