Critical thinking

[crow]

Flying involves air, open spaces, and effortless being. Humans have difficulty with that.
I saw my crow, once, spread his wings and lift off, without a single flap.
He wobbled and hovered, then sank back to his perch.
No university can teach a fraction of what that moment contained.
Sure, you can fill your head with stuff. But can you fly?

[Dylar]

...and a crow can't teach you particle physics, or, for that matter, how to cook.  A place for everything, and everything in its place.

[crow]

A crow does not teach. Certainly not about particle physics. Ironically, it is particle physics. Writ large upon the earth. Cooking? What but a human would have any use for that?
A crow shows how life can be fully lived, without the mountain of arbitrary stuff required by humans, to create a poor facsimile of what every crow can effortlessly do.

[Dylar]

As you say, a crow is a crow, and a human a human.  A crow has no need for abstractions, nor the brain to conceive them, but part of being human is being not-crow, and what is meet for a crow is not necessarily so for a human.

[crow]

Fair enough. How do you like being a human?

EDIT: Sorry, Dylar. I hit the wrong button and your reply vanished.
You said:
"It has its moments".

And I reply:
Yes it does. It has many. All of them fragmented by the mind.
Remove the mind, and you remove the fragmentation. It becomes one eternal moment.
Easier to deal with, eh?

[03-04]

There are different levels to being human.

A human needn't think all the time, and he will be better off for it if he doesn't.

Yet there are some humans who are addicted to thinking. Too many, in fact.

The more you think, the more time you'll spend locked up in the mind.

It probably boils down to this: Some people like being in prison, because they do not understand the outside, and therefore fear it.

[crow]

Some prisons are invisible to their prisoners.
Not knowing their status, they usually don't take exception to it.
But they probably sense that something isn't right.
A crow flaps by, outside the window...

[03-04]

Funny how it's a philosophical convention to ascribe freedom to man, but not to animals. The philosopher argues that the animal is trapped in the world of instinct - but perhaps it is man that is trapped in a world without it.

[crow]

I've never met anyone so completely on the same wavelength as me.
The same plane, as my wife would say.
I retain an ability to feel excited, and that excites me

[03-04]

Who said man couldn't fly?

I try my best, though I often feel that I fall flat on my face.

But still, I feel my feet are getting lighter. I hope my words are too.

[crow]

It's always hard to evaluate you own worth, without ego to advise its own pricelessness.
Every time I write an essay, I wonder how bad it is.
Or speak with a human, only to wonder how badly it went.
It does get easier, but not easily.