Moitta 25/01/2022
Minhas notas do livro
the details we choose to remember are a reflection of our personalities.
The idea that accounts of the past shouldn’t change is a product of literate cultures’ reverence for the written word.
We rewrite our pasts to suit our needs and support the story we tell about ourselves. With our memories we are all guilty of a Whig interpretation of our personal histories, seeing our former selves as steps toward our glorious present selves.
It’s no coincidence that “aspiration” means both hope and the act of breathing. When we speak, we use the breath in our lungs to give our thoughts a physical form. The sounds we make are simultaneously our intentions and our life force. I speak, therefore I am. Vocal learners, like parrots and humans, are perhaps the only ones who fully comprehend the truth of this. · · · There’s a pleasure that comes with shaping sounds with your mouth. It’s so primal and visceral that, throughout their history, humans have considered the activity a pathway to the divine. Pythagorean mystics believed that vowels represented the music of the spheres, and chanted to draw power from them. Pentecostal Christians believe that when they speak in tongues, they’re speaking the language used by angels in heaven. Brahman Hindus believe that by reciting mantras, they are strengthening the building blocks of reality. Only a species of vocal learners would ascribe such importance to sound in their mythologies. We parrots can appreciate that. · · · According to Hindu mythology, the universe was created with a sound: “om.” It is a syllable that contains within it everything that ever was and everything that will be. When the Arecibo telescope is pointed at the space between stars, it hears a faint hum.
He points out that there’s a sense in which it’s incorrect to say we eat food because we need the energy it contains. The conservation of energy means that it is neither created nor destroyed; we are radiating energy constantly, at pretty much the same rate that we absorb it. The difference is that the heat energy we radiate is a high-entropy form of energy, meaning it’s disordered. The chemical energy we absorb is a low-entropy form of energy, meaning it’s ordered. In effect, we are consuming order and generating disorder; we live by increasing the disorder of the universe. It’s only because the universe started in a highly ordered state that we are able to exist at all.
Some lovers break up with each other the first time they have a big argument; some parents do as little for their children as they can get away with; some pet owners ignore their pets whenever they become inconvenient. In all of those cases, the people are unwilling to make an effort. Having a real relationship, whether with a lover or a child or a pet, requires that you be willing to balance the other party’s wants and needs with your own.