Return from ice cream with Jason.
Drop him off at gf's home.
Trying new path to return
Vision dazzles my brain
A gimmick, I question from afar
But no, a random quirk creates
for me a dazzling new perspective
pattern leaps from random chain
And now, what it was. I was driving towardsa highway shortcut that I use to get to mycurrent residence in slumsville, and I saw astrange sequence of lights flash on and offrepetatively up ahead. I couldn't understand whatthey were until I got closer, and saw that the trainwas going by over a bridge I pass under. The traingaps were selectively allowing me to see the pole andtraffic lights behind it, and the arrangement of thelights were as such that no light (AFAICT) was directly aboveanother and they were all at varying heights. It wasquite beautiful and strange seeing how the pattern couldleap out at me, and the dark sky was perfect. Such abeautiful pattern merely coming from the interplay oftwo such simple sources -- repetative vertical gaps andlight sources that have no cousins on the same vertical line.
Conservative factions -- Jason and I talked about politics and other things as we went out for ice cream. Eventually, I stumbled on the topic of political alignment of frathouses. Jason noted that they were conservative, but I wasn't quite happy with that definition, although we worked out that he was right, in a way foreign to most other forms of conservatives we commonly think about. I coined the term "Good Ol' Boy Conservative" to specify the age-invariant form of their style of conservative, and we thought about their likely form of peer-induced form of religion that only might begin to get real with moderate age, and wondered about the animosity the evangelical christians feel towards them. Combined with way conservatives take advantage of liberal disunity -- could we analyze fault lines which divide conservatives that could be similarly exploited? Isn't it interesting how this form of conservativism relies on the institution of the greek system to perpetuate itself? Perhaps not unlike the church being the fulcrum of other conservative factions? Could a sufficiently powerful analysis allow us to shatter the conservative alliances with less effort? Do other conservative factions rely on other fulcrums? Institutions can be shattered, with effort. Yet, dare I risk letting the liberals take the balance should conservativism be broken?
I can almost feel my knowledge of humanity and society coming together. I think I have a pretty good idea of what is possible and what is impossible, and given the right lever, perhaps I could indeed move the world. In a sense, it is possible to program people and groups, societies. A social movement's lifeblood is enthusiasm -- managing that is the key to getting things done. I can sometimes almost feel my mind expanding. The most impressive part of power is merely knowing where to stand.