Inception!

It has been a fair while since I have done anything approaching writing out actual ideas, essays, and treatises, which I suspect will be the end focus of these pages, so I think I will begin by easing myself into it, with a few general observations about humanity.

One thing I have always found fascinating about people is that we like to think of there being six directions: forward, backwards, left, right, up, and down - always, interestingly, in that precise order - and yet we really only think in five of them. You see, humans, by nature, never look up; after all, evolutionarily speaking, looking up is foolish for creatures that live on wide-open plains: neither threats nor food could possibly be above us. Doubtless, our forest-dwelling ancestors would have spent a fair amount of time scanning the tree-branches above their heads, but years of savanna and grassland have beaten that awareness out of us.

It is a commonplace in the entertainment industry, for example, that audiences will happily observe what is going on below them, but will refuse to look upwards, even if their virtual lives (in the case of a video game) depend on it. The best place to ambush someone is from above, which is why the president of the united states always enters and leaves buildings under a tent: the secret service agents, however incredibly skilled and highly trained, know that they are most likely to miss an assassin above them.

What is interesting about this, however, is that it works in metaphor as well as reality. Humans must be forced and cajoled to look up, to find a higher purpose or greater ambition for their actions than just a personal one. Perhaps that is why it is said we were made in God's image. After all, for him, there isn't any up at all.