Arrgh, you got me back! Snoffair! Oh, all right- and asking these questions means you are interested in my answers, which is flattering. Thank you.
Fight or flight? Explain.
Both. They are amygdala responses, both valid in the right circumstances.
A Flight came to mind first, running away from a job.
Fights I can think of, actually, were less Amygdala: struggles over months or years to achieve a goal.
Do you believe in aliens? Why or why not?
I hope for aliens in our own solar system. Europa, moon of Jupiter, may have water oceans. Heat energy from tidal flexing allows the water to remain liquid, and may provide the energy source life needs. High in the atmosphere of Venus, there is a temperate zone between the boiling and freezing points of water, and possibly there are microbes there, just as there are microbes high in the Earth’s atmosphere. There is even the suggestion that at vents deep in the ocean, life using that energy has evolved from a separate source from our own, so would have a different genetic structure from known bacteria.
With 10^22 stars existing, and 777 exoplanets already identified, life must be extremely unlikely if it only exists here. And yet intelligent life: cells with mitochondria, which make up most multicellular organisms, have existed about two billion years, primates have existed 55 million years, human civilization about five thousand years, or about one millionth of the age of the Earth: so Earth has always been definitely worth studying, but only very recently possibly worth talking to.
I am an optimist, believing in progress. Once intelligent life starts it will find a way to continue. But even if it is possible to bend space and travel through worm holes, would they bother coming here? If they did, would they let us know? They might not be able to make us comprehend: “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him”. They might only repeat the message of Jesus, “Love one another”. It is worthwhile to seek to speak with “aliens”, people from another country.
What fictional character you've "met" most feels like an old friend?
The Narrator, from “In search of lost time”, because I know him better than any other character, and because he has chosen me, personally, to hear his confessions. He says art consists in exploring the self, which is the only human being one may ever know. Here, I explore myself.
And- Dorothea Brooke, from Middlemarch, who first yearns for the life of the mind, and attempts to find it in an intellectual husband- for women could not be educated. She marries a man who is scared of her, and probably impotent. So, when he dies, having produced nothing, she marries a man for physical love. This is my move now, from thinking to feeling.
I am only tigging you, Mindy. Three questions:
What did you do yesterday? How did you meet your partner? How did you get together?
Clare Flourish 
http://speedoflove.iwarp.com/intelligent-infinity/zzen_1.html
Clare you may find this link and all that is contained in here a very interesting journey. 🙂 jacqui
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Thank you for that. I have watched the introductory video and two others. The paintings are pretty. The wisdom based on reincarnation I am less sure of. A friend told me that I might be female because I was gonadally female in a previous life, and they tell me that a woman might be attracted to a woman because she was male in a previous life. Um.
So, judge it by the wisdom given. Homosexuality is OK. In unrequited love, the other might not be ready for it yet, or one might be on a different path, try to see how to make the other more joyous. Reasonable advice.
I may go back.
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I had to look up amygdala. 🙂 Yes, there are times when each response is appropriate. Good one.
Exactly! about the possibility of life out there. I think it’s ludicrous (given how many planets there are) to think there would NOT be. Have you read Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land? I think you’d like it. Read the unabridged version if you do!
I don’t know either of those characters but they sound interesting. Mine is John Irving’s Owen Meany. I think it’s his voice. Irving’s spinning out of the threads that make Owen’s character (including a voice given us entirely in capital letters) is brilliant.
Here are my answers:
“Yesterday” when I first read this was Wed. On Wed, I worked and then went to a group “meeting” of folks who find themselves recovering from religion. Great conversation, sharing, some tears… it was good.
Sandy and I met in church actually. We were part of a pilot small group at the pastor’s house, working through “emotional health” and communication skills. Ironic, really. We became friends, and she invited me to join a small group of women that met in her home monthly. Almost a year later, we realized we had fallen in love. And then the fireworks started. We grieve that our community wasn’t able to gather around our new relationship and celebrate and support… but that is what it is. A little more than a year after that, we moved south. It was time for both of us to be done with the big city, but I now also believe we needed to breathe a bit freer out from under all the reminders of that rejection.
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I read Owen Meany twenty years ago, and still remember the capitals speech. Do try Middlemarch, some think it the great English (as in nation of England) novel. I heard that Heinlein and whatsisname had a bet on who could found a religion, and Old Father Hubbard took it rather more seriously.
And- for the recovering from religion thing- it is Christianity’s loss. The Christians you have come across have not been good enough. Thank you for sharing.
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