The new website 750 Words, a solution for private daily journaling, has probably just irrevocably altered my life.  I had a moment of crystal clear clarity and, while I didn’t manage to put it all down on paper  before I lost it, I got a good bit of it.

Incidentally, as I start attempting to keep a daily 750-word private diary, producing even a fraction of that output for publication* on my blog would be a smashing success.  And so, I think I will write about an idea that came to mind this morning that I have been pondering recently.

Quite simply, I find the notion of someone acceptably being a stranger fundamentally disconcerting and depressing.  We are not evolved to treat nearly every person we see with indifference because we don’t happen to know them.  In primitive societies, in the rare case in which you saw someone you didn’t know (probably a visitor from an out-group population) wouldn’t you at least introduce yourself? The dance of cognitive dissonance that every city resident does every day as they walk by thousands of strangers, perhaps awkwardly avoiding instinctual eye contact, just seems very sad to me.  That is all.

*As a total random aside, isn’t it interesting how our perception of the meaning of common words like “publication” is somewhat removed from the roots from which they derive.  Publication really just means making something public.