"You can't step in the same river twice."

I heard that sentence in that form a while ago. I took it to mean that you cannot redo the past. You cannot step in the same river again, because the water is not the same.

Entropy, ever stubborn, allows no mulligans.

But when you examine the sentence in its original form, it seems to say more than that.

The original form that is closer to source (Heraclitus) is, "No man can step in the same river twice. For it is not the same river, and he is not the same man."

Time changes both the stage and the actor.

The second part of that sentence also brings up the question of identity. Am I the same man I was, say, seven years ago? Am I same man I was last night?

There is a very interesting thought experiment in metaphysics called The Ship of Theseus. So it goes that Theseus the great Greek hero sailed in his ship and did many heroic deeds using said ship. When he passed, the ship was put on display. People from near and far came to admire the ship. Over the years, the wooden planks of the ship rotted and were replaced, until a time came when not a single original plank used to build the ship remained. Is it still the Ship of Theseus? You could argue this paradox both ways.

Yeah, identity is a paradox. It does not survive the passage of time. What is perhaps worse is that it can be replicated and the very act of replication immediately destroys any notion of identity.

This computer being used to type this post is unique. It is My Computer. Or so it seems. If someone took all the data in this computer and copied it into identical hard drives, and put those hard drives into identical hardware, and shuffled them, how would someone tell which was the original computer? The computers themselves could not tell the difference (if they could think) since they would have identical outputs.

If someone took all the memories I am holding in my head and implanted it in a thousand bodies, which one is Me? Since the memories are identical, each one of those thousand Me's would unequivocally state that it was Me. And they would be equally correct. Or incorrect.

Therefore the paradox. 

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

 ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

I don't need to be the king of the world
As long as I'm the hero of this little girl.

I don't need to be a superman
As long as you will always be my biggest fan.

-- Warrant, Heaven

We don't have homosexuals in Iran, like in your country. I don't know who told you we had it. 

-- President Maumoud Ahmadinejad, responding to a question about execution of homosexuals in Iran.

I am of the opinion that as a rule, every homophobe should--once in his life and purely as a perspective exercise--be held down and buggered by Andre the Giant.

Why the hell someone would meddle in a relationship between two consenting adults, I don't know.

This world has two types of distasteful people. Type I tells the rest of us what is OK for us to wear, read, smoke, drink, fuck, worship, and eat. Example: the Pope, your Parents, Politicians. And Type II slavishly obeys Type I.

Type II cannot think for itself and Type I is only too happy to take over that function.

Type I is distasteful and frightening; Type II is beneath contempt.

And wankers, both.

Every culture has its share and no place is free of these wankers. Whenever you see freedoms being legislated, there is one of these wankers at work. Whenever you see the boundaries of education, conversation or art being defined in great big halls, there is one of these wankers at work. Whenever you see someone telling someone else whom they should marry, there is one of these wankers at work. Homophobic Muslims and Christians, caste-ridden and inbred Hindus--all variations on the same stinking theme.

Fuck them all.

Up the ass.

Kishore Kumar was magic. No one has even come close to touching his robe. But this is cute.

 

Incomparable words.