In the end, everyone is the center of their own universe. We can mince words about it, but it's tough to care when you don't exist, and it's tough to exist when you let everyone and everything else go first.

This doesn't mean we must be egotistical. But we always feel through ourselves first. When we empathize enough, there's a suspension of disbelief, a virtual transmigration to another soul. Yet it's all read in through the screen of ourselves. Even when we forget who we are, and assume another's name and viewpoint, we feel through ourselves, and are ourselves.

The piece that's the same trick exactly

We all possess—or are possessed by—consciousness. There is physical matter—not exactly us, but temporarily in our system, temporarily ours. And (as I said) there is this odd informationally aware component—a component we all have, and I think it's even more the same stuff for all of us than the matter is. That is, we're made of mostly the same materials, but slightly different combinations. There are types of molecule or atom in you, no doubt, that are not in me, and vice versa. You or I might be taking a medication or have been exposed to an industrial pollutant, and so our matter is different enough. But our awareness I think arises from the same process. The contents of our awareness differ. But I think it's exactly the same principle that makes you and me aware. So in a strange way what we consider most different and unique—this feeling stuff—is on another level what's most identical.

Few things frustrate me more than reviews that take the attitude that everyone is stupid, or the person who made this is stupid, or both.

Get over yourself. God.

The smartest reviews almost always show an understanding of the intent, the craft, and the people who see something in it.

If you can't do that, you aren't reviewing, you're venting.

Motivation is psychosociochemical... or even psychosocioelectrochemicoinformatic. Wish we had a better term for this.* Maybe electrochemicoinformatic covers the psychosocial, just in more detail, and losing some perspective.

When you have a mental health condition, this stuff suddenly becomes a LOT more relevant to your life.

But it's relevant to everyone.

Your decisions are not just magical instants. Much goes into them behind the scenes of your own awareness.

What you experience is like what the audience sees - or maybe the actors see, when they're on stage. The actual decision process includes the writing, the living behind it, the rehearsing, the costume design, the lighting, the construction of stage and hanging of curtains, the finding and placement and brandishing of props, and so on. All that extra stuff you aren't aware of helps to make - essentially does make - your decisions. You are aware of the surface, the way you are aware of the steering wheel and gas pedal while driving - whereas the engine is drastically more complicated, and most people wouldn't even know where to start when building one like it.

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* PSECI? Psysoelchemin? Sylchemin? Pselmin? (I don't feel like any of those would catch on... PSECI is clearest so far as an abbreviation. It also has the problem that the hierarchy of scales is obscured... except... psychosocial is high-level, electrochemical is mid-level, and informatic is low-level. But I think if you ignore any of these components, you're missing something critical. Motivation as we experience it crosses scales and media.) I guess PSECI prounced "sekky" would do.