Abstract to specific

General commentary: why is it that people impose themselves upon one's field of affect if and only if the situation is in no way propituous for such imposing? Is it a functiuon of the mind to store only the out-of-place events of imposition and ignore the events where the interaction of two or more individuals is contextually appropriate, given certain mutual values and common background assumptions? Moreover, can one say that the geometrical causal neccessity of human interaction taken to its most abstract form is a closed or open stucture? All questions that are very vague. What promped this?

More specific commentary: while waiting in line for labcoats today a person spoke to me as if we were two old friends sharing aqn in-joke. This threw me off just long enough to not be able to make an impression. Isn't that something? And this looms larger in my working memory than the general argument of an essay I wrote today. I'm trying to become a decent conversationalist, but I'm stuck in one of those vicious circles that I occassionaly break somehow (and then have no idea how I accomplished that).

Consider: "I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things evolved. I am not saying how humans morally ougfht to behave. I stress this, because I know I am in danger of being misunderstood by those people, all too numerous, who cannot distinguish a statement of belief in what is the case from an advocacy of what ought to be the case. ... Let us try to teach altruism, because we are born selfish."