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Jacque Fresco Lecture Series
'Good and Evil'
July 8, 1976

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www.thevenusproject.com

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[J. Fresco] Okay.
I want to get into some aspects

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of assembling ideas:

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how the brain selects again
from a wide variety of things;

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how a decision is forced from
a wide variety of events.

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It works on the principle,
getting back to the old principle

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of the apple tree, or the cherry tree,
that I talked about.

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I mentioned that a person would have to have

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information that runs a broad scale.

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Now a person with just a
few bits of information

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has a simple decision-making system.

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And the simplest decision-making system is
'yes' or 'no'

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and computers work on that basis,

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the early computers, on and on.

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And 'Yes and no'
was a game people used to play years ago.

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"Do you live more than ten blocks [away]?"
Remember that? "Yes."

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And you go on "No." And then they
pretty much pinpoint the situation.

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"Do you like apples?" "No." And then yes, no,

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and then they come down to
the kind of food you like.

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It's kind of a long drawn out
process to arrive at something.

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So, [for] a simple person,
here, between good and evil,

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the decisions don't have
shades of gray in it.

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Even the religious system doesn't have

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a person that rides between good and evil.

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They don't talk of percentages, you see?
The center line.

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The religious people want people to be good.

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And 'good' would have to do with

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being god-like, and good

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would have to do with
the intent of the person,

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not what they seemingly do.

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If you go out with a
minister and you help people

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and you carry the bags and all that,

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he says "You're a very good person."

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But when you're not with the
minister you may not do those things,

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So it's pretty hard to tell
whether a person's good or bad

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even in the minister's terms,
if you follow that.

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And if a person makes fast decisions...

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I'll show you how a person
makes fast decisions.

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This is a brand new Rolls Royce.

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And you look at it and the guy
wants to sell it for 20 bucks.

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Well people make a fast decision,

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because the direction is
obvious in relation to

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all the other events that they know of:

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they can sell it,
they can do whatever they can do with it.

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I also mentioned in the past,
during World War II,

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in the South Pacific.
I don't know why they did this but they

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brought some sewing machines there,
for the natives.

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And they showed them how to use it

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and they had power trucks and all that.

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And after the armies left,

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some people came back
about 10, 15 years later,

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and they didn't see any
of the sewing machines.

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They used them for anchors.

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Because they didn't have any power,

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and they weren't foot-operated.

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At least if they were foot-operated,
it'd be pretty good.

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So they ran into a problem of use,

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putting the thing to use.
What good is an electric bulb...

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What good is an electric bulb
if you don't have any power?

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I guess you didn't, because in the early days

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all electric bulbs had a little
tit sticking out like that.

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Did anyone ever see one of those?

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Do you remember the early lamps?
Anybody here?

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Jeez, all these young people.
You never saw one Joe?

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[Joe] No. Edison's lamp -
the original lamp - has got that tit on it.

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- No,
they've been like that for many many years.

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When they manufactured the bulb,
they pulled it off like that

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and there was a little curly cue here,
like a Rupert tear.

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Then you stuck it under water
and broke that tip off...

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[Woman] Yeah, I did that...

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- and it filled with water completely.

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Nobody's ever done that here?
Just you. All right.

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This shows how young you people really are.

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- And then you used it for a barometer.

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- Yes. Do you remember that?
- Yeah.

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- There were just a lot of different
things people used to do with that.

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All right,
here's your decision-making system.

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Like I said before, good and evil,
according to religious people,

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and then the center line here,

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they say "Well, that's where people are.

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They're somewhere between that,"
and that isn't true.

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On Wednesday they're over here,

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and then on Thursday they may
ship back over to that point.

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And then Friday they go to confession

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and they're back over to this point.

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And so all between good and evil,

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which is ridiculous.
Because on the day you die,

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if you're evil you go to hell.

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And if you're good on the day you die,
you go to heaven.

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Now when is the judgment made?
Over a period of time?

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And it seems to me that any
person with religious training

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is good and evil, equally

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(evil meaning against

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the patterns established).

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And if it's even, then the score is zero.

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You don't go to heaven or hell,
you go to limbo.

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That's between systems.

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In our system here,
we don't use the term "good and evil."

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We use the term[s]:

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"Is the process more effective
than the earlier process?"

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"Is the system better
than the earlier system?"

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"Does it take less effort to operate?"

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Okay. If you work as a systems person

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(meaning working with mechanical things),

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you can reduce a process considerably;

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the complication of the process.

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Behaviorally, you can't.
Does anybody know why?

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In technology you can.
I can make a sewing machine work

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very smooth, and very fast,

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up to the point that a
sewing machine can work.

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After that- in other words,
if a sewing machine does a certain job,

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as the needle moves up and
down at a certain rate,

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if you have a rotary spot-welder on
the sewing machine, a seam welder,

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it'll weld as fast as that thing can rotate.

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But if you have a series of
pulsating laser beams that weld,

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you can weld 90 miles per hour!

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Do you think you know what I mean?

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If you just scan it with a laser beam

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you can weld the join
without moving the fabric.

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In other words, if you had

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a skirt on some kind of
a mandrel or a maniquet,

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and you wanted to seam it right here,

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you do it with a laser beam right down,

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faster than you can say "Jack Rabbit."

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The idea of decision-making...

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The reason that it takes time (the decision)

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is the wiring in the human
body is- like I said before,

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information moves through the
body with the speed of light.

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But what they call consciousness,

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moves with the speed of a roach.

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Because even though your brain
signals move very very fast,

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they would be moving so fast,

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you wouldn't know what the
hell you were thinking about.

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So you slow it up.

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In the real world, we slow things up.

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We slow it up so badly,
that if you say to a person

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"What do you want to do today?"

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and the person looks around, hems and haws

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and says all kinds of things,
and tries to package

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what they'd like to do so
you might do it for them.

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A child- if you say "What do you want to do?"

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he'd say "Whatever I want to do."

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And [you] say "What would that take?"

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He says
"It would take enormous sums of money."

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So, you say "Well,
we're not going to do that."

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"Then why do you ask me what I want to do?

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Tell me what you permit me to do today."

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This way, if people say
"What would you like to do today?"

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and the person says
"Just hang all day from a platform."

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Well first of all, I'm not going to do that.

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We're not really concerned with
what people would like to do.

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It'd be very difficult

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to come into a situation
where there are people,

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and you want to begin to make
contact with the other person -

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this is what they are
trying to do all the time:

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make contact with the other person

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for a purpose. Isn't that awful?

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There's no contact made with another person

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unless there's a purpose.
"Pardon me sir." "Yes?"

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"How do you get to 5th and Main?"

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So, any contact you make has a purpose.

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Only normal people have lost that.

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They don't know that they
make contact with purpose,

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or they don't want to believe it.

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They say "Well I just...

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just make contact to be friendly;
that's the purpose."

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But there's no such thing
as contact without purpose.

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You pick something up

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because you're curious
or you have need for it,

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but there's nobody...

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Sometimes a person will pick
it up because it's there,

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because of what some people call

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surplus energy, or hyperactive.

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Kids certainly will touch or pick up things.

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But children brought up in a ball

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don't pick up anything or touch anything.

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Once they've touched the surface of the ball

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and they find it to be fairly uniform,
they may lean against it.

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Their curiosity is diminished
to zero in a gray ball.

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But if the ball has no lighting in it,

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then they go back into themselves.

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Do you know what that means?

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If you're put it in a gray ball and fed,

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you go back into your-.... you dwell in here;

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the stimulus comes from the inside out.

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And that's what a dream is:

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when you don't have any external stimulus.

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A dream is the automatic
traveling of the circuitry

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to wherever the hell the potential is.

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Sometimes this flares up
and the signal goes there.

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Then something else flares up,

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Now here's what that means.

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. . .