Vimarsh

"Most animals feel stress when they sense danger. Humans feel stress when they 'imagine' danger." The above quote highlights a key difference between how animals and humans experience stress. Breakdown: Animals: Their stress is reactive and tied to the present moment. When they detect a real, immediate threat like a predator nearby, loud noise, or sudden movement, their body triggers stress (fight-or-flight) to help them survive. Once the danger passes, the stress usually disappears quickly. Humans: Our stress is often proactive and imaginative. We don't need an actual danger in front of us — we can create it in our minds through worry, anticipation, rumination, or "what if" thinking. We stress about future possibilities, e.g., "What if I lose my job?", past mistakes, or imagined scenarios that may never happen. This mental simulation keeps our stress response active even when we're physically safe. Why it matters: This ability to imagine ...

“ The same principle can be seen in a more consistent form, not in art, but in moralistic and religious texts such as parables, in myths and in proverbs. Repetitions found their way into proverbs at a time when they were not yet perceived aesthetically but had a much more important mnemonic or moralising function. ” -Yuri Lotman The quotation comes from Yuri Lotman, a prominent Soviet/Russian semiotician and cultural theorist. It appears in his book Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. In this passage, Lotman discusses repetition as a structural device in texts. He contrasts its role in "art", especially poetry and literary works, with its appearance in non-artistic, more "practical" or functional genres like parables , myths , and proverbs . Key ideas in the quotation Lotman observes that repetition, for example, parallel structures, redundant phrasing, rhythmic echoes, or symmetrical patterns, often appears in artistic texts. In art, such repetiti...

When a culture is analysed as a code or system (an also happens with natural languages), the processes of use are richer and less predictable that the semiotic model which explains them. Reconstructing a code of a culture does not mean explaining all the phenomena of that culture, but rather allows us to explain why that culture has produced those phenomena.  -Umberto Eco (Universe of Mind) The above quote comes from Umberto Eco's introduction to Yuri Lotman's Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (1990), where Eco reflects on Lotman's ideas while drawing on his own semiotic framework. Here’s a clear breakdown of what the passage means: “When a culture is analysed as a code or system (and also happens with natural languages), the processes of use are richer and less predictable than the semiotic model which explains them.” A “ code ” or “ system ” in semiotics refers to a structured set of rules and conventions that allow signs (words, images, gestures, ...