Undergraduate / "Our Perception"-Common App essay [5]

This is a common app essay that I wrote about half an hour ago, so it's still pretty rough. Please let me know if you think writing something like this is a terrible idea or see any major problems with the essay (I'm not worried about grammatical errors right now). For example, is it wise to mention "acid induced musings"?

Thanks a million!!

I think a lot about thinking. I was riding home on a rush hour bus a few weeks ago, jammed between the large frame of a Jamaican woman and a slim metal pole. A stroller rammed the back of my legs every time the bus driver hit the brakes (which was frequent), and it was hot. So hot in fact, that a man had removed his sweater and was frantically wiping off the drivers enormous front windshield as we crept along. But for some reason all I could think about was the animated conversation two men in paint flecked white coveralls were having a few feet away (their language heavily dominated by swears). And as I got more and more uncomfortable and started experiencing brief exchanges of silent, commiserating, eye contact from complete strangers, I became more and more incredulous. How were these men able to continue their "conservation" comfortably in the face of such blatant discontent? And why, of all people, did I feel embarrassed?

The mind is a weird thing. By definition it's an abstract concept, yet it's oddly enough housed in the physical location of the brain. Everything we hear, see, taste, feel, experience, and believe, all of our emotions and thoughts and knowledge and understanding comes from this three pound organ at the top of our bodies; the slightest variation in which could spell the difference between observing a seemingly out of place conversation on a bus, and participating in one. But what makes us uncomfortable are not the situations we are faced with, but the way in which our brain perceives those situations. So sure, swearing loudly on a public bus may have seemed rude to me, but if you genuinely think there is nothing wrong with it, and both parties are intrinsically convinced of their own self-righteousness, there's no way of "talking sense" into either of them. An unfortunate reality that ---------____'s itself in everything from the lack of bipartisanship in our politics, to religious wars, to genocide. The same self-absorption that has allowed our species to evolve and progress so quickly also sabotages our ability to be truly understanding and tolerant.

But let me assure you that these are not the acid induced musings of some pre-adolescent fool. I actually think about these things, and through this kind of thought have become a much more tolerant person (or so I tell myself). I only wish that everyone could find the same sardonic humor I find from knowing that every national rift and war, every teenage betrayal, every disagreement that has ever occurred, has come from the same five pound mass of cells at the top of our bodies. And that despite our obvious physical differences, we are all pretty much exactly the same; all enslaved to the same paradoxical machine that allows us to love and feel empathy yet dangles the carrot of true selflessness just out of reach, and all too trapped by our own minds to understand this. Who knows though, perhaps realization is the first step.