Domino

Today I evalled. I'm not going to bother explaining what it means. It is the anticlimax of my henceforth existence. This 10 hour flight and everyone is too tired to move at the end, and a little too bitter to give where credit is due. It is this landing and this long transit across the united states.

And all the souls I know are on night shift, and it's a wednesday, which means I celebrate with a bottle of smirnoff ice, alone on my couch.

I may watch the daily show, I may read something, I may go to the casino. My apartment smells like onions, like a rotting box - the life is drained out of me. I eat because I must and I let my eyes tumble out of their sockets like bowling balls in the alley down the street. The one I'm not in.

Here is the transparency, here is the melancholy, here is the roadblock. The paths of blue open before me, as does the sand. There is no more excuse.

Shift

Evolution before our eyes. It's amazing that though concepts like evolution, relativity, and quantum physics are in all of our mind - established parts of science - but we've been studying them such a short time that big discoveries are still very possible. There may even be more big discoveries in front of us than are behind us, so young are our studies of some subjects.

A case of evolution observed.

We've only been "enlightened" so long, and the world is growing and becoming more fascinating before our eyes. I was driving a few days ago and thought about how we now have paved roads that connect the upper reaches of canada with their antarctic counterpart in Argentina and yet 100 years ago, in 1908, cars were still propped up on wagon wheels. Every facet of our universe is touched by this. We move from a view based on tradition to a view based on discovery and learning, and expanding. Our definitions have changed, anthropologists even have a difficult time defining what exactly sets us apart as "humans." It used to be activity, like tool making, but gorillas were found to do that, even birds and insects have been found to do that. We're so much a part of this world and we are so lucky to be living in a time where we're beginning, at such an accelerated rate, to see what we are, and what this universe is.

Some work of noble note, may yet be done, - Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods

My ex-wife wrote in her blog, "IF I love Him I WILL keep His commandments." Obviously we're assuming there's something real to love here, so putting that aside - This is true. Likewise IF you truly believe something, you WILL live your life by it.

I got in a tuff with a "Mormon" in my class over this. I say "Mormon" because he's been excommunicated but he still claims to believe every word of it, he just doesn't live by it. I said this is impossible. If you truly believe you're going to be punished for your misdeeds, you won't do them. IF there's a cop walking around with you, you WON'T steal. The same as, if I really DON'T believe there's a door in front of me, I WON'T bother to open it before I try and go thru it.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about dreams, and it goes something like this. IF I really want something, I WILL pursue it.

That's where if bites though. If I really want it. If I REALLY want it. And if I REALLY want it, why the hell am I not pursueing it?

Or does it just get choked under our obligations? Under these pressures that society, and pride, and the boogeyman put on us. "We work jobs we hate, so that we can buy shit we don't need."

So either I don't want it, or I'm letting it get choked. I'm hoping it's the second one, cause I'm just flapping in the wind if my dreams are something I really don't want. Just another check mark on the checklist the boogeyman handed to me some time in my youth. Cause he's got a stack that says "Baseball Player" and "Astronaut", and he's handing them out like candy at the park, to unsuspecting younglings that don't know yet about abortions and laziness and bipolar disorder. But for most people it must be something some best friend actually handed to them, or some TV show, or some girl that likes men in suits and fancy cars. Cause really what they wanted more was a family, or a cushy job, or some time alone on the couch.

So I'm reading The Gunslinger again, and it's one of those stay up past your bedtime books. One of those fuck-society I-don't-need-friends books. And I underlined something in the introduction. "Let it rip regardless of what anybody tells you, that's my idea; sit down and smoke that baby." He's talking about writing despite being young, about taking on big ideas when the older and wiser might shake their head and say you don't know the first thing about what you're talking about.

When did I stop thinking that? I said to myself, laying in bed, early. I used to write everything I could think of. When did I start being scared and when did I start not caring? When did I start choking and when did I start listening to the chicks that go after big cars? Since when did I let the warning labels and the has-beens tell me what to do? Since when did I stop saying my dreams are what make life worth living, and the only thing that will make me happy?

The answer is, of course, is never. I stopped believing it, and I stopped living it.

"If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned."

So I invite you, dear reader, to join me. I will give this three weeks. Three weeks. Apparently it takes 21 days to establish a pattern. For these three weeks I will write 1000 words a day, and see if I can't stop by the end of it. I have a calender on my wall and I'll check off the days, starting tonight. Today is the 9th (or a few days later for you maybe). By the end of April I'll have 21 days behind me. At the close of this month I will have chased my dream, truly and immediately, for at least three weeks. If the handwriting on your checklist is your own, and not the boogeyman's, or some ex's, I offer this opportunity for you to join me, to stop choking and come up for air. It's not too hard, it's only a blip in your life.

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

On death and dying. That was a class at the community college I went to, I think - where they looked at writing about death, and death as a subject.

Because he is gone. The only tiny idea most people have of this guy is that he wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey. What are you doing Dave? That Buuuh...buuuh....buuuuh....NA NA!! Song is from that too.

But he was so much MORE than that, to me. A couple weeks ago I went to the Half Priced Books, in West Omaha, and bought I think like 6 or 7 of his books. The birthday present Amy gave me was one of his books also.

He was born in England and knighted there, but he hated it. So at some point he moved to Sri Lanka, and he said he never intended to return to Britain. If you read that article you can see he was one of those authors, like H.G. Wells, that wrote about concepts before they happened.

I have little doubt that some of his other books will be made into movies. The sci-fi he wrote never had aliens in the intergalactic war sense, never had star-wars esk lazer fights, or warp drives. That's why I appreciate him. For the most part, he write's sci-fi for the world he's in, and not the next one to come - even when talking about hundreds of years in the future.

Rendezvous with Rama, for example, is about we human beings here encountering the first aliens as a huge cylinder - this vehicle wandering through our solar system - programmed literally thousands of years ago by some intelligent species - and on it's way from somewhere we don't know to somewhere we don't know, probably completely oblivious to us.

Because, if evolution is true, which nearly all scientists think it is, the possibility that we're the only life forms in the universe is getting smaller and smaller, the more earth-like planets we discover. And it's very possible that these life forms could predate us by millions of years and hence be far more advanced technologically, than us. This idea returns in The Fountains of Paradise, where what's basically a huge computer database comes sailing through our solar system, it's soul purpose being an information exchange with intelligent civilizations. We send it our encyclopedias and it tells us what else is out there in the universe, then sends that back it it's home planet - itself many light years away.

But I'm sure I've filled my geek quota for the next week, so I'll end and say that even if you're not a sci-fi fan, check out one of his books - 2001 if nothing else, cause I know I'd have no chance of understanding the movie if I hadn't read it.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future" (Clarke's second law)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.
Arthur C. Clarke, 1983

It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.
Arthur C. Clarke, First on the Moon, 1970

Interrupted

I used to live in a suburban city in Southern California. With the exception of an Uncle and Aunt and cousins dodging fires, after 19 years of life there, I have no reason to go back - not in any sort of permanent basis at least. The rest of my family and some friends live in the desert capitol of Arizona, and I was born there, but it's also not my home. No where and at no time will I return to the same high school friends up to the same old antics, and I'll probably never frequent the haunts of my childhood.

It seems romantic to be free with no ties, but it's also very strange.

2 Funny Videos

The Vampire Within

Over this weekend, myself and my whole class has to make the transition from 6pm to 12am class to 6am to 12pm. I can never go to bed early, I just end up laying awake in bed until I usually go to sleep (which right now is 4 am). So this is what I did:

Yesterday I woke up about noon. Instead of going to sleep at 4 am, sleeping till noon today, and then trying to go to sleep at like 9 pm today...I stayed up till about 11 am this morning, then went to bed, and I just got up, and it's about 9 pm now. So now I'm going to stay up and go to class and then probably end up falling asleep like afternoon on monday. So this way...yeah I sort of lost a night of sleep...but I'm not tired and I'm just using my tendency to stay up late to adjust my sleep schedule in a way that feels more natural. Before, half my waking free time was in the middle of the night anyway.

So we'll see how it works out.

Beyond

An interesting article about the limits of our knowledge and the possible limits of the knowledge of our successors, if there are any.

Turning

Randy's response (In the comments section).

Conclusion:

Forget what you thought you knew.

Superman

I think I go through spells of what I'm interested in, but these last for months at a time. I'm thinking, though, that if I could identify the order of my interests, I could somehow harness that power, like a bolt of lighting and frankenstein.

It seems to, at least sometimes, go - that I just play a ton of video games cause I just want to be entertained - then I feel as though I'm wasting my life on the video games, so I stop them, and get really productive. During those times I'll try to write a lot, read a lot of books, research things...etc. At some point I start to see the inadequacy of these pursuits and I get kind of wistful and musical, and like to plan trips and write fiction. Then I think that degrades back into just being entertained and the cycle starts again.

I just came up with this a couple weeks ago and I might just be creating it in my own mind - but if it's true it could explain why I, for instance, want to change my proposed major every few months (it's still philosophy, for the time), or why I'll have spells of weeks when I am very social and entertaining, and spells where I just like to go home and do whatever it is I do. Maybe everyone has these kinds of things, but I just wonder if the ebb and flow doesn't have a logic to it.

Right now I'm productive. That's lasted me a while - maybe I can form that into a habit so it'll just become me. I'm reading a lot of books (Neitzsche, right now), studying math, cleaning my apartment. It's during these times that I'm most optimistic about what mankind, and I, specifically, could accomplish with focus. It's during these times that Benjamin Franklin's attempts to perfect himself seem like something to consider, rather than laugh at. Maybe what takes me out of these times, though, is getting lonely. Not many of these kinds of pursuits are conducive to a crowd, with any honesty at least, though their worth it.

I guess a balance would be what the psychologist would prescribe, Chuck Palahnuik wrote, "trust me, you won't look back and savor the moments you spent alone."

But Neitzsche apparently did, as he wrote, "All great things occur away from glory and the market-place...Flee, my friend, into your solitude."

The Bell

Another response in the comments of this post.

Backlash

I wrote a response to Randy's statements, but I won't frighten the rest of you with it here, or it's length. I'm posting it in the comments of this entry, if you'd like to read it.

Bear With Me

Okay this is long and pretty out of place in the "comments" section. But it's still a response to the comments in the post previous this:

I know this discussion feels like beating a dead horse, but there's a true disagreement between us, isn't there? So either I'm just not getting something or you're not getting something, or maybe we're both not getting something. But conversation is the best way to sort this out, where we're both able to give our sides in hopes of establishing our position as true. Because only one of our sides can be true, and learning truth is very important isn't it? So allowme, please, to beat this dead horse a little longer (longer with big red).

Regarding the issue of "falling in love." I agree with you that "falling in love" with another person may be a perfectly understandable, legitimate act. Science is still in the process of understanding the mind, but maybe there really is, say, a pattern of chemicals in our own brain that somehow matches with the other persons or something like that, something that's very real and can catalogue this emotional act we call, "falling in love." When you extend this to the spiritual realm, there's a couple problems though. The first I see is this: when was the last time you heard a chemist say, "You need to respect my beliefs about chemistry. They were revealed to me through something like falling in love." Or a doctor say, "Please respect my beliefs about how I practice medicine. They aren't verified by experiment, but if you'd gone thru what I've gone thru, you'd see what I mean." We don't respect conclusions people come to just by sitting in their own mind, we evaluate reasons.

The second problem I see springboards off this: These "spiritual," if I may lump them into that category, experiences may be useful in describing the human experience - how we observe the world - but they are not useful in explaining the true nature of the world, if not coupled with empirical evidence. Our sensory perception is fallible, and our emotional perception is exponentially more fallible. Take a look at this for a demonstration on the fallibility of just our eyes. People have imaginary friends that they think are to more or less a degree real, depending on their particular mental state - but make no mistake, many people's mental and emotional experience is just as authentic as your "falling in love," yet it's toward Allah or Sathya Sai Baba. Let me here quote Sam Harris again (in speaking about spiritual experiences): "What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.

There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate."

So just to reiterate what he's saying: yes those "falling in love" experiences are useful in telling us things about our own mind - but are not useful in telling us things about the world. So however great your reasons for falling in love are, and however big your emotions are - they are slightly more than useless in telling us whether a statement like "God exists" or "Jesus ascended bodily into heaven" are true.

And Julie, I apologize if I was unclear. My question wasn't "why would someone choose to seek out God." I think I understand that to some degree, as I did it myself for about 20 years. My question, instead was HOW is it possible to determine which God or "religion" is true, if you've forsaken reason in your "leap of faith." As long as we're defining leap of faith in the Kierkegaardian way as a deciding to believe something without empircal evidence that it's true. My question, really, is this: In looking at all these religions, as you did, when it comes down to it, you're looking at a set of propositions which, basically, are not convincing in their own right. All of these are religions that REQUIRE you to stop thinking about logic and reason, and just DECIDE that one of them is true, right? That's what I understand when someone says "faith comes first." Obviously they're not convincing from a logical point of view, or you wouldn't NEED faith to come first - it would be just as convincing as 2+2=4 or believing there's really a chair underneath you. So, if there is a road of logic that leads to a chasm. On the other side of the chasm you see Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Jehovahs witnesses, and leading away from all of those is their own road of "logic (the logic of the Bible that God reveals to you AFTER your leap of faith)," how do you decide which one to jump to?, if you "logic" map likewise has a blank spot there?

I think it's also important to point out is the false dilemma I think people push themselves into during these encounters. As you said, "I became knowledgable on J.W., Mormons, evolution, Christianity and New Age." As though, if you found all but New Age to not make sense, you would default to New Age...or none of them make sense except evolution, so you default to evolution. We have to give ourselves the license to say "I don't know." There is so much confusion, I think, in people thinking that poking holes in evolution makes the doctrine of creationism and christianity on iota more likely. It doesn't. If evolution is false (which the evidence points heavily to it not being false, but that's not this argument), it is a perfectly respectable position for an atheist to simply be an atheist - not knowing how the life around us came to be. We need not believe ANYTHING on insufficient evidence. We would, in most cases do well to side with the position that is most likely - has the most evidence on its side - but if I, for some strange reason, had to say I'd die rather than say that the big bang theory may be overturned in the future, I'd plead ignorance rather than arrogance.

And just one more thing, Julie, regarding yours. I don't understand why you would, at the same time both attempt to undermine the foundation of science, in saying that it requires faith, while using science to try and legitimize the Bible. You've admonished me twice now on how much the bible and science have in common. In fact, right now, with the uncertainty principle in quantum theory as well as more "recent" discoveries like "action at a distance," if science bolsters any one faith system it's new age or eastern philosophy, hands down. You can point to some things in the Bible like the the water cycle in Job or the circulation of the atmosphere in Ecclesiasties, but when we come to parts like Leviticus 11:6 "And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you." (hares don't chew the cud) Or Job 9:6, "Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble." (the earth does not stand on pillars, though many ancient cultures said similar things) Or 1 Kings 7:23 - "He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it." (Notice anything wrong? In this verse, pi=3), people will say that many of these verses in the bible are "figurative" or "the bible isn't a science book" or that there was somehow a miracle that made the animals bred in front of the striped sticks turn out all stripey. This makes the argument very convenient - either it's science, or a miracle, and therefore everything, both benign and strange, in the Bible, is easily accounted for. I'd just like to point out that Harry Potter is a true story as well, as long as everything in it is science, a miracle, figurative language, or just "rounding off." You can choose a few a FEW verses in the bible that support science. This website catalogues some. Many of them literally made me laugh out loud in how far they're stretching. "Jeremiah 33:22 “As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the descendants of David My servant and the Levites who minister to Me.” Yes, the bible says there are a lot of stars. I don't think it's surprising that a culture that hadn't discovered Zero yet couldn't count them all. Is this really a convincing argument that it was inspired by God?

The question comes down to, what is more likely? Is it more likely that this book is the literal truth which the only true God revealed to people 2-6 thousand years ago in which he developed a system where he would forever after reveal himself to people only in a falling in love type experience and those peoples acceptance of that experience, and the acceptance of several empirical truth statements (jesus was born of a virgin, enoch went into heaven in a fiery chariot) that are joined to it, would determine the salvation or damnation of these people for eternity? - or, is it more likely that this book is the mythology of a group or "race" of people, similar to the mythologies of the people around them, joined with turn of the millenium writings on doctrine, similar to philosophy written by others around that time, about a cult with a central figure that performed miracles and made claims, similar to claims and miracles made before that time, during that time, and all throughout history? Is it more likely that Christianity is unique in its non-empirically supported claims, or like every other group that has developed non-empirically supported religious claims? Should we accept any of these claims because of ancient mythology and mountain top experience? I think you know my answer.

Fascism

Take a look at this.

I think it was probably more controversial when it was made 2 years ago, when what it says wasn't so close to what a lot of americans themselves are saying. So do you think it's true? Or what parts of it do you think are false?

Another question I guess would be, if it's accusations against America are correct, is America's position on this matter morally wrong? When it says that the war on terror is the war on anyone that opposes American domination, should American leaders feel remorse about anything except that that's not a very sensitive way of putting it? Is it wrong for a country to go to war against people that oppose their own global domination? Or is that what all countries do, and America just currently has the power to make their war the most far reaching?

Give me your thoughts, if you have any on this subject.

Watch This

We really are living in amazing times.