Skinny Waistlines

Inside the male brain is a mechanism which looks at a woman’s waist to hip ratio.  First, thinner women tend to be more healthy than those who are overweight.  Second, the hips and waist are examined and their proportions analyzed as to how easily they could give birth to a baby.  Healthy women with the right waist and hip proportions are deemed more likely to successfully deliver a healthy baby.  So men are sexually attracted.

Large Breasts

My first guess was this had something to do with breast feeding the infant.  If the woman had large breasts she would be deemed a better candidate than a woman with smaller breasts.  Evolutionary psychologists don’t think this the case though, because breast size bears no relation to a woman’s ability to lactate.  So what could be the reason?

Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe believes that breasts have been used in the past for their ability to indicate a woman’s age, and hence her reproductive abilities.  Large breasts tend to be heavier and sag with age.  With smaller breasts this sagging is less apparent, so it’s harder to tell how old she is just by looking at her.  So men have evolved to examine the breasts, and prefer large ones.

Since men are naturally polygamous, they stare at any woman who walks by with large breasts and a thin waistline.

Others believe large breasts indicate other forms fecundity (reproductive ability).  Two reproductive hormones, estradiol and progesterone, are found in higher levels in women with large breasts and tight waists.  So men have evolved over time to prefer large breasts.

As an added note, Jean-Paul Satre believed men preferred large breasts because during sex the man could control the movement of the woman’s breasts, giving his body an extension.  He gained two new appendages to control.  So it’s a form of possession.

Long Blonde Hair

A woman’s hair is an indicator to her health as well.  Shiny, lustrous hair indicates vigor and vitality.  Dull hair is found among the sick and aged.  Blonde hair is judged most healthy because of how vibrant it is.  Also many young women are born with blonde hair but as they age it becomes brown. So blonde hair indicates health and youth.  It’s not an accident that women want blonde hair and that brown haired women get blonde highlights.

Blonde hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe.  Anthropologists believe this is because the women were wearing heavy clothing and a health indicator was needed to judge age.

There’s more to hair than this though.  Styled hair, its shininess, and grooming also play a role.  A woman who has put a lot of effort into her appearance must have a lot of time on her hands, therefore she’s not struggling to survive.  She’s clean, healthy, and well off.  This is also why women prefer men who are clean shaven, a fresh haircut, and are well groomed.  It’s all about health and how well off you are.

And some may like to argue, “Well I prefer women with red hair.  It’s all personal preference.”  Overall though, research shows a strong preference for men to prefer blondes and for women to dye their hair blonde.  You can find women dying their hair blonde all the way back in 15th century Italy.  Even women in Iran today, with little to no exposure to Western culture, are dyeing their hair blonde.

As for long hair, the growth takes a long time and by examining it you’re able to see a long history of a woman’s health.  It’s a sort of rudimentary health record.

Blue Eyes

What would eye color have to do with anything?  Why would blue be preferred to green or brown?  The best explanation for this so far is that the human pupil dilates when exposed to something we like.  This happens in both males and females.  Pupil dilation is a completely honest method for determining interest and attraction.  It’s most easily visible in those with blue eyes, so it’s preferred.

You may think, “Well I didn’t even know the pupil dilated, how could I be basing my attraction on this?”  Well, our brains do a lot of things unconsciously and you don’t have to be conscious of what it’s doing to notice the effects.  You simply see her, she sees you and your brains notice the pupil dilation.  It doesn’t matter if you consciously notice it.  Only by studying body language books can you bring these thoughts to the conscious level.  All kinds of psychological states are indicated by a person’s voice intonations, gestures, and signals like this.  Most of our communication takes place at this level, not the actual words coming out of our mouths.

It should be noted that this isn’t always the case with highly intelligent individuals.  Such people are armed with a high vocabulary and words take over; gesturing and intonation can be used less.

In their study they took religious and non-religious people alike and asked them to think about religious topics while hooked up to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans.   They asked the subjects to think about God as a savior, a forgiver, and a moral guide.

This is where things get interesting.  They noticed the same neural pathways opening in the prefrontal cortex, which is the area of our brain responsible for empathy and thoughts that others have thoughts and feelings too.

So basically when people think about God, its goodness, its mercy, its love, divine morals, and those sorts of things, the same area of the brain is being used as when you imagine the feelings of your lover, your neighbor, your children, or anyone else.  We can’t feel someone else’s feelings directly but we imagine them using a particular area of our brains.  We use our prefrontal cortex, which is the most recently evolved region of the human brain.

We use our own cognitive processes and try to relate those to other objects we see.  We try to relate to them.  Unfortunately the more different the being in question is, the less effective this method is going to be.

It’s like seeing a small child holding a butterfly in its hands and saying, “You poor thing.  Do you have any friends?  Do you ever get lonely?”  Besides being completely incapable of understanding your speech, even it could, the words would mean nothing as emotions as we know them only exist in mammals.

We assume all things to be like ourselves until we learn otherwise.  God is no different.

Thing is, we’re humans, and always will be humans.  We think like humans.  Act like humans.  Behave like humans.  We’re always human.  And no matter how hard you try, your thoughts will always be that of a human.

I think it’s futile to try to imagine the thoughts of a “supernatural” all powerful being.  If God does exist in some timeless, omnipotent, omniscient state, it’s so beyond human understanding it’s futile to even attempt it.  And as history shows, those who try it cause us all misery with their “revelations.”  They stifle all progress and innovation, burn you at the stake if you differ in opinion, and we all end up with witch hunts and crusades instead of Paradise.

The weirdest part of this study is thinking on the idea that how I feel, and how I think others may feel, both about me, and the world, may not be on the same page at all.  I can only guess, and hope my abilities to imagine are powerful enough to emulate the true feelings resonating inside of them.

But it’s so easy to get out of step with the world.  But as humans, most of our society’s solidarity is based on our ability to empathize with our fellow citizens.  That very limited prefrontal cortex is all we’ve got.

I think the news is particularly harmful in this regard because they pound us with violence and horror stories.  The net effect of this is to turn off our prefrontal cortex, where we’re unable to empathize with others anymore.  We’ve seen so many people blown up, murdered, raped, and pillaged, it’s so painful to think about it all that we stop altogether — and hence, we as a society fall out of step with one another.

Our minds move into defense mode.  We surround ourselves in barriers and try to keep the world out.  We no longer extend our hands to help, like a good neighbor.

We have to be careful not to overload our minds with everything that’s wrong.  Oftentimes the best advice is “be thankful,” which really means to take time to notice the good things around you.  I don’t do that near enough.

I think part of what it means to be brave is to not cave under that fear society tries to instill in us. Sometimes we have to suck up those fears and do the right thing, even when that’s a little scary.

A prime example of this happened to me the other day.  I was out for a walk and it was freezing cold outside.  A university professor, who lives way down the street, who doesn’t know me at all, stopped and asked if I needed a ride.  Now I didn’t need a ride but that actually made my day!  I thought, “A nice person!  Oh my God!  Someone who doesn’t think I’m a rapist, pedophile, child molester, and has nothing to gain from this, yet still offers to help me.”

It’s impossible to be a good person if you lack this courage.  There’s a risk to everything we do in this life.  There’s even a risk to being good.  You have to love the idea of living in a good society, where everyone is helpful and believes in one another, more than even your own life.   If you can love goodness more than you fear death, you’ll be capable of being a good citizen who can help others.

Our society now is giving in to fear more than loving one another.  We’ll subject one another to humiliating nude scans at the airport because there’s a minor chance that a terrorist may attempt a bombing.  That one-millionth of a percent chance outweighs our love for one another.  We’re terrified of death, and because of that our freedoms are being ripped away from us.

They’ve come to learn that every time a memory is accessed, it is modified.  In fact, each time a memory is accessed, it is subsequently destroyed, then rewritten, making it a sort of Phoenix.

This research, which is being done by Karim Nader of McGill University, is absolutely fascinating to me.  I had always wondered why Sigmund Freud’s “talking cure” worked.  Freud’s discovery had always been a mystery to me.  Somehow, just by remembering a painful event, you could cure yourself of the emotional anxiety it was bringing to you unconsciously.

For example, say you’re a war veteran and you and your wife visit a pawn shop and you see guns on the wall.  All of the sudden you feel anxious and nervous.  No memories surface to your mind, but you just all of the sudden feel an uneasiness and discomfort.  You might start to sweat, your heart rate increases, and you may begin to feel nervous.  That’s your mind calling up the memory unconsciously, bringing up those old fears from your war days, but because it’s so painful the memory is repressed and is unable to surface.

What happens during the talking cure is that when you remember the painful events, your brain destroys the old memory and rewrites a new one in its place, and thus rewires things in your brain.  That’s why it cures you of the anxiety.  This is also why it helps you to talk to others about your problems instead of holding them in.   You’ll still remember that the events happened, but it just won’t bother you as much.  That emotional charge will be relieved, and they’ll become like any other memory.

But there’s even more to this than that!  Memories are rewritten each time they’re accessed, meaning that a memory is more accurate the less times it’s been accessed.  So if you find yourself telling a story over and over, it tends to change over time.  You end up forgetting what really happened, and your memories are replaced with your own “story” of the event.

So if you’re like me, and sometimes lie awake in bed and think about events that happened, and analyze them, the more times you replay the story, the more you’ve corrupted that memory.

The implications of this are immense.  Your memories of what happened to you in the past may not be accurate at all.  You may recall it.  You may swear by it.  You may even be able to bring the events directly to mind and picture it as you believe it happened.  Unfortunately, that event as you’re remembering it may have never happened – at least not exactly as you’re recalling it.

The imagination can add and remove things from the memory each time it’s accessed.

Quoting from Discover magazine:

“Brunet’s experiment emerges from one of the most exciting and controversial recent findings in neuroscience: that we alter our memories just by remembering them.  Karim Nader of McGill — the scientist who made this discovery — hopes it means that people with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]  can cure themselves by editing their memories.  Altering remembered thoughts might also liberate people imprisoned by anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, even addiction.  “There is no such thing as a pharmacological cure in psychiatry,” Brunet says.  “But we may be on the verge of changing that.”
These recent insights into memory are part of a large about-face in neuroscience research.  until recently, long-term memories were thought to be physically etched into our brain, permanent and unchanging.  Now it is becoming clear that memories are surprisingly vulnerable and highly dynamic.  In the lab they can be flicked on or dimmed with a simple dose of drugs.  “For a hundred years, people thought that memory was wired into the brain,” Nader says.  “Instead, we find it can be rewired — you can add false information to it, make it stronger, make it weaker, and possibly even make it disappear.”  Nader and Brunet are not the only ones to make this observation.  Other scientists probing different parts of the brain’s memory machinery are similarly finding that memory is inherently flexible.”

After studying the chemical methods by which our brain stores and accesses memories, Nader performed a very simple experiment.  He took some rats and programmed them to fear a sound.  He’d play them a sound then shock them on the foot using an electrical device.  Over time the rats began to fear the noise.  Each time they’d hear it they’d freeze in fear.

Next he injected them with a protein-synthesis inhibitor which prevents new memories from forming by prohibiting the alteration of the synapses.  If memory worked how people thought it did, then this should have only affected new memories from forming, but should not affect the old ones.  However, the rats ended up forgetting their associations with the buzzer entirely.

Upon hearing the buzzer the rats brains recalled the event.  However, upon recalling the event they “opened up” the memory but were unable to rewrite it back to the brain due to the drug they’d been injected with.  They ended up forgetting about the shocks and the buzzer entirely.

In effect Nader had shown that reactivating a memory destabilizes it, putting it back into a flexible, vulnerable state.

Scientists now are struggling to find out just how malleable our memories really are.  They’ve found out that they can be modified, now they need to find out how much memories change over time.

The main goal of this research, at least in its present stage, is to help cure people struggling with PTSD.  They have a drug now called propranolol which blocks the action of adrenaline.

During psychoanalytical treatment, Freud always dealt with patients getting tense and anxious while recalling the painful memories.  It was hard on the patient and it was his job to sit over the patient and push and encouraging them to keep going until they finally recalled the event in its entirety, no matter how painful.  Using propranolol you can disable that discomfort yet still recall the memories.  Going through the talking cure with these new drugs is a lot easier.

It’s amazing how things get better everyday.  At the same time, I just watched Total Recall a few days ago.  It’s a bit scary to think that it doesn’t seem very long before that’ll be possible.  Maybe 100 years from now it’ll be possible.  But I think that’s a good thing.  School will become a thing of the past, and learning will become like what we saw in the Matrix movies.  You plug in and download whatever you’re interested in learning.  Your focus will be on discovering new truths and advancing humanity instead of relearning the same things others have already labored to discover.

That’s really the process evolution has been on.  One of the advantages we as humans developed was our vocal chords, allowing us to produce a wide variety of sounds and talk to one another.  Now we’ve come to a point where reading, writing, and talking are too slow.  There’s too much information out there and we can’t possibly keep up.  Inventions will be created which allow us to communicate with one another more quickly, transmitting large amounts of information quickly and easily.   I think we’ll communicate “telepathically”, but I’m guessing early inventions will work just like wireless computer equipment works today – probably over electromagnetic waves.  We’ll have a computer chip embedded in our brains which will decode the waves and will then store the information in our brains.

It may well come to a point where we’ll just be sitting in our chairs at home or at work and new information will flow into our brains.  Some sort of global broadcast which uploads the new information to us.  New science.  New discoveries.  New data.  We’ll always be up to date.

I think with time our brains will be swapped out by something faster and more efficient.  Probably a sort of quantum computer which can mimic the same operations, but do it way faster and store a lot more information.

I was lying in bed yesterday and thought about what I’d do if a super advanced alien came down to Earth and started talking to me.  I was thinking what it’d be like if I asked it, “Tell me about the universe.”  Communication through speech would be so slow it’d be unbearable to the being.  I bet aliens at that level don’t even communicate with humans because it’d take a thousand years just to tell us something complicated.  They’d have to be able to interface with our computers, because our brains are way too slow and weak to communicate with.

“Could you give us a star chart of the positions of all galaxies and individual stars, planets, comets, and other size-able bodies floating in space?”  They couldn’t do that.  They’d need to communicate with our computers.  And what about all their past positions, and how the galaxies developed over time?  Good God!  Our brains couldn’t even handle the present instant, much less billions of years worth of data.  And what if there’s multiple dimensions?  It becomes even more futile talking to us.  Not to mention that what we call matter only constitutes a tiny fraction of all the “stuff” that exists out there.  Most matter is “dark matter”.  Humans are too primitive.  I doubt they bother us.  We’re like lowly animals to them, like a small critter we see in a cage in the zoo.  They fly by and wave at us, and quickly observe, then fly off.  And knowing us, the Department of Defense probably shoots a laser beam at them, or fires a nuclear warhead at their vessel.  Fear of the unknown and anything that’s different — that’s humanity’s motto.

A few thousand years from now, I don’t think humans will be humans.  They’ll be something else entirely — if we don’t annihilate ourselves before that.

Violence

Due to our origins evolving from the first cells, and competing with other life for resources, we inherited a violent nature embedded in our genetics, our emotions, and our mind.  These violent instincts are manifest all over, and in civilized society are given outlet all over the place.   We also deal with wars, nationalism, theft, envy, political creeds, and more, whose causes are all rooted deep in the human psyche and these violent instincts.

Sex

Also due to our origins in evolution, we all have inherited a strong sex drive.  Our ancestors didn’t live for very long, and had to reproduce quickly in order to survive.   Because we’ve become the dominate species of this planet, we no longer have any predators and have created elaborate mating rituals.  Also, a great deal of our psychology is rooted in sexual drives, mainly because one of the primary reasons for this human body is to reproduce and spread our genes.   Sex dominates most people’s minds, almost entirely.  This process of finding a mate, and reproducing, and finding an emotional state of happiness is by far the strongest drive behind human behavior.  It leads to both happiness and misery.  Unrequited love creates difficult dynamics and what determines attraction is a combination of sex appeal as well as arbitrary and random psychological factors.  Also, emotions in human beings are fickle.  This leads to couples constantly changing partners, and homes being broken up, and difficulties for children — all in a search for emotional stability and happiness.  Most humans are pretty apathetic toward events going on in the world, but if you mess with their lover, their children, their family, their home, or their food, or anything related to these things, they are very likely to get violent.

Mental Weakness and Survival Instincts

The difficulties and trials this world brings are too much for the rather delicate human psyche.  The overwhelming forces of this world tend to damage the mind, and leave malfunctioning humans beings running around causing trouble not only to themselves, but to others as well.   Some examples of this include escapist philosophies and religion, denial of events taking place out of fear, hoarding of wealth either out of various forms of insecurities, greed, or fears of an uncertain tomorrow, all the mental defense mechanisms psychoanalysts talk about, and more.  Since humans have evolved from reptiles they also have an innate tendency to blindly follow leaders.  When uncertain as to the reasons behind their own success, human beings tend to follow tradition, which basically embodies the concept, “We’re not sure how we got here, but things are ok as they are now.  As long as we don’t change anything, and just keep doing what we’re doing, things should be ok.”  This fear makes human society difficult to manage, and even more difficult to modify.  Once a government structure is set up which has a small degree of success, the masses of people don’t want it to be touched. This is also why it’s very difficult to bring about change politically, and why people in the United States for example, seem to worship the “Founding Fathers”, yet never have read the U.S. Constitution, or anything the Founding Fathers have even written.   Humans also fear their own death, so much so that they’ll do near anything to attain immortality of any sort, even if it’s only being remembered in the history books.  They’ll also do anything to attain “eternal life”, even if that means adhering to all sorts of irrational beliefs, worshiping strange and cruel deities, sacrificing animals or fellow human beings, and more.  These are rooted in their own evolutionary designed emotions, which are designed to keep them alive for as long as possible.

Religion

In the earliest societies and tribes, religion is very anthropomorphic.  Every deity is human like, with passions similar to their own.  This is due to the human psyche’s default tendency toward economy, and energy conservation.  It’s difficult to understand new things, and very hard to ascertain the true causes of things.  So they simply assume every force behind events is human-like in nature.  Deities are assigned to every role behind what they see.  A deity is behind night and day, why the crops grow, the floods of the river, and more.  Demons are behind sickness and disease, and so on.   Out of fear, superstitions form, and incorrect cause and effect relationships are established, leading to various beliefs formed to appease the deities.  As human knowledge expands, and the reasons behind the seasons, night and day, crops growing, and so on, come to be known, the deities tend to fade and become historical novelties.  This is because the deities were only invented and worshiped out of fear, but with no reason to fear any longer, the deities no longer matter.   Later religion changes into a moral sort, and the Gods seem to consolidate.   Religion became a sort of extension of the family, and embodied the same concepts.  And today religion is a sort of catch-all toward things that can’t be explained, and events that are still feared, such as death.  Ultimately, religion is a combination of survival instincts along with fear.  People will worship Jesus on the cross, and believe such crazy things because they still fear death and want to live forever.  People also still wonder about ghosts, and superstitions about demons and haunted areas and things still persists.  As science expands human knowledge, and once the nature of life is more fully explained, and the unknown areas which are now dark become more well lit, these modern religions will fade into historical novelties as well.  The main harm in religion is its escapist tendencies, and beliefs in things which are not empirical, leading to irreconcilable conflicts.  People put unquestioning faith in the nonsense out of fear, but once people stop questioning their minds become like hardened dry clay.  Society stops progressing, and they also are unable to learn anything new.

Lack Of Knowledge

It is difficult to learn.  It takes a lifetime just to master one subject.  Understanding a complicated subject matter is a lifelong endeavor, and it seems the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know.  In fact, most knowledge teaches you not how smart you are, but how dumb you are, and how little you really know.  You learn one thing only to realize you don’t know about 10 other far more complicated things.  Everything always turns out to be more complicated than you expected.  The more you learn, the more options are available to you.  A sort of union with the reality around you takes place.  Humanity’s main problem is most of their time is dedicated not toward learning, but toward reproducing, eating, sleeping, working pointless jobs, and general existence.   Because learning is difficult, and the only method available toward learning is through books, most people learn very little throughout their lifetimes.  They remain for the most part, stupid.  The less educated a person is, the more prone they are to believe superstitions, propaganda, and other exploitative and nonsensical mindsets.  Because a person can only master one subject, and human prosperity relies us all working together effectively, we’re forced to work with one another, though we do so reluctantly.  Unfortunately working together requires intelligence, and most people spend their time worrying about reproducing, eating, and want to spend as little time with books as possible.   Since the majority of the masses are stupid, getting them to progress and move forward, or anywhere for that matter, is quite an undertaking.

Individualism vs Collectivism

After realizing the benefits of organized society mankind faces an immediate conflict.  How much government?  We have complete anarchy on the one hand, and authoritarian slavery on the other.  Humans have a strong tendency toward independence, and only reluctantly come together to form anything larger than a family or a small tribe.  But complete anarchy is a terrible way of the world, so we form nations and governments.  But being told what to do on every count is also a miserable way to live, so we tend to frown upon dictators, monarchs, aristocracies, and other “elites” controlling our lives on every count.  Freedom versus organization is one of the most difficult problems and has been around since the dawn of the first civilizations.   The “right” amount of government seems to be an onging battle, and everyone has a different opinion on the proper role of government.  Monarchies seem to be the first forms of government which form, as these are the most compatible with primitive savage thinking.  People naturally want to follow the strong man out of reptilian instincts.  Later society becomes a bit more free, and merchants and the rich start to rise, and grow to power which competes with the king.  These societies lead to exploitation of the working class, and they demand more representation and say in things.   Once education rises to a certain level, democracy becomes possible, but how successful it is depends on how educated the masses are.  Communism and socialism seem to fail miserably, as they do not have proper economic incentives, nor the freedom to pursue various dreams and ambitions.  Socialism seems to show a lot more promise than communism, but requires a degree of planning, education, and magnanimity which just doesn’t exist in the masses today or in the past.  In capitalism, a system where your success in it is mainly due to sublimated greed, the ambitious members of society tend to work their way to the top, and upon getting there find things like competition a bother, so bribe off the political leaders, getting special perks, economic protections, price floors, and more, becoming parasitic leeches.  As graft and corruption slowly suck the life out of nation, the free society finds itself slowly collapsing back into a sort of monarchical, aristocratic, authoritarian rule.   After so long the exploitation and corruption become too much to bear, and a nasty, oftentimes violent revolution takes place, the rich and the monarchs are overthrown, everything is cleaned up, and society hits the reset button.  If the revolution is organized poorly the people end up with a vile dictator instead.  But if things play out, the nation gets a fresh new start.  This is why economics and money are so important to understand, but due to the economic incentives, individual groups have more of an incentive to lobby than for the public to constantly be scanning the government for small inside corruption deals.  Because of these incentives, these cycles of clean start, gradual increasing corruption, upheveal, start over, gradual corruption, and so on, seem to be repeating themselves over and over and over.

Economic Systems

Having already mentioned capitalism, socialism, and communism, many economic related problems face mankind.  Economics deals with overcoming the “physical evils” of this world.  Efficiently organizing and sharing the things we produce, while allowing freedom at the same time.  It seems the broader the economic system, and the wider in scope, the more prosperity everyone receives.  A worldwide currency, and policies which allow all nations to share goods produced, as well as services, is the ideal.  Everything seems dependent on the division of labor and being able to share the goods people produce to the widest possible audience.  History books always talk about “trade routes.”  This is because trade routes allow people to share products from all over.  This makes roads, technology in ships, and package delivery, increases in automobile transport, increased communications, book-keeping techniques, mathematics, and other technological innovations a primary mover in human prosperity.  On the other hand, these technological innovations are not natural products of evolution, therefore harnessing them depends on education, which as we said, is difficult and slow to attain.  So as mankind now (generally, in civilization nations at least) lives a life of material ease, we psychologically struggle to keep up with everything going on.  Society is advancing faster than our mind can keep up.  We used to struggle out in the fields, now we struggle in the classroom.  Those with weak minds are being left behind and feel they’re being left out.  As technology progresses, manual labor will become worthless.  Besides these concerns, economically another issue seems to arise over and over in history – debt bubbles.  Banking establishments and corrupt politicians in control of the money supply always bring with them problems, if left unchecked.  Banks and merchants have always been guilty of burying people in debts they can’t possibly pay off with the real intention of making them their slaves.  Political slavery may not exist today, but economic slavery is rampant.  If politicians are not trying to print up money, shave the gold coins, or other corruption schemes involving money, they’ve been guilty continual budget deficits, never having enough money, and war machines, with their imperialistic ambitions to take over the world.  Also, the human mind seems to never have enough, and is never satisfied.  It wants the best society has to offer, and will often step on anyone to get to the top.  Politicians seem to be more guilty of this than anyone, as they tend to be opportunists, desperate for fame, full of vain ambitions, and eager to please.  We all suffer as the result.

Environmental Pollution

This is a modern problem which has only arisen within the past century.  Our actions these days are so contrary to the natural road evolution was on, we are destroying the other life on the planet, and since we depend on them to survive as well, we’re slowly destroying ourselves in the process.  Rainforests are being chopped down for cheap profits.  Pesticides are being used on crops, polluting the water.  Islands of plastic garbage are floating in the Pacific Ocean.  Our environment is really taking a toll and will not sustain human life forever if left unchecked.

News & Sensationalism

Because of our inner vile instincts, human kind yearns for things which are utterly disgusting.  We watch movies filled with violence and horror for enjoyment.  We hunt animals for sport.  We’re rather nasty creatures, and even though the world is generally becoming a more and more peaceful place to live, you wouldn’t think that way watching the news.  Everything is always getting worse, and you’d think everyone was a child rapist, pedophile, mass murdering, stalker, backstabbing, lying, cheating… [insert terrible outlook of the world here].  The news brings people stories they’re interested in.  They deliver what people want to see and unfortunately this is all the worst of everything in the world mixed with a few technological innovations and hero stories.  Everyone could be doing well, but they’ll find the one person who’s having a rough time.   This tendency to dwell on the negative is a healthy trait, as the world is a harsh place to live, and we continually must be changing and dealing with problems in order to survive.  Unfortunately, the news profits from this psychological tendency, and exploits it in the worst possible way.   Also, complex issues are not presented in proper light and instead are given in fifteen second “sound bites”, leaving people more confused than informed.  Instead of educating and informing, they instead rile up emotions and mostly spread propaganda which benefits the big corporations.  They also tend to incite party politics and left/right paradigms, instead of uniting people on issues.  They always complain about ineffective leaders, when they themselves are more guilty than anyone at tearing away any unity mankind has been struggling to build.

These are the topics I wrote down that morning, but I’m sure there’s a lot more.  These are all I came up with while lying in my bed the other morning.  Many of these could be vastly expanded upon, but as I said, I soon find myself writing a book.

Now this list was created off the top of my head while laying in bed this morning.  I don’t intend for it to be comprehensive.  But I hope it’s a decent starting point, and for whoever on the internet finds this post, if you have anything to add to help me build a better list, please feel free to comment below.

Violence

One of the most sad things about this world we all live in is our own origins.  When you turn on the discovery channel, or animal planet, and watch animals struggle to survive in the wild, fighting, killing, and eating one another, you really see the Darwinian struggle staring you right in the face.   Everywhere I look is violence – both in the animal world, and in mankind.

We’ve evolved from those lower creatures, and outside of of some oxytocin flowing through our brains, and a slightly more developed brain, we share those same instincts.  All those violent instincts you see in the animal kingdom are buried deep within mankind.  In civilized society these instincts are repressed, but you can see the violent instincts manifest and given outlet all over the place.

Just turn on your television, or watch a movie.  Everything is sex and violence.  Gunslingers, bank robberies, gun fights, stabbings, murders, blood, gore, and everything else.  Horror movies.  Action movies.  Thrillers.  All fear and violence.  Video games are mostly violence.  First person shooters.  Role playing games are all about hunting and killing monsters, with a storyline along the side.  RPG players load up the game and kill monsters for hours and hours, using every sort of weapon imaginable, killing every sort of monster — all for the fun of it.  Outdoorsmen hunt and fish.  I remember going fishing with my grandpa years back, and after catching a trout he put it on the stringer.  He ran it straight through the fish’s eyes.  One eyeball was left hanging out, and the fish writhed around in pain.  Even then I sat down wondering, “Why is the world like this?”

It’s nice that these instincts are given outlet in fictional worlds, instead of in the real world. I’m guilty of playing violent video games all the time.  Just the other day I was playing Doom 3.  The year is 2145, and you’re a space marine stationed on Mars.  A scientist there is doing some crazy research and somehow unlocks the doorway to the demonic spirit world.  Demons possess everyone around, and you’re one of the few left.  You make your way through dimly lit Martian space bases, with demons and zombies chasing after you.  Half the time you’re clicking down on the mouse button, killing and blasting things to a bloody pulp.  It’s pretty bad.  But I admit, it’s pretty fun.

Then there’s wars.  In the early days wars were fought mainly as a labor saving device.  A tribe would be migrating around, come across another tribe, then they’d simply attack and steal the other tribe’s stuff.  Later, as mankind settled down into set areas, our reptile instincts made us territorial.  (We evolved from reptiles, you know.)  Just like dogs, and other animals, we defended our territories from invaders, and were violent to anyone outside our tribe.  Even today, we have nation states, and patriotism, which is just a slightly more complicated version of the same thing.  Other wars have been fought over religion, and various deities.  It’s my opinion that the religions of the past were simply excuses to invade and kill other tribes.  Jesus taught pacifism, yet the Catholic church held countless crusades, and witch hunts.  Mankind is prone to that sort of behavior because we have violent instincts.  “God told me to do it.”  “God wills it.”  Rids them of their conscience, which as psychoanalysts point out, is simply a complicated super-ego dynamic.  They fracture their own conscious mind into two separate “minds” so to speak, and then have an avenue to relegate responsibility.

There’s so much violence in the world because men enjoy violence.  It’s in their nature.  They like the fight, but don’t like the consequences.

Sex

Outside violence, the second most prevalent thing I see is sex.  Women want to be beautiful, to attract a man.  And even if they’re married, they still want to look beautiful, for all sorts of reasons.  When you go to the bookstore, most of the books are about relationships.  Look on youtube’s front page, and it’s all makeup videos.  Men seem to put a lot less into it, though they certainly care about it a great deal as well.

I remember watching a film about birds on some island.  They had no predators there, and the biologist was talking about how they created elaborate mating rituals.  The male birds would fly toward the females, dance around them, and chase them all over the place.  It was very elaborate.

Mankind is no different.  Our mating rituals are super complicated.  This is all so widespread because, like violent genetic instincts, we’re also born with sexual drives.  If you study Freud, you’ll see that 3/4 of what goes on in our heads is driven by sex.  Once kids hit a certain age the guys and girls start gravitating toward one another.  Natural genetic process.

I think sexual instincts can be both beautiful, and disgusting.  Sometimes they seem to bond couples together and eventually it grows to form a deeper bond of true love.  Other times sexual drive is sublimated into artistic work, and creates very beautiful work.

But at the same time I don’t want to belittle family, or marriage.  In the past, I viewed things from give and take, and other stupid ways of thinking, and never even realized the value in family, marriage, or love.   My personal philosophy never even spoke of it.  But love within the family is the most beautiful thing there is.  The same is true of friends.  Whatever may have drawn you together, those bonds we share when we truly grow to love one another is more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen.

Mental Weakness and Survival Instincts

Many psychoanalysts say that birth in itself is a trauma.  It seems from the day we’re born we open our eyes to perils and trials of every sort.  It’s really something else.   I don’t know how many times I’ve opened my eyes in the morning, only to think, “So I woke up here today.  This world.  It wasn’t a nightmare.  I really do live in this hell hole.”

When I read history, I see this world beating the hell out of the human race, and people are simply doing all the can just to make it through the day.  Can you imagine waking up in the late middle ages with the Black Death ravaging the world around you.  You have no idea what even causes it.  People waking up with huge boils under their armpits, wheezing and dying a few days later with no real medical care even available.  You watch the men in your town pile up dead bodies.

Or how about the Nazi death camps?  Can you imagine what the soldiers, and the prisoners endured?  Throwing piles of dead bodies into giant ditches and holes?  Or how about the veterans of World War II, watching their buddies mowed down as they invade Normandy on D-Day.  Watch your best friend blown to bits by a grenade.

Whether it be watching loved ones die of cancer, religious nutbags and their holy wars, politicians and their lies, infidelity in relationships, and everything else, the mind seems to break down.  Psychologically it can only take so much before it wants to escape.  And throughout history, religions have been a sort of balm to comfort the weak, the oppressed, and those with a bad lot in life.

If you can’t find love in this world, Jesus is up above ready to welcome you into his arms.  If you can’t find a way to earn money, don’t worry, blessed are the poor, and the meek, and if you’re faithful you’ll one day inherit the Earth.  Just endure your lot and bide your time, God will reward you for your service to his work soon enough.

We all want to survive and live in a better world, and when we lose our faith of that ever happening here, we look for that comfort someplace else.  Unfortunately all forms of escapism are unhealthy.

Once man submits himself to the invisible deities, and lives for alternate worlds in the heavens, getting them to come back to this world is a real trial.  Also, these religious beliefs tend to cause all sorts of problems.

Just picking up a newspaper I begin to read about hate crimes.  Gays have it bad.  Religious people just don’t like gays, and even feel they’re doing the work of God when they give them a hard time.

Or read about the Middle East and the wars.  They’re all religious.

President Bush felt he was doing the work of the Lord during his presidency.  He told us he prayed every night.  He lived by faith and his convictions.  You can see where that led us.  And don’t forget about the Dark Ages.  You know, a lot of the worst times in our history have been when the Catholic church was in control of the world.  All scientific thought was stifled, and for almost 1500 years barely anything progressed.  Sure we built some windmills, learned some farming techniques, established the first schools and universities, and even worked out representative government from feudalism, but still, relatively speaking, mankind progressed at a crawl and could’ve done a LOT more.

The Egyptians, Greeks, and even Romans did all kinds of stuff.  Then progress just went down the toilet.  The Greeks used to work out geometry, law, philosophy, physics, and more.  They studied the stars, thought about the origins of the universe, and worked out their theories in vigorous debates.

But religion stopped the debates.  Faith was the new law, and not empirical truth.  Men already knew everything there was to know, and it was in their holy books.  Outside of revelation from God, there was nothing worthwhile to know.  They stopped questioning, and the world stopped accordingly.

Once Rome fell due to corruption, graft, over-consumption, insufficient slaves to exploit, and so on, the world got real bad.  Economic systems failed.  The money became worthless.  Invaders started to plunder them from every angle.  That’s when the world turned to Jesus, and we went into the Dark Ages, and it took forever to get out.  Recovery would’ve been a lot faster, but people turned to relief in the imaginary world, instead of this world.

Mental weakness causes so many problems for mankind.  That neurotic, psychological breakdown when we just can’t take it anymore.  When we begin to turn to all sorts of irrational beliefs just to comfort us.

Anna Freud, the daughter of the famous Sigmund Freud, outlined all the different ways we run from this world.  I’m more guilty of psychological abberations, and running away, than anyone else.  Wanting to understand myself was why I read every book of Freud’s, and many other psychoanalyst’s works as well.

Now that I’ve had a lot of free time, I’ve went back to studying some psychoanalysis.  I went to examine myself some more, and questioned my own beliefs.  I questioned my own views toward relationships with women, and I came to all sorts of insecurities.

I looked back over some things I wrote to a girl I like, back a year ago when I confessed my feelings.  So much of what was in there was fear driven.  I talked about how I’ve always wanted to construct a sort of “room” where I could reveal everything I was thinking to someone, and where I knew she would always accept me.  I stared at that, and though it sounds all beatific, and almost spiritual, it’s all rooted in fear of not being accepted for who I am.

So much philosophy, spirituality, mystics, new-age thinkers, and those sorts, they all seem so deep and profound.  Half the time however, what passes for spirituality is nothing but deeply concealed, and intricately interwoven fears.

In one of the letters I sent I talked about masks, and how I wondered what an identity even was.  But that too is partially rooted in fear of not being accepted, or good enough.  It’s a moot point if you’re comfortable with who you are.  Basically all I was saying, “I’m scared of choosing who I’ll be, but accept me.”  Loving one another unconditionally is beautiful, but fearing that someone may not love you will hurt you in the end, and drive you to do stupid things — like I did! 

Once I realized that, I’ve changed a lot.  Or at least, I feel changes going on, for good or for bad.  The past months, not having the worry about earning money, and not being so stressed out, things have been changing for me.   Stress had a lot to do with my own philosophies.

I even analyzed why I’m often so, “I could really care less,” about so many things.  Why I felt so many things were petty, and not worth thinking about.  A lot of that was rooted in events that happened in high school.  I had a terrible event happen with a girl, and my life dreams were crushed, and I just walked away saying, “Whatever.  This crap isn’t worth dealing with.  I’m going to pursue something more rewarding.”  Way back then, I went into a sort of emergency survival mode based on the trauma and never really came out.

Repressed those desires and thoughts, and then slowly the life seemed to drain out of me.  And naturally, being the kind of person I became, it caused a chain reaction with everyone I was around.  And though I seemed so focused and determined, it was really all rooted in unconscious repressed issues.  Why try to have fun, when it’ll just turn out like last time.  Why try so hard, or put so much effort and hope into something when it turns out so awful.  It’s a refusal to try things that failed in the past.  Nothing had value because everything was a temporary place, and I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

When you’re Rambo out on a mission to get in and get the hell out, you’re not going to enjoy life’s “petty things” at all.

Dreams are that way.  Sometimes dreams are truly our dreams.  Other times, they’re just us running.  It’s oftentimes so difficult to tell which dynamic is taking place.

I think we all hate that our minds are fragile, and how it’s so easy to deal with problems the wrong way.   I’m just saying we do it, and it hurts us all.

Your own fears, and things you won’t deal with end up causing everyone else problems as well.  Denial and running away.  Sad as it is, we don’t even know we’re running from anything half the time.  You have to know someone smart and skilled enough to identify it.  And half of us don’t want to hear it when we are confronted with it.  The reason we repressed the thoughts was because it was painful to think about to begin with.   It’s not very fun bringing it all up.

When you’re knowledgeable enough, you see that sort of thing all over.  Take Rick Warren’s book, “The Purpose Driven Life.”  Apparently President Obama thought highly of the book, and even took part in debates with Rick Warren during the campaign.  But that book is all fear.  Who defines your purpose?  If not you, then who?  It’s simply not choosing who you want to be in life, so you hope someone will make that decision for you.  It’s slavery masked as religion and spirituality.  Jesus teaches all things are possible to him who believes — that is, unless it’s against your “purpose”… In that case, you better not believe for certain things, because that’ll just get you in trouble.

I mentioned change earlier.  I think every change I’ve been noticing lately has to do with two concepts.  1) Love, and 2) Moderation.  Speaking of love, the thing I’ve been noticing is that showing a person love can bring them out of all kinds of problems.  A person dealing with all kinds of issues can overcome a whole lot of things just because they’re accepted and loved.

The power of love is something my personal philosophy has been lacking for too long.  It’s a powerful and deep force.  Being shown true love is 100 times more powerful than any disappointments you may have endured and can blast problems away.  Growing up in a loving family, I never noticed the power behind it.  But once I studied it more, and saw what had been going on, I realized a whole lot.  So many things become irrelevant when you’re placed in a loving environment.

Love can’t make you overcome your inner demons.  That’s your job.  It can fix a lot of things, however.  It also can make everything easier.

Maybe in this entry of “Problems of Humanity” I should talk about Lack of Love, but I honestly don’t understand love near enough.  My philosophy towards life has been incredibly shallow.  I may sound intelligent, but half the time I’m just an idiot.  Half the time in human affairs knowing the answer doesn’t even matter.  Not everything in this world is science, or cause and effect.  There’s things far more valuable to know.  Knowing someone’s there, and is with you.

I learned this simple lesson one time visiting a friend.  As we were talking, his father came in the room.  My friend’s mother called his father on the phone, and I was in the room overhearing the conversation.  They were going through a really rough situation, and I knew the context and what they were talking about, even though I couldn’t hear what she was saying to him.  After listening for a few moments, and hearing the mother sobbing on the other end, he said something to the effect of, “We’ll get through this.  This stuff happens.”

He said something much more loving.  I’m so pathetic, I can’t even remember.  I can’t even paraphrase him correctly, even though it’s so simple.  But I sat back amazed and I realized that I’m a complete idiot.

If I would’ve received that call, I would’ve been laying out strategies, and gone into all kinds of philosophy, and ways to deal with problems.  How we can’t let problems affect us, and to rise above every circumstance.  None of that even matters.   That’s logic, not love.   And you know what?  They got through the problem just fine, together, with such a simple mindset.

That sort of simple love, I’ll be there for you, don’t worry, is elegant and beautiful, like a law of physics.  It’s unmovable and simple to comprehend and express.  It adds a human dynamic to living that a computer like mindset, like my own, could never comprehend.  If you’re not affected by events, you’re not even alive.  Love, like a law of physics, is simple to state, but can be applied to practically anything, and moves things out of the way, like no other force I know.   Maybe to try to put love in as few words as possible:  You live together, die together, and do what you can whenever shit happens.  So simple.

I’d seen it my whole life in Dad.  That’s what Dad does with all of us.  When the car breaks down, what happens?  You call Dad.  How do you fix it, Dad?  And even if he doesn’t know, somehow it gets done.  Phone calls are made.  Money is pooled from some location.  Things just happen.

Drain clogs.  “Dad!!!  The drain’s clogged.”  Then he unplugged it.  Toilet plugged.  Same thing.  Water pump go out?  “Dad!!! Water’s not working.”

With me, I’d seen it, and just assumed it as a sort of unspoken principle.  Everyone in my family is that way.  I couldn’t understand anything different.

I remember in high school one day when my mom never showed up to pick me up from school.  I was like 15.  I don’t even remember why she was unable to make it.  I called up my grandpa, and he came.  He didn’t complain.  Never got mad at mom, or me.  It’s the mindset, “Something happened.  Somehow Jason’s stranded at school, and needs a ride.”  And here came grandpa to pick me up.

I remember getting in the car, and he was smiling.  He said, “Hey Jay man.”  Then when we finally got to my home, as I was getting out he said, “You ever need a ride again, you just give me a call.”

To me, getting stuck at school, then having to walk a huge distance home in the cold was unheard of.  There was a whole network of people who would take care of things like that, and I never had to worry.

Even though growing up I lived in this environment, later my mind came to dominate everything.  I became business, capitalist, Jason and lost my understanding of this.  I thought in debits and credits.  To owe and not to owe.  I give this, you give that.  That’s no way to live.  After all, the economics texts told me that those principles had built the most successful societies.  But what it didn’t say was, “Compared to what?”

But even being around it everyday, my whole life, I never saw it.  I stressed the details in how to accomplish various goals.  But details don’t always matter.  The most fundamental thing is, “We’ll take care of it.  Somehow.”  That’s love.

But I’ve been unable to feel, or express such simple feelings because of events that happened to me ages ago. It really is something else.

Logic tells you to keep getting better, and forces you to be perfect.  If you’re perfect, you’ll no longer have to worry about screwing up.  But life’s not that simple.  Becoming “perfect” is impossible and the mindset isn’t the least bit practical.

Why are you so stressed about becoming perfect, and the ultimate person?  It’s because somehow, if you’re not so perfect, and awesome, someone may not think much of you.  What a nasty, vicious cycle we put ourselves through as human beings.  And really, nobody expects perfection from any of us.  Most of us would be fine with decency and just a little respect.

Wow, that was quite a tangent.  Way off topic, but I’m not removing it.  This is a blog entry, and it doesn’t need to be perfect.

But to finish talking about running away, sometimes we move into denial, and just shut everything out.  I see that going on today everywhere I turn.  The government is getting more and more invasive, into every aspect of our lives.  They’re installing cameras on every corner of the street.  More and more police.  Our civil liberties have been eroding away.  But people deny it.  Anyone who acknowledges it is a “conspiracy nut.”  It’s simply denial.  You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that every aspect of our lives can be pulled up by anybody with a computer.  We have no privacy whatsoever.  But, we deny it.  Doesn’t exist.

Sometimes we joke about it.  Make everything into a big joke, and don’t take anything seriously.

Sometimes we project our own issues onto others.  Like the preacher who rails on day after day about homosexuality, when he himself is having a gay relationship off camera.  Carl Jung said that the things which annoy us oftentimes say more about us than the thing in question.  When things deeply annoy you, it’s time to look inward and see what’s going on there.  Also, the things we preach with the most zeal tend to be rooted in our own insecurities and issues we’re dealing with.

Sometimes we rationalize things, downplaying the importance of what’s going on.

Another rampant psychological insecurity which plagues this world is fear of insignificance.  Alfred Adler talked about this.  He called it the inferiority complex.  Man’s struggle to be significant.

Everyone wants their name on a plaque.  Some building dedicated to them.  Awards.  Ceremonies.  It’s all people who are insecure about themselves.

How much misery do we all endure when tyrants try to take over the world, hoping to leave their names in the history books and leave a legacy?  When CEOs never get enough.  They may claim it’s all ambition, and they “think big”, but how much of it is really rooted in that?  What if nobody saw you, or cared.  Would you be doing the same thing if everyone on the Earth died, and you were left alone?  If not, then you’re doing the wrong thing.  It’s insecurity.  It’s not facing up to defining yourself, and instead you’re defining yourself through someone else’s eyes.  Hopefully if someone else will acknowledge you as worthwhile, you’ll have accomplished something in life.

As ironic as this sounds, I wish more CEOs would truly be selfish.  If so, I doubt they’d do half of what they do.  But they don’t live for themselves.  They live for glory, recognition, and prestige.  The money is never enough because glory doesn’t know any bounds.  Money isn’t acquired because they have any real use for it.  It’s simply used as a comparative point system, to compare how “valuable” they are.   By who’s standard, is the question.

We also tend to fear the unknown.  That’s the real origin of tradition.  We have a reptilian part in our brains which follows leaders blindly.  When we don’t know something we look to the strong man, and follow without question.  We hope if we imitate him, or find his favor, we too will come out on top.  Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.  We end up exploited.

When you walk into a cathedral somewhere, and see thousands of people taking place is weird rituals – ash pots, bells ringing, priests in robes, chanting Latin, drinking wine from a cup, taking part in prayer claiming that wine is the blood of God, and so on – it’s all fear of the unknown. At least, that’s why people continue to do it.  I think Joseph Campbell was right in his interpretations of these sorts of ceremonies being rooted in deep psychological principles, but I think that meaning is lost.  It seems to me to be just rote procedure followed out of fear, not out of amazement or love.

When you don’t understand what brings about prosperity, your natural inclination is to say, “Well, if we keep doing what we’re doing now, at least we can count on things staying the same.”  So out of fear of breaking the system, you keep doing what you’ve always done.   “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

That’s the power of tradition, and why people turn to old books.  It worked for grandma, and kept them alive.  Let’s do the same.

I’m exhausted, and have barely even touched on my list.  I have like 20 topics to write on, and didn’t even finish mental weakness and survival, which is just the third one.  I’ll have to deal with that next time.  I have to finish my Space and Geometry entries as well.  I’ll work on it.  Too busy reading though!  Hehe.  And goofing off.  I’m done for the night.  You guys take care!

I wrote one entry a while back called “Moving Faster Than Light”, but that was mostly me rambling about the various problems you encounter if a body is allowed to move faster than light.  But in this new series of entries I will take more time and fully explain everything.

Considering the depth of the subject, and my own time constraints, we’ll have to cover our ground step by step.  But if we break this massive subject into enough pieces, it should be manageable – both to read, and for me to write. We’ll start from the very beginning, assuming you know nothing about anything, and move slowly.  My only purpose of this entry today is to explain why we think this world is three dimensional and how we come to that conclusion.   Later we’ll move into things like relativity, quantum mechanics, curved space-time, and more.  For now, we’ll start at the very beginning.

So let’s begin, shall we?  If I was to ask you, “What is space?”, what would you tell me?  How would you explain it to me?  Can it be explained?

If you’re like most people, you probably envision space as a giant box.  Its edges extend out to infinity in all three dimensions.  If I had a rocketship and shot out into space, and kept going in a straight line, I’d just keep going and going and going.  There is no end to it.  I would get farther and farther and farther away from the Earth.

Secondly, you probably think space is “continuous”.  If I was to say, drop a baseball, and you watch it fall to the ground, that motion was smooth and perfect.  There’s no choppiness.  No jerks.  The baseball has a set size, and is a set sphere like shape.  It moves at an absolute speed through the big “space” box, as it accelerates toward the Earth due to the pull of gravity.   In other words, if I was to watch the ball fall with a high speed camera, no matter how quickly it took pictures, there would always be a “frame” for the camera to take.   Even if the camera could take 100 billion pictures a second, and we view the film reel frame by frame, every one of them would be filled with a picture of the baseball, each in a unique position, very very slowly making its way toward the Earth.

Are these assumptions true?  No, not really.  Space is not a giant box of infinite extent.  Motion is not smooth and continuous.  The baseball doesn’t have an absolute size, shape, or velocity.  Its color isn’t even necessarily white, and its seems are not necessarily red.   The Earth doesn’t necessarily orbit the Sun.  It’s just fine to keep your frame of reference on the Earth, and if you do that, the Sun orbits the Earth.  It really can go either way.  And as for the camera and its film reel, if you took enough pictures, you’d eventually find frames which are blank.  In fact, if you took pictures quickly enough, each frame would have at most one pixel lit up and the rest would be blank.  This is because light moves through “space” in energy packets, which are akin to bullets.  The laws behind how these bullets fly gets us into quantum mechanics, but we’ll have to postpone that discussion to a later time.

So are the common assumptions completely wrong?  No.  They’re approximations, and as long as you don’t move at speeds near that of light, don’t extend your 3D box too far, and don’t focus too hard on following each little light photon bullet, you’d be roughly correct.  You’ll be able to do physics and calculate things, and your answers will be correct enough.  And anyways, everything we do in science is an approximation.  There’s no such thing as absolute precision.

So if these ideas are not correct, then how come they’re so common?  Why do we think the world is a 3D box when it isn’t?  Why do we think the baseball has a set size and shape?  Why do we think the room we’re in has set dimensions?  Is it some sort of defect in the brain?  Is the human brain confined to three dimensions, and forced to struggle to understand anything of higher dimensions, such as four dimensional space-time?

No.  The brain could easily understand a four dimensional world.  The problem is not with our brains.  Our problem is we’ve never experienced moving at high speeds near that of light.  That’s not a common experience for us.  Therefore the consequences we draw from Einstein’s equations are strange and foreign to us.  We’ve never seen the baseball morph into an oval, or the straight walls of our house begin to curve then become straight again.  And since our brain works with the experiences it’s had, telling it that, “Yeah, your bedroom wall right there can curve on you if you move fast enough…”, it naturally replies, “… I’ve never seen the wall curve.  That’s a pretty crazy thing to say.  I don’t believe it.”

So let’s talk about how the brain comes to a notion of “space” to begin with, and what that even means.

Space And Your Brain

Tactile And Motor Space

First we have tactile space.  This is a sense of “space” which comes from touching and feeling things. For example, imagine being on the beach with someone you love.  I’ll do the same.  I find myself in an intimate embrace with this lovely woman.  I caress her, my hands moving up and down her body.  I feel every curve.  Even if my eyes are closed, I’m immersed in a very spacious world.

I could be blind my entire life, but I would still have this sense of space.  I could rub my hands across my bed, a bookshelf, a coffee mug, a kitchen chair, or anything of that nature.  Just by rubbing and feeling the object, and the muscular contractions and sensations of touch, I can form a sense of space and of solid objects.

In a very complex way your brain associates various sensations of touch, as well as the the feelings of muscles contracting and loosening, and links them together.

Now the first thing to note is that these sensations and linkages do not necessarily have to include any notions of space whatsoever.  In our day to day experience, most sensations of “touch” occur when our body comes in contact with another body.  But that need not be the case.  It’s just as logical that touch sensations could arise in different circumstances.  For a weird example, imagine if you felt a pressure come over your body the faster you moved relative to some star in space someplace.  The higher your velocity as calculated from someone watching you from that location, the higher the pressure.  It’s possible.  But that’s not how it works in our reality.  We “feel” when we come in contact with something, or a force is acting on our “body” in some way.   The sensations we experience just happen to correspond in such a way lead to our conception of tactile space.

As for the tactile space of everyday experience, it has one interesting property which is worth noting.  Unlike the objects we see with our eyes, those we feel never change size.  To feel something you have to be touching it.  If I embrace this lovely woman I’m with, caress her, then let go, and she takes a few steps away from me out of reach, my sense of touch goes away.  I extend my arms but she’s not there.  As she’s walking away her size may shrink smaller and smaller, but my sense of touch has no parallel to that.  Touch always feels the same in everyday experience and never “shrinks”.

Space Based Upon Sight

Imagine staring at a computer screen which shows random colors.  Kind of like the black and white fuzz on an old television set.  Just random colors appearing all over the screen.

Is there any sense of space there?  No.  But there is a sensation of sight.  You do see colors.  Those colors don’t seem to tie together to make a spacial reality of any sort, but you are seeing something.

So our first point to make is that seeing doesn’t necessarily mean there’s space, or even any “objects” to see.  Objects only come into play when the images change in such a way that there seems to be an order of some sort.  But what do I mean by “order”?

Your first thought may be to think of light waves radiating from the sun, or a light bulb, which then come in contact with the surface of objects, causing their surface atoms to vibrate, which then creates electromagnetic waves of their own, which then radiate back through space, eventually coming in contact with the eyes of various observers, giving rise to a personal idea of space and order.  You further imagine “order” to mean complex laws of physics, which can be patterened with mathematics and logic.   But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  That may be how the reality we live in right now works, but that’s not to say we couldn’t have a reality with space which works on entirely different principles.

So instead of talking about how alternate realities could work, and give rise to space, let’s discuss how the brain comes to the notions of solid objects, and from those and their various perspectives, gives rise to the 3D geometrical “box” of space that we are all so familiar with.  That’d probably be the most practical, and beneficial concept to understand.

So you’ve just been born.  You’re in your mothers arms and your father is standing at the bedside saying, “You did well”, and “Hey there little guy.”    How did baby Jason come to his first notions of space?  It required three separate concepts.  My visual senses.  Tactile senses.  And Motor senses.

Visual is my ability to see.  Tactile is my ability to feel.  Motor is my ability to move based on my own volition.

I’m not too keen on babies and their early eyesight, but if I recall correctly, babies take a bit of time before they can see well.  Images are initially blurry.  So let’s skip ahead and move on to baby Jason being able to crawl, and capable of seeing clearly.

Mom lays me down on the living room floor, and I begin to squirm around.  What’s going on here?  This is me establishing tactile space.  I feel the hard ground beneath me, I feel my body coming in contact with it, and I also begin to sense how my own volition controls these appendages of mine.  I kick my legs.  Swing my arms.  Clasp various things with my hands.  Stick things in my mouth.  Bite down on everything I can.  And so on.

Eventually I get a feel for my own body, and how it relates with the immediate environment I’m in.  I also notice that as I’m squirming about, the images I see with my eyes keep rotating and spinning.  Eventually though I start to correlate it.

For example, when I move my head, I watch the environment “turn”.  This movement brought about a muscular sensation.  Then I move my head a different way, and I watch the picture I was seeing return back to its initial state.  When I turned my head one way, the picture changed.  But once I moved my head back, the image returned back to how I first saw it.  This is the very beginning of the 3D box space we all know.

Eventually we start to see space using our eyes.  This is because we link our tactile sensations and our visual sensations together, based on our motor movements.  Say there’s a flat screen television mounted on the wall of this living room.  We “aim” our head at the television, then crawl toward it.  We watch the visual sensations change.  But then we crawl backwards, and it returns to the same image from before.  We begin to link our movements with what we see.  Various movements bring us the same images, and tactile sensations, and we correlate those together.  We have formed our first concepts of “location”.

We start to give “objects” a “location”.  An “object” is a set of visual images and tactile feelings, and “location” is us remembering motor movements and subsequent tactile and visual impressions we’ll experience “getting” to that location.  We link everything together in this web of chains of experiences.

So how the images and other sensations change based on our motor volitions, determines space.

To summarize, we see that we could have no concept of space without our sense of touch and our ability to achieve mobility.  We have to be able to move in order to experience different locations.  If we were confined to a single location, and could only see a series of changing visual images, we could never form any conception of space or objects at all.   It would be no different than a slide show of random colors, which would never make any sense to us whatsoever.

Taking in isolation, none of our individual sensations, whether tactile, or visual, could lead us to an idea of “space”.  We only come to think of “space” when we begin to study how these sensations change based on our own motor volition.  We watch their succession, and begin to get a “feel” for space before too long.

Changes Of State and Changes Of Position

So far, the world we’ve described does not allow for things to move, or change state.  In the real world, things move all the time, and objects change in all sorts of ways.  How does our brain come to understand these things?

First let’s discuss position, and an object moving through space.  Let’s go back to the beach, with my beautiful lover.  She kisses me, smiles, then takes a few steps back from me.  Then she takes a few more steps back, and stops.  I’m well aware of her movement.  But what does that mean?  What does it mean for her to “move”, and how did I know about it?

I understand movement in terms of my own movement.  When we kissed, her face was next to my own.  Then she took a few steps back.  In order for me to restore that same visual image of her face, I take a few steps toward her.  I once again have restored the same picture from before.  I see her face up close once again.

Now how do I know whether she moved, or whether I moved?  How do I judge this?  If I see the images change, but feel no accompanying muscular contractions in my own body, I assume that she moved.  I myself have not moved.  If, on the other hand, I feel the muscular contractions, I know that I was the one who brought the change.

So we have a few two scenarios when we’re experiencing a change in sensory impressions:

1.  If I attempted no motor “movement”, and felt no muscular sensations, yet the images and sensations are changing, the object I’m seeing is “moving”.

2. If I attempted motor movement, and feel the muscular sensations, this happens when the object is not moving.  Its stationary and I’m the one bringing about the “movement”.

Now let’s give another example, then discuss what it means for an object to change its state.

My lover is several yards away from me staring me in the eyes.  She apparently likes this little game we’re playing.  She smiles, then she “turns”.  How did my brain recognize this as a turn?  This is because I can “correct” her turn, by walking in a counter circle, relative to how she turned.  I take a few steps in this circle, then once again we’re making eye contact again.

But what about changes in state?  Say a strong breeze blows in, and her long hair is blown into the air.  How did I recognize this as a state change in this lovely woman?  This is due to the fact that I cannot “correct” this change by any motor movements of my own.  I can continue to walk around her in circles, but her hair, which was once hanging down, is now blowing in the wind.  There’s no movement I can do to change that, without going right up to her, and pressing her hair down with my hands.

Watching these state changes is how we come to think of things in “pieces”.  When I saw my lover’s hair blow in the wind, I noticed that her facial position stayed in the same “location” as before.  Her arms, body, and legs, are all in the same “location” as before.  (Remember “location” is motor movements I would have to bring forth to experience those things in a certain way)  Thing is, her hair no longer is in the same location.  It changed location, and I didn’t feel any muscular sensations, so therefore I was not behind the change I’m seeing.

We Finally Define Space!

So what is “space”, then?  Space is our ability to change our impressions through volition, then reestablish those same experiences, and have them once again in relatively the same manner.  Location is a series of motions we can perform which leads to a particular experience we remember, or have been told about, or have possibly imagined.

For example, the flat-panel TV mounted on the wall in the living room.  We’re in the kitchen.  We get out of the chair, walk down the hallway, through the doorway, to the center of the room, turn, and there is the television on the wall, just as we remembered it.  Every time we look at that wall, there the TV is, on the same wall.  We have nearly the same experience each time we walk down the hallway, walk into the living room, turn, and look in that direction.  And if something has changed, because we have a memory, we can say, “Hey, what is this box in the middle of the walkway?  Who left this here?”

This definition of “space” works not just for our own world, but for other “worlds” as well.  Say you’re playing Super Mario on the Nintendo, telling your nerdy girlfriend about a secret passage.  She says, “Where is it?  How do I get there?”  So you both sit down in the living room.  You take the controller into your hands and hit the Nintendo’s power button.  You begin to push buttons on the controller, which brings about certain changes on the TV screen, which you remember.  You move the little Mario on the screen to the pipe, you tell him to go down the pipe, you watch the little Mario guy fall, then land on the ground.  Then you move him some more, and then to the secret passage.  You recognize the graphics which display on the screen and say, “Here it is!”  She then says, “Oh my God I love you!”  Then passionately makes love to you on the living room floor.   Nerdy girls are the best!

Another example is knowing the “location” of a website on the internet.  Location is the perfect word really.  You type in an address into the bar on the web browser and a series of familiar images displays on the screen.  Same thing.  This web address is just as spatial as the “real” location “Paris, France”.  It’s an experience you can bring about if you perform certain actions.   And just as you can get to the same website from multiple computers, you can get to the same location in “actual” space by multiple paths.  It seems almost unconsciously that the people who used the word “location” for a web “address” understood this conception of space.

Controlling Mario on the Nintendo is no different than controlling your real body.  Through a series of voluntary movements you bring about changes in your experiences.  That’s all that space is, in its most general sense.  You’re just as alive playing a video game as you are walking around in the “real” world.  I’m not sure what someone means when they say gamers have “no life.”  When do you stop living?  Life’s just a series of experiences strung together by the twine of our memory.  You can never leave reality.  You’re always there.  You just choose one experience over another.

3D Geometric “Box” Space

Finally we come to the three dimensional conception of space we’re all so familiar with.  It arises as we come to form approximate conceptions of what we’ll call a “solid body”.  In general, a solid body is one where displacements it undergoes can be corrected by our own subsequent movements.

Solid bodies have a tendency to hold their form for long periods time -  long enough for us to unite them together in memory, and form conceptions of space.   If that consistency was not there, we could never form a concept of space.

If everything was like a liquid, constantly flowing this way and that, and never holding to any particular shape or pattern, we could not form a conception of space.  Things have to remain constant.  Laws and patterns must exist.  Geometry and space rely on matter holding to various forms long enough for us to relate them together.

The 3D space we’re acquainted with is formed in our minds due to these solid bodies which exist in our world.  My computer desk is a solid body.  My Playstation 2.  My history book here on the desk.  My computer monitor.  They hold their form and continue to exist for a long period of time.   Throughout my typing of this entire entry, they’ve stayed here on the desk, in their same relative positions, appearing in exactly the same way.

When I form a concept of them, my mind wants to represent them in a three dimensional geometry.   Like my desk for example.  It’s rectangular.  Is its absolute shape rectangular?  No.  On a microscopic level its surface is rough and bumpy.  It’s also mostly empty space, even though to me it appears solid. And as we mentioned earlier, its edges would curve and bend, if I was to approach near light speeds.

But I never move anywhere near light speed.  As I move toward it and away from it at very slow speeds (relative to the speed of light), I see it in a perspective, and all its edges remain straight edged.  It gets smaller as I go far away, and gets larger as I approach it.  The desk’s edges shift at angles based on how I rotate my head, and where I’m standing relative to the desk.

The reason I “see” the desk is because of light coming from the bulb on my ceiling.  Electromagnetic radiation emits from the light on my ceiling, approaches the desk, excites the atoms of the desk’s surface, they radiate light waves back to my eyes, and I see the desk.

I can also feel the desk with my hands, and form a conception of space based on my tactile senses.  With that there is a complex dynamic of forces and atoms, as my hand approaches the desk and comes into contact with it.  I push on the desk, and it pushes back on me with equal and opposite force.  We’ll discuss more of the physics of this phenomenon later.

So by now you should have an idea what space is, and how we form our first ideas of it.  This brings us near the end of this first “lecture” on Space and 3D Geometry.  But there’s much much more to discuss, as we will soon see.  For now, let’s briefly highlight what to expect in our next lecture.

Relativity and Space-Time!

In our next lecture we will discuss how light works, and some of the strange dynamics involved with it.  In particular, we’ll be covering the famous Michelson and Morley experiment.   We’ll see that light is very strange indeed!   Light doesn’t work how you think it does.   Since one of our primary conceptions of space comes from sight, which is based on light, we’ll start to learn some strange things about our world when we look into Einstein’s research.  Also, in later lectures, we’ll discuss the quantum mechanical nature of matter, and attempt to discuss what tactile sensation would be like when moving at near light speeds.  Eventually we’ll find ourselves talking about the big-bang, curved space-time, and the universe.  So look forward to it!

What is alienation?  In short, it’s when people don’t love and accept one another, for whatever reason.  A person, or group of individuals, treats another person or group of individuals, in ways that make them feel they are out of place, and do not belong.

I kept thinking about the fact that no matter what decision I make, and no matter what lifestyle I choose, I will always bring some closer to me, and will push others away.  It’s sad, but in life you can choose to be in with this crowd, or that crowd, but it’s rarely the case that you can be part of both.

It’s amazing that no matter what you do, some will admire you, and others will look down on you, for the same exact decisions and actions.  I’ve been pursuing my business adventures since I was 16, hoping to make enough money to be financially free, so I can pursue some of the things I’ve always wanted to do.  It’s been a rough road.  I can be around a group of business men and they’ll cheer me on, telling me to stick with it, and admire my resolve and determination.  Then I can spend some time around others, such as a group of college students, and they’ll start telling me things like, “Your business pursuits are consuming you.  It just seems wrong to me.”  I had one friend tell me I was “chasing my shadow”.  It doesn’t matter what you choose, some will like you, others will disapprove of you.

I talked to some of my friends about my recent experiences lifting weights, and how I’ve been gaining a lot of muscle mass.  I get mixed replies.  When I see the changes, I look in the mirror and see the new me and think, “This is nice.”  I talk with Greg and he’s like, “Yeah, that’s great.  You should keep that up.”  I talk to some girls, and they think the change is good.  But that’s not to say everyone likes it.  I showed a picture of how muscular I plan to get to one friend and he said, “I’d never want to look like that.”  The guy in the picture had veins slightly popping out of his arms, and he thought that was gross.  I thought, “The guy had just been lifting weights…”  But it doesn’t matter.

If you’re slim and in good health, some will hate you just because you look good.  Others will hate you if you DON’T look good.  You’ll hear something like, “Oh, she’s just little miss perfect”, “She’s a spoiled princess”, “She’s so lucky, all the guys like her!”  Then if she doesn’t look good, other people will be saying, “She’s so undisciplined.  People are so lazy.  Why can’t they make time to go to the gym!  She should put more effort into her appearance.”

If you’re clean and organized, some people will hate you for that.  My friend Greg showed a picture of his place to a girl, and she responded, “It doesn’t look like you live there.”  To her, a place isn’t “lived in” unless it’s a bit messy and at least a little disorganized.  To another person, Greg’s high level of cleanliness is the ideal, and they can’t stand messiness or disorganization of any kind!  They can’t stand slobs!

If you’re morally blameless, and have lived a good life, there are those who will hate you, telling you that you’re spoiled, and don’t know about the “real world”.  But this same sort of nastiness can be directed the opposite way, when people are found morally disreputable, for all kinds of reasons, and the other side stands with the halo and plays the saint.

With my parents, who are devout religious believers, I feel alienated when any topic of God or religion is brought up.  It’s not me either.  It’s religious intolerance. I immediately feel like an outcast, and do not belong around them.  My beliefs are most closely aligned to that of an athiest, but that’s not to say I am one.  I don’t think there’s really much difference at all between those who “believe” in God, and those who don’t.  People who generally tell me to “believe” in God rarely seem to have any conception as to what a human “belief” entails.  Generally speaking, a person’s actions show what they believe, and do not believe — not some confession out of their mouth.  Bertrand Russell defined “belief” very well.  Because it’s so important to understand the kinds of arguments a smart atheist brings up, I’ll quote some passage out of his book ‘Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits’:

“‘Belief,’ as I wish to use the word, denotes a state of mind or body, or both, in which an animal acts with reference to something not sensibly present.  When I go to the station in expectation of finding a train, my action expresses a belief.  So does the action of a dog excited by the smell of fox.  So does that of a bird in a room, which flies against the window panes in the hope of getting out.  Among human beings, the only action by which a belief is expressed is, very often, the pronouncing of appropriate words.
…
To put the matter schematically, with a more or less unreal simplication: The presence of a stimulus A causes a certain kind of behavior, say B; as a result of experience, something else, say C, may cause B in the absence of A.  In that case, C may be said to cause “belief” in A, and “belief” in A may be said to be a feature of the behavior B.  When words come in, all this becomes more precise.  The sight of a fox (A) causes you to pronounce the word ‘fox’ (B); you may learn the trail of a fox in snow (C), and, seeing it, say ‘fox.’  You are then ‘believing’ A because of C.  And if the trail WAS made by a fox, your belief is true.”

Taking this as a tentative definition for what a “belief” is, then what would it mean for me to “believe” in God?  My Dad tells me to ‘believe’ that Jesus died and rose again, and those who believe the Biblical account of his death and resurrection will have eternal life, and their sins forgiven.  So say some prayer and confess it in the presence of the church body?  That’s what it means to believe?  No you say, it’s my actions?  You’ll know a Christian by their fruits? A lot of people live morally, far better than a lot of Christians, and I wouldn’t say they’re “believers”.  All I could envision “believing” in Jesus to mean, for me, is that I tell people “I believe in Jesus”, if they ask.  It’s a mindless, meaningless blurb of words I spout out as a conditioned response.  It sounds so superfluous to me to not even be worth anything.  I don’t know Jesus, he never talks to me, I’ve never seen his face.  And as for those who say Jesus DOES talk to them, how could this be?  How could they BELIEVE in Jesus by FAITH, if they KNOW Jesus?  If they know him, it’s not a test of their faith to believe, and really no faith is even involved.  None of it even makes sense to me, yet so many people think atheists are immoral people, who lack all virtue!  But these sorts of things divide people, and alienate family members.

The educated alienate the uneducated, and the uneducated alienate the educated.  When I’m around very intelligent people, they can’t stand those whose views aren’t rooted in strong empirical evidence.  They have a lot of trouble tolerating idiots.  Whether it’s the constant misunderstandings, the stupid retorts, or whatever, they just can’t stand to “debate” with a person who hasn’t even taken time to pick up a book, and can’t even follow basic logic.  But the uneducated are the same way.  There’s religious people who will burn books they haven’t even read.  They won’t respect anyone without faith.

The poor alienate the rich, and the rich alienate the poor.  Movies are geared to the masses, who are in general relatively poor, and their films tend to play out the rich as these miserably greedy individuals, whose life is empty.  The rich are shallow people, who haven’t learned to enjoy the simple things in life.  And the fact that a lot of rich, powerful men marry women for reasons other than what most normal people are accustomed to, they find even more reason to deride them.

The poor hate the rich because they find them too ambitious.  Then the rich can’t stand the poor because they lack ambition.  The rich get mad because they work so hard, and their money is taxed so heavily, and handed to people who work much less.  The poor feel the rich have too much money, and there’s an unequal distribution of wealth.

I find my greatest joy in studying books, and reading.  I love to learn new things.  That’s my passion.  My thoughts resemble those of the great philospoher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead:

“Our minds are finite, and yet even in those circumstances of finitude, we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.”

To him, life is about understanding as much as possible before he dies.  If knowledge is a mountain, he wants to climb as high as he can, and see the world from the highest point possible.  When he grows old, and stands at a great height overlooking the world, he finally reaps his reward.

The Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman wrote a book specifically about the joys of finding things out.  To relive the adventures and discoveries of past ages, and to resolve every problem that has ever been solved! For what reason? There is no reason!  Knowledge is its own reward.

I read their books and think, “I want to be like you guys!”  You’d think you’d be univerally admired for ambitions like these, but in reality, not really.  Most girls you date will find you boring.  Instead of watching movies with her, you stay in your study working on mathematical equations representing various physical phenomenon.  I’ve had girls tell me I’m boring.  One girl I’m fond of told me, “I wish you’d live more.”  When I read that I thought, “What do you consider life?”  Running a successful company, and dreams of science pursuits of space, physics, and depth psychology are boring I guess.  I tend to disagree.

My parents don’t admire me for my studies at all.  The only thing they see is me “losing faith” in Christianity.  To them, I’m “backsliding”. As for what I may or may not understand, they could really care less.

Everyone has their own way they think life should be lived.  I’d go so far as to say everyone is living their own ideal.  That’s not to say their life is “ideal”, in the sense that they’re happy and successful.  What I’m saying is they all have a big torrent of views in their head, swirling about, which is how they think themselves, and others, should live.  As for why they themselves are not successful, or why their own views aren’t bringing them happiness, they typically blame others, such as the corrupt politicians, or the bankers, their spouse, their children, or someone else.  These views in people’s head, without other levels of psychological and spiritual understanding, are what cause alienation.

I once saw an anti-drug commercial, which I’m very fond of.  Unfortunately I’m not able to find it on YouTube.  It shows a kid who wants to fit in, so at first he dresses like a prep, then a punk, then a cowboy, then a gangster in baggy clothes, then he gets tattoos and shaves his head, then he grows out and dyes a red mohawk, and several other transformations.  New friends keep coming into his room each time he changes.

So many people will see a commercial like that and say, “Haha, so stupid for someone to give in to social pressure like that.”  I think this commercial is deeper than social pressure though.  I believe the most important message conveyed is that people oftentimes won’t love others unless they’re part of their “clique”.  Notice, new friends come and go, as his image changes — which is true to life.  What the kid is really looking for is acceptance.

The same people who make fun of the kid in the commercial are the same ones locked into cliques, and think their identity is formed by “choosing who they are”.  They’ve found something they like, and have found themselves, unlike this boy in the commercial, who lets others define him.  They’re the “authetic” cowboy, or the “authetic” prep, or the “authetic” gangster.  They don’t realize their own misconceptions, which are the cause of so much misery in the world.

The commercial is geared to teenagers, so it talks about social groups of preps, cowboys, jocks, etc.  But in the real world, it’s not much different.  There’s the Christians, the Muslims, the Democrats, the Republicans, the rich, the poor, the in shape, the out of shape, the beautiful, the ugly, the scientist, the factory worker, and on and on.  All these different social clubs.

Very few people can see through this facade of being an “authentic” whatever, and notice that they’re all just masks, and none of them embody the real us.  Considering that we can always change, there is no such thing as an “authetic” anything.  Jean Paul Satre, in his book “Being and Nothingness” calls this “bad faith”.  It’s when you believe you’re something, when you’re really not.  In his book he compares it to a waiter in a restaurant.  The girl waiting on your table does not have to be a waitress, but she chooses to be, and plays that role, much like an actor.  She’s not a “waitress”, in a metaphysical sense.  There’s nothing insider of her, in her biological constitution, which is telling her, “You must be a waiter!  This is the true you!  Sarah, this is your DESSTTIINNNYYYYY.”  She’s only acting the role of a waitress at that moment, and in the future she could easily be something different.

There’s nothing wrong with choosing a role.  In fact, we HAVE to choose a role in order to interact with each other, and live.  You have to be able to see behind the masks, however.  Behind every role is a living essence.  It’s indefinable, and always transcending the present and moving toward the future.  People are not their masks, they’re what’s under the mask.

If you’re like me, and would like to see a world where people get along, respect one another, and live in peace, one of the first things we all have to do is realize that all these choices we have available to us in life are not embodiments of who we are, but are more akin to roles in a big theater like environment, which we call life.

That’s not to say every role is equal.  There are roles that are horrible, and it’s our choice what roles we play.  Some roles, and combinations of roles together, make for a much better performance, and a much better life for all of us on stage.  Being Hitler is a role any of us could choose to play, but that’s not to say it’s a good one.

I also think it’s worth noting that selecting our role in life is a difficult process, and more often than not, we sort of end up in our role after a long complicated series of events, much of which are unplanned.  That’s not to say our life is determined. I’m just saying that life has a tendency to blow you around if you don’t fight the currents.

I think we all start off life in a blank room, surrounded by unmarked doors.  It’s most often the case that we go to open doors, and have no idea what’s behind them.  We choose that path, and find ourselves in one of those roles, and from then on we do what we can.  It’s not effortless to change roles either, especially when you’ve made your way through countless hallways and passages.  It takes time to backtrack.  That’s why people are so resistant to change.

Sometimes we’re lucky enough to have people who help us along the way, and tell us what’s behind various doors before we enter them.  A lot of us don’t have this luxury, however.  Life, in general, is very difficult and complicated.

As for helping others select “good” doors to enter, that’s worth talking about as well.

About eight years ago, I started my philosphy quest, hoping to one day be this wise sage in my old age, who could warn the young as to all the pits and dangers, and keep them from making the common mistakes in life.  I’d study all the literature and books, and find out all that’s most important in life.  I’d learn how to prosper and be rich, and teach others how to life a life of abundance and happiness as well!

It’s an admirable quest, I think, but the problem I’m experiencing, and what others before me have already experienced, is that wisdom is something everyone has to acquire for themselves.  Belief in authority can only work for so long, and has too many drawbacks.  When it comes to helping others, it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are.  An idiot is incapable of understanding things at your level, and will not even listen to what you have to say.

I saw Richard Dawkins interviewed on Bill O’Reilly’s Factor (Fox News), and they were talking about God and atheism.  I saw countless comments on YouTube, and everyone was saying O’Reilly’s arguments “crushed” Dawkins.  Somehow O’Reilly had proved that God existed.  If you study philosophy and logic, Dawkins was clearly far more intelligent, and his arguments more refined.  The problem is Dawkins arguments are complicated, and require serious study to understand whereas  O’Reilly’s arguments pander to pre-existing instinctual drives, which people are already pre-disposed to believe.

Men naturally want to believe they’re the center of the universe.  We’re born selfish.  It took us countless ages to finally realize the Earth is not the center of the universe, and that mankind means little in the big scheme of things.  In fact, after centuries of study, the intelligent among us are realizing that we’re ignorant fools, waltzing about the Earth for a short while, touting mostly nonsense, then die.  We evolved from primordial slime, which orginally was just a chunk of the sun which broke off a long long time ago.  Our universe, as far as we can trace it back, started off as a gigantic explosion, and the formation of planet Earth was just as fantastic.

When you become more wise, you start to realize that your life means very little in the big cosmic scheme of things.  In fact, when you become very intelligent, you find that there is no intrinsic “meaning” to be found in anything.  “Meaning” is relative, and it’s up to us, as humans, to give meaning to things.  Meaning only exists in our brains and emotions, and oftentimes changes from human to human.  What’s “meaningful” to one person, is “meaningless” to another.

You can take three different people, and have them listen to a speech by a great man, such as Martin Luther King Jr.  After you play the speech, ask them to tell you what it “means”.  If they’re not intelligent, you’ll get three different answers, but the more educated they are, the more alike their answers will be.

It’s easy to tell people the earth was created by a God, who is a nice male father figure, just like us, and that he flew around in space and created everything.  God creates man, in his own image, and then creates the animals, for us to rule over.  It’s a nice pretty picture, until you study biology, cosmology, physics, and other sciences – it all falls apart.  Biology will remove the distinction between species and show you their true origin, and how they change over time.  Cosmology and physics will tell you about the formation of planets and galaxies, the big bang, movements of the stars, and the laws that govern our universe.  But O’Reilly conveniently dodged all these difficulties by just saying, “Oh, so you [Dawkins] are admitting that you scientists haven’t figured it all out?”  How could scientists figure it “all out”, when there’s literally infinite knowledge to find out?  We’re as sure evolution took place as the Earth goes around the sun… how much more certain do we have to be?

I’m sure there’s already a huge percentage of people who read those last paragraphs and already disagree with me.  I read a whole library of books, and condense it into a few paragraphs.  I’m sure a lot of people have no idea what I just said, or the importance of anything in this entry.  But that can’t be changed I suppose.  I send some of my philosophy journal entries to scientists who work at Lockheed Martin, and NASA, and they respond to me saying, “That was wonderful!  Such an insightful read”, and give me glowing praise.  I send the same material to others who aren’t anywhere near as intelligent, and they quarrel with me on just about every point.

There’s generally a consensus among people who read books on a lot of things.  That’s because, generally speaking, such books contains facts and information, which changes the reader’s opinions on things.  They come to trust in empirical research and science, and all opinions tend to disappear, and only truth remains.  This truth is the unification factor, which makes all people who know it universally agree.

There’s sure to be a confusion when I tell people to love everyone, regardless of what they believe, or what they think, yet at the same time, only acknowledge empirical reason as truth.  If science points to evolution as true, than how can I reconcile this with a person who believes the Biblical account in Genesis?  The answer is, I don’t try to reconcile anything.  People who don’t know the truth, and haven’t studied into the science and biology of it all, I view them more akin to a child who is doing something stupid.  I don’t hate a kid in school just because he gets a math problem wrong.  I try to help them if they’ll at least listen, but if not, I don’t worry about it.  I don’t look down on them though.  And that’s what’s important.

Most people’s views are held because of the information they’ve been exposed to.  If they get a hold of the right information, and the right arguments, they’ll make the right decisions, most of the time.  I think what’s most important is to have arguments, documentaries, and books readily available for when the person is finally ready to open their mind, even if just a little bit, to hear out what others are saying.

It’s also important to say that everyone is a work in progress, and none of us complete.  We have to be patient with one another.  It’s silly to spend 10 years studying books, and then charge into a school building and start yelling at all the kids, because they don’t understand it all.  It’ll take time, and many people will never put forth the effort the learn.  Knowledge is a gift only given to those willing to seek it out and work for it.  It’s something that truly has to be earned.

I think when it comes to this subject of alienation, in the beginning people have to adhere to a simple precept of “masks”, where this principle tells them to accept other people and their ways of life out of a moral duty.  It may be a struggle for them, but they’ll adhere to it as a moral principle, and just do it because it’s the “moral” thing to do.  Later, with intelligence, if they hopefully acquire it one day, they’ll learn what I mean when I’m talking about the masks.  They’ll read books like Satre’s Being and Nothingness, think about what it means to even be human, and then realize that it makes no sense NOT to live this way.

Unfortunately I have doubts whether that would even be effective.  Morals enforced and fueled by will power are never as effective as people UNDERSTANDING why they should obey certain moral rules.  We run into another instance of my favorite quote: There is no solution to a lack of knowledge.  It embodies everything I’ve ever learned, including all treatments and problems of alienation.

If you were to ask the average person what they think of when they envison a man or woman with courage they’ll probably recount to you a story like the following:  A fireman rushes into a burning building to save a trapped child, a soldier risks his life for his country, or a policeman stands his ground to a mob of criminals.  Stories such as these tell of men and women who face strong outward adversity yet stand strong, and do not let the danger of the situation influence them.

I would definitely consider these displays of courage, but only one form of it.  I’d also say it’s far from the most useful form of courage.  Go around to the people around you, and ask them how many opportunites they’ve had to save a child from a burning building?  How many opportunities have they’ve had to save a distressed woman from a group of thugs?  How many opportunities to display calmness when in a hostage situation?  You can probably fit this entire group in a small room, and as for the rest of us billions of people on the planet, such stories are more fitting for newspaper headlines and movies than real-life practical application.  Disconnected from our real-lives we read such stories, find them amusing, and they have no real affect on us whatsoever.

The valuable forms of courage are more rare, and subtle.  Fear is the opposite of courage, and the most common fears I see in people normally relates to their past.  Love is the most common.  Relationships are typically latent with troubles, and we all know they oftentimes don’t work out.  People become bitter and let their past dictate their future.  Psychological fears of this sort seem to follow the following equation: There is a fear that what has happened in the past will happen again, and you are powerless to fix the situation.  Fear that you no longer have control over various aspects of your life, so instead of confronting it, and mastering it, you run from it.  Such psychological fears go far beyond love life.  Any failure in any area of life can bring on this type of fear.

The situation between the fireman and the burning building, and the single person looking for love, but scared to try it again, are very similar.  Both were confronted with a situation they didn’t like, and ideally wish it never happened, but the fireman took charge, overcame his fear, and did what he had to do to make things right.  The single person cowers in fear.

One of the main differences in this situation, however, is that with the fireman there is an outward danger facing him.  The danger is obvious.  The troubled lover, however, his or her troubles do not exist in reality: they are only in the mind.  This inner fear, and overcoming it, is the most valuable form of courage — far more valuable than overcoming things you fear in the outer world.

Inner demons will never leave you alone until you confront them.  A fire burning down a building eventually burns out, and things are back to normal.  An inner demon’s fire blazes night and day, never relenting, and is always waiting for its chance to surface.  Psychologists call them “projections”, because they are like a projector which follows behind you, and your body is a transparency slide, and the projector shines an image in front of you, which you think is a demon, but it’s really your own fears inside of you.  People project their own past fears onto others.

There are all kinds of psychological fears, and its rare to find someone without them.  With some its superstition of all kinds, including religion.  They read their horoscope and it tells them the day isn’t going to go so well, and they get fearful.  Others believe God is sitting up in heaven, watching their every move, and for every “sin” they commit hell’s flames are dancing waiting to suck them up.

Even more common than religion and superstition, but less common than love frustrations, would be public humiliation: the fear of shame and disgrace.  This form of psychological fear is rampant.  It may even be more powerful than love related fears, I don’t know.  Everyone’s continually watching over their shoulder, and making sure they stay within the socially accepted norms, even if they don’t really like the standards very much.  They fear the possibility of being in a social situation, and the crowd looks to them with signs of disapproval.

When it comes to social situations, the issue of “trying to conform” is a difficult one.  Let’s take both extremes.  Say no one conforms to anything, and everyone walks their own road.  Such a world lacks any form of unity, and no society as we know it is possible.  It’s pure disorder and chaos – literal anarchy.  On the opposite extreme, everyone conforms to some immutable set of rules, and there is pure unity.  Problem is there’s no growth and nothing new.  Historically both extremes have been tried, and both have failed.  The answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Most of the benefits we enjoy in life come from a united world.  If we had to do everything on our own, we’d be savages running around in the woods.  We live in a country with a constitution written by other people, speak a language someone else invented, and learn complex knowledge discovered by others from past ages.  We eat food others have produced, listen to music others have composed, and live in homes other people have built.  Our country is united by a complex economic system, and many of the comforts we enjoy are due to people who have worked hard to make things as good as they are.  Is it perfect?  No.  There’s work to do, but believe me, the troubles of living with others are far less than the difficulties you’d encounter if you took on life completely alone.

Modern philosophical thought wonders to how to unite people, yet allow freedom at the same time.  People have such varying desires, what common ground exists that we can all strive toward?  Is there a social framework that exists where everyone can be happy?  If not, what is the most optimal?

But setting that issue aside, you must have courage to go against the social herd, if need be.  To give an example, my family is a group of extreme Christian fundamentalists.  The Bible is to be interpreted literally, and it’s the inspired word of God, and it’s all that matters in life.  I grew up going to church, and doing everything I was supposed to do, and though the Bible promised happiness and joy, I found myself miserable.  I began questioning everything, and then I began studying many books.  Eventually I came across biology texts, and learned of evolution.  Then there was Sigmund Freud, and psychoanalysis.  Then there was history, and comparative religious studies.  I found so many flaws in the Bible, it’s unbelivable.  I found moral teachings that were simply unacceptable.  The story of the origin of life was contradictory to scientific evidence.  I found gods that were near identical to Jesus in the ancient world, thousands of years before Jesus ever existed.  Identical stories – lamb of God, died for the sins of the world on a cross, blood forgives sins, twelve disciples, died between two thieves, rose from the dead three days later, etc.  I heard doctrines being taught behind pulpits which went against proven laws of psychology.  Ways of viewing discipline was wrong.  Ethics was way out in left field, making morality into staying sexually pure and how many church servies you attend, and how many hours you spend praying, instead of what really matters in life.  I could go on and on, but needless to say, there came a time when I needed to confront my parents about this.

These are the most commmon kinds of situations which require courage.  My parents had certain expectations of me, and like any child, I wish I could live up to all of them.  But later I found I had to walk my own path, and unfortunately, my path had to be distinct from the road they wanted me to go on.  I told my parents I wasn’t going to go to church anymore.  My mom made a short scene, but overall, it went over a lot better than I thought it would.

I was once hanging out with a good friend of mine.  We were in the park sitting in the back of his truck, after we had attended a party.  We started talking about these kinds of topics, and he told me something that stuck with me.  He said, “Yeah, we oftentimes let the stupidest people in this world dictate our lives, simply because if we don’t conform to what they want us to do, they throw a fit.”  I think in most social situations, it’s this “fit” that we fear.  It’s tiresome putting up with a bunch of irate people operating in stupidity.

My parents are not stupid people, but when it comes to areas where religion is involved, such as origins of life, etc., their mind is like hamburger.  All critical thinking is turned off, and replaced with fairy tales.  With my Dad, I could say, “Hey Dad, what about the fossil record?  What about the dinosaur bones which are millions of years old?”  He’d acknowledge these bones exist, that carbon dating expresses a fact that is true, and that there is no conspiracy.  Then I’d say, “Well the Bible says the animals were created, then Adam and Eve, all within a week, so that must mean Adam and Eve were created millions of years ago, if we take a literal interpretation.”  That’s when he would get weird, get irate, and tell me I don’t know anything.  Or maybe he’d quote an obscure passage from the book of Isiah, and give some discourse about past dispensations, before man, when Satan ruled the Earth.  (It’s sad seeing intelligent people trying to make sense of a book like the Bible.)

The problem he doesn’t wish to confront is the long lineages in the Bible, which is where the all too popular “6000 year old Earth” comes from.  If you’ve read the Bible, I’m sure you’ll recall the lonnnnnnngggggggg lineages, where it says, “so and so begat so and so, and so and so begat so and so …” and the list goes on.  The long lineages which go from Adam to David, and from King David to Jesus in the New Testament.  Well, the Bible has two “life-span classes” of people, those who used to live a long time, and then after a curse mankind’s lifespan was limited to 120 years.  Those who lived a long time, their ages were given when they had their children, and how old they were when they died.  If you extrapolote all this information, and you take all the names in that lineage list, multiply then all my 120 years, and for the other guys who lived longer, add up their lifespans as well, and add up 2000 or so years for when Jesus was born, you get around 6000 years, approximately.  A fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis certainly cannot be true.  But if you make that symbolic and not literal, what else in the Bible becomes symbolic?  Maybe Jesus never literally died on a cross, maybe hell is a spiritual kinda concept representing a psychological torment instead of flames in the afterlife?

Thinking of “begetting”, fear begets more fear.  The Christian fundamentalist belives it all literally, because God supposedly requires faith in his word, or you’re calling Him a liar.  What are the consequences if you don’t believe it literally?  You go to hell and suffer eternal torment.  So originally they believe the “Word of God” in fear.  Not because it makes sense to them.  If you question them as to “why”, they say, “God’s ways are higher than our ways.”  In other words, it doesn’t have to make sense to our petty minds.  But that’s not what’s really going on.  This is all fear driven.  The next “Jesus freak” you encounter on the street, who tries to “witness” to you, just listen for the line, “You can choose not to believe this.  That’s your choice.  But what if I’m right, and you’re wrong?”  This is a direct sign that they’re in fear.  They’re directly saying, “I fear what’s in this book. I fear the God this book writes about, and fear going to hell. You should too.”  After all, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.”  Please.  Believe things contrary to all scientific evidence, and cower in fear of an afterlife in hell.  God is pure love, yet he’s going to torch you for eternity if you don’t believe a bunch of stuff that doesn’t even remotely make sense to you.  Jesus’ suicide mission to spill his blood on the ground is the only way mankind could ever be “reconciled” to God.  After studying indepth psychology, it’s hard to even believe in such harsh “right” and “wrong”, because you start looking at the causes to people’s actions, and people all become to same.  You’ll even look on the mass murderer with compassion.

If someone wakes up a mass murderer, then it’s obviously instinctual drives pushing them to it, and they cannot be blamed.  If they acquire such tendencies throughout life, you need to examine their set of beliefs and ideals, and then look into their past and see what events happened to them.  People’s beliefs are formed from the events they experience.  They’re a decision as to how they’re going to deal with the future, typically based upon what’s happened in their past.  If they read such information in a book, the author had such experiences, etc.  People are typically predisposed to certain beliefs and inclinations, based on their past history.  For example, if someone has never been shown love, or respected, they’re statistically prone to hold a mindset like, “In life, you have to take care of things for yourself.”  If they are an older person, and have never seen much love, it’s difficult for them to believe in others.

To such an individual as this, you don’t morally criticize them.  That just makes things worse.  They’ll just think, “There’s the self-righteous saint.”  You show them love that they’ve never seen.  Or you show others love, and they see you doing so.  At first, they’ll just think you’re a strange exception, and have deep respect for you, even if it’s unspoken.  And if they see enough love, they’ll eventually start to change their mind back the other way – not instantly, but over time.  It’s amazing how much one person showing love can change.  They can literally transform the world around them.

I’ve had this happen to me before.  I’m no saint.  There’s been times, especially during business endeavors, that I’ve encountered some real scum bags.  You get surrounded by a bunch of filth and mindsets start to creep in, “People are worthless.  They’re just trash.”  Then someone will send you a card and inside it will say, “I really admire what you’re doing”, or maybe they send you a very thoughtful gift.  It’s times like these that fight off those evil mindsets, and make you step back and say, “What was I thinking.  Not everyone is this way.  There’s really good people out there.”

If a mass murderer is raised in an environment where he’s shown all kinds of love, is treated well and kindly by everyone he encounters, and people are always helpful, it’s difficult to pick up a gun and go shooting everyone.  It’s rare for people to take a knife and stab their mother, especially if their mother has always been good to them.

Of course the situation is more complex than this.  There’s repression and unconscious behavior, where rational judgement gets impaired due to complex inner workings of our brains: but even when you study this, you see that people with such problems are dealing with a machine malfunction, and it’s not something to morally condemn them over.

For example, a man may have serious marital problems – so serious his mind can’t concentrate.  Eventually he tries to direct his mind off these things, but there’s too much psychic energy, and he ends up with some serious “repressions”.  These are caused because so many things are associated with his wife, and he doesn’t want to think of his wife, or things connected to her.  Because of this, he may get psychically off balance, and not be able to think clearly.  That’s when he’s prone to do things which we label psychotic.  Any painful event someone wishes to avoid thinking about can cause this.  This is a machine malfunction – a brain overload.

The religious person’s mindset toward hell, and sin, and all morality is just totally off in left field.  But I used to think that way, and most people think of morality in similar terms.  Wars are waged on such premises.  People think in terms of “justice”, and immutable “right” and “wrong” imperatives.  The “hero” charges off to avenge his nation, which has been wronged. The only way to cure such beliefs is through knowledge of things like depth psychology, history, and why people do what they do.  Such knowledge leads to love.  But without it, people are prone to a morality based on fear.

Fear always gives birth to more fear, like a disease.  Life for many is unbearable, so they begin to fear whether it’s possible to ever live a better life.  The Christian fundamentalist, because of this inner suffering, is suspectible to living a life in the imagination, instead of the world outside.  So they create a mindset of heaven, and a God who will take them to paradise. Unfortunately, they have very little knowledge of perfection, or even what drives people’s actions, so they struggle to contemplate how this perfect world is going to be rid of such evils.  People are going to be taken to this heaven, yet people can be so nasty.  How could it ever work out? The only hopeful possibility is personal righteousness, and God giving them this perfect nature as a gift.  So now God is offering a gift to live in bliss, only if we accept it.  But what about people who refuse it?  What happens to them?  Well they’re obviously worthless.  Who would refuse a free gift to paradise?  They must be refusing to give up their pet sins.  No perfect world can ever exist with such people around.  God must put them up for some sort of display.  So God institutes hell, both to imprison evil souls, and to scare all future generations away from their lifestyles.  With the advent of the new Heaven and the New Earth in the glorious book of Revelation, after Jesus comes back, all the mortal men still living on Earth can look down into the pits of hell, and see these worthless individuals burning for all eternity.  During the great reign of the Messiah at the second coming, Jesus starts throwing sinners in the fire and fixes the world.  The period of grace ends, and God’s going to rule with his rod of iron!  In with strictness, and out with tolerance.  God’s not going to put up with this any longer!

We see fear creating the ultimate fear – going to hell.  Individualis who believe this become paralized.  So much so that they won’t let anyone discuss issues which shed light on the falseness of the Bible, or any sort of proving of the scriptures.  Such individuals will not even read books on evolution.  Many of them would consider it a sin to do so!

Many years ago, when I was still religious, I started buying lots of books. I can remember my mother telling me to stop reading certain books. In fact, she didn’t want me reading any book unless written by a Christian.  She desired me to go as far as limiting my selection to that of certain established authors, and particular denominations.  She was worried the devil would trick me into believing what’s in the books. Fortunatly for me, I was too old for her to tell me what to do.  Dad did the same thing in his own way.  He used to quote a passage from Proverbs, primarly intended to discourage my studies, “The reading of many books wearies the mind.”  That passage emodies the complete negative of my being – my polar idiot opposite – everything I DON’T want to be.  He told me about good ol’ grandma Vaughn, a simple virtuous woman, who only read the Bible.  He felt she knew all that was worth knowing.  I highly disagree.

Dogma of any kind is believed originally out of some sort of fear.  People give away their mental freedom, because they fear the future, and lack confidence in their own ability to make life into what they want it to be.  The famous philosopher J.S. Mill, in his book “On Liberty” expressed the following profound quote:

“…for in proportion to a man’s want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of ‘the world’ in general.”

But fears are not always created out of an anticipated danger, or even a present danger, but can also come from a fear of losing something they already have.  They will do all they can to prevent such loss. This is a dangerous form of fear, because everything in this world is built on an uncertain foundation, and because certainity is impossible, this kind of fear has no limits.

Greed comes from this form of fear.  You have to keep saving up for a rainy day, and be prepared for anything.  In consequence, the more such individuals have, the more they have to lose, and the more they must do to protect what they already have.  To such people fear is masked as caution, but things go far beyond ordinary precautionary measures.  Greed always wishes to maintain some certain lifestyle, and fear steps in lest they lose it.  These people have huge sums of money in the bank, but never spend any of it.  Money to an economy is like blood is to the body, so economists are forced to devise systems which make sure this money doesn’t stagnate in these individual’s bank accounts.  It was decided that the money should be lent out to the public.  But money can’t be given out for free after all.  Lending at interest may be its own detriment, but what do you do?  It’s better than letting the nation financially suffocate.

Unfortunately this enriches people who don’t need the money, and also leads to “boom/bust” cycles – artificial prosperity to depressionary economic cycles.  Slowly the interest feeds into these individuals bank accounts until less and less money is circulating about in public hands.  The economy becomes more and more debt driven, because to get “blood” to survive, you have to take out loans.  Eventually the public takes out more loans than there is free-floating currency available to manage the interest on the loans, and you get a depression.  People invaribly cannot make the payments because it’s impossible to do so, as there just isn’t enough money in the normal public’s hands to do so.

This creates instant panic among the greedy money tyrants.  Lending requirements go through the roof, and people can’t get any loans at all, and since the economy is debt driven, people can no longer “afford” things.  So they quit purchasing, which means companies have less money to pay people, and they begin to lay people off.  Eventually they can no longer lay people off, so they they begin to cut people’s salaries.  This is unfortunate, because in a debt driven economy, everyone is buried in debt, and they soon cannot make their payments.  Those laid off have to default on their home and car loans, etc., and lose everything.  This leads to even stricter lending requirements, because fear leads the money tyrants to even tighter constriction.  This of course, leads to companies making even less profits (because their products were bought via loans), so even more salary cuts.  Eventually the salary cuts are so great that even working people, with jobs, cannot make their payments and default on loans, which leads to even tighter loan constriction.  A vicious downward spiral has begun that doesn’t end until the entire economy collapses on itself.

Such cycles are called “deflation”, which really means, “the blood banks of the rich are hereby slowly being shut off, use what blood you can find out there”.  Though the valves are being shut off, that doesn’t mean the rich’s intake valves have been shut-off.  They’re still sucking in money, they just stopped dishing it out.  A debt driven economy with deflation is sure-fire disaster.  Once organizations like the Federal Reserve see deflation creeping in, they do everything they can to stave it off.  They know it will completely wipe out the entire economy once it starts.  So they use their little bag of tricks to try to keep things afloat.  They screw around with interest rates and bank reserve requirements, but eventually they push the banking system to its absolute limits and the economy still cannot function.

It’s obvious why this system cannot work.  The rich end up with all the money eventually, because they slowly drain the currency available to the public.  During a depression the money doesn’t “disappear”.  The money is simply controlled completely by the rich and powerful, and there is no longer any money in circulation among the public, because it’s been drained by the banking system.  As a direct consequence, you can see that the greedy cannot grow their money forever, because there is a limited amount of it.  Eventually after they’ve drained the money from the public, they fight amongst themselves.

This is exactly what’s happening in the United States right now.  The greed of the money tyrants was never enough, and they kept lending and lending and lending, but the public pool of money becoming pretty shallow. So people have been defaulting on their homes, their cars, etc.  That’s why there was the housing crisis, and why the auto dealers are going under.  Such things are always purchased with debt, and now loans are not available.

They’ve really suckered the public.  The foolish and ignorant have spent themselves silly with credit cards, big homes, and big cars.  All they have is a big pile of debt, which they soon will not be able to pay.  You’ll notice in the financial industry, the big financial magnates have been dumping off their loan notes to other organizations.  The wise knew it was time to get out, so they got out why the going was good.  This is part of the conflict between the rich.  They’ve also been utilizing techniques to steal people’s retirement plans.  Organizations that manage people’s retirement accounts are partly used for this purpose.  The rich people’s bad debt has been sold to companies which manage people’s retirement plans.  This allows them to convert retirement plans into cash (which was handed to the rich during the sell out), and the rich have gotten out, and the companies managing people’s retirement plans are going under.  Work thirty years for a company saving for retirement?  Sorry, your money just went “poof”.

But greed has no limits.  These bankers lent out so much of their money, they’re struggling to completely “get out”.  No problem, says the government.  We’ll form a massive bail-out package.  We’ll take the money from the wise public who have taken good care of their money, and give it to you guys.  We’ll also tax the business owners, and hand that money to you as well.  Turn on your TV and the news networks begin to blare the propaganda, “This is for main street!  Main-street!  This isn’t just greedy Wall-street bankers. It’s for you too!  We have to pass this bill right now!  Within the next few weeks or the entire economy is going to explode!”  They pass the bill, then they tell us (after the bill passes of course) it’s not even going to go into effect until this coming year (2009). So much for the rush.  Fear caused greed, and now this greed is begetting more fear in the public through the news and propaganda.  People have high hopes for Obama, but I don’t think we’ll see the “change” that he’s been touting.

In fact, I’m rather perturbed about all of this, because my most recent business venture is struggling to get capital because of it.  You see, these “bail out” packages are nothing more than the government printing up money and handing it to various corporations and banks who are friendly with the politicians.  The rich have been pulling out of the United States, worried as to how much money the government is going to print up with these “bail-outs”.  They’re converting their U.S. Dollars to things like gold, and getting the hell out why the dollar still has some value left in it.  I don’t blame them either.  Our governments, state and federal, keep spending themselves into oblivion.  You going bail all them out too, with printed up money?  Then there’s the wars we have going on.  Defecit spending galore.  Even foreign countries are backing off, and not buying our treasury bonds – they’re becoming junk status.  But what if you don’t bail anyone out, then what?  Do you let another Great Depression ensue, with bread lines, and mass poverty?

You print up money, the dollar tanks.  Cut government spending, they’re worried the economy won’t manage.  Too many jobs will be lost.  Will Obama increase taxes on the rich and the successful business owners?  Why should they be punished for the greed on Wall Street, and fund Bush’s Iraq war, which nobody even wants?  It sounds like Obama’s going to be jacking up business taxes even HIGHER.  Whatever rich investors were left, after hearing that, they’re gone as well.  American businesses are already over-taxed as it is.  They’re fed up, and taking their business elsewhere.

Since these rich individuals are the ones who fund entrepreneurial enterprises, the investor capital market in the United States right now is basically non-existent.  It doesn’t matter how good your business plan is, investors are simply too scared to put any money in this country right now.  Fear made greed, and greed is now causing more fear.  Greg and I had several capital groups examine our plan for months, stare at it closely and say, “Man this looks good, but….. I dunnnoooo.  This just isn’t a good time.”  Even after formally turning us down, they keep looking at our plan, seeming to second guess their decision.  They seem to want to invest, yet are in fear to do so as well. Failing businesses are being rewarded for not changing with the times, and new growth is being kept out.

This whole mess was caused by fear.  Some people will tell you the system is too complicated to understand, but I don’t think that’s completely true.  The only thing impossible to know about it all is the vastness of the corruption, because there’s so much of it it’s nearly impossible to track it all.  What makes it difficult is the fact that the powerful people purposely try to keep everything hidden and mysterious.  Accounting methods, statistical calculations, etc., are all modified and distorted in ways that makes things appear different than they really are.  The government wants us to think everything’s ok right up until the last moment.  They don’t want anyone getting worked up until they’re done sliding money under the table.  They can’t take our money all at once; they have to use a siphon.  One day we wake up and check on our money only to find it’s all gone.  If we’d gotten upset earlier, we’d have checked on our money, and this wouldn’t have happened.  These money lenders and managers are all scheming every way they can to enrich themselves.  I think money and banking is the most corrupt industry there is.  The only reason I’ve chosen to study physics more seriously than economics is that economics just makes me frustrated, whereas physics leaves me in awe and wonder.  But I always seem to find myself coming back to it.  Even with the corruption, I just have to know what’s ‘really’ going on.

What’s most sad about this situation is that the greedy rich, who think they’re so clever, end up only destroying themselves.  What good is having a huge warehouse of money, if it cannot be used to puchase anything?  Money is only as good as what it can be exchanged for, and since nobody is producing anything, the money is worthless.

This leads to a strange point, which I only realized after reading a book by Betrand Russell.  You cannot exhibit the highest forms of courage unless you have an impersonal outlook on life.  I suppose in one sense you could say that these corrupt individuals are very “brave”, considering they take such risks, and could even be executed if they were caught.  I was reading a book by a great economist not too long ago, who said the American people would be up in arms if they only knew what was going on in the banking industry.  But with greater insight into the nature of courage, I don’t think their actions contain any sort of courage. I’ll simply quote the text:

“There is one thing more required for the highest courage and that is what I called just now an impersonal outlook on life.  The man whose hopes and fears are all centered upon himself can hardly view death with equanimity, since it extinguishes his whole emotional universe.  Here, again, we are met by a tradition urging the cheap and easy way of repression: the saint must learn the renounce Self, must mortify the flesh and forego instinctive joys.  This can be done, but its consequences are bad.  Having renounced pleasure for himself, the ascetic saint renounces it for others also, which is easier.  Envy persists underground, and leads him to the view that suffering is ennobling, and may therefore be legitimately inflicted.  Hence arises a complete inversion of values: what is good is thought bad, and what is bad is thought good.  The source of all the harm is that the good life has been sought in obedience to a negative imperative, not in broadening and developing natural desires and insticts.  There are certain things in human nature which take us beyond Self without effort.  The commonest of these is love, more particuarly parental love, which in some is so generalized as to embrace the whole human race.  Another is knowledge.  There is no reason to suppose that Galileo was particularly benevolent, yet he lived for an end which was not extinguished by his death.  Another is art.  But in fact every interest in something outside a man’s own body makes his life to that degree impersonal.  For this reason, paradoxical as it may seem, a man of wide and vivid interests finds less difficulty in leaving life than is experienced by some miserable hypochondriac whose interests are bounded by his own ailments. Thus the perfection of courage is found in the man of many interests, who feels his ego to be but a small part of the world, not through despising himself, but through valuing much that is not himself.  This can hardly happen except where instinct is free and intelligence is active.  From the union of the two grows a comprehensiveness of outlook unknown both to the voluptuary and the ascetic; and to such an outlook personal death appears a trivial matter.  Such courage is positive and instinctive, not negative and repressive.  It is courage in this positive sense that I regard as one of the major ingredients in a perfect character.”

To lose the self is the greatest form of courage.  You won’t fear death.  You won’t be tempted by greed.  You’ll have no desire to gossip or put others down.  Why?

You don’t fear death, because you realize there’s much greater things in the world than your petty human existence, and your mind learns to direct itself outward, instead of inward.  There are many miserable people who have realized how petty their human existence is, but that doesn’t do any good.  It’s when you find things infinitely greater than yourself, and spend your time thinking on those things.  Once you find those things, death doesn’t even matter.

In order to truly experience this, you must have a pure curiosity, which is not rooted in any form of self.  You have to be like the mathematician Archimedes.  He was once asked by the king why he spent his days working out geometrical relationships.  After all, what was he going to use them for?  Archimedes didn’t seem to understand the question.  The king had never experienced the bliss of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

Many people will dabble with the latest science and philosphy of the day.  They’ll watch a PBS documentary, and view some twirling 3D graphics of black holes, or other concepts of the universe.  Hopefully they’ll pick up just enough information to impress someone at a dinner party or social situation.  This isn’t a true love of knowledge.  Such people still think the greatest thing in the world is themselves, and since the self is so petty and evanescent, they wonder why they’re miserable focusing their mind on such things.

The bliss of the pursuit of knowledge only comes in when you study the subjects in such detail that you become part of the current “conversation” in that community.  You’re playing an active role, like a detective, trying to solve the latest mystery.  Then when someone solves the puzzle, you’re absolutely exhilarated, because you’d wondered about it for so long.  You were active in the pursuit, not just an idle spectator.  You were out on the field, and one of your teammates just scored a goal.  You run up to him and give him a high five.  It’s impossible for a spectator in the stands to feel the same joy.

New years just rolled around, and everyone’s making their resolutions.  I’m sure there’ll be newcomers in the gym, hoping to lose weight to be more attractive to the girls.  Others are planning to get an education, so they can make more money.  Everyone will be whipping up long lists of selfish pursuits, which won’t even make them happy even if they accomplish them.

Such men would be more attractive to women if they had respect for themselves, instead of trying to get it from others.  In shape, or not, what most women find attractive in men are mentally related attributes such as humor, intelligence, and confidence.  Well, unless she’s an airhead.  The same applies to many men – at least the ones worth catching.  If they would exercise because they want to feel better health wise, instead of trying to impress others, they would not only increase their own happiness, but it would wear off on others as well.  When their body ceases to be them, and becomes an object they see in front of them, which they begin to work on as their own personal project, then it will bring joy.

As for the people who work careers for money, I feel sorry for them.  They spend the majority of their lives doing something that means nothing to them.  They hope to make money to impress their family, friends, or high school alumni.  Generation after generation rolls around, and each group learns the same lesson: no one cares.  They haven’t learned the laws of impressing others.  There are two of them.  1) You show that you’re impressed with THEM, or 2) You be the person they always wish they were.  As for the first law, we’ve all heard family and relatives after a social gathering say something like, “So and so, wasn’t he nice?”  Such individuals typically either made the family members comfortable, humored them, or made them feel good about themselves.  The only other way around law one is law two, which is to be a person’s hero.  For example: They’re a physics student, and you’re a top physicist for NASA.  You won’t even have to do anything and they will be impressed.  Ancient Indian philosophers were once asked by Alexander the Great what it took to be beloved by everyone.  They told him, “He must be very powerful, without making himself too much feared.”  In other words, he’s a person who provides them with safety, joys, and comfort, but poses no danger to them.

There are people like celebrities who seem to break these rules.  They seem to be admired, not because they’ve really made people feel good about themselves, nor do their fans wish to be an actor by profession, yet they still attract huge followings.  You have to remember that this fame is fleeting.  Unless they’ve done something which has really changed the world, and made people’s lives better, they will be forgotten about. Celebrities come and go with the wind.  Men and women who have devoted themselves to worthy causes, and served humanity, are the only ones who will be remembered after a long time passes.

There’s no amount of money that will make people like you, unless that person wants to be rich like you – but they only want your money, and hope you can teach them how to make money as well.  There’s no degree of “awesomeness” you can achieve, where people will all just stand back in awe and love you to death.  There’s no amount of education and respectability which will make you beloved.

It’s easy to see that selfish pursuits are always self-defeating.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about fear, and things to avoid, but how do we develop confidence and courage?  If you read back over all these examples closely, you’ll always see that courage came from finding something more valuable than the self.

With my parents, I was tempted to keep “playing along” with church, but what gave me strength to resist was finding a truth, which revealed to me that the religious views were really nothing but fear.  I feared death, so I invented fantasies for the afterlife in heaven.  I feared making decisions, so I invented a God who watched over me constantly.  I feared losing my loved ones, so I invented heaven.  But the cost of such fears was greater than what I was gaining, and it stilted me from growing into a better person.  In my studies, I found things much greater than myself, my family members, or any human being, which occupy my mind, and this gave me strength to resist the temptations of falling into the religious snare.

If the greedy money tyrants would stop focusing on themselves, and look at the big picture, they would also see they are creating not only their own misery, but misery on others.  But they don’t have strength to overcome their greed, because they can’t think of anything better than the false security they think money offers them.  They COULD donate their money to scholarships and provide capital to business ventures, which would be good for everyone, including themselves.  Give science grants to MIT students, and I’m sure they’ll create new inventions that improve life.  Fund projects like Google, which make information available to all.  There’s a lot of things to do with money, and it’s a lot better than keeping your money in some bank, which lends it out with credit cards, and your money just goes to people blowing it on worthless junk – not to mention the boom/bust economic cycles.

If the newcomers to the gym saw the pointlessness of their own enterprises, they too would behave much differently.  But as long as they are lost in self, they’ll be blind to see why things aren’t working for them.

Knowledge tends to have a strong impact on courage.  When you’re quite confident that you’re right, and someone else is wrong, it’s not as difficult to have courage; at least psychological courage.  As for fear of getting physically injured, most confidence in these areas can be overcome by knowledge of the area being dealt with, developing skills, and practice.  With sufficient training, even a cobra snake can be less intimidating.  I think with the fireman, who displayed courage, he saw the potential in the young child’s life, and knew it was greater than his own life.  If you’re going to risk your life for something, you’ll have to find something you think is greater than your own life.  Few people ever reach this level of virtue.

You may think, “How can you know they’ll be greater than me?  Maybe the kid will just grow up to be a nuisance, and was not worth saving.”  This is the most critical juncture of all.  The whole purpose of intelligence is to see things that are not immediately obvious to the untrained eye.  You have to be able to see beyond the present.  You have to see unseen potential.  You need love.  In fact, I think there’s little difference.  People love those they believe in, but we can only believe in others if our eyes are sufficiently trained to see beyond the present, and see people’s potential.

I’d like to end this entry by telling you to find something you believe in.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s necessarily the greatest advice.  For you see, it’s easier to give your life to a cause, than to know whether the cause is worthwhile.  Seek knowledge for its own sake, and you’ll find plenty to believe in, and courage will come with it.  Love for others will naturally occur, because that knowledge will unite you with them, and also reveal their unseen potential to you.  Courage to live and even die for your friends and community will occur naturally, and because your mind and intelligence will be active from knowledge, you will be kept away from unworthy causes.  News networks will be continually telling you to give your life to some war, but knowledge will inform you that the war is a farse, and is only designed to enrich greedy tyrants.  Stay away from all forms of dogma.  Stay clear of anything that keeps you from seeking truth, and tells you to believe things that are not rational to your mind.  You’ll find the only reason you wish to believe it is some form of fear, and fear rarely has good consequences.

Do not worry about not having time to answer the last letter I sent you.  I understand your time is limited.  It almost goes without saying that if a man is valuable, so is his time.  There’s no need to apologize.  This makes me think of something Einstein said in his book, “The World As I See It”.  Quoting from the text (speaking of “cosmic religious feeling”):

“The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole.”

I think time, and having to manage it into priorities is one such prison.  A huge part of making decisions is deciding what we’re going to leave behind.  That has always been what I’ve hated most in life.  Giving the time we have to various enterprises is one of those double edged swords.  You can experience one thing, but only at the cost of losing something else.  Many view life as a great series of evils, yet there’s one “correct” way of life for them, which destiny ordained before time began.  There’s a place they’re “meant” to be.  The closer they get to this single ordained path, the happier they will be, and the farther, the more miserable.  The mindset has its advantages, but I think it has more cons than pros.  I myself don’t believe in such things, and have found many walks of life appealing and fulfilling.  Yet my mindset isn’t without its cons either.

For example, you can spend your evening with a charming woman, but then you miss out on the studies you could have made that afternoon.  You can choose your career, but what if you are interested in multiple fields and disciplines?  I love economics, philosophy, psychology, mathematics, physics, literature, politics, law, and the list goes on.  There’s so many things I could do, and would love the work, yet at the same time, I cannot do them all.  I love life, but time seems to bind me to some post, and set limitations on me.  Spread myself too thin, and I really don’t experience any of them; focus myself too much in one area and I miss the big picture.

Those who believe there’s a destined path for them, normally also believe in a “love of their life”, who they’ll marry, and live happily with their entire life.  Though with a cursory glance it sounds kind of nice, with closer inspection I find it depressing.  I doubt there’s only one girl in the world worth marrying.  I wouldn’t doubt there’s tens of thousands, or possibly more, women out there who I could spend an entire lifetime with, and be very happy in all of them.  It’s a sad thing having to choose one of them, and the thought creeping in that ten thousand more women are out there, each with their own unique contributions and life, and I miss out on all those experiences.

What a complaint huh?  Dang it, I’m only married to one amazing woman, in a single satisfying and fulfilling career.  I want ten thousand different wives, and to exist in ten thousand parallel dimensions at once, or I’m going to be unhappy.  I’m sure God’s shaking his head at me now, with his arm’s crossed.  Then I tell him, “Just to clarify one thing God, I also want to be able to see the consequences of each major decision I’ve had before me, for all ten thousand lives, and see how things could have gone differently in each of them.  Oh, and while I’m at it, I also want access to anyone else’s life as well, for each person, past, present, and future.  Hmm, why not throw in some aliens, and other life-forms.  Cya later God.”  *puts note in ‘afterlife requests’ box*.

See Littlejohn, this is what you have to look forward to studying more philosophy.  Mix sex drive, love of science, and philosophy, and you end up with ten thousand wives, can work every career, and even live life as a grey alien.  As they say, if you can see it in your mind, you can have it!  I’m going to put this mental ninjitsu to work.

This reminds me of one of Grimm’s fairy tales.  Two factions are about to go to war.  A young man goes up to one of the factions and they ask him, “Join our side!”, but the young man refuses as he doesn’t wish to take sides.  Then the other faction finds him and says, “Join our side!”, and once again he refuses.  Not long afterwards a truce is negotiated and both sides celebrate.  The young man finds the first group holding a large party, and he asks if he can join in, but they tell him, “Leave, you are not one of us.”  Then the young man visits the other group, and they too are having a large party.  He asks to join but they also tell him, “Leave, you are not one of us.”  I suppose the moral of the story is that you have to make a decision to do something, even if that decision means leaving certain things behind.  If you don’t make any decision, you end up with nothing.

One of my favorite things about philosophical discussions is they are not time specific.  They move at a nice leisurely pace.  You could wait several years to respond, and the response would be just as relevant as if you responded the next day.  So no rush, debates about free-will and the nature of life have been around for thousands of years, and will probably be around a long time after we’re both gone.

I’m sorry to hear about your health problems.  I hope your surgery goes well.  Though I was sad to hear about your recent health experiences, I enjoyed the soundbite admonition, “Celebrate Competence”.  When it comes to experiences like your brother had with the pharmacist, I’ve always wondered how to mentally deal with it.  You can pay special attention to those who do a good job, as you have done, or you can search for ways of mind where troubles do not bother you.  I’ve spent most of my time developing mindsets of the latter type, though I’ve found both to be effective, and for different reasons.  That’s why the subject of this letter is, “Loving The Unloveable”.

As you know, I was raised in a very religious environment, and was pounded with the teachings of Jesus.  They’ve been crammed into my mind for so many years, that I do not think they will ever be removed.  One of Jesus’ core teachings was to love others as you do yourself.  As people are so apt to tell us, this is easier said than done.  Under a religious guise I liked to think I had achieved such a state, but really, I knew deep down I hated many people.  Later, as I became less religious, I was more honest with myself, and saw the nasty thoughts that ran through my mind.

When I studied philosophy for many years, I began to ask myself, “Is it possible to love that which is disgusting?”  I also questioned why such a thing would ever be valuable.  As with most philosophy, the answer becomes clear when you push it to extremes, so I devised several extreme thought experiments.  My first thought experiment entailed an angry mob surrounding me.  They are hurling insults of every kind on me, telling me I’ll amount to nothing in a thousand different ways, and throwing garbage on me.  I soon find myself buried in garbage and only my head pops out, like a man buried under the sand.  Flies are buzzing around, sour milk is splattered all in my hair, and the smell is unbearable.  I then asked myself what sort of value could be found in such an ordeal.

I then thought, “Hmm, this is certainly the main message behind Jesus’ parable of the house built on the rock, versus the house built on the sand.  The house built on a rock withstood the great tempest that blew against it, yet remained unscathed, while the house built on the sand crumbled.”  I then imagined myself sitting inside the home built on the rock, while the tempest was blowing.  Outside the storm was raging, but inside I pictured a fireplace, beside which was a rocking chair. I was rocking back and forth, smoking a pipe, reading one of my favorite works in literature.  I could not hear the wind, nor the rain.  I then thought, “Yes, this is the same as in engineering.  A well constructed building or bridge can withstand great forces and not tumble. Ideally it’d be left completely unaffected.  Jesus must be speaking of psychological engineering.”

As for the angry mob, Jesus must be recommending an invisible shield.  Somehow I surround my mind with an invisible aura, which deflects all attacks which could irritate me.  However much of the world’s garbage I can handle, without it bothering me, indicates the strength of my psychological shield, and directly measures how well my mind is constructed.  The problem however, came when I searched the Bible for detailed blueprints.  I found none.  I seemed to know the goal I was striving for, but I had no idea how to construct such a shield.

My own solution to this problem came after years of research, and it was not easy to find.  Strangely, it came to me after a combination of studying Buddhism, at the same time I was reading the works of Sigmund Freud.  I came across this:

“If ye realize the Emptiness of All Things, Compassion will arise within your hearts;
If ye lose all differentiation between yourselves and others, fit to serve others ye will be;
And when in serving others ye shall win success, then shall ye meet with me;
And finding me, ye shall attain to Buddhahood.”
- The Hymn of the Yogic Precepts of Milarepa

When I first read the part, “If you lose all differentiation between yourself and others, fit to serve others you will be”, I sat back puzzled.  I thought, “We’re all different, and diverse.  Why would all of us being the same make any difference?”  I couldn’t figure out what it meant.

At the same time I was thinking about this, I was getting a grasp on all the detailed psychoanalytical processes which happen within our mind.  Then two events happened to me.

My uncle was admitted into the hospital.  He was an alcoholic, and addicted to drugs.  He had been to the emergency room many times before, overdosing on various medications and such.  Eventually his body wore out, and during one of these times, my uncle died, and we (the family) noticed the doctor didn’t do much to save him.  This particular doctor had been known to give up on patients early, especially if he deemed them unvaluable to society.  Unfortunately for my uncle, he too was deemed unvaluable.

As I sat in the waiting room, I pondered the Yogic precepts and then it came to me, “The doctor feels himself different than his patients, and if the differentiation becomes too great, he no longer feels them worthy of his time, or society’s medical resources.  Once this differentiation sets in, he is unable to serve others, and ceases to be a physician.”

That’s a rather nasty conclusion.  The more valuable he becomes the greater the distinction between himself, and those he works with and on.  If we were to imagine that men had very long lifespans, the longer this went on, the larger the distinction, and the more difficult it would be for him to work on patients.  Ironically, the more gifted he is, the more capable he is to serve.  Such a backward system.

Then I pondered, “What does it mean to be, ‘the same’”.  When the Yogic precepts talked of similiarity, they must not have been talking about similar in terms of physical matter.  So what is it that we’re all supposed to find in common with one another?  A common humanity?  Common goals?  Common affiliations?

Then the second event happened.  I was spending some time with a girl, and she blew up on me for no reason.  I had been studying psychoanalysis, so instead of getting angry with her, I asked her why she was angry. Later this led to me finding out she had suffered verbal abuse from her father.  Then I remember thinking, “I’ve had painful events happen to me, and I’ve became angry before.  I can see why she’s angry.”  Then it dawned on me, “Of course, this is it!”  The exact opposite thing had happened with me and this girl, then what happened with the physcian and my uncle.  I found things in common with the girl, and because I love myself, and always show myself mercy, I easily showed her mercy as well.  It was effortless.  The physician however, could not find common ground between himself, and my drunkard uncle, so he was unsympathetic.

Later this developed into a complex mindset where I search for the reasons why people do what they do, instead of looking at the events in isolation.  Once I developed the mindset out quite a bit, I found it to be nearly the same as what happened with Jesus, as they were crucifying him, and he said, “Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.”  I had found my shield.

Unfortunately though, my shield tends to work on and off.  I don’t think it’s because the ideas behind the shield’s generation are wrong, it’s simply because I spend most of my time in isolation these days, and have not developed its skillful use.  It’s like solving a complex mathematical relationship, then going and doing other things.  A few years later you’re asked to use that relationship, and you’re unable to use it off the top of your head without brushing up on your notes.  The key to the shield is to find common grounds between yourself and others, and if you find that common ground, your shield will work.  If this particular shield is to work effectively, it must become almost habitual.  I’ve found that the shield does work, though it’s not elegantly simple to use, which is why it doesn’t always work for me.  But hey, better than nothing.

I think such a shield is moving in the right direction, because it’s similar to Einstein’s view on things, and views the world as a single significant whole.  The shield’s strength works on finding common factors between yourself and others, and the more it’s developed, the more alike people, and yourself, become.

To go back to my angry mob example, I remembered a time when I was young, and I had strange conceptions of what it meant to be spiritual.  One time I said some nasty things to someone when they missed church.  Then I saw a younger version of myself in that crowd, throwing garbage on the pile.  It’s not easy to grab the trash and throw it back at yourself, or even at someone who reminds you of yourself.

Then I realized that Jesus had it figured out as well, yet I was unable to comprehend the scripture’s complete meaning.  “Why do you find the speck in your brother’s eye, when you yourself have a log in yours?  Examine yourself, and you’ll see clearly how to remove your brother’s spec.”  Unfortunately, when you’re blind you can’t see anything, including your own faults.  So dumb that you don’t even know you’re dumb.  The first step to humility and kindness: gaining knowledge of your own stupidity.  I have a quote, but I cannot remember who it is from, “A breakthrough is a sudden cessation of stupidity.”

I’ve wondered for a long time what forgiveness actually means.  Prior to this, I had never found a satisfactory definition.  I think forgiveness is when you’ve once again established unity between yourself, and the person you were once angry with.

I mentioned that I found both the “celebration of compotence”, and “loving the unloveable” to be effective.  To be truthful, I think they both must be used in unison for maximum psychological happiness and strength.  Loving the unloveable, and finding common factors alleviates weights and hatred, which can consume a person.  This leaves you more nimble.  But what value is being nimble if you don’t have anywhere worthwhile to go?  That’s where the celebration of compotence takes place, as we search for beauty.

The strength of both systems seem to rely on the other.  If you start to feel too distanced from the world, feeling you have nothing in common with anyone, hatred will fill your heart and cloud you from seeing the beauty around you.  The garbage of the world will weigh you down, and bury you like the man in the sand pile, until you drown in filth.  The mind seems to have a psychological mechanism that if it gives forth a certain amount of effort, and there is no reward, it writes it off and does not want to spend any more time with it.  If your shield is functioning, the filth will be deflected, leaving you free to pursue beauty.  On the other hand, beauty and truth are what give us the strength to go on.  Without that, you’ll gladly let yourself get buried, and pray for death.

I guess in conclusion, you do not love that which is disgusting, you build a psychological shield that leaves you unaffected by the filth around you.  When it comes to people, when I see them coming short of how I think the world should be, I have several steps.  One, I give them excuses for what they do, rooted in complex psychoanalytical reasoning based on my best approximations of why I think they did what they did, always giving them the benefit of the doubt.  I assume there’s something I don’t know about them, such as some painful event in their past, bad reinforcement, their childhood raising, etc., which is causing them to be the way they are at the moment.  Other times I seek reasons from human nature and the inner workings of our constitution.  I don’t neccessarily say what they do is “right”, I simply try to find reasons, and when I find probable reasons, my anger tends to dwindle down, and I grow from evil, becoming stronger and more aware of the world around me.  Two, I try to remember the invisible potential which exists within every man.  Hydrogen may be a simple element, found everywhere including water, but if you know how to set it off you can have unimaginable power.  I think people have such potential, and I assume they can change.  Three, I search for things in common between me and the other person, and when I do so, compassion steps in to replace hatred.

This is a system I’m continually trying to refine.  Any input is welcome.  I think a lot of it is very crude and rudimentary, but I can honestly say it works pretty well for me.

I’m happy to join you in your celebration of competence, and hopefully this information will help us keep up our shields, so we’re not weighted down with the world’s garbage, and can more easily find beauty in the world around us.

So what is happiness?  To most of us, this consists in feeling good, laughing, and smiling – a general enjoyment of life, looking forward to tomorrow, and the joys of the present moment.  Oftentimes when we’re feeling good, out with friends and good company, there is a lot of laughter.  Happiness and laughter seem to go hand in hand, and are so often associated together.

I’m going to break down what actually happens in our brains, and how the reward chemcials are released, and when.  Once you learn how things really operate in the mind, you’ll view the entire subject differently.

First let’s discuss the main problems of happiness, then we’ll move into the causes into why we feel good, and the mechanism of laughter.  I think Sigmund Freud takes a good position on happiness in his book Civilization and Its Discontents:

“We will turn, therefore, to the less ambitious problem:  what the behaviour of men themselves reveals as to the purpose and object of their lives, what they demand of life and wish to attain in it.  The answer to this can hardly be in doubt: they seek happiness, they want to become happy and to remain so.  There are two sides to this striving, a positive and a negative; it aims on the one hand at eliminating pain and discomfort, on the other at the experience of intense pleasures.  In its narrower sense, the word happiness relates only to the last.  Thus human activities branch off in two directions — corresponding to this double goal — according to which of the two they aim at realizing, either predominately or even exclusively.
As we see, it is simply the pleasure-principle which draws up the programme of life’s purpose.  This principle dominates the operation of the mental apparatus from the very beginning; there can be no doubt about its efficiency, and yet its programme is in conflict with the whole world, with the macrocosm as much as with the microcosm.  It simply cannot be put into execution, the whole constitution of things runs counter to it; one might say the intention that man should be happy is not included in the scheme of Creation.  What is called happiness in its narrowest sense comes from the satisifaction — most often instantaneous — of pent-up needs which have reached great intensity, and by its very nature can only be a transitory experience.  When any condition desired by the pleasure-principle is protracted, it results in a feeling only of mild comfort; we are so constituted that we can only intensely enjoy contrasts, much less intensely states in themselves.  Our possibilities of happiness are thus limited from the start by our very constitution.  It is much less difficult to be unhappy.  Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense with anxiety and pain as danger-signals; from the outer world, which can rage against us with the most powerful and pitiless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men.  The unhappiness which has this last origin we find perhaps more painful than any other; we tend to regard it more or less as a gratuitious addition, although it cannot be any less an inevitable fate than the suffering that proceeds from other sources.”

Basically, in that short blurb, Freud has summed up the entire mental process of happiness and sadness.  It might help if I elaborate on what he said.

In short, we have desires – things we want out of life.  If the goals are small, and we achieve those goals, we feel a mild happiness.  If the goals are large, and we accomplish them, we feel a great intense joy.  If we fail and come short of these goals, we feel sad.

Happiness is a set of reward chemicals shot off in the brain at different times.  All kinds of things fire off these chemicals.  When you’re hungry and eat something, reward chemicals fire off.  Whenever you use the bathroom, reward chemicals fire off.  When you have sex, or masturbate, reward chemicals are fired off.  When you see a nice looking member of the opposite sex, etc.  Most of them revolve around maintaining your existence (staying alive), and reproducing.  If you did not have these chemicals firing off, you would be a robot.

Imagine you’re writing an AI algorithm for the software “brain” of a robot.  If you did not program in for the robot to “care” about itself, it wouldn’t care if its arm got ripped off, or even if it destroyed itself.  It wouldn’t care if it lived, or died.  It wouldn’t care if it had power to recharge itself.  It wouldn’t prefer one environment to another  (no sense of beauty).  You get the idea.  These reward chemicals that exist within us are what make us alive,  yet at the same time they are complicated, which is why it can be so difficult to be happy, and so easy to be sad.

Our bodies have evolved over a long period of time, and for the most part, they’re just barely holding on to life as it is.  Everytime I look in the mirror, I ponder how crazy it is.  Our bodies are so fragile.  We’re susceptible to so many diseases, starvation, malnutrition, wild animals, natural disasters, and the list goes on.  There’s weather – scorching heat, and freezing cold – and our need for clothing and shelter.  When you study the anatomy of the body, you find its a thin bag of water with a skelton, with some tiny nerve wires running through it which conduct electricity.  Our power source is from eating plant life, and the plants get their energy from the sun.  The energy we get from eating other animals and life comes indirectly from the sun, because those animals ate plant life (at least somewhere down the food chain), which is where they got energy.  Our bodies conduct this energy from plants sloppily, and it allows us to move around for short periods of time, before we need to eat again.

It doesn’t take long for us to die.  We can die literally in less than a week without food and water.  A lot of us in just a couple days.  If you’d rather see that expressed in hours, that’s just 70 or so hours.

These reward chemicals of ours keep us alive.  If you need food, they’re going to put you through intense pain and discomfort until you find the body some more energy.  If you’re bleeding and injured, pain nerves are going to be shooting off, telling you to take care of the injury.  If your body is in temperatures too hot or cold for it to endure without putting your body at jeopardy, chemicals start firing off telling you to find some shelter, clothing, etc.

The more you study the body, the more you’ll find it’s a rather slopped together mess.  There are nerve wires which run down to sections of the body (such as our ancestral tail), which no longer function.  There are bodily organs which serve absolutely no purpose at all, left over from periods of evolution when they used to have a purpose.  Our teeth rot out if we don’t brush them everyday.  We stink, producing nasty bacteria under our arms which smells disgusting.  Our skin naturally is grimy and oily, and if we don’t shower, absolutely disgusting.  Our insides are literally filled with shit – the same stuff that comes out when you use the bathroom.  If you don’t believe me, just go hunting and skin a deer or something.  It’s unbelievable.  We age at a very fast rate, and just as our brains start to figure out the world and get a little comfort, we start having health issues and die.  The insides of our cells do all these weird, oftentimes unnecessary processes.   When I was reading some books by James Watson on DNA, I sat back amazed at how sloppy everything was.  I’ll stop talking about our bodies now.

I didn’t say all this to discourage anyone, though it’s definitely something to think about.  I wanted to make a point that life is not easy, and that our bodies are not the most well constructed things out there.

So to make a point:  Why are we so often sad?  1) We’re barely holding on to life as it is, and our reward chemicals know this, and know that there’s no time to sit around.  Our species has survived because these chemicals have situated themselves in this manner, making us uncomfortable and moving in ways which have kept us alive.  2) Our bodies are created almost at random by evolutionary processes, most likely by forces which don’t care about our happiness or feelings.

These reward chemicals would make sense to you if you were to go back and view mankind 20,000 years ago, but to us living today, they seem a bit strange.  We’ve solved some of the problems that we were facing technologically, and have overcome many obstacles, yet our physical constitution is still as primitive as it was back then.  The human body is the same as its been for a long time, and besides a few vaccinations, little to nothing has been changed.  That’s why sometimes we sit around and feel empty, lonely, bored, etc., yet do not seem to have any good rational reason to be so.  That’s just those old chemicals firing off in ways that don’t make sense for a modern life.

Take boredom.  We work in an office all day long, but our bodies want to go out there and hunt things.  Most men want to kill, destroy, and bring back some food for the women.  We want to ride a horse and chase buffalo.  Sitting in that office chair, we think, “Man, there has to be more to life.”  Even in intelligent men, when you psychoanalyze them using depth psychology, you find those violent instincts are still in there, but they’re just sublimated into different areas of life.

All the heroes in the movies are saving distressed women.  Where do you think this comes from?  It’s old instincts.  In the past, women used to be attacked by animals, and the stronger male had to defend her by fighting.  That’s why young women like athletes, because instinctually women are wired to desire a man who is in good physical condition, so he can defend her and hunt food for her.  This doesn’t make sense in a modern world, as a rich fat man with money could take better care of her than some mindless jock, but the girl instinctually prefers the handsome (which is an indicator of health), muscular male.

Few children these days are actually breast fed, but men are still drawn to women by their breasts.  A woman with good healthy breasts can provide milk for the children.  They’re instinctually wired for this.

People confuse these instinctual things for the voice of God, calling us to serve Him.  “Of course there’s more to life!  Only God can fill the emptiness you feel!”  No, it has nothing to do with God.  It’s a complex situation which they do not understand.  It’s just an imbalance of chemicals, and your body being placed in modern society, yet your instincts being wired for a much more primitive time.

I find it interesting when I play video games, especially role playing games.  Of all the things we could make a video game do, what is every video game filled with?  Violence.  In RPGs all you do is hunt animals and other strange creatures, kill them, and take back their pelts and other loot back to your base or to town.  It’s like a modern version of the old Indians you read about in the history books.

Now we come to sexual frustrations.  Humanity has not been civilized for very long.  For most of our existence we were running around the plains and forests, chasing animals with spears.  We were a sparse race, and our sexual chemicals were designed with this in mind.  When a man saw a woman, he took her some food, had sex with her, and had kids.  There was so much death, and since neither of them survived for long, it was important that men had sex with as many women as possible, in order to produce children.  This is where our sex drive comes from.

Our old sex drive instincts don’t go well with modern society, which is why its so difficult to make a love life work.  Nowadays its about monogamous relationships, yet our anatomy is designed for a different lifestyle.  Take the male penis for instance.  When a man has sex with a woman, his penis is designed in such a fashion that it scoops out the sperm from other males.  80% of all sperm within the female is destroyed just by a few thrusts of the male.  Many women wonder why men lose interest in them after coitus.  This is an evolutionary thing, so that the sperm the man just injected into the woman will not be destroyed by his own thrusting.

But this isn’t all there is to humanity.  We have developed a pretty powerful mind, and this has a lot to do with our happiness and sadness as well.  One aspect of our minds is an unconscious comparison mechanism, which tells us how good we’re doing, relative either to its own unconscious standards, or standards we’ve imposed on ourselves with our beliefs.  This same system is also the root cause of humor, wit, and associate pleasure.

Let’s say you go to knit a scarf.  You’ve been knitting for a while, and say you’ve become pretty good.  Then say a newcomer comes and you see that person struggling to do the same task you do easily.  Then you feel good.  Why do you feel good?  Your mind has unconsciously compared how much effort it would take you to do the same task, and you could have done it much easier.  Your mind sees how much energy they used to do the task, and how much energy you would have used to do the same thing (automatically happens in your unconscious imagination), and the two are subtracted.  If you have energy left-over, the excess energy is spilled over in such a way that feels really good, with reward chemicals being shot off.  If the energy is a lot, this may come out as laughter.  If there’s only a little left over, it may be a subtle smile.

Now another person comes along who is a way better knitter than yourself.  This person makes you look like a novice.  Then you feel “intimidated”, and maybe even anxiety.  This is because you’ve compared the energy you would have used, and the energy the expert used, and you used a lot more.  You have work to do!  So your mind punishes you, and makes you feel inferior.

An expert in something is always someone who can do a complex task, with little effort.  That’s the meaning of an expert.  All experts can do a task as easy as possible – in other words, they use the least amount of energy to get the job done.  This is an evolutionary thing which has developed and our minds utilize.  It makes us feel good when we’re doing good, and feel bad when we’re not doing good.

Wit works very similarly.  Witty people are able to use very few words to communicate complex subjects.  You’ll notice that all wit is rooted in how pithy the statement is  (has to be short).  This is due to how our minds associate words together, their psychic intensities, and the dynamics of speaking.  Different concepts are charged with different intensities in the mind.  To create wit, one must quickly jump from one topic to the next with very few words, therefore leaving a spill over of psychic energy, which the mind releases in the form of humor.  Also, wit oftentimes takes advantage of repressed issues in our minds, and by dancing around thought associations, can relieve various repressed things which have been built up, and relieve the built up energy, while at the same time getting around our moral censors.  Comedians use this all the time, when their jokes indirectly reference and talk about taboo subjects, such as making fun of people we don’t think we should make fun of, or subjects such as sex, which have so many taboos.

Take sex jokes for instance.  If you don’t have any repressed issues regarding sexuality, then jokes or wit about the subject will not work as well on you.  One time I was with a group of nerds, and they kept making jokes about sex.  They’d say things like, “Your balls”, “My ass”, and they would make everything said into some sort of sexual innuendo.  Everything said was some sort of sexual reference.

This sort of thing has one of two causes.  One, these individuals never have any sexual experiences, and have pent-up sexual needs.  Or two, they use these sexual references to arouse the opposite sex members that are in the company.  With the pent-up needs, the indirect references are a way of letting out both anxiety, and sexual energy which is repressed.  To come right out and say, “You’re a loser, you never have sex”, would be too direct, and would be fought off by their conscious censor.  If that kind of thing was said, they’d probably snap back at the person who said it.  But to indirectly reference sex by using this crude wit let’s them let out some steam.

Another instance of this was when I was network administrator for a company.  I remember I’d go into some of the offices, and I’d see these signs up on the wall that’d say, “Bang head here”, and it’d have a big circle.  These are indirect ways of letting off steam.  There’s something worth noting here.  People who love their job do not have things like that on their wall – it’s the people who do not like thier job.  They wish to scream, “I hate this place”, but they cannot do it, but they can let off some steam by indirectly stating it in jokes like these.  I rarely see this sort of thing going on in highly respectable people’s offices, or people who think very highly of their job.  Such individuals normally have plaques on the wall of their educational degrees, awards, and other accomplishments.  The lower-end office staff hate their jobs, and have pent-up hatred for work, but cannot say it to the boss, because they’d get in trouble.  People without such pent-up aggression do not find such jokes even funny, and if they do not understand this psychological concept, find it strange that someone would put a picture of a circle on the wall, and bang their head on it.

Now in the company of successful people, a person less successful will feel intimidated.  They feel as if they don’t fit in.  This is due to the fact that unconsciously, they feel they have not accomplished as much, even though they may have had the same available amount of time.  But this isn’t always the case.  A young man may be a protege to a successful older business man, and he feels like he fits it, even though his master can perform the same tasks much better than he can.  How can this be?  This is due to the fact that the young man feels he is just as accomplished as his master if he compares himself to his teacher in respect to how much time it has taken him to get where he is, versus how much time it took his master.  If he’s doing just as well, or better, then he will feel as if he is an equal with his master.  If he’s progressing much quicker than his master did, he will feel superior, and think he has greater natural talent and abilities.

Of course, like most things with the human body, this unconscious comparison mechanism of the mind, though it seems to have evolved for simple situations to help us know when we’re doing well, and not doing well, is not full-proof.  Some people are really quite gifted, but due to psychogical issues such as inferiority complexes, they feel they are not doing well at all.  Beautiful women sometimes think they are ugly.  Intelligent people with good minds get depressed and think they are stupid.  On the opposite side of the specturum, sometimes people think they’re doing better than they really are.  People get arrogant and think they’re better than others, and their own arrogance destroys them.  Emotionally speaking, the only reality that exists is the one you believe in.  If you BELIEVE you are ugly and worthless, then that is how you will feel, regardless of how beautiful and talented you really are.  If you’re arrogant, you’ll go around FEELING like you’re a champion and can defeat anyone, but in reality you’re under a delusion.

What’s dangerous about the emotional life compared to reality, is that if the two are not in proper sync, you may try to take on something you’re not ready for, or not accomplish as much as you have the potential to accomplish.  Greg and I know a business man who went to some seminars and came out of them thinking, “Yeahhhh!  I can do anything!”  He then tried to rapidly expand his business, ended up failing, and felt worse off than he started.  He even ended up ruining some valuable business relationships.  Emotionally, after the seminar, there’s no doubt he felt great.  He really did think he could do anything.  But emotions are one thing, reality is another.

Now we come to goal setting.  We all know we feel good when we accomplish the goals we set for ourselves, and feel bad when we fail at them.  This works under the same principle.  At first we set a goal for ourselves and in our minds we estimate the amount of energy required to accomplish the goal.  We then set out to do the goal, and our mind compares how much energy we’re using against this imaginary energy budget we ourselves created in our minds.  If we’re left over with excess energy, we feel good, and end the job with a smile on our face.  If we end up coming short, we feel depressed and angry.

This is why having realistic expectations is so key to emotional health.  If you underestimate each task in front of you, you will always be unhappy.  What’s even more crazy about this situation is that you’re creating your own misery, because you yourself created this energy budget.  You tell yourself, “I’ll get this room cleaned this afternoon”, then it takes you three days, and you feel awful.  On the opposite side, if you would have got the same job done in 30 minutes, yet thought it’d take you all afternoon, you would have finished the job grinning ear to ear.

So one of the key components of being consistently happy is to have continual small goals, and realistic time-frames set for them, and to be continually beating your expectations.

Also with goals, if we have something we’ve been working on for a long long time, and have been suffering great difficulty trying to accomplish something, then finally are able to do it, we feel great joy.

To recap goals then, to feel mildly happy all the time, you must have lots of small goals and be accomplishing them.  In order to feel very happy, you must suffer a great deal, then finally, after a long arduous period of pain, finally break through and accomplish your goal.

This runs into problems.  Small goals with “realistic expectations” are tricky, because you know your own abilities.  You cannot lie to yourself.  You cannot tell yourself, “I’ll get this room clean after a month”, when you know you could do it in an hour, and still feel good about yourself.  To feel good about small goals, you REALLY DO have to outperform your own expectations, and beliefs.  That isn’t always easy.  On the other hand, to feel great happiness, you have to first suffer a great deal, which isn’t very inviting.

In other words, it’s almost impossible to feel happy all the time, because it’s impossible to know how hard various goals are going to be, and even if you DID know, then you wouldn’t feel happy about it, because you have to outperform your goals to feel happy.  If you only accomplish your goals on time, then to feel happy you must be comparing yourself to some standard, and feel yourself growing relative to it.  You might be comparing yourself to your family members, and telling yourself that you’re doing much better than they are.  Or maybe you’re comparing yourself to friends, your past self, etc.

You have to be careful about who you compare yourself to.  Christians make themselves miserable by comparing themselves to a perfect moral authority, who imposes rules on them which are unnatural.  Young Christian men feel they are horrible people because they have a desire to have sex with their girlfriend.  “Impure thoughts, impure thoughts!”  They continually come short, and beat themselves down.

Besides fighting our imbalanced instincts in modern society, our other battle for happiness is goal setting.  Set unrealistic goals and you’re unhappy because you come short of your own subjective mental energy budgets.  Set too easy goals, and you know that you could do better.  Then there’s the battle of comparing ourselves to all those we see around us.  There’s those who are more beautiful, get lucky breaks, make more money, etc., and we always feel like we’re short of them.

This brings me to an interesting note.  Though I’m not myself superstitious, Greg and I, a while back, decided to mess around with the I-Ching.  We asked it some questions, and then it gave us some answers.  The book told Greg that he’d be very rich, but unhappy.  It told me that I had great sucess coming my way, and happiness.  I’m not going to say this outcome will be true, because I don’t believe in such things, but I did think about it the other day.

Greg compares himself to others a lot, and sometimes I do as well, though not as much.  Oftentimes we refer to some business men we encounter as “real”, and others as “not real”.  Greg wants to grow in power, and seems more concerned about others image of himself.  This is where him and I have always differed.

I wondered about Greg’s mindset, and I noticed that he is dissatisified with his current situation, comparing it to where he wants to be, and rapidly striving to get there.  While he’s in the process of getting “to the top”, he’s unhappy, because he has to deal with crappy, low-end business men, who can’t make things happen.  Yet at the same time, when he gets to the top, he will not have anyone to compare to when he gets there, and because the work doesn’t seem to be about the work itself, but more so about the image other people have of him, he’ll be forced at this point to naturally compare downward, which is something he hates to do.  I’m not sure what the overall goal of this is, and I think recently he came to this conclusion himself.  He’s been developing his own ideas lately about “being in the moment”, and I think that will eventually lead him to figure out the flaws in his current mindset.  He’s led on to the idea in conversations we’ve had, talking about living in an “ivory penthouse”, yet being bored and unhappy, but at least he has tons of money.  I’ve figured that there’s no need to confront him about it, because he’s a smart guy, and it seems he’s found out the conclusions of the mindset himself.

The thing about comparing yourself with others, is that as you grow better and better, the opinion of others matters less and less.  If you suck in basketball, a high school basketball coach’s tips and compliments may mean a lot to you, but if you’re an NBA super-star, what a high school coach has to say will mean little.  Eventually you become so good that nobody’s opinion matters anymore, because the only person good enough to judge your quality is you.  There are people who enter such a state out of delusion, but others, like Einstein, reached this state by simply being so awesome nobody can even understand what them anymore.

My mindset doesn’t have these flaws.  I study science, and do not care what others think of me.  I just keep studying, and learning new things in a steady fashion, so I almost always feel good, at least when I’m doing my research.  My happiness in this revolves around continual growth, and I keep beating my old standard, which is simply the old Jason.  Even if I run out of science books, I still have my own research endeavors which it leads to.  There is no “top”, and there is no place that I exist within a current hierarchy.  I’m not competiting with anyone. I grow as a person, and become better, for me.

My current flaws though is my own denial of my more base instincts.  I’ve always tried to escape them.  I tell myself I don’t need a woman, or sex, but I do sometimes develop feelings toward girls I speak with a lot and admire, and would like to have an intimate relationship.  I tell myself it’s base, and unnecessary, and throws off my nice balance of research and solitary happiness, but this is the kink in my system.  My biological fate.

Maybe the I-Ching saw Greg and I’s current mindsets, and saw that mine eventually led to good things, and his, if he continued his current ways, led to unhappiness.  I do not know.