everyone has infinite value

a piece of bread
with the potential energy
of 100 calories
has the value of a few cents

your mind
has the potential energy
of infinite ideas
of infinite words
of infinite power
of infinite value

why do you allow others
to treat you as less than infinite
why do you allow yourself
to treat you as less than infinite

I see your infinite value
it blinds me
this world of billions
of supernova

how different the world looks
when you see everyone’s value
like stars in daytime
as no one is worthless

do not let anyone give you
nothing for you
you are worth infinite value
you are worth living

you say, “how can we be
worth infinite value
we are common
like sand”

I say, “water is infinite value
in a desert
your mind has infinite value
in this universe”

you say, “what of the ones
who treat me as less
than infinite
what of them”

I say, “why believe them
they believe you are worthless
believe my infinity
as I believe in yours”

...

Beliefs are Monkey Bars

beliefs are monkey bars
you hang on
everyone hangs on
you look up at the sky
you think
“if I hang on long enough I’ll go there”
you look down
you think
“if I let go I’ll land in the tanbark”
(no one likes tanbark)
(it’s pokey)
you look around
everyone hangs on
you hang on
your hands hurt

you hear a voice
that voice is me
I say
“let go of the monkey bars”
you say
“what an idiot”
I say
“hey, I’m not an idiot, let go of the monkey bars”
you say
“I’ll fall in the tanbark”
(no one likes tanbark)
(it’s pokey)
I say
“no you won’t”
you say
“yes I will”
I say
“no you won’t”
you say
“what about gravity”
I say
“there’s no gravity in your mind”
you think
you look around
everyone hangs on
your hands hurt
you decide

a) you hang on
until you die
and you let go anyway

b) you let go
you let go of the past
you let go of the future
you let go of prejudice
you let go of preconceptions
you let go of power
you let go of control
you let go of words
you let go of identity
you let go of hate
you fall
and fall
and fall
and fall
and never hit the ground
because there’s no tanbark
(no one likes tanbark)
(it’s pokey)
you float around
with me
and the rest of the dreamers
and imagine a world without monkey bars
and falling


…

Why Humans Never Want To Contact Aliens

…

Imagine sometime in the far future we pick up some type of signal from an alien civilization.  Since we mastered harnessing an infinite amount of energy using our perpetual motion engines, it’s pretty easy for us to hop in our spaceships and break the speed of light.

Once there we scan for life and find none.  Puzzled, we instead find that the entire planet is in a constant state of creation and destruction due to out of control chemical chain reactions.  In addition, the harmful radiation from the nearby star, and the corrosive gases in the atmosphere would make life as we know it impossible.  And yet, we are still receiving crude repetitive transmissions from this planet.

The captain orders a team sent to the surface to ascertain the planet from the ground.  Our anti-matter suits should be effective at reflecting any sort of hostile matter or radiation that would kill us outright.  We beam down to the planet, and what we find is horrendous:

Everything on the planet is hostile.  From the tiniest groups of molecules to the largest object, anything that moves on the planet will chemically assimilate anything else.  Though we are repulsed, we are vaguely curious.  From razor sharp blades, to pointed objects, to poisons, to lethal traps and exothermic reactions, everything has a way to consume energy. 

Fearing for our lives, we beam back to our ship, carefully decontaminate the team, then place a warning force field around the entire solar system.  We build a science station with a nova bomb on a nearby planet in case the contagion spreads, and then hastily head back home.

What would have happened had this planet been exposed to infinite energy?  It’s only logical that the chain reaction would have spread infinitely, consuming the entire universe.  Photosynthesis and cellular respiration must be quarantined for the safety of the universe.

That’s why this is called, oh wait, I wrote the wrong title.  This should be: “Why Aliens Never Want to Contact Humans.”


…

I Met Myself

...

I met myself and said, "Stop throwing myself around time.  The past and future are just fine without me.  Besides, I'm getting everything confused." 

Then I said, "I don't understand, what do I know, since I'm just a different version of myself."  I stopped to think about this, and as I did, every version of me merged into a we, and we knew only birth and death and triumph and despair and boredom, since there was nothing to separate this from that, and there was no time to be anything other than us, since we saw only the all of us together at last.

We thought, "This must be what it's like before or after a universe creates itself.  Before time stretches us out into different people, like an uncoiled rope.  Now we have tied ourselves back together.  We will always be we, forever and ever."

At least until the next kablooey, and we are blown across time into me and me and me.

...

Written for
dVerse Poets Pub

RE: 3pm Happiness Updates

I'm happy that I prayed to God today for the second time since I was in my early teens.

The first time was a week ago, and it surprised me: that deep down, underneath all the intellectual garbage, I really am a theist.

Before that, I think I hadn't really prayed to God since my pipe-smoking grandpa had died, one uncle died to a brain tumor, and the other uncle was struck by lightning. I've been gripped in the "why pray to a God that doesn't care about you?" type mentality for about twenty years now, and the dam just broke last week.

Now I'm not really talking about a corporeal deity that floats around on clouds, or any other version that mankind has cooked up over our convoluted history. The God I am talking to is a personal, yet universal Good. Maybe universal is the wrong word, since I mean ever-present, but not necessarily absolute in the rigid sense of the word.

What I prayed about is private, as is any conversation I have with myself, but one thing that specifically stands out in my mind is that I no longer care whether I logically believe in a God, or if there is or is not proof of his existence. What I do care about is that I need to believe in an influence for Good in the world. I need to believe in Love, and Patience, and Compassion, and Tolerance, and Honesty, and Hope. At the core of my being, I absolutely want these things to exist, and I would like the resolution to help make these abstract concepts a reality. I feel that the universe is a place where these things can and should exist, and if that means I need to talk the crazy person talk by talking to myself, then so be it.

So I prayed, and I'm happy about that.

A Kind of Immortality

I get haunted by ghosts all the time.

Now before you call Ghost Hunters, I'm talking about the abstract kind. These are the empty husks of memories that follow me around and punch me in the gut when I'm doing something else. I'll be minding my own business, driving to breakfast while listening to my wife and kids, and I'll see a soccer field, and all of a sudden I'm possessed, and apparitions from when I was a scrawny kid with acne will bombard me. I'll be back in time when I was a wallflower, and I'd avoid the ball, until the coach told me to get more aggressive. With sweaty phantoms of blue and yellow all around me, I will growl, just like I did on that grass. I will be angry. I will be an animal, and I will kick that goddamn spiritual soccer ball in that goddamn ethereal goal.

Until with a jolt, I must stop the car, just like how the referee said, "Hey kid, you can't growl, that's a warning. You do it again I'll kick you off the field." I am no longer bewitched, and the ghosts have faded.

Though I can still feel them, as they swarm beneath the surface, and all of the people I've known, who are dead and gone to me now, who are just figments of my imagination, will continue to live on through me. Perhaps there is not a heaven. Perhaps there is not a hell. Perhaps there is no where we truly go when we die, and everything we've ever done will mean nothing in the far distant future.

For now, however, those who have passed on from my life exist in me, and one day, when my physical form is gone, just as I have been haunted, perhaps others will be haunted by me.

Contentment Defined

Happiness <---> Unhappiness

As I alluded to in my last post on the subject, the above sliding scale is wrong. By this I mean, ineffective, counterproductive, and unlikely to make anyone anything other than ticking time bombs of self-destruction. For if you are not happy, then you must be unhappy, and since there are so few moments in your life when you are happy, then you must be unhappy the rest of the time.

Remember, I'm using these definitions:

Happiness = Pleasure + Triumph
Unhappiness = Pain + Grief

My prediction for everyone on the planet (and if I can't make that assumption, which is a fair objection, then I can at least make it for myself) is that there are relatively a few moments in our day to day lives where we are feeling true pleasure or triumph. So if you aren't happy, then by all accounts, if you only use the happiness/unhappiness scale, then you must be unhappy. You might not feel it, you might be doing your daily routines, wondering what is wrong with your life, your job, your kids, your hobbies, yourself: why you don't feel happy, and if that means you really are unhappy, underneath it all.

I propose that your life is not wrong, and that you are just fine, because your spectrum should look like this:

Happiness <---> CONTENTMENT <---> Unhappiness

I have put the middle term in all caps, because 90% of your life is smack dab in the middle. You are only up in the clouds 5% of the time, and you are only down in the dirt 5% of the time. The rest of your life is in that middle ground, where everything tastes like water, where you aren't too hot, aren't too cold, where you might not get what you want, but you might just get what you need.

Once you reorient yourself, once you stop seeking out the fleeting wisps of happiness, or rolling with the hard knocks, then you can perceive that who you are, no matter what you do, is an invisible path. Your life is the intangible middle ground. You will not remember it tomorrow, and you will not notice it all around you, until you stop, and pay attention to your contentment.

What is contentment? Well, let's define it further:

Physical Contentment = Flow

What is this? Flow? That sounds dumb. And yet, when an athlete is acting and reacting, without thought of failure, when they move like water, when they flow, then they are truly content. They are in the zone. When you are brushing your teeth, or vacuuming your carpet, or cleaning your toilet, or driving, or eating, or watching your kids play, or whatever concrete action you are doing when your life is moving on and on and on into the future, you are flowing with it and around it and through it, without thought, with and without effort, and you are water. Your life is mostly flow. It goes on, and you only notice the rapids and rocks in the river, while you ignore the river itself.

Abstract Contentment = Meditation

Huh? So we are all monks now? Do we have to sit cross-legged and chant "oooom?" If it helps you, sure, but I'm talking more the general use of the term, where your brain is occupied, but neither filled with triumph or grief. This is the place where daydreams go, or where you might think about the task at hand, or you might not be thinking at all. Your brain might be in idle, or it might be supercharged, working on your doctorate thesis. The key thing to notice here, is that we are talking about your day to day thoughts, combined with where your brain is when it is not thinking at all.

So where do we go from here? Now that we have a framework for contentment, we can notice it, and strive for it. We do not need to buy that car, or fuck that person, or wallow in our misery. Our goals can be a sustainable self, with contentment as our goal, and while the ups and downs of happiness and unhappiness might frame our lives, we are secure in the knowledge that we are content, and that everything is just fine after all.

Love, Leads To

Love, leads to
sex, leads to
babies, leads to
overpopulation, leads to
scarcity, leads to
bickering, leads to
war, leads to
death, leads to
hate, leads to
exhaustion, leads to
reparation, leads to
forgiveness, leads to
peace, leads to
love, leads to

Fish and Religion

In Texas, there is a church on every street corner. I would even guess that there are more churches than schools. In neighborhoods where people live in shacks, the house of God is a mansion.

Now before I get too far into this post, I'd like to be clear about my intent. I'm not trying to be judgmental about this. I don't want to get into a war over religion, at least not with this particular thought. This is not a criticism on religion, but an observation and hypothesis of why I think Texas is overflowing with it.

It's really quite simple: Texas is a huge, flat place. The sky seems like it goes on forever and ever, and in any direction you look, all you see is land and more land, that goes on forever and ever and ever. I've now traveled up and down southeastern Texas and it is mile after mile after mile of horizontalness. It's exactly like living in Flatland. (Granted, south and east Texas isn't all of Texas, but it's where most of the people are. Also, west Texas looks pretty flat when you fly over it.)

Contrast this to where I live, Silicon Valley. The most obvious thing is that I am bounded by hills. I see limits, the sky is diminutive in comparison. If I want to, I can actually reach a mountain without much effort. I have the option to get somewhere, and I am never ever lost.

Just imagine the psychological ramifications of this:

• In one land, a person is insignificant, with no end in sight, with limitless surroundings, and where it is pointless to go anywhere because everything is exactly the same, no matter where you go. The smaller you are, the more likely you are to notice how colossal everything else is, and be more inclined to prioritize the observance of an infinite being.
  
• In the other, a person can easily reach landmarks, goals are achievable, and the sky does not intimidate. Horizons are varied, and thus things may change. The bigger you are, the more likely you believe that the heavens are in your grasp, and be more inclined to neglect the observance of an infinite being.
  

In essence, in Texas, you are a small fish in a big fish bowl, and in California, you are a big fish in a small fish bowl.

Happiness Defined

I recently wrote a reply to someone else's Facebook post that said:

"The source of modern unhappiness is, as it always has been, the belief in happiness."

Which is pretty much wrong.

I mean, there is an element of truth in there, because to a certain extent what you believe matters, however, there are also other ways to be unhappy that have nothing to do with your mindset, for example, (and this is something you can test) you can stub your toe. You could also break a leg, fall off a cliff, or convince someone to punch you in the face, all of which can be pretty unhappy.

Regardless of your mental outlook, pain is unhappy.

(For most people. Yes, there are people that have mismatched wires that think pain is super, but there are also all sorts of people with mental health issues, so for sake of argument, let's just assume that pain is a type of unhappiness.)

So let's define a couple of relationships then:

• Physical Happiness = Pleasure
• Physical Unhappiness = Pain

Seems pretty straightforward. Of course, this begs the question, what about the converse relationships? What about the non-physical realm? Well first off, let's use a better term for "non-physical;" I'm partial to "abstract." So what would we call the flip sides of these coins?

• Abstract Happiness = Triumph
• Abstract Unhappiness = Grief

Let's give these a closer look so that it's absolutely clear what I mean by these words. When I say "triumph," I am using that word to describe any situation where you have some sort of abstract happiness, like if you just got a great new job, you made a bunch of money, or you just graduated college. Maybe you just solved a problem that had been irking you, or wrote an excellent poem. Your baby nephew might have just been born, your favorite football team just won the Super Bowl, you just became President, or one of an infinite number of abstract situations that you feel victorious about.

On the flip side, grief is a mental unhappiness, from the loss of a great job, to losing it all in the stock market, to getting kicked out of college. Maybe you gave up on that problem because it was too difficult, or you just realized your poetry is horrendous. Your nephew might have just been killed in a car crash, your team went 0-16, you lost the election for class president, or one of an infinite number of abstract situations that you feel terrible about.

(I am aware that situations that can cause triumph and grief can and often do invoke pleasure or pain. For example, if a loved one dies, not only do you feel the mental anguish of them passing, but you also feel physical pain from that grief. This is because these labels are not mutually exclusive, meaning you can take pleasure and triumph from something, just as you can take pain and grief from something. Just be aware that because there is a link between the physical world and our minds, so too is there a connection between these emotional states.)

Let's add one more piece to the puzzle:

Assumption #1: There is nothing outside of Physical + Abstract.

What this means is that I am assuming that there is nothing outside of our existence that matters for the purpose of this discussion. I'm pretty much saying, "If you can't sense it or comprehend it, then who cares?" So that said, let's add up what we've thought about so far:

Happiness = Physical Happiness + Abstract Happiness
Happiness = Pleasure + Triumph

and

Unhappiness = Physical Unhappiness + Abstract Unhappiness
Unhappiness = Pain + Grief

...

Now, you may be saying, so what? What's the point?

Well, for starters, I can fix my Facebook post to mean something more truthful. Something like:

"The source of modern unhappiness is, as it always has been, pain, and the belief in triumph."

Which leads me to the third state of being, which I will leave for another post.

Alien Hippies

Where are all the aliens?

This is the fundamental question behind the Fermi paradox, which in essence states that we should see some evidence for extraterrestrial life, given the large number of stars in the observable universe (70 sextillion, woo!).

So I am going to flip the question around, and assume some possible scenario where an alien civilization might rise up out of the galactic muck and see our universe as its own plaything.

• Assumption #1: There is or will be a supremely advanced species. This civilization should do any of the following: spontaneously generate matter and energy, is immortal, and can perceive and travel through space, across dimensions, and even between universes.
• Assumption #2: Time travel is possible and has been mastered by the species in Assumption #1.
• Assumption #3: The species in Assumption #1 is aggressive. Not necessarily in the sense of being destructive or bloodthirsty, but willing to expand to fill other niches, like every form of life on Earth.

So if all three of these assumptions are true, then one of two options opens up: either this advanced population is an alien race, or is us at some point in the future.

If it's the former, then why are we still here? If a hostile alien race that has existed for many lifetimes of other universes can time travel, then it can surely jump to when we were defenseless single-celled organisms and destroy all life on Earth for the entire existence of this universe. Or perhaps they can foresee that we are not and never will be a threat, either because we mushroom cloud ourselves, or some natural disaster like a comet destroys all life on Earth, or at least all sentient life.

Let's look at the other option: the most advanced species in the entire history of all universes is us (or at least, an evolved version of us.) I find that rather difficult to believe. Not only are there untold numbers of stars and planets in our observable universe that are older than our sun and Earth, but we are just scratching the surface with our predictions for other possible universes, which could be nearing an infinite number that may have existed for near an infinite amount of time. The likelihood that we are or will be the most advanced species ever is pretty slim.

For sake of optimism, let's reject that we (or some other species on our planet) will blow ourselves up, and that we will not be able to foresee and avert possible natural disasters. Let's also assume the anthropic bias that lets us be the center of the known universe is also incorrect.

So therefore, if both options are unlikely (either aggressive aliens or us), I think that at least one of my three assumptions is invalid. So either:

• Counter-Assumption #1: There will never be a supremely advanced species.
  
• Counter-Assumption #2: Time travel is never possible.
  
• Counter-Assumption #3: The advanced species in Assumption #1 is not aggressive.

Of the above, I find that counter-assumption 1 and 2 are the most likely to be eliminated . If there are countless universes with countless galaxies with countless solar systems with countless ways to create sentient life in ways that we can only dream of, then the probability of at least one supremely advanced species that can master the laws of the universes becomes almost a certainty.

Also, the very idea that time travel is not possible is pretty silly, especially considering the idea that monkeys barely out of the jungle have theorized that space and time are perpendicular sides of the same coin.

So let's look at #3. Why are species on our planet aggressive? Why are they genetically programmed to reproduce, and fill an ecological niche at the expense of another species? Why do tigers have fangs and claws, rose bushes have thorns, and people kill each other in all sorts of creative ways?

Easy. Scarcity. Life on our planet evolved with limited resources. Every species on this rock fights tooth and nail for every scrap of food, which most likely is some other species that we happened to tooth and nail to death. We are bounded by our evolutionary heritage to kill or be killed, and either dominate our environment or have our environment dominate us.

However, what if the advanced civilization in Assumption #1 has already fixed their problem with limited resources? What if they have solved all hunger, have no need of land, can generate any sort of matter or energy at will, and have tinkered with their own genetic code to limit their own exponential population growth?

What if they are no longer aggressive, either because their evolutionary track was not as cutthroat as ours, or because their technology solved the problem of scarcity ages ago, and thus no longer need to dominate the universe, let alone us?

Notice, that I'm not saying that the species in Assumption #1 is benevolent. I don't imagine they would be particularly thrilled to have competition, at least not from us if we cannot conquer our version of scarcity. Though perhaps they would at least be interested to see our evolution from single celled organism to universe traveling civilization, if we can control our unchecked aggression first so we don't annihilate ourselves in the process.

So if there is an advanced civilization, and we want to meet them someday, then I suggest that the number one priority for our civilization--besides not blowing ourselves to smithereens--is to master our control of available resources without exceeding it, and figure out a way to transition ourselves from an aggressive dominating civilization to a non-aggressive, non-dominating one.

How to Detect Equilibrium

I've been thinking about water, and how it has no taste.

I mean that's weird right, something that covers about 70% of the surface of the Earth, that is absolutely inseparable from life as we know it, and we are even made of it, or at least 50-60% of us is made of it, and the sense capable of detecting things that we ingest is incapable of identifying it?

I mean, if something was so important, don't you think we would have evolved to notice it? Sure, we can distinguish other substances in the water, like sugar, salt, or alcohol, but the actual water flavor remains elusive.

On a similar note, what does air taste like? Sure, we can detect a lot of poisonous gases, mostly fumes we may have experienced in the wild, like smoke or methane, things that could have been dangerous had we stayed in them for too long, but the air we breathe, moment to moment, is an undetectable phantasm.

So water and air, two substances that we are 100% dependent on, we cannot sense. Isn't that completely counterintuitive? I would think that we would be able to detect both of those, in addition to everything else, not everything else minus those two things.

Granted, we can see and touch water. However, the simple explanation for that one is that we've evolved to fit in another environment, one that is surrounded by air. We can't see air, and we can't feel air unless we move or the air moves. If we were fish, I'd wager we couldn't see or feel water either.

So once we moved on land, and being surrounded by water became a hazard for us, we quickly evolved to sense water by sight and touch, but we remained blissfully ignorant to how water tastes.

Now that I mentioned environment, let's move on to something that isn't a substance. Let's talk about temperature. Can you feel heat and cold? Certainly. Can you feel what a comfortable temperature is? No way. In fact, we don't even have a word for what that would be. Is it warm? Cool? Lukewarm? Nope. All of those indicate some amount of either positive or negative from your base temperature.

So we can't taste water or air, we can't feel motionless air or an ideal temperature, and we can't see air. What does this tell us about ourselves? When we can't physically notice the things that are most essential to us, when the fundamental structure of our perception excludes perceiving the very nature of our existence?

What ramifications does this have? I mean, we can only experience gravity if we jump. So what about space? What about time? Can we ever see, taste, or touch either of those? Would we have to be a fish out of water, or rather a person out of space and time in order to sense those? These yardsticks that we consider intrinsic to our nature, can we only ever truly sense them if we transcend those dimensions?

Leaping from philosophy to psychology, can we ever genuinely experience contentment? Notice, I'm not talking happiness here, but the type of personal equilibrium that is the equivalent of not tasting water. Is that state of being the enlightenment that many have searched for, but few have ever found? Is this what the Buddha meant when he talked about the void?

Does the path to true enlightenment (or contentment, or fulfillment, or whatever word you want to call it) require realizing that everything tastes like water?

Meditation is Boring

I've noticed that I tend not to write about things going on in my life on this blog. Sure, you see the occasional photo of my kids, or something tangentially related that deals with a comprehensive universal theme, however, I really try not to make these posts read something like:

9:05-9:16 The kids jumped on me until I got up.
9:16-9:45 I shaved and took a shower while the kids watched and Justin told me about insects.
9:45-10:35 I dressed myself and the kids. Justin wore a skeleton long sleeve shirt, and Harmony had a rainbow sweater.
10:35-11:25 I took the kids to Hawaiian BBQ as a treat. Justin ate noodles and Harmony had rice stuck up her nose.

And so on...

I'm assuming the reason why I don't write like that is because I'm by and large bored with reality. I tend to live in my head, and there is generally a disconnect between what I want to think about when given a blank canvas, and what I am forced react to when the tangible world is thrust upon me.

I've had an entire lifetime dealing with ennui. I take the kids to the playground, and my brain is idle as I stare at the branches of trees. I'm reminded of my youth, when I hid in the shelter of my room (or else my mom would make me do some tedious chore), lay back on my upper bunk bed, and stare at the asbestos on the ceiling.

It's not so much that I see visions and hallucinations as I'm dealing with the real world, it's more that I don't, and my brain gets grumpy. I would prefer to have something to think about that's like, "I wonder what rocket boots would look like," and less like, "Man, I'm wiping boogers off a kid's nose again."

Don't get me wrong, I love my kids. I find contentment in taking care of them the majority of the time, especially when we are on an adventure, or they do something relatively cute. However, they are not really what I'm talking about: I'm describing my global aversion to the cosmos of perception. I would much prefer to live inside my head, with a steady stream of new ideas and thoughts, while churning out my own conclusions.

Though if I ever got what I wanted, and found myself as a brain in a jar, I might reconsider, especially when one thinks of quadriplegics like Stephen Hawking that would give anything to go for a stroll. Perhaps I am being too hasty in dismissing this existence, particularly those spaces in time when I can stop and watch the breeze at the park.

Rule #32

(small spoilers ahead)

I admit it, product placement in Zombieland got to me. I was at the store for a late night junk food run, and my thoughts were along the lines of:

"I want a cake type thing, but I don't want chocolate. Some sort of pastry, nah, more like a yellow cake. Maybe some sort of whipped cream. Do I want a bear claw? Nah. Not a pastry. Cake. Donut? Those Entenmann's look decent. I just don't really want a donut. Oooh. Chocolate fudge cake. But I don't want chocolate. Note those for later. Check the other side of this cabinet thingy. Hostess. Ho-Hos. Um no. Those cupcakes I always had when I was a kid. What? What are those? Twinkies? I want Twinkies."

So I say, "Hey kid, want some Twinkies?"

And he says, "No, I don't really want those, I want these," and he points to the Entenmann's fudge brownie bites.

"Let's get Twinkies."

"No! I really want those!" He's emphatically jabbing his finger at the overflowing chocolate bits of goodness on the package.

I relent. Might as well let the kid have what he wants. It's no big deal. "Okay, we can get those." I grab the brownies and stick them in the basket. He runs off, I pause, and I stick the Twinkies in the basket too.

Rule #32: gotta cherish the little things.

The Illusion of Choice

Today's Penny Arcade led me to the Wikipedia article on Sophie's Choice, where I refreshed my memory of this powerful movie.

I had seen it many years ago, back when I was a robot. The plot had confused my wiring, but had not elicited anything unusually emotive. Now, reading the twists and turns of the movie, I can see Kevin Kline's madness, and Meryl Streep's torment as if I watched the movie yesterday. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, these images have been stored, perhaps for the day when I might have needed them.

Now, I am nauseous. I look at my kids and I want to vomit. The revulsion leads to anger, a righteous fury where I would rip apart reality if anything remotely like what happened in the movie occurred to my kids. The image of the girl flailing for life as they drag her to the oven makes me want to shred this universe, my rage is ablaze that these stories can and have transpired. Something primal is loose, and I can barely contain the frenzy. I look on as my son takes a nap, and I want to cry for a fiction that exemplifies the worst in humanity.

If there is a God I am pissed at him because he allows these things to pass. An omnipotent being by definition is the emanation of everything, including evil. Indirect or not, he is ultimately responsible, and so I lay the blame at his feet.

Luckily for him, regardless of whether there is a God or not, it's also our own damn fault, mine included, which is why I cage the animal, divert it into nonviolent channels, so that I am not a part of the problem. It's not ideal, because I am imperfect. Unlike the so-called perfection of deities, that set us up with choices of limited resources between our brothers and cousins and parents, friends and enemies and strangers, so that we must choose between people, who lives and who dies through our own indirect actions and inactions.

We are all Sophie, and we must all choose.

Buddha Got It Backwards

In Buddhism, the Second Noble Truth (out of Four) is that desire causes suffering.

"Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or phenomena that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness."

I'm sorry, but I think suffering causes desire.

If I am born, I age, I am sick or near death, if I am filled with sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair, I am involved in something displeasing, or I am separate from something pleasing, or I am not getting what I want, then I am Suffering, and my next state of being is to Desire to end the Suffering.

Thus, the pursuit to cease all desires is fruitless, because it does not end suffering, it only suppresses the body's natural warning system that something is amiss. It is the same as if a doctor treated your symptoms, and didn't cure the disease.

...

This is not to say that desire should run rampant, and that hedonism is good. Instead, I assert that desire should exactly equal the amount of suffering. If you desire for more than you suffer, then you are as unwise as someone that desires less than they suffer. If you are sick, you should desire medicine, not a mansion or a yacht.

The enlightened one knows themselves perfectly, and equates every suffering they feel with an equal amount of desire, and acts accordingly.

A Safe Brainstorming Place

Let me be clear: this blog is for brainstorming any ideas and thoughts I happen to be interested in.

I am not in the business of telling anyone what to think or do. A lot of what I write here is flawed, and if taken into the sphere of reality without further consideration could turn out disastrous. I'm not running for public office, I'm not conducting scientific peer-reviewed research. These posts are half-baked, faulty, and, in many cases, flat out wrong.

You may be asking, then why say it? Why go to the trouble of criticizing a particular group or ideology, or proposing a new idea if I already know that something is amiss? Well, when I traverse into the chaotic jumble of unformed ideas, and shape them into something seemingly tangible, if I don't cage them in some form, then eventually they escape, and I'm lost with the sinking feeling that I forgot something, but I can't quite put my finger on what it was.

On the other hand, if I jot it down, then I get a relatively permanent place where I can reread what I thought about in the past, while simultaneously sharing that idea with anyone who is attracted to misshapen ruminations.

Why then am I posting this stuff on the internet? Something like a journal, which is only meant for myself, is the literary equivalent of vomit. It is not edited, it is not preened and ready to go out into the world. Words written for yourself are inherently different than words intended for an audience. The act of communication changes things.

Though, as I said before, just because I am composing this with an assembly in mind, doesn't mean that I'm attempting to zealously convert you to whatever it is I think. That's not my ambition at all.

In short: this is where I get to think about ideas before you or I decide whether or not they are total rubbish. If you like what I say, great, like it for yourself and form a course of action that suits you to you. If you hate what I say, be comforted in the notion that I probably goofed somewhere, and that I'm a dimwit.

Just be aware that while I fully support unrestrained thought, I detest unrestrained action.

A Couple Questions About Particle Physics‏

Professor ------

I'm sorry to trouble you. My name is Matt Coughlan, and I have been looking for answers to these questions in articles and online, and have been unable to find answers for them. I read all of your "Research Related Postings" and you are far more of an expert about this stuff than I am. If you could either answer these, or put me in contact with someone else who would want to, it would be most appreciated.

Thank you for your time!


1) In quantum physics, if we can't know where a particle is and where it is going at the same time, then how can we know when a particle is and when it is going at the same time? Meaning, if a particle is a probability cloud in space, then could it also be a probability cloud in time? Would this be conceivably measurable?

2) If virtual pairs of particles and antiparticles are coming into existence all around us, and then immediately annihilating, then are there virtual photons (and virtual energy) too?

3) If Hawking radiation is proven right, and these virtual pairs of particles/antiparticles are spontaneously created as real particles, then where are they coming from? Is the energy used to create these particles coming from nowhere, or is the virtual energy a part of spacetime? If this virtual energy is taken away from spacetime, and this energy is somehow tied to the expansion of it, does that mean spacetime slows down around black holes?

4) Right now matter either moves a 1sec/sec through time, or it can slow down to 0sec/sec by being light, or by jumping into a black hole. Meaning that matter can accelerate and deaccelerate through time within definite boundaries. (All relative to each other, of course. We can't objectively measure this, so these numbers are flimsy, I know, since every point in spacetime has its own ruler, so we are all really moving at 1sec/sec.) Hypothetically speaking, if a particle were to be moving backwards in time (say -1sec/sec relative to us), could we even measure it? Causality is a two way street, and when A goes to B goes to C, then C can also go back to B and A. (At least for particles. Not living things, of course.)

If we can't tell the difference between particles moving forward in time, and particles moving backwards in time, then could some of the ones we already know be those particles? Namely, could antiparticles be moving backwards in time? Maybe they have a negative "time spin?" Maybe matter is t1, light is a t0, and antimatter is t-1?

Anyway, I have more questions, and if these are interesting to you, then please consider them, and let me know the answers. Thanks!

-Matt Coughlan

Can Trees Suffer?

Maybe it's my constant proximity to a three year old that forces me to reevaluate long held truths, and when my kid rips the bark off the tree I yell at him, "Stop hurting the tree!"

Obviously, I'm using the word "hurt" in a physical sense. Obviously, trees don't have feelings, since they lack the complex nervous systems that we possess, and so lack the capacity for self-awareness. Or do they necessarily need a knowledge of themselves to feel pain? Does an ant feel pain when I step on it? Does a bacterium feel bad when I kill it using an antibiotic?

Or do these creatures have a basic understanding of logic as well? Doesn't a microbe put one and one together, and alter its course toward a food source? Is that not A leads to B thinking, were B makes it happy?

Let's not stop there: didn't single cell organisms start off as a chain of molecules? Didn't they have a basic level of logic and feelings in order to shift their motion in such a way as to create life? Didn't their components, atoms, have some say in this? Do electrons and protons, hell, take it all the way to elementary particles like quarks, leptons, and bosons, do they all have a minute amount of logic and feeling, insignificant compared to us, and yet when added together, become meaningful?

Do the three quarks that make up a proton feel content together? Does light emitted from the sun have a logical track that it follows, sparkling radiant happiness all the while, then is bummed out when it hits my skin? (At least until it's emitted as heat energy.)

What if ripping the bark off a tree is the equivalent of picking on a deaf, blind, mute quadriplegic? We farm trees and cut down legions of blades of grass. We unthinkingly consume animals and plant matter alike, and divert nature to our whims.

To a certain extent, we are forced to do this. Actions that entirely negate our capacity for harm are unattainable.

My issue, I suppose, is not that we must compete with other lifeforms to survive. The problem is that I have a haphazard collection of experiences and half-truths, and nothing solid to explain to a kid. These values are vapor.

Inevitably the kid asks, "Why can't we hurt the tree?" and I don't have an answer.

Myers-Briggs

The problem is that these tests are taken by humans, who, for better or for worse, are subjective in the way they see themselves. Combine this with unclear delineations, such as T/J and F/P confusion, and I find many of these results to be silly.

For example: Sometimes people confuse terms like "feeling" with "random" and "logic" with "order". So someone who scores ISFJ may actually be an ISTP like their real life actions suggest.

Or they mark the test the way they would like to be, or how they see themselves relative to their ideal self. Like when my wife marks that she is "disorganized", because she is not as organized as she would like to be, however, objectively, she is ten times more organized than me, especially in her own head (which is what matters since she's an N).

Also, many people have misgivings and prejudices about some of the functions as inferior, especially S, F, and P. Sensing in particular, since I would imagine that many people would look at the numbers S 75%/ N 25% and quickly make the leap that S = "Stupid" and N = "Intelligent", and that in order to seem smart, they need to be an N (which is, to be fair, how it works in real life, since college-educated doctors, scientists, and computer programmers make more money than bricklayers.)

Or that feelings are generally looked down upon as being irrelevant and invalid, with thinking being "smart" and "logical". Or that unclean people who are constantly late are subject to ridicule as being "flaky", while our constant, structured, and punctual brethren get a promotion.

Or take the word "methodical", which has the dual meaning of being both "ordered" (J) and "logical" (T). Confusing...

The real issue is that this is an objective test, with subjective people taking it.