Life & Liberty

We as the only sentient (intelligent) species on this planet, have an incredible burden to bear; the one of pride and also, the one of the not knowing – the not knowing if we are special or common) not knowing if there is intelligence else ware in the universe. This causes the doubt, the internal emotional struggle of our importance. Which arises out of the (what is the meaning of life) disconnect between our not knowing and our hoping that there is a meaning to life causes an internal struggle in each of us. This struggle compounds on larger and large scales of human civilization: from our societal norms and cultural norms, to our local, state and federal governments (and even moreso in modern times, global governments and continent wide governments.) Cabals of interesting and unique cultures being homogenized for the sake of – what?

We continue to expand in this way because it has served as an evolutionary advantage. We have allowed ourselves to be dominated by tyranny for most of human history. Tyranny has brought nothing but death and poverty because if the inherently evil and imposing nature of control.

Liberty has only very recently in human history, been given a chance to flourish on such a large scale, but it has been all but stamped out in less than 50 years… It should be unequivocally clear to anyone living in our country that we are less free than we have ever been before. To cradle us from that fact are the marvelous wonders and technologies birthed out of our time of more freedom and liberty – but that only serves to deny us from the truth. There are more restraints on our personal, behavioral and cultural freedoms than were ever in the past. We have given up on the concept of liberty… this is a very unfortunate affair for the fate of our Nation and for humanity.

All people should be free, always. An individual life is important – this is the most important and central concept of liberty. Liberty views each person as a special and valuable individual.

This is crucial: without a respect and admiration and encouragement of the concept of an individual life, you can never be truly free from the dominant and oppressive bonds of group thinking, collective thought, and personality homogenization. It is a miracle of the universe that you can be. Why would we so willingly give this up?

As an individual, one can think up anything. Be anything. One mind can begin to think about concepts never dreamed up before. One can enter fields of thought and discovery that person never thought possible, simple with the power of their individuality. Liberty truly is the release of creative energy. It is the bedrock on which the foundation of prosperity is built.

Our individually is what made us such great inventors and pioneers. We’ve pioneered the expression of liberty and freedom and the power of a free republic to the world, but we’ve lost our way. We used to lead by example, and now we’ve changed. We lead by force and control. We are tyrants in this world. In giving up our desire for our individuality, we’ve slipped down into a place of darkness, despair and oppressive inward thinking. What’s even worse, is that many of us have united in a sense of disdain for those who still express their individuality and use it to relish in prosperity.

We are so quick to judge others for being creative and individualistic, and yet at the same time, we fail to remember that it was through the same power of the individual what we unlocked the equivalent of hundreds of years of accomplishments and progress in less than a century.

Today, we pioneer nothing except for wars and debt and death. We are a culture of death. We celebrate and cheer death.

A culture that celebrates death with jubilation will be consumed by death in jubilation.

We need to be a culture that once again celebrates life and liberty.

Think of the kinds of media that are deemed acceptable for our children to consume… We actually raise and indoctrinate children with a greater appreciation for violence and death, than we do life. Horrific, brutal violence is accessible to the youngest of minds – and, for the most part, we don’t even acknowledge it as remotely offensive.

So, why is it psychotic to be open and celebrate the very means by which we make new life, but it is considered normal to embrace the vehicle of death: war?

For, is it not the most beautiful expression of humanity for two individual’s bodies to become one – and through the cosmic magic of physics and chemistry and subatomic congregation, a person – a new life capable of living, loving and creating new things is brought into existence?

We should embrace love and compassion, life and liberty – not death, destruction and tyranny. This is the America I one day hope to wake up in. To wake up – from this nightmare that has endured for far, far too long.

Time

Time, as we experience it, is merely the result of our four-dimensional universe, which is a singular object (among perhaps others… think – multiverse) with what we might call the past, present and future existing simultaneously as a long undulation, passing through three dimensional space.

So, our universe, with everything that has, is and will happen, is a singular four-dimensional object passing through a three-dimensional membrane. We experience three-dimensional cross-sections of this object that we consider to be the “present.” This is much in the same way that a 2-dimensional being would experience only 2-dimensional cross-sections of a 3-dimensional object passing through its 2-dimensional membrane.

Why did I type this? Because I happen to reside in the four-dimensional object in which I was going to type this.

Ignorance Isn’t

I pity those who would rather escape into an internal delusional fancy, than to appreciate and accept the reality of our universe as it is – and not as they would wish it to be.

neosis

Life is a balancing act between striving for perfection and accepting that perfection is impossible.

purpos nōn obstante absurdus

I am driven to learn. For, what higher a purpose could we assign ourselves? Us, replicating bits of organic matter that have clumped, organized, and become aware. We could not exist if, within the nuclear furnaces of supernovae, the elements that support life were not fused in nucleosynthesis… If those stars had not exploded, seeding their oxygen, carbon and iron-rich innards into the mix of swirling dust clouds.

We are the universe waking, and I at least, find myself obliged to learn more.

In Memoriam Carl Sagan

Anthropic Nonsense

Is it really so surprising that we find ourselves in a universe that allows life, on a planet that is suitable for life?

For, in universes that don’t allow life, and on planets not suitable for life… we would not have selves to find.

A Thought Experiment On Morality

Its been a hot talking point lately, at least as far as I can tell, for theists to claim that atheists must be immoral, as they don’t get their morals from any absolute source (God). I find this claim fascinating… and, while thinking about it further, have reasoned that every sane person on this planet must admit that they do not, in fact, get their morality from God. They pick and choose which passages from the bible that justify morals they’ve already decided on without God, and ignore passages in the bible that they disagree with (again, from a secular, reasoned standpoint). Now so far, I’m making a bunch of claims that have no grounds for being true or false, but I’d like to try my thought experiment on you, to perhaps prove, that you get your morals from an internal reasoning of right and wrong that is beyond god or just about anything else for that matter.

Suppose for a moment, that a booming voice suddenly, and without warning, began speaking to every single person on this planet, inside their mind, and in the language they would most understand:

“All of the religions you have created, are false. I wish that you would stop killing one another. Be tolerant and loving and caring for every single human being on the planet.”

How do you react to this? Are you still skeptical? Do you accept the orders of this apparent god and begin living a life of love and care, completely disregarding your previous religious (or non-religious) convictions? If you’re skeptical and you were non-religious, I do hope you pull from Clarke and state that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” At this I would say, well done, “Now what?”

If you were religious and you remain skeptical, perhaps for the exact same reason as the non-religious person above, my immediate question to you would be, “Given the overwhelming evidence of the existence of God this event has been (even though there’s always room for deception by advanced technology) why in the world did you, and do you continue to do so still, believe in a god on meager evidence and scattered, contradictory stories?”

Now let’s suppose you weren’t skeptical at all and accept this entity as god and begin living your life accordingly… Did you do it because the message fit with what you believe or did you do it simply because you undeniably follow the absolute morality as determined by God? Well… lets take this thought experiment further and see how well you hold up, shall we?

Suppose the exact same thing happens, only the message from the entity goes something like this, “All of the religions you have created, are false. I wish that you go out into the world immediately and beginning raping and murdering everyone you can. Make no exceptions. Engage in homosexuality. Stone people and eat people and murder people. Cause as much chaos as is possible. This is the will of your true god and I have spoken to each and every one of you.”

Do you follow the word of God and go out into the world and beginning raping and murdering people? Or do you make a reasoned, conscious decision to reject these demands. That – despite the apparent absolute morality professed by this entity… something must be wrong. That you, yourself know right from wrong? If you chose the former… congratulations, you remained consistent and have proven yourself to be insane. You have no place in a modern society of human beings working together, and I do hope your sad existence never crosses my path. You will likely never think for yourself and will forever be a slave to whatever you happened to have been told by people who were also intellectually enslaved before you, like your parents.

If you chose the latter, and I expect most people to do so, congratulations, you’ve just demonstrated that no sane person gets their morality from god. We get it from reasoned, argued, progressive discussion with one another. We get it from being empathetic, and, in taking the role of the people around us, determining how we would feel if we were treated certain ways, and then adjusting our behaviors and our moral opinions accordingly.

*This draft is very rough, but I wanted to get my ideas put together and out to the world to read while they were fresh in my mind. Do not be surprised if this writing undergoes several revisions in the future.

absurd certitude

I think that we form and solidify our religious, political, philosophical and other worldviews in order to shield ourselves from the stress, worry, and uneasiness that accompanies doubt. As we stare blankly into the abyssal unknown, with the only certainty being our own death, we shiver as the darkness stares back at us. How do we cope with this feeling? We make stuff up. We’ve constructed fantasies and dogmas so rich with intricacy and complexity that we’re able to convince ourselves of their cogency and truth.

What do I mean by this? We take these positions and mentalities with us, filled with their simplified responses and predetermined stances, when we begin a discussion, debate, or an argument that involves such complex topics. Our ideologies allow us to be shielded, during moments of criticism, from something we fear the most: change. We’ve become so convinced by the world around us, and the social pressures that are in it, to make a decision about stuff that no one could possibly have a true answer for… that are fundamentally the most difficult questions we could possibly ask about the universe. Yet we do it anyways. We make a choice, and in our stubborn, fearful desire for homeostasis, we cling to them. They become embedded in our psyche, a part of our identity… why? Why do we do this to ourselves? Where did these ideas come from in the first place if not from the minds of men and women who were free from the mental bondage of the ideas that came before them?

Who are we more than just our names? Are we our religion? Are we our political party? Are we our favorite activities? Can there be something more? Something less superficial, artificial, and disconnected?

This isn’t a call to action… but it is a suggestion. A humble request. Stop pretending to be so damn confident that you’ve got all the answers. You don’t. No one does. Everyone is masquerading around on this mote of dust, convinced that they know. The truth is, we’re all afraid to admit that we don’t know. We’re too afraid to admit to a child that’s lost its mother that we honestly don’t know where (if anywhere) she is now. We’re too afraid to admit to ourselves that we haven’t the slightest clue why something exists instead of nothing. We’re too afraid to admit that we have no idea what the future may bring. We’re too afraid to admit that the universe may be void of ultimate meaning. This uncertainty is so intense for anyone who gives it any thought… that almost everyone gravitates to this mind-numbing certitude.

This false sense of certainty, certainly brings with it comfort… but ask yourself: is it worth it? Wouldn’t you rather choose to genuinely seek the truth, no matter where it leads you? To be intellectually honest with yourself and anyone you enter a conversation with? I don’t believe anyone who seeks this form of comfort is being honest with themselves… I think it is an elaborate smoke-and-mirrors that we’ve devised to cope with reality’s sometimes harsh, bitter, disinterested goings-on and the fear it causes within all of us.

So much fear… and yet, in spite of this, we’ve found a quick solution that lets us put on the smiles – Agnostic*. Anarchist. Christian. Democrat. Muslim. Keynesian. Strong Atheist. Libertarian. Hindu. These views have something similar at their core: they make claims about reality that may or may not be true. They help people feel comfortable by creating the illusion that they’ve finally made sense of reality, of the world around them, when they haven’t at all.

Frankly, I find this absurd.

I’m here to tell you that I’ve been without fear for a long time… and it feels great. Moreover, the only thing I’m certain is that I’m not certain at all. I’m comfortable with that. I embrace that. I venture into the world with an open-mind and a desire to learn as much as possible, and I couldn’t be more grateful for it. When we admit what we don’t know, we raise our awareness and free our minds to once again engage in the genuine inquiry that we’ve drifted so far from.

Give doubt a chance.

In Memoriam Socrates

* I wanted to qualify my statement about agnosticism. I included the term in the list of examples on purpose, because it allows me to take this discussion a little further… The traditional understanding of agnosticism fits with what I’m saying perfectly. Agnosticism makes the claim that “whether or not god exists is unknowable.” This is an unjustified claim about the universe that may or may not be true. I however, consider what I’m proposing here to be “true agnosticism.” Gnostic, in its simplest terms, means “to know” and I think we can all agree that the topic of my writing here is about how much we simply don’t know, instead of being about what we can or cannot know.

Contemplating Chaos

This post comes at a time shortly after my viewing of the BBC Documentary, The Secret Life of Chaos.

The Secret Life of Chaos

If you haven’t watched all 6 parts, then you might not be on the same page as me upon reading this. The ultimate conclusion of the documentary, if one can be derived, is that the supposed order and stability of life… the shapes and colors and sizes… the hearts and instincts and symmetry and geometries that became encoded in self-replicating things called genes, is the result of chaos.

Chaos, as it is being used, is the result of the unknowable* goings-on of things which we do not have the technology to accurately measure… for example, an electron. Every device we currently use to study and get up close and personal with electrons, and indeed anything else in the subatomic world, interferes with that world. We never get an accurate measurement because our measuring devices alter the very thing we’re trying to measure. More importantly, the goings-on of these particles on small scales actually tend to have a huge impact on the larger scale, for which we see with our own eyes, the results.

But… how can I make an analogy that might help you understand the concept of something being immeasurable? Well, suppose for a moment that we were much larger than we really are… God-like in size, galaxies of hundreds of billions of stars appear as mere specs to us. Now imagine trying to investigate the motion of even smaller specs around a glowing spec (in this case, the Earth going around one of those billions of stars in those galaxy-specs, the Sun). Suppose the earth and the sun are so small that we cannot see them even with the most refined of microscopes… so what do we do? We observe them indirectly… we introduce something into the system… and let the interaction it has with our measuring device to tell us a little more about it… lets do that.

We poke a very small (by our standards) stick in the place where we might expect the earth to be. Guess what happens? The stick and the earth become entangled! The earth begins wobbling our stick (because the effects of the stick’s gravitational pull has caused the earth to now orbit it instead of the sun) and its existence is revealed (although indirectly of course). Based on what we know about our stick’s mass and the way its wobbling, we can deduce the mass of earth and even what speed its traveling around our stick. So what’s the problem?

Well, if we were trying to study what’s really going on with the earth, we’ve failed miserably. The introduction of the stick disrupted Earth’s gravitational attraction to the sun and now the earth is going around our stick. We know some things about the earth, but the big picture will always elude us.

The same thing happens when we try to observe electrons. Our measuring devices are just too crude and even more so, also made up of electrons, photons, neutrons… that all cause a tremendous disruption to any single electron we might try to observe in its natural state.

So how does this create chaos? Why can’t we just look at something bigger and make predictions based on things that our measuring devices won’t influence? The real problem is that, as far as any scientist can tell, this is impossible. The subtle goings-on of subatomic particles have huge implications for the much larger world that is simply made up of trillions upon trillions of these particles. Predicting their outcome at an already much long-gone step of the process is futile. Imagine trying to predict the trajectory of a baseball that has been hit without knowing how hard it was hit, or at what angle it was hit…. the goings-on of subatomic particles are those angles… they’re the key to making the most accurate of predictions from anything from weather patterns to the ultimate expansion of the universe.

The fact of the matter is: we’re inside a petri dish called the universe – trying to understand it. And understanding it entirely, from within the thick of the universe and being made out of it, seems likely impossible. This is the chaos. This is the uncertainty. But at the same time… it is through this chaos that the most seemingly spontaneous and simultaneously beautiful things in this cosmos have ever emerged… that our minds, capable of contemplating this cosmos came to be – and I can’t help but be filled up with awe and wonder and gratitude for it.

*A caveat: Take the word unknowable with a grain of salt. For in fact, we can never be entirely certain that it is definitely impossible to create a device that does not disturb the subatomic system it is trying to measure… but for all intents and purposes, it seems that this is the case.

On Existence

That something might exist, does not mean it does. Likewise, that there is no evidence for something does not mean that it does not exist. Therefore, the only reasonable and logical qualifier for existence is repeated, scrutinized, peer-reviewed evidence and observation.This is not to say that something doesn’t exist until we observe it, but rather that nothing for which there isn’t any evidence should garner our beliefs.

This goes against our inclinations as human beings… but this is only because of our desire for the universe be the way we want it to be rather than accepting it the way it is. A rational and unbiased pursuit of truth places these desires to the side and moves forward using reason and science.