Musings on humanity and existence

Comments on Jimmy Kimmel's halloween challenge to parents.

2011-11-04T17:56:00.000-07:00

Recently Jimmy Kimmel invited parents in America to pretend that they ate all their children’s halloween candy, and to video tape their children as they break the news to them. The audience laughs as videos of crying, disappointed children are played one after another. Really? How exactly is that funny? The children are not having a good time. Do you realize that? They are suffering. You’re laughing at the expense of someone else’s happiness.

And the idea that lying to a child like that is supposed to be a fun game just exemplifies how our society still does not think of children as people at all; they think of them as property owned by the parents.

But the best part of the video came at the end, when Jimmy Kimmel “humorously” comments that “kids are very unstable.”

Really.

REALLY.

I think I’m going to have to re-post an edited version of the video in which I’ll cut from him saying that to footage of an A-Bomb explosion, or planes flying into the world trade center.

When will this end? When will people stop thinking it’s funny to torture children? And when will they stop thinking that children’s upsets and tantrums are somehow larger than adults upsets and tantrums?

Adults have tantrums exactly like children over trivial things, and when they’re in situations of power those tantrums can result in the death of millions of people.

How would you feel if you were informed you’re not getting your paycheck for the last month of work you did?

How would you feel if you were informed your partner has been cheating on you for the last five years?

These problems are as large to you as halloween candy is to a child. It's the same.

Heck, how would you feel if you were waiting for a bus, and the bus drove right by the stop without stopping, and you had to wait fifteen minutes for the next one?

Adults get upset just like children. With rare exceptions, they are not any more enlightened, at all. But as long as they think they are, they will wreak havoc in this world. At least a child knows that they’re a child. Anybody who has been on the earth for eighteen years or longer thinks they’re an adult, whether they are or not, and that’s a big problem.

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YQpbzQ6gzs

The Hours of the Day: A Poem

2011-11-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

1:00 am - The Stirrings of Life

Raccoons feast on overturned trash bins in the dark alleyways, planes blink cold and noisy through the black sky, the glowing clocks say “go back to sleep.” People stir in their beds.

2:00 am - Alienation from Familiarity

Slumber deepens. Even the commotions of the night are subdued. Traffic lights glow green and red over empty streets. Truly alone is he who cannot sleep.

3:00 am - Comfort in Mediation

The classic center of the standard night. Looking backwards or forwards, one cannot find light. The black sky continues to hold at bay the coming day, but there is comfort in the knowledge of the day’s inevitable return.

4:00 am - The Augmented Hour

A mix of worlds swirl around. For some it is still dead night, for others it is morning. The traffic lights begin to have company again. The sky takes on the slightest hint of grey.

5:00 am - Accumulating Momentum

The air is filled with cool mist. Many awake, while others still sleep. The bustle of life is ramping up.

6:00 am - The Retreat of Loneliness

Light penetrates through the grey sky. The night is coming to an end. Relieved and at peace becomes he who could not find rest during the black hours.

7:00 am - The Definitive End of Night

The night is over, but the memory of it is close by. Looking ahead, one has many hours before the bright sun of noon will strike them from above.

8:00 am - Distance from Night

The memories of blackness fade as the noise of day settles onto the world like a blanket of radioactive substance. No matter what happened at 2:00 and 3:00 am, it now loses it’s grip on a person, becoming a dark and distant memory.

9:00 am - Full Throttle

The peak of activity for the bright morning of life. People rush to and fro, their minds ablaze with the worries of the day. Nature and darkness fade into the deepest recesses of consciousness as the bright vivid reality takes over.

10:00 am - Acceleration Towards Noon

The speed of mid-morning life quickly propels towards the brightness of noon. Homes are empty. Streets and offices are packed.

11:00 am - A Breath before Brightness

An interlude between the termination of late morning and the commencement of early afternoon. Time stands like a velvet bridge between one cliff face and another. A moment to reflect, to recall what happened during the morning, before plunging into the afternoon.

12:00 pm - The Death of Morning

All memory of night is obliterated as even the morning begins to fade into the past. The day is still young though, and the brightness promises the possibility of good things to come.

1:00 pm - Still Early Afternoon

There is still the comfort that the day is young. There is still so much time ahead. Afternoon has only just begun. Morning was only a little over an hour ago. The commotion of daily life is in full swing.

2:00 pm - Uneasiness

It begins to be clear that the hours of the day are ticking by, and that the day will come to an end at some point.

3:00 pm - Still Plenty of Time

Fears of darkness are pushed back aside. After all, there are still a few hours left before early evening. There is still more than enough noise to distract one from the thought of the end.

4:00 pm - The Aged Afternoon

Like a browned field or a rotted apple, the afternoon now sits, finished and irretrievable. To try and squeeze more out of the afternoon now is to face the harsh cruelty of time.

5:00 pm - Realigned Perspectives

Forgetting about the afternoon, the evening is still very young, and one can look forward and realize that night is still a ways away. Commotion on the streets begins to die down as people return to their homes, but energetically the day is still in full swing.

6:00 pm - A Comfortably Mature Evening

An hour or two into the evening, things are rolling along nicely. Dinner can come along soon, and the sky is still light. Many have returned from work, and things are settling down in the comfort of this spacious hour.

7:00 pm - Creeping Shadows

A desire to extend the day begins to seep in. Dinner and socializing are comfortable, but shadows are beginning to creep in, and it feels like bright afternoon wasn’t that long ago.

8:00 pm - Middle Evening

The bright commotion of the afternoon fades in memory. The warm, spacious time of the remainder of the evening asks for a good book, a film, or a visit with friends or family. There is still time for all of this, though the sky is darkening again.

9:00 pm - Evicting the Unprepared

Those for whom the evening sprung upon as a surprise find themselves scrambling to still make something out of it, while others enjoy a well-planned relaxing time. Darkness has nearly re-taken the sky.

10:00 pm - Strike One

The first of the three sledgehammer strikes that mercilessly bring the day to an end. The memory of evening is still fresh, but the sky is darkened, the evening is over, and you can’t go back. Time is running out.

11:00 pm - Strike Two

Moving rapidly towards blackness and night, the evening begins to sink away into a distant memory. One is trapped outside the exit of one day and before the entrance of another. The black void approaches, and a new day can only be reached via night.

12:00 pm - Strike Three

Time is out. The day is over. To continue to try and squeeze more out of it means to wander into the black hours of the night, incomplete, mourning for the previous day. Time is out.

So you think technology has changed things?

2011-10-14T23:20:00.001-07:00

People always talk about how quickly technology has changed things, and about how different it was when they were growing up. It’s true that because of technology we now have computers, cell phones, the internet, etc, and these have had a reasonable impact on the way people go about their daily lives, and the way they think or interact with others. But essentially, nothing has changed yet. That’s right, nothing.

People still call each other on the phone, they still sign physical papers, they still have a need to print papers, they still walk to physical college campuses, they still have physical books, they still ask teachers questions, they still read sheet music from physical papers, they still use physical debit and credit cards, they still use cash, they still go to movie theaters, they still ask others for directions to places, they still have keys, etc.

Technology has barely scratched the surface of our lives. It has only just begun. Some of the aspects of society that are going to be most profoundly affected by technology are so old that there is simply no way that technology could have revolutionized them yet. Technology is still a baby. It has only dented at the old traditions, and hinted at what is to come. College is an example of an institution that’s so old and so rooted in classical traditions, that it’s going to take some time for technology to do away with the current model, but it will. Trust me.

In the near future, there will be no more phones; neither land-lines or cell phones. All phone-like communication will be via the internet, either through computers or mobile devices.

In the near future there will be no more physical papers. There will be no need for them. Electronic documents will be electronically sent, received, signed, etc.

In the near future, there will be no more printers, as nobody will need to print anything. Everything will be electronically sent, received and used.

In the semi-near future, there will be no physical college campuses. I don’t know what they’ll do with the locations that are currently college campuses, but there will be no need for them anymore. Everybody will know everything due to technology, and those who want to enter a certain field will be able to do so with a combination of interning/hands on training, plus getting all the basics of the information down via the internet and self-study.

In the semi-near future, musicians won’t be reading music from physical papers. They will either use devices that work well for the purpose, or devices designed specifically for the purpose. For example, electronic music stands for orchestras, the “stand” part of which is an ultra-thin screen that displays the music.

In the near future, there will be no physical debit cards, credit cards or cash. People will pay directly from device to device.

In the near future, nobody will go to movie theaters anymore. Everybody will either have a home theater system, or know somebody who does, and movie studios will begin selling people the right to stream the film into their home theater on the day of release.

In the near future, nobody will ask their friends or family for directions to places because their technology will tell them how to do is so quickly and easily that it would really be pointless to ask. That common aspect of social interaction will simply fade away.

In the semi-near future, there will be no keys anymore. Only electronic key cards, or finger-print/cornea/whatever locks.

These are just a few of the things that will change in the near and semi-near future. I’m sure there are others that I can’t even comprehend right now. Eventually of course we’ll all be in flying machines instead of cars.. but that’s a little farther off.

Anyways, yeah, technology hasn’t really changed anything...... yet.

Introducing a Wagnerian journey through The Lord of the Rings

2011-09-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

The Fellowship of the Ring, Part One

The Fellowship of the Ring, Part Two

The Two Towers, Part One

The Two Towers, Part Two

The Return of the King, Part One

The Return of the King, Part Two

I spent all of this last summer becoming acquainted with Wagner’s Ring cycle, for no reason other than to become acquainted with it and enjoy watching them that much more. Little did I know that those dozens of hours of listening would pay off in another way as well.

On or around September 5th, I was visiting some relatives in Maryland, and I had the thought of making a music video of The Lord of the Rings using music from Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). I very quickly began conceiving how I could create a whole series, and which piece of The Ring I could use for which scene of The Lord of the Rings.

Even though I was away from home and had no access to my computer, I began jotting down on my phone the locations and durations of the orchestral segments in The Ring. I began listening to the music with the project in mind, brainstorming what could go where. Some combinations were obvious and were decided upon even at this early stage. These include using the theft of the ring music for the scene where Sauron gets the ring cut from his hand, the Siegfried forest music for the shire, and the “descent into nibelheim” music for the scene where we descend into Isengard and see orcs forging weapons.

So, quite some time was spent just writing down what all the orchestral pieces in the cycle were, and thinking about where they could be used in The Lord of the Rings. I wrote down anything that came to mind as an orchestral segment, which included everything in the opera that was over twenty seconds long or so.

Then, after arriving back in Seattle on September 8th, and after some more jotting and brainstorming work, I began editing in Final Cut Pro. I actually chose to use Final Cut Pro over iMovie solely for the audio cross dissolve feature, which allows me to transition from one piece of music to another as smoothly as possible. Once I became re-familiarized with the program, I was glad I had chosen it for other reasons as well.

Anyways, so I put down the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring in my timeline, and dragged in the opening prelude to Das Rheingold, and got to work. Basically the process was pretty simple throughout the project. I had the whole film right there, dragged in whatever piece of music I wanted to use, and sculpted down the footage around it. Then I would drag in the next piece of music, make sure there’s a smooth transition between it and the last one, and continue to cut footage around that piece accordingly. Of course it was almost never as simple as this sounds in reality, but overall that’s what was happening.

A lot of the choices I made in terms of which piece goes to which scene were made in advance, but some combinations came up as I went along. The video and audio would be playing together, and suddenly I’d be seeing a scene along with this music that I hadn’t planned to use in that place, but it happens to fit really well, so I’d go with it and edit that scene around the music.

The basic editing for each of the six videos took about five to eight hours approximately. Then there’d be hours of fine tuning work, making sure audio and visual transitions are smooth, and sometimes making more major changes if I didn’t like something.

I mostly avoided having any voices from the music be in the video, though there are a few places where a hint of a voice can be heard, because it trailed into the beginning of the segment of music I wanted to use. This only happens two or three times throughout the whole series.

Also, there are a few notable exceptions to the rule, which I chose to do. When Gandalf is fighting the Balrog, I had to use the music of Siegfried fighting the dragon, and it includes the dragon yelling during the fight. In my video it appears as though the Balrog is the one yelling. Also, in the first part of The Return of the King, we hear the eight voice chorus of the Valkyries at one point when Faramir and his troops are running from Osgiliath. And finally, when Frodo and Gollum are fighting over the ring, and falling over the edge of the cliff into the cracks of doom, Hagen's voice is heard shouting "Keep away from the Ring!" (in German). I didn't really have a choice here, because I needed to use all the music before and after it, and I allowed it to stay because it does really fit in the context.

And at the very end, after the ring is destroyed and the Hobbits are back in the shire, I use the beautiful song from the end of Siegfried, “Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich,” and we hear a voice really sing for the first time.

I thought this would be a really fun project to do, because the music of Wagner’s Ring Cycle is in a way the “original” score to the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s story is quite similar to Wagner’s, and as can be seen in the videos, the music summons up the same mood as the images. I was honestly surprised that no one else had done this yet.

Anyways, here again are the links to the six parts! Total running time is about 1 hour 38 minutes, making it by far the longest fan music video ever made.

The Fellowship of the Ring, Part One

The Fellowship of the Ring, Part Two

The Two Towers, Part One

The Two Towers, Part Two

The Return of the King, Part One

The Return of the King, Part Two

There are no individuals; only different elements of the whole.

2011-09-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

The vast majority of people I have ever spoken to can all name someone on this planet that they don’t like. Someone who they think is perpetuating or encouraging a lack of morality usually. They look at this person and say “You’re a bad person. You’re doing bad things. If you didn’t exist other people would be better off.”

But if that person didn’t exist, someone else would be in their place saying the exact same things they are. In other words, the “individual” is completely irrelevant. They are merely, coincidentally, the instrument through which that particular expression is currently being expressed.

It is that element of human nature that people despise, but to label a singular individual by name, saying that they are causing that element, is ludicrous. They are only, at this point in time, the physical manifestation of that portion of the whole. If humanity grows past the point of having these undesirable elements, then nobody will display those undesirable characteristics, but currently, it is humanity as a whole that is at a place that still harbors these characteristics. You are part of it as much as the person you dislike is. The current human mindset, the one you and almost everyone else is in, is the mindset that allows monsters to grow. They just happen to be where they are, and you happen to be where you are.

Bursting Bubbles: A Short Story

2011-09-15T01:29:00.000-07:00

By Lennon Aldort

She followed him everywhere. He had left the gathering outside, and had paced around the house and up into his room, but she persisted in his mind. Her laughing brown eyes, her flowing hair, her voluptuous body. Why did she have to be wearing such revealing clothes? Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he shouldn’t be so hard on himself for feeling this way. Maybe, cousin or not, if a beautiful girl looks and dresses that way, it’s excusable to harbor such feelings.

He had been in the bathroom straightening his hair when he heard her family first come in through the door and be greeted by his mom and dad. Even at the first distant sound of her voice, it met his ears like beautiful music, but he banished the thought quickly. They were cousins after all.

Cautiously he had exited the bathroom and approached the chattering, hugging group.

“Oh here’s Sam!” his mother said. “Come on over here.”

“Sam! It’s great to see you again!” his Aunt said. “Last time we saw you you were this tall.”

“I’m sure you remember Holly?” his Uncle half asked, half stated.

Big brown eyes, brownish-blonde hair and round face, she stood there in blue shorts and white tank top.

“Yeah,” he said, “kind of. I think I was four or five, right?”

“Something like that,” his mom said.

Holly blushed as she smiled and waved at Sam. Sam smiled and returned the awkward gesture before putting his hands in his pockets and shifting nervously.

“Well!” his dad interjected into the growing silence, “we’re setting up stuff in the backyard.. we’ve got a few barbecues.. make yourselves at home!

Throughout the family gathering, as more relatives trickled in and hamburgers and hot dogs were served en masse, Sam looked for any opportunity to be close to Holly, and finally, he made his way towards an empty folding chair next to a round table, across from which Holly sat, observing the scene, a partially eaten hot dog on a plate next to her. He sat down. She looked over at him.

“Hi,” he said awkwardly.

“Hi,” she smiled.

“Man.. it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other,” he said. She nodded. “What have you done in the last ten years?” he laughed.

She chuckled. “Well, I’m a sophomore in high school...”

“Nice,” Sam nodded. “Me too. How are you liking it?”

“It’s alright.”

“My mom told me that you guys are moving back to this area.”

“Yeah, my dad got a job in the area or something. Our new house is a few blocks from you.” She smiled at him and squinted in the light of the sun.

“Cool,” he said, glancing around and nodding. Other relatives were shuffling about, eating and talking. Someone jumped in the pool. Birds chattered in the trees. An airplane flew overhead. The concrete was hot beneath Sam’s feet and the smell of barbecue filled the air.

“I guess we’re supposed to reconnect,” Holly jested.

Sam chuckled. “Yeah. Apparently our parents loved the way we used to play together.”

“Do you remember those sleepovers we’d have?” Holly laughed.

“Not really...” he replied. “Why, did anything crazy happen?” He smiled at her.

She laughed. “No, I barely remember anything, but I do remember we used to have some sleepovers. I think your mom made cookies once when I came over.”

“Sounds like her,” Sam said with a smile. “So, you’ll be starting junior year here?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m kind of nervous about meeting new people and making new friends.”

“Well, at least you know me,” Sam said. “And I’m sure you’ll have no trouble making friends here.”

She smirked. “Thanks.”

By the time Holly and her parents took off, the two of them had chatted as such for quite some time, but Sam wished he had gotten to talk to her more, to get closer to her.

Now he sat in his room, her beauty haunting his mind.

Through the window he saw the last relatives leave, and his parents walk inside the house.

After a night filled with dreams of her, his desire compelled him to venture towards her new house. After spending thirty minutes in front of the mirror fixing his hair, he headed down the old wooden stairs and into the living room, towards the front door.

“Sam! Check this out,” his mother called from the living room couch as he walked by. “This is really something else.” She pointed at the TV, which was on a news channel. “This couple discovered that they’re cousins, after they got married. Gross, right? There’s a debate going on about whether they should stay married.” “Sure! If you wanna end up in hell!” she snarked at the TV and laughed.

“Where are you headed out to?” she asked him when she saw his shoes were on.

“I thought I’d go over to Holly’s new house and say hi, or see if they need help unpacking or whatever,” he replied casually.

“Oh, sounds like fun! Tell them I say hi,” his mother said.

Sam hastened out the door and out into the crisp morning air, not yet too hot. The sky was mostly blue, with a few clouds here and there.

As soon as he was out of sight of his house, he paused.

“She’s your cousin,” he said aloud. “She is your cousin.” “You’re crazy.” “What are you doing?”

But these pillars of reason couldn’t stay rooted in the soil of his mind as the hurricane of desire swept through him. Heart beating rapidly, he brought his attention back out of his head and continued walking.

Can I really do this? Does this make sense? What if just me showing up there in itself is too revealing of how I feel? What if she gets angry that I came? He sighed and rubbed his forehead, looking around at the houses, the trees, the stop sign, the old lady sitting on her porch a few houses away.

Ignoring his rapidly beating heart, he continued walking. Around the next corner, down two more blocks, and he saw their house, about a hundred feet down on the left. He knew it had a brown roof, and it was right about where it should be.

He began walking cautiously towards it, on the opposite side of the road. As he got closer he noticed a U-Haul truck was parked backwards in their driveway, and he saw some commotion in their garage and front yard. Their house was two stories with blue walls and a brown slanted roof. There were several windows on the front side, a nicely kept lawn, and a curving concrete path and stairway leading up to the wooden front door.

Holly’s dad spotted him as he approached. “Sam! He-hey! Nice to see you. Come to help us unpack?” he laughed, and lifted a chair out of the back of the truck. “Anne! Sam’s here!” he called into the garage.

Anne emerged from the shadows. “Oh hello Sam! Wonderful to see you again.” “Are you looking for Holly?” she asked.

“Nah, Sam’s here to help us unload this truck!” his uncle said jokingly as he set the chair down in the garage.

“Oh Jimmy, don’t be silly.” “Shall I fetch her for you?” she asked Sam.

“Well...” Sam began nervously, “I kinda just came to hang out... ya know.. see how you’re all doing... maybe chill with Holly some.”

“See?” Jim turned indignantly to his wife. “He’s come to help us unload the truck!” He grinned.

At that moment Holly emerged from the front door of the house, stepping barefoot onto the concrete path leading away from the door. The sight of her sent warmth through Sam’s body.

“Hey Sam!” she called.

“Hey!” he responded. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she said as she began moseying her way down, arms pulled across her stomach and holding each other. She looked at her parents.

“He’s here to help us unload,” her dad smiled at her.

“Oh, cool,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Here Sam, why don’t you grab a couple of these boxes over here,” Jim said.

For the next hour or so he helped Jim unload the truck, while Holly stood around awkwardly, disappeared and reappeared, and helped some. The time flew by unnoticed to Sam, who simply stared at Holly every moment he had the chance. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Why don’t you show Sam your room?” Jim called to Holly after he and Sam had just finished setting down a large table at the back of the garage.

Holly looked uncertainly at Sam. “Do you wanna see it?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure!” he replied.

Holly walked into the garage and through the doorway into the hallway, sidestepping the boxes Sam had placed there. She turned to him. “Come on,” she smiled. He followed her down the hallway and stared at the lower half of her body as they went up the stairs. Soon they entered a small bedroom.

There were still a few boxes on the floor, but it looked like a lot had been unpacked already. The dresser was covered with girly things, the bed was made, the closet was full of clothes, there were posters on the walls, and a laptop was set up on a small desk.

“This is it,” she said semi-triumphantly. “Whaddya think?”

“It’s really nice, I like it,” Sam said. He stood in the doorway as she went and sat down on the bed. Her room smelled like sugar and roses.

“Yeah, I kinda like it,” she said. She was wearing short black shorts and a green short sleeved t-shirt, and it didn’t seem as though she had yet fixed her hair that day. “So what is there to do around here?” she asked him.

“Well,” he said casually, “usually after school I’ll just hang out with some friends, around the neighborhood or at the park nearby.”

“Oh there’s a park nearby?” she said. “That’s cool.”

“Yeah,” he said.

She nodded. “Come on in!” she said with a sudden smile and gesture.

He smiled and walked into the room. “Do you have a nice view here?” he asked.

“Not really.” “I can see some other houses and stuff, but it’s not spectacular or anything.”

He nodded while looking out the window at the surrounding neighborhood.

“Sit down!” she commanded him with a smile and a point.

Sam sat down diagonally across from her. He glanced around the room.

“You like that movie?” he asked and pointed to a poster of The Notebook on her wall.

“Yes,” she nodded and smiled. “It’s my favorite.”

“I always thought it was kind of cheesy,” Sam said with a smirk.

“Pfft. You’re just being a guy,” she teased. “What’s your favorite movie?”

“Oh I dunno... maybe.... Super Masculine Tough Guy Kills Lots of People,” he smiled at her.

It was a joy to see her laugh.

“No seriously,” she said, reigning in her outburst. She smiled affectionately at him.

“I don’t really have a favorite. Maybe Lord of the Rings,” he said.

“That’s a good one too,” she agreed.

“Too?” Sam mocked. “You’re implying The Notebook is on par with Lord of the Rings?”

“Oh shut up,” she joked. “You’re a guy, you’ll never understand.” They smiled at each other.

“Hey Holly? Sam?” they heard Anne call from downstairs. “Yeah mom?” Holly called back. “Do you guys want any snacks or anything?” she called, her voice growing louder as her footsteps were heard moving up the stairs. Moments later Anne appeared in the doorway. She had a half-eaten carrot in her hand, and was wearing some kind of long bland gown. She had the same brown eyes as Holly, and the same blonde-brown hair, slightly longer than her daughter’s.

“I’ve put out some vegetables and chips and dip. If you guys wanna come down, help yourselves.”

“Thanks mom,” Holly said simply.

“Thank you,” Sam said. “You wanna go down?” he asked Holly, trying to conceal his disappointment.

“Yeah sure,” she said. She began to move off the bed, but her mom gave her a look. “I’ll be down in a sec,” she said.

As Sam exited the room he heard agitated half-whispers between Holly and her mom.

“.... gonna be too late if you.....” “I said I would.....” “You have to....... application” “And don’t forget about the....” “I know...... call them.”

Their voices faded as he made his way downstairs. He sat down on a stool near some plates filled with snacks.

“Hey!” Holly’s dad came in from the hallway. “How’s it going?”

“Good,” Sam nodded, faking a smile. Jim nodded emphatically.

“It’s gonna be fun living near you guys. Give you and Holly a chance to reconnect,” Jim said.

“Yeah,” Sam said, faking another smile.

Holly came down the stairs followed by her mom. “Sam, Holly has some things she has to do and get finished by tomorrow morning, so she’s gonna be pretty occupied with that the rest of the day,” Anne said.

“Oh, okay,” Sam said, unable to fake a smile this time.

“He didn’t just come to see Holly though!” Jim said enthusiastically. “Sam! You wanna help me with more unloading?”

“Sure,” Sam said. He waved goodbye to Holly, who smiled and waved goodbye in return, and then he followed her dad out to the garage. The first time, when Holly was there, with her gorgeous body and angelic face, the work seemed effortless, the boxes light, the air delicious. This time, everything felt as dead and heavy as occupied coffins, and the air was flat and stifling. Thirty minutes of work felt like hours, but fortunately after that thirty minutes the truck was almost empty, and Jim thanked him and sent him home.

The blue sky hung heavy over Sam as he walked home. The streets, the houses and the bright sun seemed hollow and meaningless.

The next day, heading past the living room, his dad asked where he was off to, and appeared pleased that he was heading to his cousin’s house again.

The weather was grayer today, and the old lady wasn’t on her porch. A few cars passed him on the usually quiet streets as he made his way to Holly’s house, and after a few minutes he arrived there. The U-Haul truck was gone, and the garage door was closed. No one was outside. He felt discouraged.

He walked up the concrete path and stairs, and knocked on their large wooden door. Anne answered it.

“Oh hi Sam! Nice to see you again!” she exclaimed.

“Hi Anne,” he replied with a smile. “Is Holly home?”

“She sure is!” Anne said, and at the same moment Holly appeared at the top of the carpeted stairs, in black sweat pants and a gray turtle-neck. “Hey,” she said, smiling. “Hey,” Sam smiled back.

“You wanna come on up?” she offered, not moving from the top of the stairs.

“Uh.. yeah.. sure,” he looked uncertainly at Anne, who smiled and headed into the kitchen. Sam moved towards the stairway, the smell of freshly baked cookies washing over him. Even in concealing clothing, her face shone like an angel’s, and the curves of her body were visible through her garments.

He went up the stairs and followed Holly down the hallway, passing a bathroom on the left, and another bedroom on the right.

“Check this out,” she said as they entered her room. “I’ve finished unpacking everything, and got a little fan for when it gets really hot!” She held up the fan excitedly.

“Nice,” Sam said, and began moving into the room. A bright gray from outside shone through the window and thin curtain, casting a mild light over everything. “It took me like, a month to get fully unpacked in my room when we first moved to my house,” he chuckled.

Holly smiled.

The bed made a quiet squeak as Sam sat down on it.

Turning from the desk on which she set the fan, Holly said jokingly “So, are you just gonna be stopping by here every day from now on?”

Sam smiled. “I dunno. You’re pretty cool. And I don’t have a lot of friends.”

“Hah, thanks,” she said, reaching over to close the door of her room.

“So what should we do?” she asked, turning around to face him.

A slight breeze played with the white curtain by the window, and outside a car drove by and some voices could be heard. The light from the sun intensified and glowed through the window and onto Sam and Holly.

“We could go for a walk,” Sam suggested, looking longingly at the new light beckoning beyond the window.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Holly said happily. “Lemme just change, it looks like it’s getting warmer.”

“K,” he said casually. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

He cautiously began making his way down the stairs. Neither of Holly’s parents seemed to be around. He stood around awkwardly near the front door of the house. The smell of baking cookies was still strong. On the living room couch were laid ornate fabrics, and there were beautiful paintings on the wooden walls. It seemed Holly inherited her quick unpacking trait from her parents. Shelves built into the wall next to the couch housed a stereo system, and there were a few small plants set around the living room. On the other side, the dining room lay in neat order, other than a few magazines and a newspaper strewn across the circular table. Three wooden chairs sat around it, and a window beyond looked onto the neighbor’s house, a green one story place with an American flag mounted next to the house number.

Holly came down the stairs quickly, her breasts bouncing underneath a green tank top, and her legs only partially covered by a short light blue skirt.

“Alright!” she said. “Let’s go!”

They headed out into the brightening afternoon. A few birds chattered in nearby trees, and the sky was mostly blue now. They headed down the sidewalk in silence for a little while.

“It’s such a nice day,” Sam finally said.

“Yeah,” she said looking around.

He kept glancing toward her, his eyes drawn to her like a cat’s to a moving ball of yarn.

“Hey, what did you have to do yesterday that your mom was all on your case about?” he asked.

“Oh,” she chuckled, “she’s having me start to investigate potential colleges and stuff, and she has this friend who supposedly can help or something, who she wanted me to call, and whatever.” She waved it away.

“Ah,” Sam said. “I figured it was something like that.”

They walked down the street and toward the park on the edge of the neighborhood. Children were laughing and playing on the swing set, and a few people were sitting or laying down on the grass. Sam pointed to an empty bench near the swing set.

“Wanna sit down?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said.

They sat down and for a few minutes watched the bustling playground.

“Hey Holly?” Sam finally said.

“Yeah?”

“I was wondering....” he trailed off. She looked at him with an innocent, curious smile. His heart was racing, and the corners of his mouth were quivering. He looked out at the trees.

“Yeah?" she said, seemingly amused and still smiling.

“Oh I don’t know,” he said, and slapped himself mentally. “Nevermind,” he smiled at her.

“Are you sure?” she asked teasingly.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. He felt disappointed in himself, but maybe it was better to get to know her a bit more before confessing such feelings.

They sat a while longer, soaking in the commotions of a sunny afternoon in the park, and then walked around the neighborhood chatting.

“What time is it?” Holly asked as evening began to set in. “I think my mom’s expecting me home by seven or so, for dinner or whatever.”

“Oh,” Sam said. He looked at his watch. “You should probably head home then.” His mind was racing about how to bring up his feelings, but he couldn’t get any words to his mouth.

“Alright. Well we should hang out tomorrow!” she smiled, and put out her arms for a hug. Sam awkwardly moved in and gave her a half hug.

“See you tomorrow!” Sam said as he waved and walked up the street.

The next day, as the early afternoon sun began to break through the clouds, Sam and Holly walked down the street toward the park together. The air smelled like summer, and there were the sounds of children playing throughout the neighborhood. They entered the park, and Holly slipped off her shoes to walk barefoot in the cool shaded grass. In a peaceful silence, they walked toward the base of a large oak tree. Looking at the grass, the knotted bark, the giant crown of foliage overhead, Sam remembered Holly’s four year old self laughing and darting around behind this tree as they played hide and seek many years ago. The look in her eyes told him that she remembered as well.

Holly sighed and leaned back against the tree, looking up at the gently swaying branches. Sam imitated her. He looked over at her face, wondering what she was thinking.

“Hey what are you doing tonight?” she suddenly asked him, smiling and turning to look at him.

“Uh, nothing,” he laughed. “It’s the summer, I’ve got nothing to do.” He smiled. “Why?”

“Well,” she said, “I was thinking, we should have a sleepover!” “You know, like old times! And it’ll help us re-bond and stuff! I’ll be fun! Don’t you think?”

“Yeah!” Sam blurted out. “That’s a great idea!...” he said, thoughts and feelings whirling inside him like a tornado. He knew he didn’t sound convincing.

“What’s the matter?” she asked curiously. “You don’t wanna do it?” Her smile faded slightly.

“No no!” he assured her. “No, I definitely... no.. this has nothing to do with you. It’s a great idea. I just can’t.....” He sighed and looked up. He couldn’t spend the night at her house and be that close with her without telling her how he feels. Within him raged a conflict between his fear of admitting his feelings and his desire to convey to her that there was nothing wrong with her idea.

She was looking at him intently, absently pulling grass from the ground with her right hand. A slight pickup in the wind rustled the leaves of the tree.

“I think you’re really awesome,” he said with quivering lips, still looking up. “Okay!” he said, shaking his head and looking at her. God she was beautiful. Her large brown eyes, her long eyelashes, her concerned expression, her cute nose, her perfect lips. “I have to tell you something,” he said. “Promise you won’t be mad?”

An understanding smile returned to her face and she nodded. “I promise,” she said sincerely. “Pinky swear?” She suppressed a laugh and offered him her right pinky, the same one she had offered him eleven years ago when they swore to stay within the park when playing hide and seek.

He laughed and wrapped his pinky around hers. Her flesh was warm, soft and strong. They withdrew their arms, and she smiled at him expectantly.

“Okay,” he said with a loud sigh. A few birds landed in the branches of the trees and tweeted to each other. A breeze briefly picked up the hair on the right side of Holly’s face.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I....” he began.

“Come on!” she said, nudging him on the shoulder.

“Okay okay,” he said. “I kind of...... ugh!” he faltered. A little girl squealed in delight as she rode down the slide. A few cars drove past. More birds landed in the swaying branches of the oak tree.

She smiled disappointingly at him. “Come on.... out with it!” She hit the ground with her left hand.

“Alright, alright, I’m going to... just....” he laughed. “Sorry.” He stared thoughtfully at the ground. She continued to look at him.

“I kind of..... have a huge crush on you,” he said with a quavering voice.

He could feel his heartbeat throughout his body, and it clouded his sight and hearing. Monsters of emotion took over every part of his body, shaking him, twitching his lips, constricting his lungs, extruding sweat.

“Really?” she asked, a disbelieving smile on her face.

“Yes,” he said, looking into her eyes. “From the first moment you came to my house a few days ago, I thought you were....” his voice trembled “.. the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.” He could feel the blood rushing to his face.

She looked around the park, visibly amused, thinking. “Wow. So, you’ve kept coming to my house because of these feelings?”

“Well..” Sam stammered, “it’s not that I wouldn’t want to hang out with you otherwise.... but one of my main motivations to keep coming over was wanting to be close to you... yeah.”

She laughed, and her hands played with a twig she had picked up. “Well, I’m flattered, honestly,” she said looking downward, “but come on Sam!” She looked at him with a smile. “We’re cousins!” “Are you sure you actually have a crush on me?” she asked.

Sam sighed, embarrassed. The dream of mutual feelings was over. He could now only hope to get over his emotions. “Yes.. I mean.. I wish I didn’t, but yes.. I do.” He looked at her imploringly.

“Sam,” she asked like a parent asking a child, “have you ever had a girlfriend?”

“No,” he admitted, looking out towards the road.

She smiled and put her hand on his shoulder. “Sam, I’m sure you don’t have real feelings for me. You aren’t in love. You’re just confused. Don’t worry about it.” She smiled affectionately. “But thank you for telling me.”

He turned towards her. “I feel better now that it’s out in the open. Thanks for being so cool.”

She smiled.

“So we can have that sleepover now,” Sam said. The monsters were letting go of his limbs and his senses. He could once again hear the children on the playground and smell the scent of the grass and earth. The relief washed through him and he laughed with joy.

She gave him a whimsical look. “I have a better idea,” she said, standing up. She brushed dirt and bark from her pants. “Why don’t we go out and find you a girlfriend?” she grinned, offering him her hand.

Peace and joy flowed over him like water onto a beach. He took her hand and stood up beside her.

“Thank you,” he said.

Beneath the oak tree they hugged.

Holly picked up her shoes, and together they walked through the green grass, past the parents and children gathered around the playground, and out towards the early evening.

The dream of mutual feelings was over, but the dream of beautiful friendship was in the springtime of its life.

Mathematical calculations on a cheesy romantic statement.

2011-08-01T00:16:00.000-07:00

I just saw this statement on facebook:

“If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you made me smile, I would have the whole night sky in the palm of my hand.”

The two ways to interpret “night sky” are the total number of stars that reside in the direction you’re looking (i.e. in the portion of the universe that is on the side of the earth you’re on that night), or the total number of stars that are visible in the night sky, to the naked eye.

If it’s the total number of stars, there are approximately 100 quintillion stars in the universe, so there would be 50 quintillion stars in any given night sky. Let’s assume that the couple has been together for a year. There are only 31,536,000 seconds in a year, so their partner would have to make them smile 3.17 trillion times per second for the statement to be true. Somehow that doesn’t sound fun to me.

But what about the other option? Only the number of stars that are visible in the night sky. At most there can be 2000 stars visible on a clear night. By that measure, in one year, the person would have to make their partner smile about 5.5 times a day. That doesn’t seem like a lot to me. At least not enough to warrant a cheesy romantic statement like that. 5.5 times per day is only about once every three hours. And if the couple has been together longer, say three years, then it’s only once every nine hours! Yikes.

So either way, the statement doesn’t work at all. It either implies a grossly inhuman amount of smiling, or a much-less-than-ideal amount of smiling for a supposedly good romantic relationship.

Well, I'm twenty-one years old.

2011-07-25T11:23:00.000-07:00

I turn 21 today. It's kind of hard to believe. In any case, like I had told people for the past several years, I still have not had even one drop of alcohol, and now that I'm 21 I'll probably go to a bar to see what it's like, but I still won't drink anything.

I've been spending my summer mostly doing homework for my writing classes, writing in my blog, playing music, and listening to Der Ring des Nibelungen. Definitely one of the more low-key summers of my life.

Anyways, happy birthday to me! :D

The nature of "respect" for others beliefs.

2011-07-21T23:05:00.001-07:00

A lot of people tout the idea that we should be respectful of each others beliefs. If you’re an atheist, and your neighbor is a christian, you should respect that, and treat that person with the same kindness and compassion that you would another atheist.

But there’s a fundamental problem with the notion of respecting others beliefs, because it requires on your part that you grant their beliefs credibility. Nobody unconditionally respects someone else’s belief. They say “well, I agree that your belief has enough credibility, that I will respect your having adopted it, even though I don’t agree with it.”

You can respect your neighbors belief in UFOs for example, because you can say “well, I don’t believe they exist, but I don’t know for sure. My neighbor could be right, but at this point in time I disagree.”

Would you respect your neighbor if they believed that you were ten years younger than you actually are? You might be flattered, but you’d think they were crazy if they honestly stuck to that belief in the face of your birth certificate. You would not be able to respect their belief, at all. Likewise, you wouldn’t be able to respect their belief if they believed that cars can fly, or that Star Wars was filmed in 1950. You wouldn’t be able to respect their belief if they believed that cats have three stomachs.

In other words, no human has any place within themselves to find respect for a belief that they know cannot be true. And this is the thorn in the side of the notion of unconditional respect for each others beliefs. We can behave kindly towards those who believe things that we know cannot be true, but we cannot respect their beliefs. You would have to delude yourself greatly in order to convince yourself that you’re feeling true respect for their belief. You cannot respect it because you know it cannot be.

When you feel that you cannot know for sure one way or another, then you can respect opposing viewpoints, because you agree that there is a possibility of their authenticity. And of course, in all areas where it’s a matter of taste, such as which movie is good, which car is most comfortable, etc, in those cases it is easy to respect others beliefs, because it’s a matter of taste. There is no empirical reality about it out there.

This is how mixed religion marriages can work. If an atheist marries a christian, and feels “well, I don’t believe what my partner does, but there’s always the slim possibility that it’s true,” then that’s great. The atheist is granting credibility and possibility to the christian’s beliefs, even though they don’t agree. But if an atheist enters a relationship with the knowledge that the christian stories cannot be true, they will not be able to respect the beliefs of their partner.

So, nobody is really respectful of others beliefs. They are only respectful of what they themselves have agreed to grant credibility to. When a person feels that something simply cannot be true, there is no respect for it.

Credibility comes from majority vote.

2011-07-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

Imagine that one day you meet a person who believes that there are monsters living under his or her bed. They tell you all about them, and explain all their theories. Also, they claim that if one eats apples, the monsters under the bed grow larger. And furthermore, they tell you that there are monsters under your bed too, as well as everybody else’s.

I don’t need to ask you how you would view this person, and what your internal reaction to their claims would be. But before we run off with the assumption that people are willing to say “you’re insane and childish” if someone is, there’s an important fact we have to realize about recognizing insanity in other people.

The reality is, a lot of people wouldn’t be finding that person’s story crazy because it’s crazy, but they’d be finding it crazy because that person is in a tiny minority, if not alone, with their crazy story. See, imagine that that person’s best friend begins to subscribe to the monster story, and then a few more friends, and it begins to spread out in a small community. Imagine then that within a few years, one billion people on earth believe that there are monsters under our beds, and that they grow larger when we eat apples.

Suddenly, the idea would have credibility, regardless of how insane it is. It would be rude to say “you’re an insane child” to someone who believes in the monsters. There would be intelligent scientists and philosophers discussing the possibility of the monsters, and coming up with stories of evidence for it.

What people consider normal, weird, crazy, sane, etc, just has to do with how many people believe it. One of the first defenses a person will have when you point out how crazy something they think is, is that “lots of people feel this way!” They feel that that gives them credibility, because, if so many others feel the same way, there must be something to it.

The monster example was taking an idea that we all agree is crazy, and showing how it could gain credibility if enough people believed it. The reverse example would be taking something like religion, which is currently accepted as a valid belief system, and reducing the number of believers down until the majority of people would feel that it is insane. If there were only five christians on earth, or even fifty, or five hundred, they would be laughed and scoffed at, and be labeled insane children.

When they thought it was real.

2011-07-17T18:34:00.001-07:00

Waves of energy endlessly washing up on the beach of time,

Carrying with them everything and nothing, through their eternal motion.

Oh, look at that wave there, how it carries the fleeting instant of

A blue planet whose inhabitants call earth.

When the wave breaks on the shore, and eternity sustains,

The consciousness that saw for that brief moment through the

Eyes and ears of the monkeys on that planet, will realize how

Silly they were, when they thought it was real.

We have sex for the same reason every other mammal does.

2011-07-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

I found this article on Science Daily, titled “Why Do People Have Sex?” and it says “Many scientists assume people have sex for simple and straightforward reasons such as to experience sexual pleasure or to reproduce, but new research at The University of Texas at Austin reveals hundreds of varied and complex motivations that range from the spiritual to the vengeful.”

Oooookay hold on a minute whAT!? They’re conducting surveys and asking people why they have sex, and they’re taking the answers the people give as a scientific truth about why the sex happened???

“After conducting one of the most comprehensive studies on why people have sex, psychology researchers David Buss and Cindy Meston uncovered 237 motivations, which appear in the August issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior.”

Before I get carried away here, let me explain something clearly. All mammals have sex. And humans tell stories while having sex. Whatever someone says about why they had sex, it’s just going to be a story. A self-interpretation of what they did. It’s meaningless, it doesn’t exist in reality at all! We have sex for the same reason all the other mammals do, because there is a drive within the existence of a species to survive and keep reproducing. It’s not personal. Nobody “decides” to have sex from a place of free will, and whatever contorted “reason” they come up with for why they did it is not really why they did it, it’s just a story. People can say “I loved him,” “I wanted to help her,” “I wanted to have a kid,” “It felt good,” whatever.. it doesn’t matter. These stories imply that if those circumstances weren’t there, the sex wouldn’t have happened, and therein lies their insignificance, because sex is the only guaranteed constant in this equation. I mean, if someone didn't have a particular story at a particular time, maybe sex wouldn't have still happened on that particular day or with that particular person, but they'd still have sex in their life.

The stories are secondary. They can morph and shift and change and whatever, but sex is always going to be happening, and we don’t really know why. All we know is “the species wants to survive.” We don’t know what that means. If we knew what that meant, we’d understand the nature of life and the universe.

The article says “Buss and Meston conducted two studies. In the first, they asked more than 400 men and women to identify reasons people have sex.”

This is insane!!!!!! You’re asking a story-telling species to answer a question about a physical act around which massive amounts of stories have already been written (love being the main one). Do you expect to get reality in their answers? What are you thinking!?

“The Texas psychologists identified four major factors and 13 sub-factors for why people have sex.”

This is one of the biggest crocks of shit I have ever read. Four factors and thirteen sub-factors? Let’s see. Okay. I can think of four factors and thirteen sub-factors too. Here we go:

Factor 1: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 1: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 2: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 3: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Factor 2: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 4: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 5: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 6: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Factor 3: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 7: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 8: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 9: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Factor 4: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 10: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 11: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 12: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

Sub-factor 13: Biological drive of the species to reproduce.

There we go. Four factors and thirteen sub-factors.

Seriously, what the hell are these people thinking? What a load of crap. Scientists are really considering people’s stories about sex to describe the reality of why people have sex? Don’t scientists already know the one and only reason why sex happens? I sure thought they did.

“‘Why people have sex is extremely important, but rarely studied,’ Buss said. ‘Surprisingly, many scientists assume the answer is obvious, but people have different reasons for having sex, some of which are rather complex.’”

Yes, people make up different stories about why they have sex, and they can be incredibly convoluted and full of shit, but nature’s reasons for sex are very simple, and not complex at all. These scientists need to be talking in terms of “what are the stories people invent around sex?” not “why do people have sex?”

If we need 237 motivations, 4 major factors and 13 sub-factors to have sex, then why do the rest of the mammals have sex!?

If you want to find out why someone does something like sex, the last place you want to ask is the person themselves.

Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070731094119.htm

I grew a strawberry: An allegory.

2011-07-14T20:26:00.000-07:00

On a fine spring day in the middle of may I set out to grow a strawberry in the fresh, rain-soaked earth.

With ease and gentleness, I carefully placed the seed in the nourishing soil, and waited.

The miracle of life took place before my eyes, as the seed sprouted and a plant began to grow.

Thin green stalks and little leaves stretched outward to soak in the warmth of the sun.

I watched it with joy, growing and growing, expanding from that point, that essence of life, and as the days passed, I began to see on a little branch, the tiny nub of a baby strawberry begin to appear.

Anticipation gripped me as I watched the tiny fruit growing in size. It was perfect, and soon it would be a full grown, red, delicious piece of nourishment.

Then, when it was still whitish-green, with more growth ahead of it, I plucked it from the green plant upon which it grew. A healthy balance of time with and away from it’s plant would help it grow properly.

How stubbornly it clung to the green plant, but with appropriate force, I managed to remove it.

Lonely it sat in the palm of my hand, it’s growth seeming snubbed, it’s spirit quelled, but I loved it, and so I would never let it die. I took it inside, and placed it in a jar full of moist earth. I spent hours every day with it, caring for it and giving it water. And then for periods of time I would take it back out to where it’s plant lie in the earth outside, and let it sit there for a while.

The days passed, and I cherished that little berry, but one afternoon, as I was taking it to be in the earth outside with the plant where it grew, I noticed a tear fall onto the white berry in my hand. I reached up to wipe my cheek as I realized something was wrong. The life in my hand, it wasn’t alright, it told me, as though through song.

It wasn’t growing anymore, my efforts were seeming to fail. I set it in earth, and sang to it, I gave it it’s nourishing jar. I grit my teeth and shut my eyes as the tears continued to fall. I was grasping in air, with nothing to hold, I didn’t know what to do. At a loss, I took the precious berry inside, and picked out a beautiful red paint brush.

With delicate stroke after delicate stroke, I painted the life back into my treasure. It glowed like a ruby, and I smiled through my tears, as I saw that my care and affection had not been in vain. I set my treasure on a special shelf, where it lies in all it’s glorious life.

So this is my story, and let me just say

Growing strawberries is difficult, but there is a way

Though heartbreak and loss

Are paths you will cross

You’ll see joy at the end of the day.

To take oneself seriously is to be insane.

2011-07-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

Our planet is beyond negligible compared to the rest of the cosmos. Our identities don’t exist outside of our minds. Our accomplishments and ideas and knowledge are only considered credentials in the eyes of other homo sapiens. We are like a little village on a little rock floating in space, agreeing with each other about a wide variety of things, and then calling those agreements “reality.” The cosmos around us doesn’t know we’re here, and doesn’t share any of our agreements. It’s all us. We’ve created our own little game of what’s true and what isn’t, and who we are.

You are not a “person.” You don’t have an identity. You don’t have a meaningful existence. You don’t know why you’re here, or what you truly are, though you may be telling yourself stories to cloud over that mystery.

You are beyond negligible. You’re an animal walking around on a teeny tiny little rock, with a pre-frontal cortex that allows you to make up stories. That’s it.

You are an animal walking around on a teeny tiny little rock, with a pre-frontal cortex that allows you to make up stories.

And these stories include “I am ___,” “My work is important,” “Life is meaningful,” “Love is sacred,” all this ridiculous crap that throws your perception of reality completely out of whack, and makes you look insane! You’re taking yourself seriously! How could you possibly take yourself seriously if you had even one tiny glimpse of the real reality of this situation? It’s laughable. You’re a little dot on a rock, and in the entire universe, only a handful of the other dots on this little rock agree with your ideas about life. We’re like a planet of story-telling monkeys, continually keeping these ridiculous stories alive by agreeing with each other about them.

How would you feel if you were taking a walk in the forest one day, and suddenly, as you pass a tree, one of the pine needles on the tip of a branch starts saying “I am a pine needle of important stature. My life has profound ramifications for pine needles throughout the world. My identity is sacred. Oh no! I’m naked. Hey, you there! Can you get me some clothes?” or whatever.

You’d look at it (once you got over the shock of it talking) and say “Dude. You’re a pine needle. You don’t matter. You may be helping to clean the air a negligible amount, but otherwise you’re nobody.”

The same is true for us, although, we’re not even cleaning the air or doing anything good. We’re like pine needles emitting toxic gas into the air. Anyways!

Seriously, stop taking yourself so seriously. It’s absolutely ridiculous and insane to take yourself seriously. It requires that you remove yourself completely from any clear perception of our place in the universe and the nature of our existence. Just enjoy the mystery of life and stop believing in your story of yourself. It makes you look insane.

We are creatures of habit.

2011-07-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

Everybody has heard this phrase before, but today I’d like to point to a much more elusive aspect of this reality, one that clouds our vision and distorts our perception of life every second of every day.

Everything that we feel is normal, as humans, we feel is normal because it’s a habit. This includes eating, walking, talking, breathing, and even being shaped the way we’re shaped.

Look at your legs. Look at your arms. Feel your face. How would you feel if you didn’t have a deep-set habit that your form is somehow normal? And I’m talking philosophically here, I’m not talking about whether you’re skinny or fat or whatever. I’m talking about your form as a monkey. Having two hands, two feet, a nose, two eyes, etc. It could be considered a very strange form and a very odd body to be in, but we feel completely at home in it and never even think about it. We think of ourselves as “people,” a kind of “gold standard” among creatures on earth. We hold ourselves as gods among the animals in a way.

When you walk, you don’t feel strange or amazed doing so. You just walk. One long leg moving in front of the other, and then the other one coming up to move in front of that one.... if you didn’t have a deeply ingrained habit of walking and perceiving it as a normal thing, you’d be much, much more in touch with your animal nature.

And putting on clothes especially! We feel so normal doing that. We get up in the morning and slip on a shirt, pants, whatever, and it’s like “yeah, I’m a person. I’m getting dressed.” The habit of seeing ourselves as people instead of animals greatly clouds our vision. Look at your hands. Look at your arms. Look at yourself sitting there. Why do you feel normal and comfortable? Like this is a normal way of being, of doing things, of perceiving? What do you think this is, really? Outside of “I need to go to college, I need to get a job, I want to have a family.” What is this Really about?

What do you think life might be about, outside of all the things that everyone’s always told you you need to do? School and work are just things we get programmed into doing, like a machine. There’s nothing personal about that. Having a family happens because the species wants to reproduce. So what’s going on here?

We likely will never know. But for now, it is a good thing to try and break free of the habit of perceiving all this as something normal. People are born, and they’re told “You’re so and so, you have to go to school, get a job, and have a family,” and the baby later repeats “I am so and so, I have to go to school, get a job, and have a family,” and that’s it. That’s how deep the level of thought is with a lot of people. It’s literally no different than when I program my computer to do something and then it executes it.

Break free of the habit of perceiving those steps as a kind of “center” of reality. I’ll say that again. Break free of the habit of perceiving those steps (school, college, work, family) as a kind of “center” of reality. The earth to the universe is like a femtometer to the earth, but in many people’s perception, all these earthly things are stretched way out of proportion, to fill nearly the entire universe. They know there’s other universe out there, but they experience this planet and our doings as a sort of staple or pillar in the universe. It’s not. Perceiving our form, our actions, our aspirations and systems and philosophies, as a kind of “norm” is a habit. A habit that constantly takes us away from the bizarre and mystifying question of existence.

Begin to perceive life and think about what this Really might be, at its true nature. In the presence of that mysterious question, life becomes much more alive.

Humans are dangerous.

2011-07-12T23:03:00.001-07:00

Humans are an incredibly dangerous animal. On top of developing weapons of mass destruction, we are heavily susceptible to harmful and delusional patterns of thinking that often result in great misery for ourselves and those around us. The fact that there are still so many of us alive, and that we’ve landed on the moon, are testament to the mystifyingly powerful drive of the human spirit.

Why art is eternal.

2011-07-11T16:19:00.001-07:00

Have you ever noticed that everything in life is the same? Everything is like everything else. Everything is reflected everywhere else. Stories, ideas, awkward encounters, patterns of development, etc. Everything is the same as everything else. We can draw parallels between the growth of a tree and the growth of a human. We can draw parallels between the growth of a tree and the progression of a day. Between sex and a river; between stages of software development and cultural differences between decades; between life and a piece of music; between death and everything. Literally, anything you take, whether it be a concept, story, object, situation or general phenomena, it is like everything else in life.

We are all living the same “thing,” over and over again, expressed in different ways, in different places, at different times. The fundamental nature of all existence remains the same.

And through recognizing this “law of consistency” as you will, we can look at art and have a much deeper understanding of what makes art great and what makes art eternal. Great art is like everything else in the universe. It is a creation from a human mind, that the creator has managed to make “fit” in with the rest of nature, as something eternal and reflecting of everything else. A piece of music, a piece of literature, a painting, a poem, if it is a true piece of art, it will be in harmony with nature in that it will be like everything else.

The example that inspired me to write about this is Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre. It hardly matters if you even know what the text is. The emotions and humanity that are in the music are eternal. One of my favorite moments is in the second act. Sieglinde is alone and terrified in the middle of a stormy night in a dark forest, with her angry and dangerous husband rapidly approaching to exact vengeance on her and her new lover, and when you listen to it, if you’ve ever been afraid of any danger ever approaching you at any point in your life, you will feel the music. It will, to you, describe every moment of terror you’ve ever had. Wagner, like so many of the great composers, was able, almost like a god, to reach into the core of humanity and explicitly extract the very nature of our emotions and our perception, so clearly that he could lay it out on paper as specific notation.

This is what is so amazing about art. It grasps at and expresses core aspects of our very nature, as though the creators of the art had a glimpse into the ultimate nature of the universe.

The Universe is four million times as old as the bible.

2011-07-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

This is a fact that really needs to sink in for a lot of people. Discussions about whether or not there’s a conscious being behind the creation of the universe are perfectly valid, but people seriously feel like the bible holds some kind of serious spot in the history of the universe, when in fact it was just written by a handful of people, on this planet, in the last little sliver of the Universe’s existence.

The Universe is four million times older than the bible! The bible is completely irrelevant to the creation of the universe, or to anything “divine.” Remember, if the universe were the size our planet currently is, the earth would be approximately one or two femtometers in diameter. You could fit a trillion earths on the tip of a pen. A trillion. The entire milky way galaxy would be about 140 feet in diameter.

Nothing any human has ever said or written has anything to do with the powers behind the existence of the universe. There is no personal god. The bible is just a book. This is not about faith or no faith. This is about looking at the scientific facts. On the cosmic calendar (where the life of the universe is plotted as though taking place within one earth year), the bible was written in the last ten seconds of the universe’s existence, around 23:59:50 on December 31st.

The Met: Live in HD series on Orcas Island!

2011-07-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve just returned from the Orcas Center on Orcas Island, where I saw Verdi’s opera “Simon Boccanegra” projected on a giant screen. It was spectacular.

The Metropolitan Opera in New York has a “Met: Live in HD” series that streams live to thousands of theaters, and then they also have a summer encore series where operas that were streamed live in the past are replayed.

Amazingly enough, the Orcas Center here on little Orcas Island has gotten involved, and has begun playing operas from the Met, starting with the current summer encore series, and continuing into the fall when new live streamings will take place. Simon Boccanegra was the third screening so far this summer, and I went to all of them.

I’m so thankful that a group of hardworking, dedicated individuals brought this to such a small community, and no, this is not some sort of ad campaign, I am genuinely grateful and expressing myself.

I haven’t posted a blog on a “serious topic” today because I have a lot of reading to do (online classes from UW), and the opera took up all of the evening. Anyways, have fun!

The difference between projection and perception.

2011-07-08T16:41:00.000-07:00

Most people are familiar with the idea that what one sees around themselves in the world is to a certain degree a projection of their mind. That if you see someone as angry, it could be that you’re angry and “projecting” it on them, or if you feel certain that a certain outcome is going to happen for another person, it could be that that’s the outcome you had in a similar situation, and you’re projecting your experience on them, etc.

Certainly, people do project. A lot. The average person hardly ever perceives anything clearly, always projecting their own insecurities, memories, beliefs and prejudices onto people around them. For example, a person might be completely certain that if their friend has sex with a certain person, that they’re going to get hurt and end up really sad and lonely. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that this prediction is coming from a person who had that experience themselves, and simply doesn’t know that things can be different for other people, and that not everything in the world is exactly like them.

If “not knowing that things can be different for other people” seems like something not suited to be preceded by “simply” to you, let me explain. You’re right, not knowing that things can be different for others is a big deal, I would venture to say bordering on some form of pseudo-autism, but the psychological mechanism that results in this blindness is actually quite simple, hence the use of that word. They “simply” don’t know. It’s a huge problem and mental defect, yes, but also a simple one. People are simply projecting their entire reality onto everything around them, with no awareness to the fact that other people could perceive things differently than them, or feel differently about things than they do.

So that’s projection, in it’s most basic, blinding form. It takes the projector clear away from reality, by cutting off all awareness of things around them. All they see is their own mind and their own stories, plastered everywhere in the world and onto everybody they meet.

Now, before I go into how clear perception works and why it is possible, let me first confirm that it is 100% true that you can never see anything in the world that isn’t also within you. When they say “you could not see that person as angry, unless there was anger within you,” that is true. And in this sense, the basic understanding of how human projection works is true, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that this law does not prevent a wise, intelligent person from perceiving completely clearly, as opposed to projecting. I will explain how this works.

Basically, the fundamental truth at the center of the concept of humans projecting things onto others, is that you cannot see something that you don’t believe or understand yourself. If you have no notion of fear, you won’t be able to detect if someone else is afraid. If you have no notion of anger, you won’t be able to detect when someone else is angry. You’ll see their actions, hear the volume of their voice, etc, but you won’t be able to make any sense of it if you don’t know what anger is.

The common misunderstanding surrounding this truth is this: If you see something in someone else, it is within you, only within you, and has an emotional hold on you. In the anger example, this would mean, if you see someone as angry, it’s because you have anger issues yourself, and the person you’re perceiving may or may not be angry at all, and it has no relation to your perception. This is of course ridiculous. If you were seeing anger in that person only because there is anger within you, then you would see every single person as angry, because your anger would be projected in the same way everywhere.

All that the concept “you can’t see what you don’t have within yourself” says is that in order to recognize something in someone else, you have to have an awareness and understanding of it yourself. It’s like radio channels. If you have the frequency “anger” within you, then you can pick up the signal when someone else is angry. It doesn’t mean that anger has a hold of you at that moment, and it doesn’t mean that the other person isn’t angry. It just means that in order for you to perceive anger, you did need to have it within yourself, in one way or another, otherwise it would not exist in your reality.

So, as you can see, projection and perception are two completely different things, and both are possible. Projection is a blind superimposition of your own mind onto things around you. Perception is being able to recognize the nature of things around you, using your own understanding and experience with those things, in order to be able to recognize them. The statement “it must be within you if you see it outside of yourself” holds completely true, but as I’ve shown, it does not negate the possibility of clear perception.

Imagine a giant board filled with numbers. Random numbers spread across a giant checkered board. And every person has certain numbers within their mind, and they can only see on the board those numbers that they also have in their mind. For example, if a person had only the numbers 19, 37 and 102 in their mind, then they’d only see those numbers on the board, wherever they show up, and everything else would look blank. The more numbers you have in your mind, the more you can see. It doesn’t mean you’re “projecting” those numbers. It means you’re able to perceive them, because you understand them yourself. It’s more of a resonation than a projection.

This is how projection and perception can both exist. And it is quite irritating when a clear-headed person makes an accurate observation, and is told “well, if that’s what you’re seeing, that must be what’s within you. It has nothing to do with what’s out there.” That is utter bull shit.

What science is.

2011-07-07T11:52:00.001-07:00

As a kind of follow up to my last post, I’d like to clarify what exactly science is, and therefore explain why it can be appropriate to put “science” or “scientists” in quotes sometimes.

Science is simply the process of figuring out whether or not something is true, based on sound, testable methods. If I eat a bowl of beans, and then get in a car accident two hours later, one could hypothesize that the beans caused that. So we feed bowls of beans to a thousand people lets say, and if none, or very few of them get in car accidents later, then we know that it wasn’t the beans that caused it. That’s it. That’s science.

I have the deepest respect for science and the scientific method. The scientific method is the most perfected system we have thus far conceived as humans, for deducing what is true and what is not.

The problem is, because of the immense credibility of the scientific method, people often call what they do scientific, because it sounds really good. Scientists and “scientists” are sometimes two separate things.

And a good example of cases where even good intentioned, knowledgable scientists engage in pseudo-science, is when they test “alternative” medicines in the same way they test conventional medicines. Homeopathy, herbal medicine and chiropractic have all been called scams by the scientific community, but none of these things were ever claimed to operate the same way prescription drugs do. So when “scientists” take them into a test lab and expect them to kill symptoms instantaneously the way the drugs do, their conclusion is that they don’t work.

It’s like testing a car next to a boat in the water, and saying “my gosh, this boat is terrible. It can’t float at all.” It’s not a boat.

Most alternative medical practices focus more on building up the big picture of the bodies health, so that it can fight off whatever it’s trying to fight off. They do not target individual symptoms and attempt to eliminate them without addressing the underlying cause, the way most conventional medicine does. And in the case of homeopathy, if anybody ever advertises a remedy that claims to eliminate a certain symptom, that likely is a scam, because it’s against the principle of how homeopathy works and what it does.

Anyways, this post is not about alternative medicine or conventional medicine. Those will be discussed later in more detail. The point is that science, and the scientific method, are practically infallible. The scientific method is a system of testing whether something is true or not, and it’s a system that is flawless, because of it’s brilliant simplicity and tight relationship with reality.

It’s people that are not infallible. People who are not flawless, brilliant, simple, or in tight relationship with reality. And this is why many “scientists” and “scientific experiments” belong in quotes.

Looking at the vaccine controversy.

2011-07-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

The vaccine debates and controversies are well known throughout the world. There are the fanatic “scientists” who say they’re completely safe and effective and the greatest thing since sliced bread, there are the fanatic “alternative” people who say that they’re 100% poison and have never worked at all, and then there are a wide variety of people in the middle.

I put “scientists” in quotes, because a lot of these people are simply reciting what they’re told by the FDA and other such organizations, which is not science driven, but profit driven. The scientific method is amazing, and it is one of the crowning inventions of the human pre-frontal cortex, but unfortunately the mainstream medical establishment is not really doing science. They’re doing business. There are often good-intentioned scientists working within the system, but what ends up being pushed and marketed and endorsed is what will make the most money, not what will make the most health. It’s as simple as that.

In the case of vaccines, the classic argument of the “scientists” is that the disease rates dropped dramatically after the vaccines were introduced. The classic argument of the anti-vaxers is that the disease rates were already dropping rapidly before the vaccines were introduced. This argument can be settled by facts and numbers. The disease rates were not dropping rapidly before the vaccines were introduced. When the vaccines were introduced, reported cases dropped dramatically. So, the scientists are right here. There were up and down trends in the reported cases prior to vaccines, but vaccines dramatically reduced the reported cases when they were introduced. Vaccines do “work.” Some better than others, as you can see in the charts below.

But this isn’t the end of the story. When the anti-vaxers say that the disease rates were already dropping rapidly before the vaccines we’re introduced, they’re wrong of course, but there’s a truth that is similar to what they’re claiming that should not be ignored.

The death rates were dropping rapidly before the vaccines were introduced.

Most of the statistical charts and data talk only about the number of cases reported. There is no mention of how many of those cases died. By the 1960s, when the vaccine for measles was introduced for example, there were only a tiny fraction of the amount of deaths from it than there were in the late 19th century or early 20th century. A lot of children were still getting measles, but hardly anybody was dying anymore, because of improved nutrition and hygiene practices.

So, if improved living conditions resulted in a massive decrease in deaths from measles between 1900 and 1960, how much more would that death rate have been reduced, with or without the vaccine, between 1960 and 2011? In first world countries, if we ceased measles vaccinations right now, how many people would actually die? Is it more or less than the occasional death or crippling adverse reaction from the vaccines? We don’t know. And we don’t know what the vaccines do to people long term. Auto-immune diseases run completely rampant throughout America now, in absurdly high amounts of the adult population, unheard of in previous centuries or even before the 1960s. Vaccines mess with the immune system in an artificial way. I think there is a logical reason to suspect a possible correlation there.

And could it be healthy for children to go through the childhood diseases and build natural immunity to them? If our modern hygiene and nutrition eliminate the possibility of death from any of these diseases, is it better to let children get them and naturally build immunity? This is a valid question, especially considering that vaccines do cause crippling and death sometimes (rarely), as well as their unknown long-term effects.

Below are some snapshots from the 1978 edition of "Health, United States." The full document can be found here, though it's a large file and may be difficult to load: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus78.pdf#050

The "progress" of humanity.

2011-07-05T15:51:00.000-07:00

In a psychology course I took at the North Seattle Community College a couple years ago, a fellow student expressed the opinion that if we didn’t make it clear to children that throwing tantrums isn’t okay, then we’d have adults throwing tantrums. I don’t remember the girl’s name, but let’s call her Jessica.

Hi Jessica. I’m World War II, and here are a bunch of my friends, World War I, 9/11, The Spanish Inquisition, The Crusades, The War in Iraq, The Holocaust, and there are a few thousand more waiting out in the parking lot. We are all tantrums thrown by adults. Nice to meet you. I guess it was obvious to you when a small child throws a tantrum, because all those books fall to the floor, and all those meaningless household items break. I can understand why a tantrum resulting in millions of human deaths would be more difficult to identify.

It is really mystifying that humanity has figured out how to create computers, airplanes, and even space shuttles, before they’re even close to figuring out how to grow up. The so-called progress of humanity is as much a falsehood as it is a reality. We are not wise, we are not even intelligent really. We are merely clever. The vast majority of adults are like small children functioning in the bodies of adults. And this is a serious matter, because children who have the power of adults are dangerous, as we’ve seen in the tantrum example.

All the immaturities and stupidities, all the childish stubbornness, and all the tantrums, are coated with terms like “lawsuit,” “war,” “genocide,” “colonialism,” “capitalism,” etc. And because all these children are the only sentient beings we know of right now, they get to make all the rules, and declare themselves as mature adults. They’re not in positions of “power” and “respect” because they deserve it. They’re there simply because there’s no one more powerful than them to tell them what they really are and put them in their place. The people running countries in this world today have no place there. They are children.

Countries fight with each other like toddlers in a kindergarten, each little shove or hit being actualized as the deaths of thousands or millions. Parents fight with their children as though they are children themselves, and they get very confused and frustrated because they believe they are not children while doing this.

People have a strong attachment to receiving approval from others, to looking good, to being liked, to being right, all of it. Most people never really grew up. Their bodies continued to grow while their brains got frozen at about age four. Yet somehow, there is also that clever aspect of the brain that has resulted in all our modern technology and in complex language, but this is hardly a substitute for having real intelligence and wisdom. To quote myself:

“I could see a mature alien species giving a tour of the earth, saying something like 'Do not let their fancy inventions and complicated speech fool you. These beings are still children in all the areas that matter.'”

The Universe has no size.

2011-07-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

This might seem like a blatant contradiction to my previous post “The Universe is really, really big,” and it is actually. My previous post should have been called “The Universe is really, really big compared to us.”

In reality, nothing can have a size until it is compared to something else. An ant is small next to my shoe, my shoe is small next to me, I’m small next to an elephant, an elephant is small next to a jumbo jet, a jumbo jet is small next to a space shuttle, etc. Are all these items small then? The elephant is huge next to the ant, the jumbo jet is huge next to the elephant, and so on.

I know this sounds incredibly basic, and it is. What’s not basic though, is when we start thinking about the entire universe. How big is the universe? What are we supposed to measure it next to? There is nothing we can measure it next to because we have no perception of anything outside of it. And even if there is a space in which the universe is held, what would you measure the size of that space next to?

The fact is, no matter what exists, nothing has any definite size, ever. If the universe is in a space that stretches in all directions forever, then that’s not a size either. Forever is both everything and nothing. Forever is actually something the human mind can’t fully grasp, but in theory we can see that an endless universe would be both the smallest thing that can possibly exist, and the largest thing that can possibly exist, at the same time. It has no size. It just is.

Another possibility is that the observable universe is all the “space” that exists right now, and that “outside” of it there is just energy, not manifested as anything. No space, no time, no forms, etc. So our universe in that case would be kind of floating in nothing, and therefore still have no size, because there’s nothing to measure it against.

And if nothing has an actual size, it doesn’t really exist in the way we usually think of things existing. Our concepts of objects existing is very rooted in a notion that they “are” whatever size they are relative to us.

What are the things in your life, if they don’t have a size? What are you? What is this?

The whole universe is right here, in your awareness, as it moves over these words.

The two kinds of beliefs.

2011-07-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

Ultimately, nothing we believe can ever be true, because the entire idea of things being true or not true is a fabrication of our mind. But regardless, within the typical dualistic human paradigm, there are things that “seem” to be true, even though our expression of their truth is just another story. For example, when you say “I am twenty-five years old,” it very likely is true that this planet did circle around our sun twenty-five times since you were born, and each circle is what we call a year, so there is some reality that is in alignment with your story. So, even though nothing we believe can be true in a concrete way, some beliefs are “provable” and are “true” within the typical human paradigm.

Now, within this standard dualistic paradigm of humanity, there are two kinds of beliefs that one can hold in their mind.

The first kind is a belief that is neutrally, emotionlessly, almost reluctantly held by the thinker, in response to a logically convincing amount of evidence. The person holds this belief not because they care if it’s true or not, but because they’ve seen a convincing amount of evidence, and so they say “This seems to be true, so unless a lot of contradictory evidence suddenly shows up, I’ll hold this to be true. I believe it.”

For example, if it’s clearly proven that broccoli is incredibly healthy to eat, and there isn’t any contradictory evidence, I will eat broccoli. And if suddenly it’s discovered that there’s actually something really unhealthy about it, I’ll stop eating broccoli. There are plenty of other foods. Not a problem. I had no attachment to broccoli being healthy or unhealthy. I simply wanted to find out as best I could which it is, so I’m informed about what I should eat.

The second kind of belief is very different. The second kind of belief is something someone needs to believe. Something they have a very strong bias towards, on which their peace of mind is dependent. They don’t care about evidence or logic, they only care about doing whatever they can to prove that belief true, because without it, they can’t find peace, or their identity falls apart, or whatever.

For example, a belief in heaven. People like to believe in heaven, because they wish they could go to such a place after they die. They want to believe that it’s there waiting for them. There isn’t any evidence for it, but nonetheless people firmly believe they’re going to heaven, because it makes them feel good.

So, in summary, the two kinds of beliefs are:

1. A belief held by a person because they have seen substantial convincing evidence for it and have concluded, for now (they are open to any new evidence that may come along), that the claim appears to be true.

2. A belief held by a person, toward which they have a strong bias because their ego wants or needs it to be true for various reasons, usually involving fear or conformity.

Most people hold many beliefs in the second category. Way too many. I myself have a few I’m sure. But I think we all should strive to only believe things in the manner of the first kind of belief. The second kind of belief is useless, and usually hinders our ability to be powerful and productive in life, because it takes us away from reality, and distorts our perception of things. One should never care if their belief is proven false. Beliefs should not be intertwined with ego. A belief should simply be a neutral observation: “That appears to be true, based on the evidence we have so far.”

Going to a movie on a first date is a terrible idea.

2011-07-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

For some reason people still consider going to a movie to be a good option for a first or second date, so I’d like to explain why it’s a terrible idea, and why you should never do it again.

First of all, when you’re first getting to know somebody, you want to be able to talk to them, and get to know them more. Sitting at a table in a coffee shop or a park allows that, but there is also the risk of the occasional awkward silence, which is perhaps why so many think of going to a movie as a good idea. Going to a movie with someone you barely know is kind of like intentionally entering a two hour “proctored” awkward silence, in which there is a giant screen in front of you making it okay, because “we’re supposed to be watching the movie. We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing. Nothing’s awkward. I’m just looking at the screen.” This is kind of like the way people look at the numbers in the elevator instead of looking at each other.

Going to a movie on a first or second date is such a ludicrously awful idea, because both people are still nervous about what the other person thinks of them, so they sit there worrying about that more than enjoying the movie. “I wonder what he thinks of my pants.” “Did that sniff she just did mean she thinks my breath smells?” “I wonder what she thinks of me.” “I wonder if him crossing his legs means he’s planning on dumping me.” “She probably thinks I’m ugly.” “I should have gelled my hair.” “I should have waxed my legs.” “His last date probably waxed her legs.” “Everybody waxes their legs, don’t they?” “Fuck, I’m such an idiot.” “She probably hates this stupid shirt.” “I should have never bought it.” “Guys don’t wear shirts like this.” “I think I put too much makeup on.” “I hope he likes that.”... and on and on and on and on AND ON AND ON, literally for the entire duration of the film!

And furthermore, if the couple really likes each other, they want to look at each other and talk to each other, not be forced to stare at a screen. A young innocent couple will be like “yay! We’re going on a date! Let’s go to a movie!” and they go in with all that excitement, and then they sit there and realize that they can’t do anything with the person they were so excited to spend time with! Their bubble of excitement quickly gets smothered out, as they have to settle into not being able to look at each other or talk to each other. Often they quickly realize that the movie was a bad idea, and that now it’s just like a big, bright, loud screen that’s getting between them and their date. And somehow the next time around they still opt for it again!

Occasionally a couple will manage to stay connected throughout a film, with constant glances, smiles, even kisses, but this is even dumber than just letting the film get between you for a couple hours, because now you don’t even get to see the movie! What was the point of going? If you’re gonna sit there staring at each other and making out, why in a movie theater? If you honestly have no better place to go, and you find a movie that has hardly any people in the audience, then that’s fair. Go for it. But the majority of people who suggest going to a movie are honestly thinking of getting to see the movie, and that’s just an atrocious idea, because it has nothing to do with getting comfortable with or getting to know the person you’re starting to date, and completely obstructs the date and prevents eye contact and communication.

Go sit in a park and get to know your date instead.

Beliefs and concepts are like sperm.

2011-07-01T11:56:00.000-07:00

Beliefs, concepts and sperm all share one very big thing in common. They all require an enclosed, warm, safe, physically nurturing environment in order to thrive, and outside of that environment they quickly dissipate away.

For beliefs and concepts, that environment is the human mind. For sperm, well, you know what it is.

We hold so many thousands and millions of beliefs and concepts in our minds, and we project them out onto the world, so we feel they are a part of the world. We say there is forgiveness “out there,” we say there is greed “out there,” we say there is justice “out there.” We hold all these concepts, and we accompany them with beliefs, “I am 38 years old,” “adultery is bad,” “The USA was founded in 1776,” etc.

But what most people don’t realize is that beliefs and concepts can only exist within their mind. They are not a part of existence outside of the human mind. Our mind is like a nurturing incubation chamber for beliefs and concepts, and outside, there is this environment called Reality, which is extremely hostile to beliefs and concepts. I would say it obliterates, nullifies or dissipates them, but it doesn’t even do that. The minute you go outside the human mind, they simply could never have existed at all.

Reality has no room for beliefs and concepts. Reality just is. Always. Perfectly.

Reality as we know it does not really exist.

2011-06-30T21:37:00.001-07:00

We humans think, talk and perceive in terms of separate identities, meaning, happiness, sadness, desire, justice, countries, governments, up, down, left, right, good, bad, easy, hard, normal, insane, and on and on and on.

These are all things that exist only in our minds, and therefore exist only on our teeny tiny little rock of a planet. They don’t exist anywhere else, at all. We don’t know why the universe is here, but there are billions of light years of stars and galaxies that are just there, burning, with no notion of any of the stories that we have invented. They’re neutral. Every human story, from identity to justice, is localized. It exists only where we are and only where we think it.

Here’s an analogy:

Imagine a huge field of trees. And I mean huge. Let’s say it’s 100 million square miles of densely packed trees.

Now imagine that one of the trees is blue. One of them. At one of the corners of the 100 million square mile field, there is one tree that is blue. Surely we recognize this as an anomaly, and we recognize that it is not a condition universal among the field, and in fact the vast, vast majority of the field is green and has no trace or hint of blue; it just doesn’t exist.

The same is true in the universe, involving all the things that humans take to be components of their reality. The entire paradigm in which we perceive reality is confined to our planet! Our entire way of thinking about life is not a constant throughout the universe. Our planet is like that blue tree. We have made up billions of stories, starting with the story of “me” as a separate identity (more on this in future posts), and we somehow feel like life “is” what is happening on this planet. That in life there is misery, in life there is happiness, in life there is good and bad. All these things don’t exist anywhere else. We made them up! Imagine reality from the perspective of our sun for a minute. Or from Mars. Or from the other stars and galaxies.

Can you see how tiny our planet is compared to what’s around it? And how nothing outside of this planet is telling the stories we tell? Reality as we know it, as we live it on this rock, does not exist. All the concepts and stories that make up our everyday lives are complete fiction.

Our entire reality is confined to this rock. Outside of this rock there are no stories. No happiness, no sadness, no good or bad, no justice or injustice, no peace or war, nothing. These are the fictional building blocks of our projected realities. Everywhere else, there is just existence.

The Universe is really, really big.

2011-06-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

I love pondering over the size of the universe, and coming up with different calculations to try and grasp just how big it is. When I look around me on this planet in everyday life, I feel like a lot of people aren’t actually aware of how massive it is. So, please join me as I attempt to present numbers and analogies in a graspable way.

First of all, as I’m sure a lot of you know, our sun is 93 million miles from earth. Uranus, which is the most distant planet in our solar system, is 1.59 billion miles away. It would take 17.7 years to fly to the sun in a fast jet plane, and 302.5 years to fly to Uranus.

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, 669.6 million miles per hour, or 5.86 trillion miles per year. Light is 1,116,000 times as fast as a jet plane, meaning it travels 211 miles for every 1 foot the plane travels.

At the speed of light, the sun is only 8.33 minutes away, and Uranus is 2 hours and 22 minutes away. Imagine that. Traveling at a speed of 186,000 miles every second (7.44 entire loops around the equator of the earth in each second), it takes 2 hours and 22 minutes to reach the farthest planet in our solar system. That’s a very long time for such a speed. But remember, it would take 302.5 years to cover the same distance in a plane.

So, now that we have a concept of how large our solar system is, and how fast the speed of light is, let’s begin to look out at the rest of our galaxy. If you set up a miniature solar system in Seattle, WA, and placed the sun about 60 feet from the earth, the nearest other star to us would have to be put in Boston, MA, for the scale to be in proportion. This star is called Proxima Centauri, and it is 4.2 light years from the earth. Light years. Remember how it took 2 hours and 22 minutes to reach Uranus at 186,000 miles per second? Well, it takes 4.2 years to reach Proxima Centauri at the same speed, and that is the nearest star to us other than our sun. It is 24.6 trillion miles away. 264,902 times the distance of the sun.

Betelgeuse is another nearby star, about 640 light years from the earth. Traveling at the speed of light (669.6 million miles an hour, 186,000 miles a second) it would take 640 years to reach Betelgeuse. Why do I say this is nearby? Because the galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter, and 1,000 light years in thickness. If you put a model of the milky way galaxy covering all of the state of texas, our sun would be 0.2 millimeters from earth. That’s right. To fit our galaxy within the borders of texas, our sun has to be a fifth of a millimeter from the earth.

There are 200-400 billion stars in the milky way galaxy, and approximately 50 billion planets. So, with the galaxy being 100,000 light years across, Proxima Centauri and Betelgeuse, lying 4.2 and 640 light years from us, do turn out to be merely our close neighbors, even though Centauri is 264,902 times the distance of the sun, and Betelgeuse is 40.4 million times the distance of the sun. 40.4 million times the distance. This is approximately 5.05 miles from the earth and sun on our texas scale.

So, we have a concept of the size of the milky way galaxy now, and you can imagine how, if it were the entire universe, it would at least be a theoretically plausible proposition to wrap one’s head around the size of it. But the actual reality is truly ungraspable. We can lay out mathematical analogies and know theoretically what the distances are, but there is no way for the human mind to really comprehend it or imagine it clearly.

The milky way galaxy is just one out of about 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

Our neighbor galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away, and is one of the closest other galaxies to us. There are some others that are slightly closer, but Andromeda is considered our main neighbor galaxy because it’s a spiral galaxy, just like the milky way, and it looks cool.

Think about this. We’re still talking about that pace of 186,000 miles per second. How could it take 2.5 million years to get somewhere at that speed? Can you imagine the distance? For 2.5 million years you’re moving 186,000 miles every single second. See why I said it’s ungraspable?

2.5 million light years is only twenty five times the diameter of the milky way. So if we made a 10 square foot model of the milky way, Andromeda would be 250 feet away from it. Not very far. Hence why it’s our neighbor galaxy. However, keep in mind that the milky way galaxy is actually 586 quadrillion miles across (100,000 light years), not 10 feet. The galaxies are only close if you’re thinking in terms of those sizes.

So, where are the rest of the 200 billion galaxies? (Take a minute to remember how big the milky way galaxy is, from the distances to Uranus and the sun, to the nearby stars, etc. There are 200 billion galaxies, all in the general size range of the milky way). They’re spread out throughout the observable universe, which is about 13.7 billion years old, and 93 billion light years in diameter.

Until now we’ve talked about light seconds (186,000 miles each), light minutes, light hours, and even light years on massive scales, from the 100,000 light year diameter of the milky way, to the 2.5 million light year distance to our neighbor galaxy Andromeda.

Now, we’re talking about the universe being 93 billion light years in diameter. Traveling at 186,000 miles every second, 11.1 million miles every minute, 669.6 million miles every hour, 16 billion miles every day, and 5.86 trillion miles every year, it would take you 93 billion years to span the universe. 93 billion light years is 37,200 times the distance between us and Andromeda. So, if you somehow travelled at the speed of light, and somehow lived to be 2.5 million years old, and made it to Andromeda, it would be like starting off on a journey from Seattle to Boston, and covering a couple blocks.

One last image: If the universe was the size of the earth, the earth would be 1.17 femtometers in diameter. A femtometer is one quadrillionth (or one millionth of a billionth) of a meter. There are one trillion femtometers in a millimeter.

The Universe is really, really big.

An absurd tragedy fueled by stupidity and ignorance.

2011-06-29T23:03:00.000-07:00

Last September a ten year old British boy named Harry Hucknall hung himself from his bunk bed using a belt. He had been on two mind-altering drugs, Ritalin and Prozac.

Attempting to use words to describe how insane this situation is, is like trying to use a toothbrush to cut down an old growth tree. But I will attempt it anyhow.

First of all, this child was prescribed those drugs by a psychiatrist, to cure “boisterous behavior and low spirits.” Boisterous behavior? Really? He’s a 10 year old boy. Should we prescribe drugs to infants for being little? And to toddlers for liking toys? And to adults for liking sex? What kind of absurdly demented thinking could have conjured up the idea that “boisterous behavior” in a 10 year old boy is something to be “fixed”? Are people really this insane and out of touch with reality?

But what about the second part? “Low spirits.” Well I’m not surprised! He was being raised by a couple too stupid to tell their psychiatrist to take a hike when he prescribed their son mind-altering drugs. He was being raised by a couple too out of touch with reality to laugh at the idea of boisterous behavior being a problem. He probably had low spirits in response to being told that he can’t be boisterous! I’d be upset too if my parents were that ignorant and gullible!

But on a more serious and realistic note, some common causes of low spirits in young children include public school and emotional disconnect from parents.

This is so incredibly tragic, and caused by an incomprehensible amount of stupidity and ignorance, on multiple levels, at every step along the way. It’s really hard to grasp. But the suicide, sadly enough, actually makes sense if you really look at what happened.

First, he’s basically getting the message that he’s defective for wanting to be wild and boisterous, and then he’s told that his low spirits in response to that emotional abuse are another defect, and then he’s given drugs that mess with his mind to “fix everything.”

I think that would make a lot of people want to skip to the next life in hopes of being dealt a better hand.

Link: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/30/ten-year-old-kills-himself-after-taking-ritalin.aspx

The real reason people like “open minded” people.

2011-06-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

I’m sure at one time or another (probably at several), you’ve heard someone joyously talk about some new person they met, and how amazing that person was, partly because they were so open-minded. You may have had this experience yourself. After all, who likes to have a conversation with somebody who isn’t willing to budge one inch when it comes to their beliefs and mindset?

You do.

If they agree with what you say.

See, this is the semi-hidden reality about open minded and close minded people. What people enjoy is someone who agrees with them. They could not care less if the person is close minded, as long as their “stuck” beliefs are in alignment with theirs. We enjoy “open minded” people, simply because they are quick to agree with us when we present new ideas. And if an “open minded” person simply feels there isn’t enough evidence for what you tell them, you’ll call that person close minded too, even if they aren’t.

The bottom line is that if a close minded person disagrees with us, we call them close minded, and if a close minded person agrees with us, we call them intelligent. And the same applies for open minded people. To lay it out more clearly:

Close-minded, agrees with us. Intelligent.

Close-minded, disagrees with us. Close-minded.

Open-minded, agrees with us. Open-minded (Intelligent).

Open-minded, disagrees with us. Close-minded.

See how simple it is? It’s about nothing but agreement. We enjoy people who agree with us. It’s not about open minded or close minded. You only recognize a close minded person as close minded if their ideas clash with yours, and you only recognize an open minded person as open minded if they change their ideas to match yours. So the next time you have a great time visiting with someone who was quick to adopt your viewpoints as their own, be honest and say “I enjoyed spending time with that person so much because they agreed with everything I said!”

All mammals are attachment parents.

2011-06-28T21:53:00.001-07:00

It's an interesting thought, isn't it? Hundreds of thousands of species of mammals on the planet, and every single one of them practices attachment parenting, except for a large portion of the homo sapiens.

For those that don't know, attachment parenting essentially means being close with your children, nursing them, sleeping with them, and listening and responding to their primal needs and instincts. This is a contrast to the typical western upbringing, which involves disconnect between parent and child from an early age, starting with little to no nursing, putting them in a separate room to sleep, and not paying heed to their basic emotional needs.

I find it ludicrous that a term such as "attachment parenting" even exists. Let me give you an analogy for what this term really is like. Imagine that for a few thousand years, humans began eating by forcing food up their rectums, instead of putting it in their mouth. Then, an "alternative" group of "new age" people come along with this "radical" idea. They say "hey, why don't we eat the way we're supposed to by nature? It's healthier and makes more sense."

These people become known as "oral eaters." Everybody else, shoving food up their rectums, remain simply "eaters" in the official definitions of the species, but those who have returned to the way things are supposed to be are given a special label. "Oral eating." This is exactly the same as "Attachment parenting." They're giving the original, natural, healthy way of doing things an alternative name, as though it is the odd thing, and saying that what everybody else is doing is the norm or standard. Sure, it's the norm among western cultures in the last few hundred years, but are people really that self centered? They determine what is normal and healthy for mammals based on what they and their friends have been doing, and what certain human cultures have been doing in the last sliver of human history?

The type of language we use is important. Language is the only means through which we can communicate complex ideas to each other, and the only way through which we can convey intangible things to each other. I propose that "attachment parenting" be renamed simply "parenting" and the current conventional western parenting method be renamed "detachment parenting."

"Parenting" vs. "Detachment parenting" much more accurately describes the nature of the two ways of raising children, and exposes the reality of what the majority of parents are doing. If we use accurate language, people practicing detachment parenting will become far less comfortable with it than they currently are, and that will motivate them to move back towards Parenting.

A dull Tuesday afternoon.

2011-06-28T16:55:00.000-07:00

It's a dull tuesday afternoon up here on Orcas Island. I'm staying here with my parents for the summer, and then returning to Seattle in the fall to do my last year of studies at the University of Washington. I'm majoring in Viola performance.

I'm also taking a couple writing classes online this summer, which may or may not have influenced by decision to start a blog. I mean, I have always liked writing.

I'm twenty years old, by the way. I didn't mention that in my first post. I'm turning twenty-one on July 25th, so pretty soon.

Early this afternoon I watched the first act of the opera Die Walküre by Richard Wagner. It's absolutely fantastic. Some of the most beautiful music ever written, and performed amazingly by the Metropolitan Opera with James Levine conducting.

There are so many things I want to write about here, I'm having trouble deciding what to start with. Needless to say, I'm going to be posting a lot here in the near future.

Stay tuned!

Hello!

2011-06-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody,

My name is Lennon Aldort. I am a musician by trade, but I also am really into psychology and philosophy (not in the academic way), and enjoy writing. I play piano, violin and viola, and I also compose music. I have a website and a youtube channel.

I think a lot about everything I perceive in life, so in this blog I will be sharing my thoughts on a wide variety of topics, from healthy eating, opera, government, family and society, to musings on the nature of existence, science, time, space, etc.

Lennon