The Pillars of a Life

(Originally written on May 3rd, 2011)


Have you ever wondered what it must be like to be on your deathbed? I mean really being on the verge of passing any day now--especially after living a long, full life. I would love to get to know someone who is nearing this end, and who knows this and has come to terms with this. Completely accepted it. Someone who has known long enough to have had time to reflect on things, formulate their thoughts and feelings. I want to pick this person's brain. I want to know their thoughts, feelings, emotions, joys, regrets, passions…

Something sort of like an emotion-driven autobiography as delivered on the verge of death. And that is not meant to sound morbid at all. Of course there would probably be tears and pain and sorrow, but only in a constructive way and amidst all of the glory and joy that should also be in abundance. It would all have its place--every single bit, every laugh and tear, no matter how tragic--because it happened.

What goes through the mind of someone on their deathbed? What do they consider to be the "pillars" of their life? For the purposes of this goal I have, someone I would like to "interview" should still be relatively healthy and good-spirited…just really really old. (I realize that expecting them to pass "any day now" is probably a bit overdramatic if the person is "relatively healthy and good-spirited." But you get the idea.)

Also worth noting is that this person shouldn't be a family member. I'm afraid they would have some sort of bias and would try to "protect" me from darker truths both for my sake and their own. Maybe not, but I could never be sure… and of course anybody else could be doing the same thing, with the best intentions even, I'm sure, but I think a relative would be much more likely to do this. Not to say that I wouldn't want to talk to a passing relative, but only to stress that for the specific purposes of the thoughts in this writing this should be avoided.

That being said (and I hope I've said it well enough to not offend or confuse or annoy or… whatever else people might be flipping their sanity over at this point--or at any later point) I would like to elaborate on the sorts of curiosities I long to satisfy with such a discussion with such a person in such a predicament.

I want to know, as absolutely completely as I possibly can, how this person looks back on the life they have lived, and in what combinations of thoughts and feelings they reflect on their experiences. What are their most cherished memories? I want to watch their expressions as they recall both pleasant and tragic memories. I am curious which there would be more of, which would be most vivid, and from what timeframes of their life most come from. Which memories, even after all this time, never faded at all? Which of them have become vague and distorted? What are their thoughts on why this is so for these particular cases? What made certain ones more "special" than others?

Probing deeper, what are this person's deepest regrets, and how did they cope with this over the years? What are their fondest joys, and what did they make of these over the years?

What, after all this time, have they come to realize mattered most of all? And at what point did they come to this realization? How often, if at all, did this realization change? I think these are some of the most important questions. I'd be on the edge of my seat as they think this through. Because here is a person that has simply lived through so much and, naturally, they have experienced so much and reflected on so much and compared so many things to so many other things. All in the due course of a life, even if they were not a particularly thoughtful and journalistic person.

They will have something interesting to say. More than likely many interesting somethings.

At what points did they get lost along the way, caught up in emotions or hectic lifestyles, or both, or something else? Which aspirations ended up being silly and/or childish efforts that only hindered their progress? Which aspirations propelled them through intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth most of all? Did they know each of these at the time, or only at some point later in life? These questions would reflect on the way they lived their life, and how they consider these lifestyles to have had major impacts in the grand scheme of it all. I expect that there would be an abundance of both proud, effective, successful lifestyles that they learned to capitalize on, and regretful, sloppy, problem-causing lifestyles that they never could quite abolish. I'm curious to know why they believe this was the case.

A large part of the motives for doing something like this would be to draw whatever parallels I might be able to see with my own life, while I'm still young enough to follow major new paths and lifestyles. In all likelihood I still have the vast majority of my life ahead of me, shrouded in mystery, overflowing with infinite potentials, and I am interested in any influence that could provide a significant benefit to my outlook and my understanding of the truer pursuits. I really really hope that I don't end up sounding like I'd be hoping to take away some sort of blueprint for how I expect to be able to live my own life, by capitalizing on whatever this person did right and avoiding whatever this person did wrong. That is entirely not the idea. My goal would be to develop an in-depth understanding of this person's life and their entire range of feelings about it, and then with any luck I'd be able to relate something of it to my own (as-yet limited) outlook and understanding. The idea would be to shed some extra light on aspects that I might have otherwise overlooked. And, of course, that's not to mention the simply profoundly interesting things I would hear from a person who has lived an utterly different life than I have so far. If I took nothing else away from such an experience, I would at least deeply appreciate the communication as a simple storytelling session.

Also, a third powerful benefit of such an experience would be, ideally, for the interviewee. This person would hopefully gain a better understanding of their own life, as well. Very possibly even more so than I. And that is a very encouraging thought.

I am, of course, assuming that some sort of filtering process has already occurred so that I have found someone who is genuinely interested in and more than happy to be speaking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth throughout.

Anyway.

What was the most beautiful thing this person ever saw? What was the most profound thought they ever thought? What were the most joyful and painful emotions they ever felt? What set each of these so far apart from the rest of the mish-mash? I would hope to get as detailed a background story on each of these as possible and, again, to see their expressions as they recall the most powerful of all their memories.

What were their most prized possessions, and what did each mean to them? What made them so precious? Where are they now?

What sorts of thoughts still occupy their mind? When they let their mind wander, or when it does so anyway, where does it go? How does this relate to their younger self? How recognizable do they think they are to the person they were 20, 30, 50+ years ago, and vice versa?

If they could live another 20 reasonably healthy years, would they? What feelings does this possibility stir? Or would they rather have died 10 or 20 years sooner, and if so, why? I want to know what they think of the idea that life should last as long as possible. If I could promise them another 50 reasonably healthy years, what then, and why? If their answer is no, then I would have a lot of brain-picking to do at this point.

How much has the world changed? Physically and socially? How much has their view of the world changed? How much influence do each of these changes have on each other? What are their opinions on the state of the world, and where things are headed?

Who were their best friends of all? What qualities made this so? Was it mutual? Did they remain friends all this time? What are the most cherished memories with each of them? Where are they now?

What do they think of love? How many times did they fall in love? How many times did they merely think they fell in love? If any of these ever ended, why do they believe this happened? What went wrong? Was it inevitable? Did they stay friends afterward? If any of these never ended, why do they believe this was? How does it feel after all this time? What sorts of emotions are still stirred up when they look at this person, or talk with them? At this point, after so much time has passed, how well do they think they really know this person? And how well do they think this person really knows them? What are the most precious memories with this person?

What advice do they have to give? Nothing generic, please!

Would this person do it all again, life in its entirety, start to finish, glory and tragedy, rather than end it for good? Why?



There are certain qualities that I believe any thoughtful person will have come to decide are the "most important." Not that every person is going to come to the same conclusions… no, no. But I can only imagine that each person has developed some of these more than others, or at least realized some as being more crucial and/or desirable in themselves and/or in others.

I regret to say, as of this writing, that I do not have these clearly defined for myself. I have my own thoughts, still in development, but I am definitely still working on it. (My regret is not that I am working on them, of course, but just that they are not yet fully developed). Again, I can only imagine that this is the same for my peers. But I can certainly point out a few things that I've come to respect, admire, and strive for above all else:

Perseverance is vitally important so that you can keep shooting for that which you desire. Difficulties and failures, while sometimes good evidence of a wrong pursuit, should be constructive learning experiences (even if they are good evidence of a wrong pursuit).

Honesty is crucial so that people will trust what you say and do, and they can rest assured that what you tell them is actually how you feel. This includes, to me, not only simply being honest in its literal sense but also telling people how you feel about something because they need to know. Honesty should not only come as a response to a question, but also as a response to a feeling that otherwise would not ever make itself known to anyone else. People cannot read each others' minds. Let's talk to each other. And be reasonable.

Integrity is sorely needed in more people, I find myself believing much of the time. Or maybe the problem isn't so much a lack of integrity, but a lack of the morals themselves that integrity -should- be upholding. People should do what they say they will do. It's just better like this, in every conceivable way. And it's not even difficult, if you're a good judge of your own character.

And, last but certainly not least, optimism is that all-powerful mindset that can do so much with so little. Sometimes believing that something good will come of something is the little nudge that was necessary to make something good come of something. There is a quote that I adore, and it goes something like this: "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this to be true." (By, I believe, James Branch Cabell). What gets me is… we live in the world we live in. It is what it is. It is meaningless to "fear" that it is not "the best of all possible worlds." Sure, there is always something that can be improved upon, there are always people doing stupid and foolish things, there are always people dying unnecessarily and senseless violence destroying homes and countries, and countless other things that could be pointed out. But it doesn't matter how you twist it, from which direction you look at it all--it is still what it is. An optimist should not believe that things are beautiful and perfect and that any sort of improvement is unnecessary, but rather that the sorts of changes that are necessary are worth pursuing. The world is a beautiful place, and it can be made an ever-more beautiful place.

Especially if everybody adopted these pillars (and others I do not have the time or skill to address). Everyone has a foundation that their life is built upon… this is fundamental. And not easily expressed in words. But each person's life is there, it exists and it is utterly unique. It is built upon a foundation, perhaps not unlike a temple. And rising from this sturdy foundation are the primary pillars, the values with which the most important and all-encompassing actions, ideas and beliefs of each life are constructed. These values guide each person's actions in the most profound ways of all. People are going to have differing numbers of these pillars, of differing thicknesses and of differing materials. And upon these pillars, and supported by these pillars, the rest of the temple is built. And the continued success of this temple, its ability to weather the storms and overcome the tests of age, will be determined most of all by the craftsmanship and maintenance of these pillars.

If the pillars of a life ever come crashing down around you, do not turn and walk away. Even among the most complete wreckage there are still remnants, pieces of a whole that can be made better this time around. Take your time and, even if it is not your own, help to piece it back together.

Gahhhh. This is just the tip of an iceberg. I'd keep on going if I wasn't starting to bore even myself at this point. HA.

XD

Posted by Unknown | at 5:31 PM | 0 comments

Does Anyone Truly Know Their Reservation Price?

(Originally written on April 14, 2011)



The idea of a reservation price has always worried me. I don't know how many times I've played out some scenario in my head of how a certain situation might go if two particularly stubborn people, with all the time in the world to spend, are haggling over a price. For simplicity I like to assume it's just a gallon of milk.

I myself just bought a gallon of milk a few hours ago, for $3.98. And it just leads me to wonder… they say "everyone has a price" and some people think that this literally applies to everyone and everything. I won't necessarily argue against that position, it's rather complicated and emotion-centered (which makes it wildly difficult to actually debate with anyone who isn't willing to approach it rationally as a simple though experiment) but there are some things that I'd really, really like to say I wouldn't take anything for. To throw out one of the more extreme examples, killing some designated person for, say, twelve billion dollars (yes, very extreme case). I want to say that I would just flat-out turn this down, regardless, even if I was somehow guaranteed immunity from the law. But I think it's worth pointing out that twelve billion dollars (or some other similarly INTENSE amount of money) is not an easy thing to comprehend fully, to genuinely grasp the implications of, not to mention that the value of a human life is most likely an even more difficult concept to consider in any practical value, so I just end up dismissing the thought altogether. I default to "NO WAY!!!" and I hope everyone else would too…

(If the idea offended anyone…. my apologies. But I find that developing an extremely extreme case is usually the best way to help reconcile some conflicting idea in my head. Not to trivialize the life of a fellow human in any way, but to point out that the question is pretty much meaningless in some cases because there is way too much at stake for some spontaneous decision to be made.)

Anyway… some guy is staring at a gallon of milk on the shelf at some small, local, privately-owned grocery store. He doesn't like the price. He is frowning. The tag says "$7.49". He frowns for so long that the owner comes over and offers assistance. By the way, the guy's name is Arthur Dent. Arthur complains about the price of the milk, and the owner apologizes and says that… I don't know, there's been a shortage at the farm that supplies him and he has to temporarily raise the price of milk. Arthur keeps protesting and says that Walmart has gallons of milk for $3.98. And the owner is like "WELL GO TO WALMART THEN!!!" No, just kidding. But the owner can at best lower the price to whatever it is he paid for it. And of course he doesn't want to… and of course Walmart is not going to suffer extreme price fluctuations like this poor shop owner will (at least in this simulated ideal world). And of course Arthur can drive his whiny self over to Walmart and pay a "guaranteed low price." But I doubt Walmart is even going to consider haggling over the price of a gallon of milk with him. There are thousands of people that are going to be willing to pay whatever the price is (within reason) on any given day, most likely, and Walmart will not even notice that this one sale was lost, I'm sure.

(You're probably thinking "Ideal world??? Yeah right!")

So Arthur has various options at his disposable, the most likely being: 1) go to Walmart and buy it there but, of course, probably spend half the difference in gas just to get there; or 2) HAGGLE.

The first thing that bothers me is this: What is Arthur's reservation price? Obviously $3.98 is a reasonable price to him, and clearly $7.49 is not. At what point in between is he going to be satisfied? Again, I like to take the extremely extreme example and consider this price-hunting in increments of one cent. One measly cent at a time. Would Arthur be willing to pay $3.99? $4.00? $4.01? $4.02? Unless he has some severe aversion to the number "4" he's probably still willing to buy. Fast-forward a little bit and we're at $4.25--still willing? Probably, I imagine. Probably even at $4.50, although there might be a slightly frustrated sigh as he grabs it off the shelf.

Let's assume that, when asked, Arthur decides that at $5.00 he will not buy the milk. This, he proclaims to the world, is his reservation price. On the surface this seems reasonable. I probably wouldn't pay that much (if I had a choice). By the way, I am the shopkeeper. Arthur won't pay me $5.00 for a gallon of milk, that knee-biting jerk, so I drop the price to $4.99. Would he be silly to refuse, if $5.00 was his reservation price? I mean, what's a penny, anyway?! If he doesn't give me the penny he'll probably pull something, his keys, out of his pocket and toss the poor thing over his shoulder in disgust later in the day, anyway. Maybe he still won't buy it, once he thinks it over. So I drop another penny. Is $4.98 reasonable enough? Every time he refuses I drop another penny. At some point he's going to agree (and if it's obvious that he's just refusing in order to get the next penny then the experiment is useless--I should point out that both people are being completely honest here. …Yes. The world is ideal in my head. I know… crazy…).

So maybe he finally agrees to the price of $4.75. This is now his (revised) reservation price, as he clearly hadn't considered carefully enough. Now, naturally, I would like to get every penny I can out of this stingy idiot (I am exaggerating my harshness towards him; after all, we are all stuck in this economy which everyone is so keen to point out "is bad"), and it's my turn to start haggling again. We've established that he's willing to pay $4.75, and maybe I don't feel like this is enough profit for me. So I refuse the deal, and ask if he'll pay $4.76. Is it reasonable to say no? It's a penny more than he would have paid. And if this argument wins him over, and he's ready to give me $4.76, then how about $4.77? It's only a penny more!!! So now we're working our way back up towards $5.00.

At what point do both sides cancel out? For the life of me, I cannot settle this dispute in my head. You can always add a cent, or take off a cent, and who is anyone to make a fuss over this? But you have to, at some point--I think at some point you have to just stamp your foot and say "STOP HAGGLING WITH ME I WILL NOT BUDGE!" Otherwise, the loop will go forever, because one cent is too small an amount to accurately judge against any other (unless you're buying individual tootsie rolls...?). Thankfully, not many (if any) people actually do this. And if anyone ever does, some wise-guy shopkeeper, I'll just be like "Don't even bother with that nonsense, I've already tried!"

But it's interesting... because you could... and it seems to me that the more stubborn of the two is going to win. Or the one in more desperate need. Or the one who can come up with the more convincing argument. Or the one with the gun in his belt. If I, as the shopkeeper, am trying to argue that it's only one more penny out of Arthur's pocket by raising the price a little, and Arthur has every reason to argue that it's only one more penny not going into my cash drawer by lowering the price slightly, then we have come to an impasse. The logic works both ways…

I hope I don't sound like a lunatic. This sort of thing keeps me up at night. :/

But it's fun. This kind of train of thought is just... interesting! And I get tired of arguing with other simulated versions of myself inside my own head…

XD

Posted by Unknown | at 5:27 PM | 0 comments

Slipping Through My Fingers

(Originally written on January 22, 2011)

 


I feel like the relationships I've had for so long, with close friends and family, have had their frameworks gradually weakening. What were once strong, unyielding foundations, like monuments of reliability, are decaying and loosening in structure. These solid, almost tangible constructions that I could always depend on, always feel, always lean on and hold on to as tightly and for as long as I needed, are now dissolving around me. If I lean I fall. If I try to hold on, they slip hopelessly through my fingers. And I worry that the harder I try to fight it, the harder I try to hold on, the quicker it oozes through. But maybe, just maybe, there has been some recent progress. What I need more than anything is wholehearted effort reciprocated. Mutual understanding. Cooperative perseverance.

The problem, above all, is distance. In most cases physical--all my friends in Cheyenne and elsewhere, and friends who have moved from here in the past couple years, and even one that still lives here in town, a mere few miles away, but it almost might as well be hundreds. If only teleportation was a possible solution. And with some, it's emotional distance--the ones I still see, even now, all the time, but with whom there is just some persistent complication. These ones are the most difficult of all, right here staring me in the face.

There is much work to be done. I hope everyone will bear with me.

I have this ideal, shining so brightly and hopefully in my mind, that the rewards of some endeavor are directly proportional to the difficulty with which they are achieved. And so, with so many of the goals I have in mind as of now, I believe I have an extremely vast amount of happiness to look forward to… if I can just manage to overcome these challenges. Near-infinite difficulty should yield near-infinite treasures.

I could very well become the happiest man on Earth.

¦]

Posted by Unknown | at 5:18 PM | 0 comments

Free Will?

 (Originally written on January 16, 2011)



Free will… is sort of a vague term, I think. You know? What does it really mean? If it simply means we can make voluntary choices, then I don’t think there is much room for argument there. I think I am voluntarily pushing these keys here. But there are various depths of consideration, such as free will as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary (second entry): the "freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention."

But what does "determined by prior causes" entail? If I punched someone in the face because he made me angry, then that anger was an emotional state of my mind-set, which is influenced by my experiences and thought processes, which are determined by my considerations of each moment… I mean, nothing ever happens without a cause (except apparently some "quantum" events like individual cases of the decay of radioactive elements), including all of our choices. Something influenced our thinking at every point where we ever made a choice. Some choices are much more spontaneous than others, but I think there must always be some level of rationale applied even if you don't have time to spend considering the options.

I don't know who said this, but it's pretty intense: “‘You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons.”

Yikes.

I don't know… it's tough. This is stuff on such a fundamental level, and I at least have some thoughts and ideas that I've come to, as of this point in my life (it could change!), and so I'm writing this out of boredom (and curiosity, if anyone has the time of day to have an interesting chat!) and also to have something documented that I can reflect on at some later (hopefully wiser) point of my life.

Anyway, I think one of the most powerful arguments, for or against this idea, is whether or not you could have made a different decision at any point in the past. But the trouble with this is that you cannot know. And that frustrates the !@%#$^& out of me! You cannot demonstrate free will, because without reliving the moment you can never, ever prove that it could have happened any other way. For all anyone knows, you HAD to make whatever decision they witnessed you make. Each of us (I hope) knows the thought processes we made use of to come to a decision, but nobody else truly does… right? It's terribly frustrating to me, the nature of so many things to be impossible to demonstrate, to prove. So when all else fails (and sometimes even before!), I turn to the good old thought experiments.

Imagine having a time machine, and with it the ability to put yourself back to any point in time. For simplicity, assume you can only go back to a point in time you've already been. Like rewinding a movie. The way I see it, there is one crucial factor to gain consideration of here: whether or not you actually have the knowledge that you've gone back in time, which should determine whether or not anything could have happened differently. Maybe you were in the drive-through at some restaurant, and you ordered some certain sandwich. I imagine, if I were to ask you, that you would tell me that you had every possibility of making any other decision. And I believe that's true, in a way. But I believe that if you traveled back in time to that fateful moment, and relived it in the exact same mind-set, you would make the exact same decision. However, if you traveled back in time with full knowledge of your intention of proving me wrong, then of course you could make a different decision, because the factors have changed. It becomes an entirely different situation, and so it loses its relevance to the original.

This is difficult to convey. What I'm trying to say, and I hope it's coming across, is that considering what you might have done is fruitless. You could only have done something differently if there was another factor involved (such as the intent to have done it differently). Every decision you ever make is determined by the sum of your experiences and your mind-set (a ridiculously complex thing for your mind to make sense of, I'm sure!). You ordered the sandwich you ordered because of this sum of experience and wisdom, accumulated throughout your entire life, and any number of influences within came together to shape your response. Within any number of exact replications you would not make any other decision.

You might go back to the restaurant tonight and order a completely different meal, and feel like you did so because of simple free will, and maybe just to reassure yourself that you could. But your mind-set would have been influenced by having read this, and in turn, your decision. Would anything really be accomplished? You're only proving that a different outcome required a different set of circumstances.

I think the only time a consideration of free will has any relevance is when planning for the future. Although you can't affect what sandwich you purchased in the past, you can certainly make plans to purchase the best possible sandwich in the future. And once the moment arrives, and is past, it will be like all the other sandwich purchases of your life--done and gone, with no chance of having done so in any other way. But until that moment does come around, everything you say, do, and think could have profound effects on whatever you will end up choosing. Free will, I believe, certainly applies to future events.  As I'm sitting here right now, I know that I can make an informed, well-considered decision on what I'm going to order at dinner tonight. But tomorrow I will know that, at the moment of reflection, without somehow inserting alternate factors (which is impossible, of course), it could not have been any other way.

The past is so full of choices we've made--each one concrete, said and done, an indication of the life we were living at the time, and to have done anything differently requires that we had been living a different life. Maybe the difference between a chicken sandwich and a Whopper is nothing more than one day looking at the nutrition facts and almost having a heart attack then and there, and removing that one influence would make all the difference. But you can't. : \  Your view of the Whopper will be forever tainted… unless you forget completely what you saw on that label. Of course you can still defy better judgment and order the Whopper next time anyway.

I don't even know if I'm saying anything that actually means anything to anyone else…. it makes sense inside my own head, at least… and so I hope it might elsewhere. But if you're reading this line, and have read all of the others, I hope you don't feel like you've just wasted however long that took you! If so, I'm sorry I don't have a time machine to let you borrow, and that your free will, if you believe you have it, was not better utilized.

XD

Posted by Unknown | at 5:14 PM | 0 comments

The Sea of Uncertainty

(Originally written on December 30, 2010)



There are, to put it lightly, unfathomable depths in each individual person's mind. A staggering complexity, shaped by an utterly unique set of experiences, that can only ever be glimpsed, from the outside, in pieces. Desires and motives that can never be fully comprehended. Emotions that will never be truly revealed or accurately understood. And each one is entirely subject to interpretations by each other. How can you ever really know if you've read something right? If you've displayed something right?

Take about seven billion of these, intertwine them in unimaginably complicated tangles, and you have an extremely vague model of the sum of the world's consciousness.  It's like a thick, sticky sea of uncertainty we're all flailing around in.

I think it's fascinating, the endless possibilities that exist among even a handful of people. And I find it SO incredible that any two people can get along on a deep level. I think this is one of the most fundamental and meaningful endeavors for us all: pursuing these relationships, and always expanding on them. If you can pass those boundaries that divide the good acquaintances from the wonderful friendships, then you're definitely onto something--one of the most rewarding things you can possibly have.

But so many people have built their walls with so much resistance. To some degree, sure, this is crucial. You don't want the wrong people mucking about inside your walls, breaking all your stuff. If you develop your standards, and stick to them, then the filtering process shouldn't be too difficult. Put some sensors, coded to your standards, outside the door. The ones who get through should be that much more worthwhile and genuine. And then you can share with them, open the deeper doors even further. Explore each others' minds. There is an unquenchable desire to explore. For me, at least, and I can only imagine that this is the norm. Everyone's mind is a treasure trove of mysteries and treasures to share with those who can appreciate them. It's all so interesting, what's inside someone's head. What occupies their thoughts, what interests them, what motivates them, what thrills them, what piques their curiosity? These are some of the things I love and long to share more fully, with anyone and everyone who will have it and give it.

But sometimes it's so hard to be granted access. For whatever reasons, some people have reinforced themselves so much that they can't even get out themselves. The right balance can be so hard to find, but I think it is pretty obvious when you know someone who has. Something profound clicks, and the treasures just start flowing effortlessly.

I try very hard to leave the doors open. Unlocked, at least. Rather than shut, lock, bolt and block them, I want to mount sensors around the entire perimeter. Laser-equipped, motive-sensing, character-judging sensors. This way any deceptions and unfavorable intentions will be seen and alerted to me long before the door is reached. Have them activate an impenetrable force field, so that the genuine people can still come and go. Put a spotlight on the evildoers, so they can't fool anyone else on the way in. This would be ideal, having a system so self-sufficient it can just operate in the background without constant intervention. If everyone developed this for themselves, I can't help but think that the general, day-to-day connections between anyone and everyone would be so much more efficient, rewarding, and understandable. I think it's important to not block the doors. You'll never know what/who you're missing out on. Just be careful…

I do sometimes worry that my own standards are too strict, but I've tried hard to work on that. I'm trying to be always reasonable and open-minded, and am always searching for the same.

Of course there are still some bugs to work out. Sometimes something still slips through some unseen, unprotected crack, and then it's like a virus… plaguing me with false hopes and doubts and confusion. When the level of trust is not equal… mutual… there is chaos. And you have to find a way to kick it out and fix that crack. Find out what went wrong, what slipped through the sensors, and hope that it doesn't happen again. Recalibrate the system. Improve it.

But sometimes, on those exceedingly rare occasions, someone wanders in who can provide a truly wonderful gem of a relationship. And for these, every bit of trouble along the way suddenly becomes worthwhile. All the struggles of weeding through all of the rest pay off, even shine light on those gems, those wonderful friendships. They'll shine so much more beautifully this way, maybe even illuminate things that you'd never have noticed otherwise. Even the deepest abyss, if they'll venture down there with you. Make use of their goodness, with your own goodness!

The bulk of trouble is in the filtering process, and in the effectiveness of not being fooled by false goodness. And the trouble with not being fooled by false goodness is at least partly in our understanding of ourselves. Exploring the depths of your own mind is just as vital and rewarding (at least!) as the depths of others. There are certainly depths of our own minds that we do not fully realize. The deeper, darker, better-forgotten parts. Those things you shoved away because you could never quite rationalize them into the bigger, brighter picture. It can be a scary place down there, and you can only explore for so long before the weight of all that is above you grows unbearably crushing. So you come back up, but those murky, shrouded depths never quite lose their curious pull. I think it's important to always bring something back with you. And never stop perfecting the defenses. And explore carefully. But never stop! And when you travel down those depths, bring some more light with you. The depths need not be so frightening!

XD

Posted by Unknown | at 5:08 PM | 0 comments

Mankind Belongs In Space



There was this awesome show that aired in late 2009 called Defying Gravity. In the show's opening scene the main character, Maddux Donner, reflects on his father's unpleasant opinion of space travel and of his son's involvement in it. His father sneeringly says "Space travel is a fool's game. Man is sixty percent water. They eat, sleep, defecate, can't follow directions, and explode like piñatas when exposed to the vacuum of space."  And while all of this may be true (though exposure to vacuum is not well documented, and theories run rampant), it suggests nothing of all the wonders and glories that are also involved. There is so much that mankind can bring into space, and not all of it is tangible or immediately obvious to the general public judging the practicality from their homes on the surface of Earth.

As far as we know, there is absolutely no life out there in space. By "space" I mean anything beyond the atmosphere of our lone planet, including the atmospheres of other planets (and moons, and protoplanets, and asteroids, and everything). There is nothing, no biology, no little creatures, no algae or bacteria or plant life, certainly no consciousness. As far as we know. For us, sitting here on the pedestal of our flourishing planet, evidence is everything (as it should be). Ignorance may be bliss, as we relish in the beliefs that we are truly and utterly privileged and unique, but knowledge is power, profound in its usefulness to further understand and truly demonstrate that our beliefs are in fact true, or able to be made more true. We will never ever know, fully and unquestionably, whether we truly are alone in the universe unless another intelligence makes itself known to us or we go and stumble upon it ourselves. And if this never happens, if we are never contacted and we never discover for ourselves another life form, we still won't truly know the answer, but we will be that much more positioned to glorify ourselves for our exceptional situation--because what is the difference, when all things that are demonstrably meaningful to us are considered, if we are not alone but will never have the opportunity to discover this, or are actually, truly, utterly unique in the vast expanses of the universe? In the face of any amount of accumulating lack of evidence, the answer cannot ever possibly be known. We can only ever feel more and more secure, perhaps prideful. But never certain. We can only get an answer by going out there and having the chance to find it.

What if there is, or was, life on Mars even, so near to us, scarce as it could turn out to be, which won't ever be discovered without a trained human eye having a look around? I often imagine a (fanciful, yes) scene where the astronauts step out of their landing vehicle on the surface of Mars, perhaps after touching down in one of the many vast craters. One of them walks over to the rim of the crater and begins chipping away with some hand tool or just overturning rocks right there on the surface. I can imagine them finding, as unlikely as it may be (but who knows) the fossilized remnants of life that was once active on the planet or, somehow, against all odds, something currently living. It's wild, but it's not impossible. It could be living, or had lived, right there, thriving within the sheltering rocks and sediments of the planet.

Finding actual active life would be so much more dramatic, of course. But a single fossil find would be no less in its implications. It would mean that life came about elsewhere, at some time. There are theories which present the possibility of either Earth or Mars "seeding" the other, or being "seeded" from the same outside source long ago. In this case there wouldn't necessarily have been independent spawning of life, given the same beginnings. However, the evolution over the eons would undoubtedly have taken very different paths, on such incredibly different worlds, and whatever forms of life this other turned out to be would provide extremely valuable, unprecedented knowledge--second only to truly unique, independent life forms. We would have unimaginably vast potential for insight and discovery through just one other example of life taking hold, whether it thrived or died out.

Pure scientific insight aside, the discovery would be incredible still. While there is a certain romance in the thought that life on Earth really is all there is, and that humans are the only true intelligence, the additional knowledge would be priceless and powerful. Whether the discovery would be nothing but ancient fossils, or simple microbial life, or complex life forms like our own, the full implications are certainly beyond my imagination. It is extremely difficult to imagine how one would react to something so meaningful. But I know that it would be astounding. The foundations of so many beliefs would be shaken to their cores, hopefully constructively. The world could never be the same again.

The argument that space exploration really is justifiable, but not by humans in the flesh, is certainly powerful. There are many dangers and concerns, including but not limited to those expressed by Donner's father at the opening of the series. Even if humans don't "explode like pinatas" in the vacuum of space, they certainly don't handle it well. And so many feel like remote robotic exploration is the only justifiable means by which to scout out the galactic neighborhood. This has its benefits, of course--primarily the lack of personal danger to any potential astronaut. But machines have their own unique shortcomings, for all the usefulness they may also provide.

Robots on the surface of a world, like there have been for many years, are so limited in what they can accomplish. They are limited to their design and initial programming, and perhaps whatever updates may be applied over time. They have some amount of "thinking" they are capable of, to deal with some situations they may be faced with. But they can only deal with what their designers had the foresight to allow for, and maybe some sort of limited "situation analysis." But this is all very strict, very short-sighted in the scope of all that may occur out there so many millions of miles away. They can't reason like a person, a certain remarkable glint in the corner of their vision won't catch their own attention and lead them over. Their controllers may notice an anomaly in their surroundings when they eventually receive and filter through the data transmitted back, but not the machine itself. They certainly won't have that certain feeling in their gut pointing them to what could lead to an unexpected discovery or an avoidance of disaster. They are machines, in the end, and can only act as machines no matter how much data manipulation is programmed into their design.

Even the newest machine that is being built to better explore the surface of Mars, NASA's Curiosity rover,  is not fully equipped to detect the presence of life (although it is being designed to analyze various components of the soil and atmosphere and can determine potential "habitability"). At best, as I understand things, positive results will hint at the effects of biological activity (but still a very strong indication that is has been, or even could still be, inhabited). But a human could conceivably find unquestionable evidence on the very first day of exploration. Still quite a stretch, but enormously more likely than a remotely controlled machine doing so. A human could look around, apply critical thinking, rationalize a good spot to start chipping away, and happen upon one of the greatest discoveries of all time--all without having to wait on instructions to travel the space between the two worlds, and without the bickering of engineers and operators debating on the specific actions to employ at each step of the mission. The speed of light becomes quite a burden when handling communications between people/machines many millions of miles separated.

None of this is to say that the machines are not a valuable tool in space exploration. Some jobs really are much better suited for unmanned spacecraft. Flyby photography, atmosphere analysis and surface mapping of worlds, among many others, are all probably much better suited for machines. This sort of technical thing can be very accurately, and much more cheaply, achieved without human presence and the dangers involved. I think both will always be crucial. But I think we need to think long and hard about the benefits, and the consequences, of a stronger human presence in space. There is certainly plenty of potential for humans in space that machines simply cannot provide. I think the most important of these is our consciousness, our ability to think, reason and appreciate, and to adapt spontaneously to unforeseen circumstances. Adaptation is an extremely useful thing, especially in such dangerous and inexperienced terrain.

I often hear opposition to the danger to human lives in manned spaceflight. Of course there have been various tragedies over the years, witnessed by countless people. And these people who were lost had family and friends, and of course the rest of their potential lives ahead of them. I will never mean to downplay the loss that occurred at each of these disasters. But they knew the risks they were involved with. They must have come to terms with the possibility of disaster. They must have felt that the possibilities were more worthwhile. There must be a great number of people who will always be willing to take the risk. I myself am one… I can only imagine how many others would be even more devoted if given the chance. There are risks involved in everything--some much greater than others, of course, and some much more rewarding. The rewards often outrank the risks, or else there would be no challengers so willing to give their devotions to any task.

When humanity was first designing the ships that they would sail across the seas and oceans, were they not faced with a similar predicament? From the smallest, simplest raft to the grandest cruiser there has been progress in design, construction, efficiency, and our understanding of how to master the art of them. I am sure it was not an easy road through the years. How expensive must it have been for the first large-scale ships to be designed, built, populated and set to sea? How much risk was put on each life while the skills involved were still being refined? How many ships, whether full of people or not, were met with disaster? How many people were making similar arguments of the dangers of sea travel and the uselessness of what would be found on the other side of the ocean (if anything)?

Of course caution is always a very good idea. Careful consideration should always be applied to unfamiliar terrain. But what would have happened if we had all but dropped the exploration of the oceans in the face of such concerns? Perhaps most of the planet would have still become populated, eventually, but certainly much more slowly and with much more difficulty. Wouldn't maps have been much less accurate? Our understanding of geology much more hindered and incomplete? And each civilization left largely on their own for much longer periods of time? Maybe some would even argue that this would have been better. I wholeheartedly disagree.

Just as most people would probably agree that a world without ocean travel, or air travel, is almost incomprehensible in sustaining the resources and communication and trading habits of today, so a generation of the future might find it unimaginable that space travel was once not a commonplace, fruitful endeavor. As our planet's resources and available land dwindle, the potential that off-world settlements offer seems more and more like a useful possibility. Confined here on this lone planet of all the vast reaches of space, mankind has only the limited resources and surface area provided with which to sustain itself. It might only take a single catastrophe, brought upon ourselves or delivered by the inexorable movements of the mighty celestial bodies, to wipe us and all we've ever known completely out of existence.

We bring opportunity into space. We bring hope into space. We bring consciousness into space. We bring awe, reverence, and understanding to things that would otherwise never have a set of probing eyes fall on them. Virtually every rock on every world in the solar system is being illuminated by the sun every single (relative) day, but unless we bring ourselves to them it's almost as if they don't exist. They certainly won't ever be of any significance otherwise. They just sit there, undisturbed, unobserved. The microbes that could be squirming around somewhere out there, providing us with potentially one of the most significant discoveries imaginable, won't ever make their presence known to us. We must go out there and find them ourselves. And even if we find nothing biological--not a single trace of life that ever lived outside Earth, in decades or centuries of meticulous exploration--then we will be that much more reaffirmed in the significance of our own existences. Life will be demonstrably that much more precious! It's a win-win, for us. We either find something or we don't, but either way we learn. We understand our place in the universe more deeply. We gain respect for life either because it's resilient and adaptable enough to have come about elsewhere, or because our position is so apparently unique that we have this priceless opportunity to relish for ourselves.

As Maddux Donner so beautifully says at the end of Defying Gravity's first episode, after much consideration of his father's harsh words:

"My old man is right, about every single item except the initial premise. Man(kind) belongs in space, because of exactly what he brings into the void."

Posted by Unknown | at 3:20 PM | 0 comments

Wanderings of a Curious Mind

(Originally written March 24, 2010)

Nostalgia is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as "a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition." I think it's interesting that nothing of "happiness" is mentioned, although I think in most cases it would naturally apply. I find myself, however, with this certain longing for almost any given point of my past. Of course, the best-remembered times are the ones I have most nostalgia for. Yet there are certainly time periods that I know were rather unpleasant and I long for them anyway. There must be reasons for this so that it makes sense. For instance, I know for a fact that I was unhappy during my 7th and 8th grade years. Possibly more unhappy than I've ever been, save for one other time. We moved for the third time in three years before my 7th grade year, and I was lucky to recognize one person at the school. I was horrendously shy and awkward, and at home I didn't really do much except play video games, read, and write. Thank goodness my siblings and I have always been close (save for a few brief issues). Yet when I think back to this time period there is an undeniable longing for it. Of course, a significant part of this must be for the memory of my dad, regardless of how unhappy everything else seemed. But still… I have always been able to see him since, however rarely, and I was not blind to the "problems" at home. There must be more.

The other obvious low-point I hinted at was immediately following our final move, away from Cheyenne and the wonderful friends that helped to finally peel the thick, broken shell from my insecure, timid self. I still shudder at the thought of where I'd be now if things had happened differently. And the ones most immediately responsible surely know who they are. So my family moved, and there was no sign that things would have otherwise changed in the foreseeable future. It tore me up. I was terrified of the thought that I might never make such friends again. In some ways, of course, I was right, but I managed to hold on to enough confidence to make a feeble attempt once school started here in Belton. And thankfully it did not take long at all. Otherwise I'd have been in deep trouble. The point is, I even have a certain longing for this time. This summer, the summer of 2004, whose memory I swore I'd curse for all time, I can't help but… miss. This is a pitifully feeble longing compared to the rest, mind you, but it's there.

Almost as far back as I can remember I lived in a situation which, upon reflection now, I would not be totally against somehow returning to. I do not seem to have this sense of nostalgia for my very early life, however. I have quite a few memories of the ages of three and four, and I certainly have no yearning for them back. The emotion seems to kick in around, roughly, the age of ten. I think this must be a result of the developing personality and perceptions of the world which provide a powerful, deeper sense of our views of the past, possibly even more powerful than the specific good experiences themselves.

Unless I am an anomaly, it seems we are in a sense wired for this yearning of the past. Perhaps this is due to a comfort we find in what is familiar to us. Obviously the past is familiar, simply because we remember living it. Maybe this subconsciously seems like an easier, safer life for us. Certainly at the time, especially for me during my junior high years, they were neither comfortable nor easy. But looking back today I would know exactly what to expect and, as evidenced by my life today, I made it out alright. So there is a sense of security in the past which we can't really get from the present, and especially not from the future. Is this a driving force behind this "nostalgia?"

This isn't to say that the more positively regarded past isn't responsible for nostalgia, or that it's equally responsible. It is most definitely to blame for the much more powerful nostalgic urges. I still have reminiscences of my last years in Cheyenne (2002-2004) that brings my emotional mind to its knees. Into a puddle of tears. It is by far the most extreme longing of all. I'd rip a wormhole with my bare hands in the space/time continuum right here in front of me now if I had the means to navigate myself properly through it.

I'd rather say instead, therefore, that nostalgia is "an excessively sentimental yearning for times past not necessarily because they were so great, but simply because they are gone."



---------------
The sun is about 390 times farther from the earth than the moon is, and its diameter is about 400 times as large as the moon's, and this ratio is what makes a solar eclipse possible. They appear almost the same size in the sky, and on those occasional meetings, the moon can completely block the sunlight. This beautiful occurrence (which I'd love to actually witness) is due to a pretty extreme "coincidence." If the earth were somewhat farther away from the sun, or closer to it, the ratio would be different. Similarly, if the moon were slightly larger or smaller, or closer or farther, the ratio would be different. If the sun were either smaller or larger, the ratio would be different. In any of these cases an eclipse would be much less interesting, because if the moon appeared much larger it would easily block everything, including the corona, and if the moon appeared much smaller it would only ever block a lame portion of the center of the sun. Still cool, but much less so.

This near-perfect set of coincidences boggles my mind. It could have been so many other ways. Some planets, like Venus, have no moons. Some planets, like Mars, have tiny moons which could never hope to rival the sun. But ours is large enough, and situated just right, to provide us this feast for the eyes. Of course, a coincidence (even one so mighty as this) may be just a coincidence--there's no way to tell, in this case, but I like to wonder whether this is a neat little perk incorporated into an intelligently designed Universe.



---------------
There is an interesting theory in physics called the many-worlds interpretation, which (to summarize rather simply) views reality as analogous to a many-branched tree where every possible outcome is realized. This is supposed to resolve all possible paradoxes, especially those concerning time travel, because there is supposedly an infinite number of universes--one for every possible outcome of every single event in history. So for every time you swallowed a blue pill instead of a red pill, there is an alternate universe where you actually swallowed the red pill. And every time you activate your time machine you are creating a new universe and are free to kill your grandfather without worrying about impossibilities. I guess, in a way, it just seems to come across as "too easy" a solution to all of these problems. Which doesn't prove its invalidity, sure, but to me casts serious doubt.

This theory has a major flaw, however, as I see it, simply because by definition it is utterly impossible to verify. If there is an alternate universe where I woke up this morning ten minutes later than I did in this one, when is that ever going to matter? Can it ever have any relevance whatsoever? So arguably, only if a way to tap into some kind of energy source or… something between them is ever discovered will this actually be of any significance. But it's an interesting thought, at least.



---------------
Time travel, by the way, is such a headache. When considering the grandfather's paradox (that is, traveling back in time and somehow preventing your grandfather from ever meeting your grandmother) the only logical conclusion that seems acceptable to me is that it's simply impossible to travel back in time. However, there is another theory I've come across called the Novikov self-consistency principle, which claims that "the only possible timelines are those which are entirely self-consistent, so that anything a time traveler does in the past must have been part of history all along." I imagine a peaceful scene, 100 million years in the past, with a group of dinosaurs calmly drinking from a stream. As I activate my time machine I suddenly emerge into existence in front of them, hurl a stick at the closest one, and then vanish back to my own time. I didn't change history because 100 million years ago on this single timeline I appeared out of nowhere, for whatever length of time I spent time traveling, and then vanished. Here in the present I disappeared for this same length of time, then returned. But an unchangeable past seems to deny the notion of free-will. So, again, it seems an unacceptable solution.

And the list goes on. Time travel is clearly a deeply considered idea. I've tried to look into the matter as far as I can with any easily accessible means, and while none of these theories can be undeniably disproven (or proven) at this point, they all seem pretty far-fetched from an intuitive sense.

Time travel into the future, however, (if you would call it that) clearly seems to be possible. From my understanding, time slows down relative to a quickly traveling object. As an object approaches the speed of light, its flow of time is likewise reduced. I once read this described in a very nice, simple way: we are moving through both space and time, simultaneously. But our "combined" speed through both is a sum of each, and they must keep the same ratio. So imagine a quadrant on a graph, with an x and y axis. The x axis is movement through time, and the y axis is movement through space. Anybody on Earth is traveling at, on a meaningful scale, next to no speed. So time is flowing at practically 100%. As an object (such as a spacecraft) gains velocity, it is moving faster through space and likewise slower through time. The implications of this are that if an object actually reached the speed of light, its relative flow of time would stop completely. And if this object's velocity surpassed the speed of light, its relative flow of time would reverse. The problem with this is that the energy required to accelerate an object of any mass to the speed of light is infinite, thus impossible. By any known means...

So if I stepped into a powerful spaceship and flew to the nearest star (4.2 light years away) and back, less time would have elapsed for me than for everyone else here on Earth (the precise details would depend on exactly how fast I was traveling at every point of the trip). I've come across and enjoy the term "time debt." So I may step out of the spaceship a mere one year older than when I had left, yet everyone who remained stationary here on Earth could be, say, twenty years older. But this is a wildly impractical method of "time travel" even if it is has been verified by all experiments. Very, very intriguing, though.



---------------
There are as many possibilities for the existence, location, definition, behavior, etc. of extraterrestrial life as our minds are capable of fantasizing. But there is a critical flaw in such runaway dreams. As far as has been made known to the public (choice of words to appease any Roswell "fans"), no extraterrestrial contact has ever been made. There has not even been strong evidence that any life whatsoever has ever existed outside Earth. Despite the profound disappointment this causes me, I'm glad the scientists are remaining skeptical. This is very, very important. If the claim is ever made, it needs to be beyond all doubt. Like in Independence Day.

"The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it." There is a term for this flaw in logic--the Fermi paradox.

There are many proposed reasons why this apparent fact may be true, some much more depressing (and some much more frightening) than others. There are a few that seem most reasonable to me. Any combination of these following propositions could explain the lack of extraterrestrial contact:

--No other civilizations have arisen. This is, simply, the proposal that life on Earth is utterly alone in the universe, and obviously is never going to encounter any other form of life. Very tragic, indeed.
--It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself. Perhaps it is an inevitable consequence of intelligent life to destroy itself either before or shortly following its rise to technological "superiority." Not an encouraging thought…
--It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others. Yikes. We may not have had any contact with another race because, if we had, they would have obliterated us. If so, stay away, please.
--It is the nature of intelligent life to remain silent. Any civilization of significant intelligence may naturally choose not to make their presence known (perhaps to avoid some of the JERKS?). This is depressing because it means they could be around, anywhere, but this fact will never be made known. Which isn't much different to us than not existing in the first place, eh? Just come talk to us!!
--Communication is impossible due to problems of scale. What if there are any number of intelligent civilizations out there, but none of them happen to be within 200 light years from us? Or 1,000? It would take a ridiculous amount of time for any kind of communication to take place. 400 years for a round trip of light, and an unfathomable amount of time for physical travel by any conventional means. It's depressing, but at least accounts for their isolated existence. This seems to be one of the most likely scenarios to me. Everything beyond our solar system is just too far away.
--It is too expensive to spread physically throughout the galaxy. We've only been to our moon a small number of times, and it was wildly expensive (and dangerous). Unless some fundamental breakthrough occurs in the science of space travel, it doesn't seem at all likely that we'll ever have the ability to travel outside our own solar system. Our fastest spacecraft is taking 9 years to reach Pluto, and it cost like $650 million. And that was just a measuring instrument. No people to support. Going to Alpha Centauri, even by extremely generous estimates, would take 20,000 years and a godforsaken amount of money to implement. This is the other scenario that seems most reasonable to me. It may just be too difficult. Ugh. The disappointment this brings is not lessened by the thought that this means that, not only is it inconceivable, but it probably never will be any other way.

But I will never stop hoping and dreaming of the day we finally find something, or are found. Let's just hope any extraterrestrials advanced enough to contact us are fully capable of accepting our coexistence and are much further along in their "moral evolution" than we humans seem to be.

Posted by Unknown | at 12:51 AM | 0 comments

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)