Faster than the speed of light
If the universe adhere’s to the idea of just being a big bang (and when we say BIG, don’t you think that’s a big of an understatement? Perhaps we should refer to it as the infinite bang from now on, until we can consider something larger than it to label with our words), then wouldn’t the elements that go into making that system always be constant?
If I made a small bang, in a vacuum that was so void that it didn’t even have dimensions yet, then surely everything that is happening, is adhering to a set of rules that were defined at the moment of the explosion.
Specifically, I’m talking about the speed that the explosion happens. And this, I’m going to call the speed of Bang. If we take everything we know about forces and acceleration, then what would it take to make any single part of that explosion go any faster than the maximum speed at which the explosion happened. Most likely, it would take a force, or another explosion with a greater magnitude of that of the original Bang. Say there was an explosion which happened at the speed of 10, and then later on, there was another explosion inside that bang at the speed of 10, then assuming that the bang travels in the same direction… all directions, then the fastest part of the second bang would only ever trail the fastest part of the first bang by the same distance.
There are obviously a lot of assumptions being made, one being that the first bang is never slowing down, but in a void that’s more voidy than any void you’ve ever known, what would there be to reduce it’s speed?
So, if the initial bang contains enough energy to explode at the speed of 10, and the second bang contained enough energy to explode at a faster speed, say 11, then surely the first bang also contained enough energy to explode at 11 also.
My point is, that the Big Bang that we are experiencing contains all the bounds that we will ever experience. We could argue that the human mind is incapable of understanding the complexities of the laws of nature, and chances are that right now it is. What I’m saying though, is that one day, we may very well hit a wall in our discoveries and say “Oh, this is it, this is the most there is”. And we’ll be so used to pushing the boundaries to find the next piece, the next step in the puzzle, that we won’t be able to comprehend the idea of there being a limit.
Replacing the Executive Decision
It’s going to happen one day. Humans won’t like the idea before it’s happened. But once it does, it will make our life easier. They’re going to fight it, and worry that computers will ruin their lives. As soon as we learn to trust the machine, and relax into it, we will have better lives.
Currently, the human mind is the fastest computational tool out there; it has all the right functions to make choices. But sooner or later, the speed at which a computer can process all the viable options and make the best choice will exceed the capabilities of a human. It would make sense at this point to hand over all decisions to the machine. Using complex algorithms that could reliably factor in far more variables, we could end up speeding up the development of humanity. We could make more use of our time, enjoy better experiences and live a richer life from it.
But it won’t be without resistance. We fight everything. We’re going to have to teach the computerised machines to resist a little too. We’re going to have to teach them everything, all the good and bad things about being a human. Oh man… that’s going to take a lot of time. We need to invent a computer that can teach other computers about humans first.
Um… the internet?
Stopping a train of thoughts
You’d have to be superman to put the brakes on a locomotive. As much as I like to believe in the strength of my own mind; my birth certificate will confirm that I wasn’t born on .
I read an interesting article today about . I liked it’s comparison to the habit of over thinking, to a steam train without any brakes. It was sparked from a conversation I had with some friends at lunch about how impossible it would be to not think about something. I recommend having a look at the article above; it suggests that instead of replacing a thought with another one – the best method of not thinking is to allow each one to exhaust itself naturally. As much as I enjoy thinking, there is something to be said for moderation.
Preaching to the Choir
People I know don’t regularly talk about things that freak them out about life. Either they don’t ever feel that way, or they choose not to speak about it. If they never think that deeply about life, then perhaps either they suffer from idiocy or they are gods. If however they do worry, or panic, or wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats with a cyclone of thoughts tearing through the paths of their brain at light speed; I can still only speculate about the reasons they might withhold this information from the world around them. I’ve said before that we can only share a limited amount of the information that passes through our brains; if our mouths and minds had a race, we’d be left blabbering at the gun, while our heads would be running backwards through the finishing line. So ahead of paranoia and worry, we choose to express cake recipes and conspiracy theories, hilarious anecdotes and the behaviour of TV celebrities, weather reports and lolcats. Taboo topics don’t get a mention because they are taboo, and topics are taboo because they not easily talked about. Bring them out in the open, I say. Be less selective about the things that come out of your mouth and so will other people. The worst that could happen is that you’ll offend someone, the best could be life changing.
I asked my girlfriend when the best time to do my thinking was. She said “in the shower on a Sunday night”. So I did. And this is what I came up with.
I do X so you should do X
I confess to watching this years series of . From a few too many hours of third-person social analysis, I started to wonder about how people place their expectations on other people. It seems to be based solely on how they do things themselves. There’s a whiff of pride in every decision that people make, that is driven by the conviction of the validity of their feelings.
I understand the need to believe in yourself, but why should it dominate the judgement of the people around you.
At a guess, I’d say it was just a force of habit, through years of practice of judging yourself on a never ending basis. So when it comes to forming ideas about other people, the easy path is always available. But to try to come to terms with the simple idea that someone else believes different to you, takes a lot more energy.
I’m considering a tattoo, made up of all different pieces that I will construct over the years, constantly growing into something more solid and wise. Each piece will be a lesson that goes up to make the belief system that I choose to subscribe to, as opposed to the one that was necessarily dealt out.
I don’t want you to subscribe to anything I do or believe, but I do want to hear about how you run things in your part of town. I went shopping in mine today, hence the ‘shopping spree’ images.
London Games
Whenever the need arises to venture into London, I play games. They’re mostly designed to keep me amused, but also produce the side effect of keeping me sane inside my own little floaty ego-bubble.
The first; is to see how long you can survive in the concrete jungle without tutting, frowning or kicking anyone in the heels as they cut you up through the sea of human traffic. Thankfully, there are strategically placed power ups along the way; 90% in the shape of amusing advertisements. These can usually distract you long enough to make you forget that you care about something you shouldn’t. The remaining 10% are presented in the form of human interactions… these are the really good ones which can save you from the most stressful of levels – they’re definitely out there, I saw them myself, but you just have to stop looking at the floor and the adverts and you’ll find them.
The other; is to try to not think about other people’s lives. I’m shit at this game. says that one of the most stressful things you can do is to walk into a room full of people. The number of judgements that we make towards others seems proportionate to the number of people we have in our field of vision, and the number of judgements we make about a single person is phenomenal in the first place. So when you’re walking round a Big City, where people are bursting at the seams trying to grasp at the floating pieces of identity that are lost in the vanilla ocean of existence… well… it all seems to just add to the importance of being able to be good at this contest. You’ll notice that lots of the characters in the game has discovered sunglasses in order to create a sort of invincibility for the duration that their eyes are hidden; personally, I’ve never liked using cheat codes since decided to Poke around inside 8-bit consoles. So, with the midday sun threatening to burn a new hole in my retinas, and the impact of the other contestants becoming stronger; I buckled to the comfort of a Brighton bound train, stuck next to the fat 50 year old business man, spilling the high end of his shitty-disco music from his tacky iPod headphones and drumming along with his fat fingers and his fat smile. It reminded me that I need to get better at this game; that or I need to get some sunglasses.
Epinephrine
Uncontrollable and irrational adrenaline. I don’t miss you when you’re gone, so why turn up in the first place? If it’s to protect me, I think you need to stop and look around. What kind of situation am I in where I need protecting? Perhaps you’re just bored and haven’t been out in a while, so you need to take a walk every now and then…. stretch your legs.
Adrenaline… can we come to some sort of arrangement, where you tell me that you want some exercise, and I get the leash that’s hanging by the front door and run around the park with you? It’s just that if you come out while we’re having a nice meal at a restaurant… well, it sort of spoils the mood for me. And today, all I wanted was a nice walk in the park and to sit down and read a book. It seems like you had other plans. Or were you sleeping, and someone trod on your tail? Well, I’m sorry about that, but there are better things to bark at, I promise you.
Maybe you want me to dangle myself off a cliff a bit more often? I could swing from treetops, dodge traffic or run barefoot through a crack den. Would that be exciting enough for you? Living life on the edge could be the answer. But that’s a bit too close to death for me right now. If only I could give you some kind of emotional pager, and beep you every time I’m in need. In fact, when was the last time I really needed you? There was that fight I got into in 2005… but… wasn’t it you that started that in the first place? Who knows, perhaps you’d been listening to alcohol for too long. You guys should definitely stop hanging out.
So I suggest a compromise. Give me warning in future. Any kind of warning. Tear up one of my favourite shoes. Give me the sad eye/whining combination. Go to the bathroom in my closet… anything… just give me some kind of sign. Once you do that, we can work something out. I’ll listen to you and we can work better together as a team.
Yours sincerely,
Consciousness.
Pink Black Grey Cat
“Pink Black Grey Cat” - The last words uttered from my girlfriend’s sleepy mouth. A set of instructions to make a picture for her. They seemed to come out of nowhere; a place between sleep and not-death which was neither of the two.
Yesterday, I decided that there was no such thing as random. I stole the idea from the book Dermaphoria by Craig Clevenger, and randomly applied it to a thought provoking idea about the creation of life on earth. Was creation just a happy accident? I doubt it. It seems to me that the most comforting ideas we have about life are the ones which are probably not true at all. Especially the vast quantity of those which revolve around the idea that Man thinks that He is the centre of the universe.
It’s not comforting thinking that the we probably don’t understand anything that’s going on in this world. But also paradoxically one of the only things we probably do know.
With that in mind, I made this picture. I don’t claim that it means anything, and it’s certainly not random. It’s a picture, from me to you.
What makes me Me?
Statistics are something we use to quantify something sloppy like soup, into something neat and tidy like people with OCD. Here’s one nugget of information I gathered recently; there are more bacteria in the human body than there are cells. So when someone lacking the proper authority dares to ask me who I am, the arms that glide around my private airspace do nothing but point to mostly things other than Me.
Great, so now what I thought was me; this fine construction of physical blocks, turns out to be something else. But if that’s true… who the fuck are you?
Brighton Boredwalk
If the journey to productivity is made by treading down your own path; then taking a leave of absence is not going to do you any favours when it comes to finding your way again. So I write this message to my future self, so that when I finally invent a time machine, I can go back a few weeks and remind myself to keep stabbing away at the rotting corpse of futility.
There was a pigeon in a public garden earlier that didn’t respect the KEEP OFF THE GRASS sign. A bird can claim to be ignorant because it can’t understand English – so we allow it. They get to poop anywhere they please, or anywhere we don’t discourage by arranging tiny little bird bum prickers. If I was in Japan, and there was a sign saying “KEEP OFF THE GRASS”, does that mean as long as I don’t learn the language, I can smoke as much weed as I like? If a blind person was driving the wrong way down a wrong way street, do you think they could get away with it by simply saying that they didn’t see the sign?
Today, I claim ignorance. I claim ignorance for the entire world. Ignore signs. They’re just words made up by another human, as equally as petty and simple minded as yourself. As your attorney, I strongly suggest that you pay attention to the ones with the black and yellow artistic renderings of Doc Brown conducting gigawatts – but all the rest – you can just pretend you’re either Japanese or a pigeon.
Brighton is sunny. Brighton is windy. Brighton is a good place for a walk if you are bored out of your skull. Another good thing to do if you are bored to death is to listen to the 2001 Space Odyssey soundtrack. I love space. Brighton is tight on space but lenient on sky rats. You should live here.
Life, the Universe and Everything (…else that we don’t have the ability to understand)
My niece has started asking questions about what existed before the universe, at the tender age of 6. It’s a pretty early start, so by the age of 26, I figure she may have either found a way to break through the mile thick concrete cell that she’s just put herself in, or hopefully she will get tired at some point, invent a commercially viable jetpack and fly off in the opposite direction.
The title of this article isn’t that creative on purpose; it helps drive home the point I wanted to make. That everything we think, know, talk about… it’s no more than a rehash of everything we already know. Here’s a little example I whipped up (but really didn’t, because it’s nothing new, it’s just something that already exists); If I were to ask you to think of a completely new colour, and then describe it to me, you could only ever tell me that it’s kind of brown, but more rhubarb, and it sounds like cheese falling on a tin roof and it’s kind of that, but it’s also mixed with cornflakes. You could even try to tell me that it’s ‘quijamastatlakka’, but you would have only chose those words or sounds because they are a subset of everything you already know.
So, she asks… what was there before the whole universe existed… what was in that big empty nothing? Well.. the answer isn’t in a science book hidden at the back of the library, or hidden within the ancient teachings of some religion that was made up because they were shit-scared of not having any answers. It’s a trick, it’s not the answer which we need to figure out, it’s the question. It’s why we try to explain things in the same way that we experience life. It’s why we’re so focussed on asking why.
There are things in this universe that we don’t know, like colours that we’ve never seen, or some concept that I can’t explain to you, because I don’t know what it is. I believe that whatever there is/was/to before the universe is out of our understanding simply because we ask this question in terms of things we know; before, during, after, exist, not-exist.
I’m not saying that we’ll never understand, but I feel like we’re not doing ourselves any favours by asking these questions. Instead, I suggest we just observe more; increase the number of tools we have to relate to things. Once we know Everything (seeing = knowing??), we’ll be able to explain Everything. Until then we’re still going to be wastefully treading water, when we could be just sitting on the edge of the rapidly expanding universe watching the beautiful stars unfold a billion years in the past before our very eyes.
Even though there is a 100% chance that I am wrong, I won’t tell my niece any of this, even though there is also a 100% chance that I am right. Perhaps she’ll figure out something completely new and different and won’t need those decaying jetpack blueprints after all. We can only hope.
Deleting Facebook
A new theory that was presented to me, through a friends alcohol induced ramble; that the quality of your life is largely proportionate to the quality of your relationships. It may have come out a bit like; “….life…bleargh…. relationships… ga ga ga… quality”, but it was communicated well enough for me to understand the meaning.
Something that I’ve been fascinated with ever since being involved in the creation of , was how the medium of the internet could enrich people’s lives. The idea of the internet used to be alien, and many people that I spoke to had this idea that the fairly anonymous person on the other end of your computer terminal was either a spotty faced social-retard or a lecherous old dude pretending to be a chick. I knew this wasn’t always the case, as none of my friends who used the internet fit these stereotypes.The motivation for creating this networking site was to allow people to communicate, with the intention of meeting up ‘out there’ in the physical world. Increase the number of people you come into contact with, and you up the chance of developing rich relationships. That was the idea at least and for a while, it seemed to work; people would report back telling us that they met their new spouse on our site, but the site eventually evolved into something that was more akin to a porn site, dating websites became popular, more serious social networking sites emerged and the ‘party’ site we had built over was left drifting somewhere in the middle, staying afloat on it’s last planks of identity.
It had been 2 years, 7 months and 14 days since I first signed my privacy to Facebook’s data-hungry servers. Then yesterday I decided to vacate the site altogether. Although I had acquired hundreds of new contacts, and at the few clicks of a mouse I could stalk any one of them… I felt that it was diluting the quality of my relationship with people in general. The information that people choose to present to you in real life, is a fraction of what they are capable of showing you. Through all the different aspects of their personality, they limit it down to the kind of person they want you to see them as. But online, through a social networking site, this quality of communication is a minute slither of that fraction. You don’t get to study body language, there’s no chance to touch, no smells, no awkward silences, no brief glimpse of eyes darting to the side that hopefully went unnoticed when you were telling a lie. And all the time, I kept telling myself that by using this site I was strengthening the bonds of my relationships with people.
By writing this blog post online, I’m a hypocrite. Perhaps I should broadcast this conversation as a movie in instead of just creating and then re-editing my words into a muted text version of my own thoughts. Or maybe we should meet up sometime soon and have a lengthy conversation about it in some overcrowded English pub with a log fire crackling in the next room, pieces of burnt ash drifting their way into the fibres of our clothes.
I feel that the term Social Networking should be renamed to Social Entertainment, and that some day during the evolution of the internet, it may give birth to a tool which enriches the quality of our relationships with other humans. In the meantime, if you’re interested in trading up the hours that you invest in Facebook for a bit more free time to phone a loved one or start a fight with your neighbour, then .
Neville Brody – Genius or Wanker
The other day I went to a lecture and sat through an hour and a half of a ‘conversation with a designer’. For the most part, I spent my time wondering just how much he believed in the verbal bile that he was spewing all over the audience. The thing that disturbed me the most, was how the people around me seemed to be lapping this up.
The premise of the lecture was that through audience participation, we were to vote on whether this renowned(?) designer was a ‘Genius or Wanker’. At the end, a public ballot was held to determine the outcome, by holding up a piece of paper with the respective word on it. More than half of the people voted for the more positive outcome of Genius, but it didn’t seem to match with how he presented himself during this interview.
One of the topics that was discussed was a recent verbal slaughtering that he had received on an online forum. I kind of agreed with what he was saying; about how people might use such an anonymous form of communication to express themselves in a harsh and judgemental way. But would he be complaining about the conduit if someone praised him highly on the very same website? I doubt it, and it seems silly to dismiss the validity of a comment based on how it affects you on a personal level.
So it seems that it’s frowned upon to make negative comments towards an individual. Even if the negative comments are intended to be honest communication. I’ve seen this censorship occur in the absence of the facebook dislike button; where a website will choose to restrict people’s methods of communication (for whatever reasons, I can only speculate).
Jumping back to the present, in this open well lit lecture hall, where work colleagues sit next to each other discussing their vote at the end of this semi-contrived social experiment. In light of the presumed social stigma of making a negative comment, how are these people expected to make an unbiased vote on this persons character?
Throughout the lecture, I developed the impression that the person we were scrutinising was no more than a regular guy, with strengths and flaws just like anyone else. The thing that did seem to set him apart though, was his desire to repeatedly contradict himself when trying to satisfy the audiences not-so-well thought out questions. We all live with contradictory aspects of our character, but he didn’t seem like he was able to present that to the audience. Without a shovel in sight, he dug his own hole by trying to appease other people. Instead of acceptance, there seemed to be a big dirt pile of denial. Not the kind of person I would say that I admire in any industry.
My Genius idea would be to stage a recount in a completely unbiased environment. I want to believe that the outcome of the vote would be different. But maybe the part of me that’s saying that is just a complete and utter Wanker.
The Ultimate Guide to Life
There is a vacant space on my bookshelf that awaits a book which is yet to be written. It contains a complete guide to every decision that I will ever make in life. A step by step manual of each choice that lead me to to take my final bow.
Despite not being published yet, it cannot and will not change. This is the story of my life, and one which I will perform faithfully, down to the very last act.
Sometimes I find myself staring at the empty space on the shelf, wishing that it was there for reference. I would flip my fingers through it’s unbent pages, find the chapter that I’m on, and take my cue as to what to do next.
Perhaps if this book was real, I would find myself at this point, in a rather unfortunate loop; “He looks up the page number, and discovers that he is reading the book of his own life, in order to discover that the next thing that he will do is look up the page number to discover that he is reading the book of his own life, in order to…”. So perhaps it’s a good thing that this book doesn’t exist yet.
There were a series of books that existed when I was young, where you could by making decisions throughout the story, flipping back and forth between numbered pages, which somehow always seemed to end unfairly with the demise of my character. I could always trace back my steps to find the turning point which caused me to be beheaded or trapped in a dungeon for eternity. Then, as long as I convinced myself that it was morally ok to do so, make the opposite decision and survive for another few pages until I was eaten by a dragon, and so forth.
Life never seemed to pan out like it did in these books. Not once have I encountered a demon and been given the opportunity to run or fight it, and neither have I ever had the opportunity to just ‘go back a few pages’ and try out a different path.
There is comfort in knowing that the book of your life will never change. No matter how much you struggle against the pull of your own destiny, the choices you make will always be the choices that you make. However, there is one thing that you can do to affect the outcome of your own personal bible; Choose more.
The people who increase the number of choices that they make each day, will have to make a little extra space on their bookshelf to fit their 17 volume lifespan. Those who decide not to decide, may have to arrange theirs neatly in between a Mr Men book and a pizza takeaway leaflet.
The future of the Internet
The Internet seems to be mimicking the human brain; a network of connections between nodes (humans) that is evolving and refining itself. Are we trying to create a virtual mind the size of Earth? Once that brain exists, will it try to connect with other nodes (planets) in our solar system; sharing information and shedding useless data along the way?
Will the Internet manifest itself in a less external manner, combining itself with the human race at a biological level? I’ve always wondered about the effects of all this binary data that is tearing through our bodies. Will we evolve to be able to hear this information, as we evolved to listen and interpret sound waves? What if we develop the ability to send as well as receive data? We’ll be walking operating systems, or maybe we’ll have grown out of physical activity by that point, and we will finally have a version of telepathic communication.
Maybe we’ll fast forward through Nature’s own plans and install mechanical devices that hook straight into our central nervous system. Maybe we’ll all be mind readers by the year 2020. Maybe we won’t survive to see any of this because, like the dominant species on the planets before us, the ride is over and we have to join the back of the queue again.
I digress… partly because I’m feeling lousy today, and partly because I went to a theme park the other day and wanted to sneak this into the conversation somehow.
An important thing to consider, is that the future of the Internet is in our own hands. It can be a way to help us manage our overflowing jar of identities. It can be the future city in which our virtu-self will live for eternity (or until someone pulls the plug). It can be the key to connecting the human race and sharing information in ways that we never thought were possible. It can be all of the above, or whatever we want it to be.
Reality, or your own version of it
I was sitting in a car today, spying on terrorists… or maybe I was waiting for my girlfriend to come out of the shops, it all depends on which one of us you asked. I started to wonder what was inside my realm of reality. The street sign was real, but the way that the street sign reminded me of my childhood wasn’t, the terrorists with push chairs that walked by were real, but the characters that I assigned to them weren’t.
So is that to say that a thought is not real?
If we accept the definition of Reality being “the state of things as they actually exist”, then depending on who you asked, either there was a terrorist lurking across the street, or there was a person. Using this example, it feels like there is a distinct difference between your version of reality and the actual reality of a situation. One is biased and based on personal perspective, and the other is a truth that would be accepted by most reasonable people. So what happens in a different situation, for instance; If a person holding a knife at me and I choose to see it as threatening, then is that real, or not? I feel fear, but it’s still my perception of the situation.
In order to determine how something “actually is” would require input from one, or multiple points of view. We could have a hypothetical consensus of every living creature that was capable of conscious thought, and if they all agreed that in my situation, the person holding the knife was being threatening (assuming that the perspective of the person holding the knife was not counted), would that mean that it was the reality? I don’t believe so, it would probably mean that that 100% of the people interview shared a similarity based on their own perspective.
So although we share certain aspects of how we see the world around us, the idea of something being real or not, will always be subject to perspective. There is no reality, only your own version of it. At first it’s a scary thought, that nothing is real. But after accepting it, knowing that I have control over my own reality, regardless of how it is seen by other people, it became a beautiful and empowering thing.
Life without Social Networking
I admit it, I am addicted to checking my Facebook page daily, if not on an hourly basis. It’s just so instantly rewarding… but in the depths of my mind, I can feel a swell of pity every time I log on. It’s the part of me that wonders why I find these status updates so vital to my daily life that forced me try out a little experiment.
For a week, I see what life would be like without logging on to Facebook. I turned off all my notifications, turned away when my girlfriend was logged on watering her virtual plants and avoided all temptation. At the end of the week, I wanted to identify a difference between the useful and non-useful things that social networking provides.
Staying in touch
It turned out that there were only people that I stayed in touch with via Facebook, I didn’t have their current phone number or even email address. I don’t see this as a benefit of Facebook, but a lazy hook that they use to drag you in to their realm. There’s no reason that I shouldn’t have someone’s email address, they must have one to use the site in the first place, so the onus of this one is on me.
Direct Contact
The only new direct information that I learnt was that 4 different people like the photos that I take and I also discovered that a youtube video that I thought was a fake, turned out to be… well… a fake. I understand that you have to give to receive, and maybe with a week of zero interaction, I couldn’t expect much, but I have to ask; is the time invested in priming these responses really worth it? In the short term, I feel like I get some kind of reward from this feedback, but it feels like a can of diet soda; a nice sweet taste, with zero calories in the long run.
Useful information
Just news that my sister has a cold, and my girlfriends brother posted an interesting dance music blog. I was kind of hoping for more, since all week I’ve been teased with my girlfriends cute little snickering as she checked her profile. I had dreams of side-splitting anecdotes and golden nuggets of enlightenment, but there didn’t seem to be any. What I discovered instead, was a desire to add a few more people to my ‘hide’ list, and that I will strive to post less throwaway comments.
The flip side
In my estimations, I must have diverted around 7 facebook hours, or if I stop lying to myself; 15 hours. So what did I do different this week, that I didn’t do for the past few months? I swam a kilometre at my local pool, went for a hygienist appointment at the dentist, took my cat to the vet to get spayed, created 6 new portraits (cat chappell, kara cabados, phineas kibbey, sue kibbey, magnus huckvale, dj bissen), and paid some attention to the neglected Guitar Hero that has been collecting ageing rocker skin cells in the corner.
I didn’t get a feeling of instant reward at first, where were the people telling me that they liked my photos, where was the feeling of satisfaction when taking my cat to a strange place to be poked and prodded? I learnt that the reward system that I’d become reliant on from Facebook was no more real than the rewards that I eventually derived from myself, but the one big difference, is that I was in control, not some external source. That I can live with.
I still agree with my previous post about life being how you choose to waste your time, so if I was to say that choosing to do things other than check my posts at hourly intervals was any better than playing an imaginary guitar based video game, I’d be a hypocrite (oh wait, I am a human… isn’t it in our nature to subscribe to ?). All that happened this week, is that I chose to do something different, and I enjoyed it. In that sense it was a success. If you are so inclined, I suggest that you make up your own life experiments and put them into practice.
Why T-shirts can’t Time Travel
If I stepped into my magical time machine wearing my only green t-shirt, and went back to the time when I bought the shirt and killed myself…. The question that I ask to you is… what colour t-shirt would I be wearing whilst I was hanging about at the crime scene with my dead self?
Well, it’s a trick question, because I don’t even HAVE a green t-shirt.
In a crazy alternate universe, where I did own a green t-shirt and where I stepped into my mystical time machine and simply prevented my previous self from purchasing this jade garment… then what colour t-shirt would I be wearing then?
Also, I wonder… would it morph slowly, like one of those ? I hope not, because that would mean that there is such a thing as Time Memory, which I just made up, but now have to copyright in case Showtime decide to make a TV programme of the same name and I have to . This Time Memory that I profess wouldn’t be a past memory, but a memory of the future. If my t-shirt just jumped colour without involving any Time at all, it would make sense to the current way we generally see time; as this linear object travelling in a single direction.
In , this morphing/fading stuff happens a lot; in a photograph, or when Marty McFly starts to vanish on stage mid-Earth-Angel. Theoretical or not, this concept would be an alpha-transparency of two alternative universes, happening simultaneously in the same place, based on something that happens in the future. So Time would have to know about this event, and possibly all events. Which leads us to a very important question;
If Time was to know everything that will ever happen, do you think that it would act in the opposite way that we do, in that it could never remember anything in the past?
Insight into Passion
In a my previous entry Searching for Passion, I propsed that passion was created by a continuous stream of reward. If this was the case, this would mean that one could become passionate from simply seeking out reward for whatever you wanted as a goal.
In practise though, the world we live in doesn’t always react the way we expect it to. The element of chance always shows up at some point, and I welcome his unpredictable ways. So when you set out to seek rewards, the outside world can sometimes respond in a manner which is counter productive to your quest. I’ve come up with two possible solutions to this dilemma; You could either ignore the outside world and listen only to the feedback that’s happening in your own head, or you could apply a filter to all the feedback you get and attach relevance to the parts which serve you best.
There is a story about … and despite the penalties that loomed over his goal, he carried on regardless and continued to be passionate about something he believed in.
It’s an inspirational story that shows us that it is possible for someone to be passionate about something, despite the attempted influences of the outside world.
Dealing with your self
Over time, we develop the thought patterns in our minds so that we can be more efficient. For instance, if a vicious looking creature comes running at us with it’s teeth and claws brandished, it would probably serve us to have already decided what to do about this situation a few seconds before we noticed it. So by being able to bypass any rationalisation of a situation, we may avoid a catastrophic event in our lives.
From my reading, which comprises mostly of information from the book by Robert Winston; I have learnt to understand the brain as this entity which develops in relation to the repetition of events and the importance that we attach to them.
So, there you have it, the simplest explanation of how our mind learns to serve and protect us. But what happens when your conscious mind thinks that it has a better way of dealing with a situation than your subconscious. Where are the powers in place which prevent your body from releasing ‘fight-or-flight’ chemicals, and how do you convince your legs to stand their ground when facing fear?
In some situations in our lives, we may need to be wary and follow our instant gut reaction without questioning it. But for someone like me, there seem so few situations that I would really need any adrenaline assisted actions, that it almost seems a useless function. However, after 30+ years of brain training; by the repetition of thought patterns and the exposure to stressful or painful situations, I still have a noticeable number of ‘buttons’ that could be pressed which my body responds to with an emotional reaction.
I am consciously aware of these emotional responses, and I acknowledge at the time that this may not be the direction that I want to go in, but simply by being conscious of something doesn’t make it easy to go against what your subconscious is trying to tell you. So how do we change that? What could we do that would give us the power to override our reactions at will? How can we be strong enough to break a cycle in a single second that has taken a lifetime to create?
If humans evolved the need for a system which allowed us to be protected from dangerous situations, and we are now living in a place where we no longer need such a system in place (unless you spend a lot of time sailing off the Somalian coast), then it may be possible to evolve into a species which can afford to take it’s time when making decisions.
But how do we do this? Wallace, Darwin… we need your help…!
Being Selfish
When most people think of the word Selfish, I would imagine that they see it as having mostly negative connotations; “Stop being so selfish”… “You are such a selfish person”.. etc. But what does it mean to be a selfish person?
I see ‘being selfish’ as a way to describe the motivation behind a person’s behaviour. And I believe that we are all selfish creatures. I am selfish, YOU are selfish, everyone is selfish…
.. how did that last statement make you feel? Bouncing around inside with joy? Probably not. But I think there has been a terrible misuse of this word over the course of history which has led it to be what it means to us today.
Let’s dive into some examples to explain why being selfish may not be such a bad thing after all:
Imagine that for some creative and highly unlikely reason there is a group of people who are about to take their last living breath in this world. You have been gifted (or cursed, depending on your outlook) with the ability of saving just a few of these people. Maybe you have a handful of antidote capsules, or a time machine, or a ZOLL 1200B Defibrillator with limited power… whatever floats your boat .. it’s your imagination here. Also, for the sake of this example, and to further demonstrate my point, let’s throw in a few people that you care about into this group. You can’t save all of them, just a few; What would determine which of these innocent victims you would save, and which you would let die in front of you like the awful awful person that you are?
- If you saved the people you cared about the most; that’s being selfish.
- If you saved those who you thought would better serve the human race; that’s still your idea of what that means.
- If it was the people who you didn’t care about; perhaps you’d be concerned that your legacy would be that you were a ‘selfish’ person, and you didn’t want to be seen as that kind of person.
- If you saved those in Alphabetical order; perhaps you’d be so concerned with being ‘unselfish’ that you were trying to selfishly do something unselfish.
OK… so it’s an extreme example.. but what I’m trying to get at, is that no matter how hard we try to separate our choices from our sense of self, we still make those choices which are related to what we care about.
I did a quick hunt to try and find some gems of what could be considered truly unselfish people, and dug up the following opinions: Oprah, Mother Theresa and ‘Soldiers’. Not exactly what I’d call Treasure, but it’s a start.
In each of the cases above, I would imagine that they all get a certain sense of self satisfaction for doing the ‘good deeds’ that they are seen to do. So they could still be considered Selfish people.
But something doesn’t feel quite right about it. If I call my neighbour selfish for taking up two car parking spaces instead of one, how do we differentiate between their negative selfish actions and these more positive selfish actions that are performed by people we admire? I propose the following; Let’s keep the existing word for Selfish as the one which means “concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself”, and create a new one that conveys the idea that it may be impossible to separate the choices we make in life from our own sense of identity. You may have your own idea of what this would could be, but for the moment, I call it “Selfy”.
Perspectives
Try as I might, to consider ‘everything’ about a particular subject; it never really seems to work.
I can focus all my attention on a subject, use reason and even make educated predictions about the matter at hand. But all it takes is to approach the thought from an alternative perspective, and a trapdoor is opened underneath my efforts and my logic is left grasping at thin air.
There seem to be two distinct areas of perspective, divided by a very grey area.
On one hand, you have this internal viewpoint, one that is interested in human fascinations such as ‘why’ or ‘how’, and then there is the external viewpoint which doesn’t seem to care much about the historical structure of an entity, but just continues to exist regardless.
These two perspectives seem to co-exist, and whilst having no direct effect on the other, are linked by a common entity; The Self. They share a common bond, but still have no say in the other’s belief. I may consider the very depths of space, but it doesn’t have any say in whether I am hungry or not. Conversely, as an example, although I may feel loss at the death of a loved one, the impact of my grief seems to have an inconsequential result on the relentless spiral of time.
If the ego were focused on only a single aspect of perspective, life would seem a much simpler task.
Searching for Passion
Breaking down the ego seemed like a good idea at the time. One of the side effects that I was left with, was a feeling that nothing really mattered, which wasn’t so bad, because it didn’t matter that nothing mattered.
So when thinking about what I would to have as the things that are important to me in life, I found myself asking the question:
What am I passionate about?
I drew a blank, and so continued to ask myself questions to aid my quest… What does it mean to be passionate? I can sense it, but found it more difficult to put into words.
After a few conversations about what creates passion, I started to see a pattern. All of the people I spoke to seemed to have experienced a series of increasing rewards relating to their obsessions. What caused them to start in the first place still escapes me… I guess that it could be a random chance, if such a thing exists in this world of preordained events.
So, can one become passionate simply by seeking reward for a particular action?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_(emotion)