Non-attachment and Letting Go

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  It's been many years since my last blog post!"  :)

Let's talk a little about the Buddhist idea of detachment, or "non-attachment to things of this world".  Let's first remember that the earliest Buddhist teachings are not religious at all, but for more of a manual for how to live life such that one has the greatest level of enjoyment.  At some point later, Buddhism picked up the idea of reincarnation (most likely from Hinduism, which already existed at the time), such that all sorts of teachings arose related to how to guide one's self into reincarnation as a better creature/person and eventually reach nirvana, etc.  Originally, it looks as if Buddhism was teaching how to reach a good state of living (nirvana) in this life, not the next.  Buddhism seems to have started as something closer to "Secular Humanism" along with guidelines as to how to avoid unhappiness in one's daily life.  Practices such as meditation were primarily to teach the ability to focus on what's important and avoid getting sidetracked by things which don't matter in the end.

As part of this focus on important matters and avoiding sinking into sadness and depression, the teaching of "non-attachment" arose.  Some people interpret "non-attachment" as something more like, "don't get attached to things of this world because that leds to unhappiness ultimately".  This is absolutely wrong.  Yes, not being attached to anything in their world would avoid unhappiness related to that thing/person/animal ulitmately going away/dying, however such a practice would also lead to not experiencing what happiness this world has to offer!  Sure, you can live outside of the world, but there is much happiness to be had in this world as well!

How do we solve this problem of experiencing the happiness of this world while lessening the unhappiness which will ultimately happen?  Well...  Let's use my own situation as an example.  My wife has quite a few auto-immune diseases, including adult onset diabetes and allergies to various foods.  She seems to be slowly getting worse and ultimately it could put her into the hospital and kill her.  If I wanted to avoid the ultimately unhappiness of not having her around, I could leave now, try to forget her, try to find someone else, etc., but that would leave me without all of the happiness which I currently have by having her around!  What to do?

What to do, is to enjoy the happiness of the present while living in the present, and then learn to "let go" when it's time to do so!  As a simple example, we can all enjoying a great meal while it's happening but we don't say,"I have to keep eating it!  I don't want to stop, ever!"  (Ok, some of us may, but that's a different issue!)  You enjoy the happiness which life brings while it's happening.  You enjoy it as fully as possible, by making use of the focusing skills you learned through meditation, paying attention to things which are in the moment and which matter.  Then, when the moment is gone, you celebrate the memory of the events, because remembering is also a way to enjoy and and gain a different type of happiness, from the memory.  However, once it's done, once the person is gone, and once you have celebrated and appreciated their memory, it's time to move on.

"Non-attachment" is not about avoiding attachment to things of this world.  It's about learning how to let events, people, pets, etc., pass out of your life and not continuing attachment to things/people who are not there.  Avoiding life is not the lessson of "non-attachment.  Learning to "let go" is the lesson of "non-attachment".  As the famous song says, "Let it go!", and look forward to the next thing in an ever-changing life!

Pro-life AND Pro-choice

 There is a lot of discussion and argument about "pro-life" vs. "pro-choice".  I guess I just see things a different way.  I'm pro-life, in that killing a fetus/baby should be avoided, but I'm also pro-choice, in that when it comes down only a concern of who has control over a person's life, I'll always side with that person.  If someone is trying to kill me, then they are exerting control over my life and taking control away from me.  That's unacceptable and I will do whatever I need to do in order to stop it and re-gain control over my own life, including killing them.  Yes, this means I'm exerting control over their life, but it wouldn't have been necessary if they hadn't initiated the situation.  There are many situations and concerns, and all of them should be taken into consideration when making a life or death decision, but the final consideration, which always trumps all other concerns is that a person should always retain control over their life, unless they give it up voluntarily (which is what is happening when someone tries to take control of my own life away from me).  In short, when you try to remove a person's rights, you inherently give up that right yourself.

So, since a person should always have control over their own body, what options are available to those who would like people to stop having abortions?  There are many options available, actually!  The first, most obvious, option is to simply try to convince the person to not have an abortion.  There's nothing wrong with making an argument for what you believe.  What's the most effective way to make such an argument?  The most effective way is always to have a civil discussion.  Lay out your reasons, listen to the other person's reasons, try to address their concerns by giving them options which are acceptable to them.

If "anti-abortion" groups want to promote not having abortions, they need to listen to "pro-choice" arguments and address the concerns.  I'll help with some examples.  For example, if a "pro-choice" person says something such as, "My passion just took me away and in the moment I didn't use birth control.  I can't afford, financially or time-wise, to have a baby right now."  Once option open to a person who disagrees with their decision, would be to volunteer to help financially and help them give up the baby for adoption.  An even more convincing argument may be to give them financial motivation to carry through with the pregnancy, such as paying for all medical bills, work time lost, classes related to easing child birth, and then helping with handing the baby over for adoption and the psychological issues involved with having an abortion and also giving up a child.  I know that's a lot, but I have to ask, "what is saving a baby worth to you?"

If abortions are really as abhorrent as anti-choice people claim, I would expect to see them offering to adopt people's babies and using their funding agencies to support adoptions and helping with medical bills, etc.  If the baby is far enough along that it can exist outside of the mother's body, then perhaps removing it from the mother and supporting medical needs until it can be adopted, may be an option.

In short, there are many options which could be pursued, however the primary one seems to be passing a law to take away a person's choice.  This doesn't address the problem at all, it simply tries to punish the person for having made a "bad choice" previously, or having found themself in a "bad position".  If it were not about control, then other, less controlling, methods would already be in use.  (Or, maybe anti-choice people are simply incapable of thinking of these other alternatives?  I would not expect this lack of imagination, however, to be as universal as it seems, so I would expect there are other reasons for trying to control people's lives.)  If the reason for wanting to exert control is because your God tells you "it's wrong!", then maybe you should pray for the person seeking an abortion and pray that God will change their mind.  It has happened, according to the Bible, many times in history and if you believe in prayer, certainly asking God to change their mind would be the strongest way to "convince" them?

Instead of trying to force people into agreeing with you, try gently pushing them in your direction such that they go willingly.  It's what you would want, if they were trying to exert control over you.

"Go ahead with your own life and leave me alone"

I don't listen to a lot of Billy Joel.  I don't generally like his music.  However...

My Life

I have to say:

• I don't care if you're gay.
• I don't care if nature or nurture made you that way.
• I don't care if it's natural or unnatural.
• I don't care if you can or can't be cured.

In the end, all of that doesn't matter at all.  It really doesn't matter what choices people make in their life or why they made those choices.  Let me repeat that:

It doesn't matter what choices people make in their life

Why?

Because it's THEIR life!  Leave it alone!

Why do people feel the need to force others to live by their rules?  It makes no sense to me.  I just don't understand it.  If the people with whom you disagree are not limiting your own choices, then leave them alone and let them have their choices.  Maybe, just maybe, they'll leave you alone and let you live your life in return.  Maybe, just maybe, we will all ultimately just let each other live freely, the way they want to live.

The measure of a society

Mankind creates societies. It's what we do. Over many thousands of years we have built and torn down many societies, some good and some not so good. But what makes a "good" society? I claim that the measure of a society is not art, leisure, wealth, etc. Those things will always be part of any society. Sometimes they are reserved for a select few, sometimes for more. No, the real measure of a society is how it treats the poorest members.

It's a given that every society will have some great achievements, some wealthy people, some art, some music, and also some poor. We could look at how wealth is distributed. What percentage of the people are so wealthy that they have nothing but leisure time? What percentage needs to work full time just to get by? What percentage must hold down more that one job? What percentage of jobs are for unskilled labor, versus those with a higher degree? While these are all good measures of how successful a society can be, they all really come back to one thing; quality of life. We're really measuring the quality of life and looking at the distribution of that quality through out the population.

As Jesus said, "You will always have the poor among you." Think about how many religions there are which stress that caring for the poor is important. Why is that? Because, if the poor still have a reasonable quality of life, then it stands to reason that everyone else will have a life even better than that. It's a distribution with the poor at the bottom end and the ultra rich at the top. The rich can take care of themselves, the poor can not. Yes, there's a certain amount of socialism here as well, but that's not the main point.

The rich lives of those who are better off in a society are always built on the backs of working people. Each person's life is made better by the work of those below them. Look at it another way, society will always have some people at the top end and will always have some great achievements. These can almost be taken for granted. The question to be asked is how that society achieved those great things. Did they have slaves? If so, we would not say that's a great society, because we do not recognize slavery as a good way to treat people and thus get things done. It's been found, for example, that the people who built the pyramids where not slaves, they were paid workers. Thus we tend to think of Egypt's great achievements as being even greater, in that they were built by paid and respected workers. If we later find that the pyramids were, indeed, built by slaves, then our view of that society would be lessened.

We will always have poor. If we shove them under the rug and pretend they do not exist, we, as a society are the worse for it. One of those lost and forgotten poor could have made a great contribution, but since we threw them away, they never had a chance. That's a great lost for society. But this is only a practical, analytical, viewpoint. There's also the viewpoint of nature. Humans are a social species. As such, we get endorphins when we help each other. For most people, empathy is normal and has a great effect on their well being. That's a selfish reason for being nice and helping people!

What I'm trying to say here is simply that since we will always have poor in any society, the question for a society is whether these people are taken advantage of, taken for granted, ignored, shoved under the rug and forgotten, or if they are treated like fellow human beings and given the opportunity to better themselves. Note, I didn't say give them handouts. I said give them opportunity to better themselves. India's caste system doesn't do this, but that is slowly changing and is generally viewed as unfair.

We, as a society must decide how to deal with the bottom of the quality of life curve. When we move that bottom up, the rest of the curve rises also. So, we can measure a society in many ways, but the one which matters the most, the one which makes us human and betters everyone's life, is to make sure the poorest members are not forgotten. It's been said that if one were to design a society, the best way to go about it would be for one person to do the design, while a different person gets to assign roles. If you are willing to be in any position in your society, it's a good one. If there are some positions which no one wants, that's an easy measure of "bad", and improvement is needed.

So, look at a society, not for its great achievements, but for how it treats the poorest members. There's your measure of humanism.

You don't really believe that so why are you saying it?

This is going to be short.  I saw the latest PBS News Hour broadcast tonight, where they were lamenting the way all Muslims are implicitly held responsible for the Orlando Idiot, because he happened to be Muslim.  Well, that's true, people do tend to generalize in that way.  I will mention, however, that when a Christian extremist has been responsible for killing a large number of people (yes, it has happened, look up "Heavens Gate"), I do not believe that any large number of people held all Christians responsible.  Why not?  It's the same situation, isn't it?  Well, not exactly.  Just keep count of the number of people killed each week by so called Muslims in the name of their religion, and keep count of the number of people killed by people professing to be of other religions.  You'll quickly see what I mean.  People don't hold all Christians responsible for the actions of one idiot, because it's not the norm.  It definitely is the norm in Islam in many parts of the world.  There's a difference there which can't be denied.  For all of the talk about Islam being a religion of peace, it's kind of like those saying that a gun is not a violent thing.  Well, it can be a non-violent thing, but that's not the norm, is it?  Just keep a tally.  You'll see.  No, this doesn't give us the right to treat Muslims differently.  We should still treat all people the same until they point out why we should treat them differently.  I'm simply stating the reason why we see the mistreatment, not justifying it.

But what really struck me as odd was the video of a Muslim woman's prepared speech about how her community sees the Orlando killings as a bad and unfortunate thing for all involved.  She wanted to express remorse over the incident, which is fine, but I guess she wanted to end saying something which would be on an upbeat note.  What she ended with, however, didn't make sense, for the person saying it.  She said that those killed are in a better place!  What place would that be?  According to her beliefs, they're either in heaven or in hell.  Since they were gay, and since gay people are considered "sinful", in Islam, then she would have to admit that she believes those killed are in hell!  I realize that gay life can be harsh, in our world, but how is hell a "better place"?  As I stated in the title, "You don't really believe that, so why are you saying it?"  Doesn't this type of dishonesty simply lead to more distrust? Anyone who is listening, and who thinks about what they're hearing just a little bit, knows that this young lady, while trying to be nice, is being dishonest.  In the immortal words of Thumper's Rule, "If you can't say somethin' nice ... (And, in this case, your religious views do not allow you to do so) ... then don't say nothin' at all."  By all means, don't be dishonest about your own views in front of the world!

Doesn't it all come back to the same point in both parts of this posting?  What we hear and see isn't agreeing with what we know to be true.  That leads to distrust.

Vulnerabilities of the Human Brain

Just yesterday, I watched the movie "Regression".  The reviews were just a little above 3 stars, but really, you should watch it.  It states at the beginning that it's based on a true story.  It definitely is.  (Spoilers ahead!)  I remember living through the period when it seemed every day or so you could easily read an article about yet another person who underwent hypnosis therapy, only to find that they were sexually molested by their parents, a friend, a relative, etc.  I remember thinking at the time, "This is ridiculous!  Maybe some of these are true, but really, don't we all know that you can get a person to say or do just about anything under hypnosis?"  Sure enough, it took about a year, but finally enough professionals in the field started investigating.  We now that a lot of innocent peoples' lives were destroyed by what we now, finally, recognize as "Junk Science".

Today, I saw that Texas and California now have laws which allow for an immediate hearing for anyone who was convicted solely on "Junk Science"; i.e., science which has since been shown to not be as reliable as we once thought.  This is a good thing and badly needed.  All jurors need to know about this possibility.

But, believe it or not, that's not what prompted this blog entry.  What prompted this blog entry was reading Dr. Carrier's article, "Did the Apostles Die for a Lie?".  Yes, the two are very much connected.  Just hear me out.  In this article, he discusses the question of whether the Apostles would have knowing died for what they knew at the time was a lie.  Read the article, as there are far too many ways this could, indeed, have happened (and has happened many times) for me to go into here.  The easiest, and simplest, explanation is simply that while they may have been totally convinced that what they "knew" as true, that doesn't mean it was true.  There are far more possibilities than simply, (1) they died for the truth, or (2) they died anyway, knowing it wasn't true.  If you don't know about The Law of the Excluded Middle, then you should learn about it.

But, that's just the beginning!  The brain is an amazing thing!  Always keep in your mind that what you know, what you see, what you hear, is totally within your brain.  If you brain says, "this is true", then it's true, for you, no matter what's happening outside!  I'll mention here that I had an experience once which really drove this home for me.  It was late morning.  (I love late morning.  I have the strangest dreams during late morning, and I usually remember them.  It's fascinating looking at how your brain is making sense of the random signals and random inputs (mostly from your ears)!  I dreamed a whole story line, which finally led up to an event which culminated in a loud noise.  That noise woke me up.  At that point, I realized the noise was a car horn.  Now, think about this.  My brain had no way to know that this car was going to blow its horn at that point, so it couldn't possibly create a story which led up to that, yet it did!  This means that in the instant when it heard the horn, it created the backstory to explain it, and I "knew" that story had happened, even though it couldn't possibly have done so!  Your brain totally controls your perception of time itself.  Amazing!

The brain is capable of many more things which of which many people are not aware.  I give you, the Selective Attention Test.  If you haven't taken the test, you should.  You will then become unfit for jury duty, because you will know too much about the lack of value of an eye witness.  (I was tossed off a jury for mentioning it last year!)

Now, do we even need to go into Confirmation Bias?  A good book on this is, "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why we Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts".  Read it, especially if you work in the Judicial System.

There are many ways to alter your view or understanding of the world, even without drugs.  One of the more interesting ways, not mentioned in the above article, is to simply toss your head back and forth.  Do this for quite a while, even in time with music if you like, and you will produce a euphoric state.  Supposedly this is due to the large amount of endorphins which are released.  We know this today because studies have revealed it, however obviously many religions didn't know this at the time, which is why so many religious ceremonies involve this type of action and claim that it, "brings one closer to God!"  I'll also mention here that other studies have clearly shown that a magnetic field across the brain in just the right place can produce a sense of being in the presence of God.  (I don't have to make this stuff up!  The world is plenty interesting all by itself!)

So, now that we know all of the many ways in which the brain can be tricked in seeing, or not seeing, things which are there, producing whole stories around events which other actual explanations, even producing whole backstories to explain an occurrence, and producing mental states which clearly show we're in the presence of a divine being, simply because we're wearing a helmet(!), can we really continue to allow our children to be caught off guard by these things?!  Shouldn't we be teaching, in elementary, or high school at the latest, all of these known phenomena, so that when our kids end up having some strange experience during a camping trip when they were exhausted and hadn't eaten lately, they'll realize what's happening?  Wouldn't it be good to hear, just once, from someone that, "I had a really strange, other worldly experience, and it felt as though I had died and gone to heaven", only to have the next sentence be, "but I know what caused it, I know that it's rather typical of the state I was in, none-the-less it was interesting and fun!"

We need to educate our kids about all of the ways in which their perceptions can not necessarily be trusted.  If they know about these things, then they will be better prepared when (not if) the situations occur.  It's normal physiology, just like knowing how to lift a heavy load without hurting your back, just like understanding the causes of deja-vu (which can also be artificially produced).  People need to learn about these things, so they can stop hurting, and even destroying the lives of, others (as well as their own selves) by misinterpreting these things, when they happen.  (They always happen eventually.)

Don't trust your perceptions and stay safe out there!

Why is everything close to 50-50?

I'm wondering, why are all matters of opinion these days always close to a 50-50 split?  It seems as if everything in this country is almost always 50/50; democrat vs republican, pro-life vs abortion rights, etc.  It's all 50 one way and 50 the other.  Are we always so even divided on everything?  I don't think so.  I think it's not normal for the country to always be so even divided.  I don't think we've always been this way.  I think at least some issues were previously (a few decades ago) 60/40 and some were even 70/30.  So, what's with the new 50/50 split on everything?

First, let me state that it's been shown that roughly 20% of the population will literally believe anything!  Yes, anything!  Look it up!  Look for studies where people have tried to get signatures on a proposal to ban "H20" because it causes a large number of deaths.  Look up how many people believe UFOs are real.  I can guarantee you that you'll always find at least 20% believing just about anything.  It's the other people, above the base 20% who have actually considered the claims, pros and cons, etc.  The base 20% will believe anything, so that doesn't really count.  When you hear 30% of the population believe "X", you should really think, "well 10% of the educated population believe 'X', because 20% will believe anything!"

But does that matter?  Does it matter that 20% of our population is uneducated enough to believe any claim which is made?  Well, ...  YES!  It matters because it shows we have a huge education problem to deal with and a Democracy can NOT have an education problem.  A Democracy absolutely MUST have an educated public, because it's that public which votes!  And whose interest is in having an educated public?  It's certainly not the government's interest.  It's easier to govern uneducated people than it is to govern the educated.  Ever heard the phrase, "it's like herding cats!"?  Trying to get educated people to follow you is hard, because they want to know "why" and also want to know your reasoning.  If you don't have a good argument behind your proposal, it won't be accepted. No, governing uneducated people is much easier!  So, it's not in the government's interest to educate people.  It's in the public's interest to educate people!

But, getting back to the original topic...  Why are we always split 50/50 on just about everything?  Well, think about it...  What other things that we know are always split 50/50?  A coin toss!  If there are two basic possibilities, then the probability of each is 50%.  Am I saying, then, that peoples' opinions are simply a coin toss?  Well, sorta, yes!  If a person is relatively uneducated on a matter, then what would they use to sway their opinion one way or the other?  They can't back up any reasoning with logic or understanding of the issue.  They're pretty much going to be swayed by their gut instinct.  Many people think their gut instinct is the the most reliable thing they have!  ("I just know what's right!")  Since their gut instinct isn't really grounded in anything scientific or logical, then it's pretty much a coin toss as to what their gut instinct will say!  Thus...  we end up with a bunch of people who are just going with their gut instinct instead of thinking things through.  Thus, we end up with a 50/50 split on just about everything!  50% is what you get then there's nothing to sway an opinion one way or the other.  50% is the base.  It's the starting point from which you must find reasoning or logical arguments to push one way or the other.  Lacking any real thinking, 50/50 is what you will always have!

Since we have a lack of real education in this country (evident by the large 20% who will believe anything at all!), we will always be lose to a 50/50 split on all topics until people decide they would like to be better educated and start thinking for a change.  Most people actively avoid thinking about deep topics.

Sigh.

Chaos Theory says that "Free Will" is a moot issue.

"Free Will!"  Sounds so good, doesn't it?  Everyone wants to think that they have complete control over their thoughts and actions.  Sorry, no.

Scientists have found that using an fMRI, they can actually see a decision being made long before the person making that decision recognizes that they have made it.  Ok, maybe that doesn't mean you don't have Free Will.  maybe it simply means your thoughts are being made at a level below where you realize it and only later do they arrive at a conscious level.

How about the argument which says:

You are the sum total of all of your genes plus all of your experiences.  If you could start again with the same genes and have the exact same events happen to you, you would end up in the same place and make the same decisions.

Interesting argument, but can this ever really happen?  Is this even a realistic scenario?  Certainly not.  We know that the exact same series of events can never happen exactly the same way, especially if they are complex events.

This ties into Quantum Physics and Indeterminacy.  If you haven't learned much about Quantum Physics, then watch this entertaining video about the famous "Double Slit experiment.  This talks about particles appearing as both waves and particles.  Related to this is also the topic of "Super Position", where a particle or wave can be in multiple states at once.  As if this isn't enough, let's also look at the issues brought up by "Delayed Choice".

So, with multiple possibilities existing simultaneously, can we ever really know the complete state of a system, enough to really predict the outcome, especially a system, such as the brain, made up of billions and billions of neurons?  Well, this actually should make you think of "Chaos Theory".  Here's a video showing how even a very simple system of two pendulums will produce what appears to be "random motion".  Notice that even a small change in the initial position of 1 degree will produce a wildly different result!  Here's a video of a real world example of the same experiment.

So, what have we learned?

1. The brain is performing actions, creating thoughts, and reacting to both itself and the outside world in ways about which you can not have any knowledge.
2. At the most basic level, all of nature is made of probabilities, not particles.  These probabilities can interact with each other in unpredictable ways.
3. Chaos theory shows us that even the smallest change in initial conditions can make even simple, Newtonian, systems perform in unpredictable ways.  If this is true of even simple systems, then we are incapable of imagining the complexity of any "real world" system.  (This is, incidentally, why even today, with very powerful super-computers, we still can not predict weather very reliably.)

So, when you take all of this into account, do we really even need to discuss the topic of "Free Will" any more?  No, you don't really have "Free Will".  Everything you think or do is completely a result of the starting conditions of your brain, followed by all of the events and thoughts which came before the action.  But, does it matter?  NO!  It doesn't matter at all, because there is no way that you or anyone else could ever reliably predict any outcome, even if the entire series of events were known and all of the connections inside your brain were known.  The organ which is contemplating "Free Will" is such a complex system, based upon other incredibly complex systems, and ultimately fabricated out of probability functions, such that for all practical purposes, it may as well be "Free Will".

The "Free Will" discussion is ultimately seen as a senseless discussion by those who understand more of the ways in which the world actually works.  To even have such a discussion, is to admit that you have no idea of the complexity of the world.  Now we understand more about Quantum Physics and Chaos Theory, we can clearly see that the "Free Will" discussion is entire moot.

A walk on the wild side

(I originally wrote this quite a few years back, but having recently read Greta's blog "Fashion Friday: Menswear, and Some Thoughts Anout Gender Roles" made me think that I really should put this back up, so here it is.)

I recently tried a little experiment.  I created an account inside the 3D role playing game "Second Life", however instead of creating a male avatar, I decided to try out my "second life" by experiencing the other side.  My avatar was female.  Interestingly, this opened up a whole new world immediately.  I decided that if I were to have a female avatar, I may as well have a good looking one!  I spent a lot of time tweaking with the visual appearance of my avatar and then started searching for nice clothes.  I found myself going to shopping malls inside the "game", looking at all of the dresses, trying things on, and even looking at matching shoes!  Why the sudden change?  Why the sudden interest in fashion when I never searched out such things before?  Well, maybe that's a topic for another blog entry at some point.  Personally, I think it has a lot to do with, "since I could be beautiful, I felt as though I should," or something like that.

The topic of this entry, however, is related to other parts of my experience.  I noticed, very quickly, that male avatars were drawn to me.  As a matter of fact, if there was a male avatar anywhere around, I could pretty much bet that they would at least try to talk to me.  I must say, I found it annoying!  I couldn't go anywhere, do anything, without guys trying to hit on me!  And what did they want?  A good conversation?  Nope.  They wanted "Second Life" sex.  (Yes, there are places you can go in "Second Life" where two avatars can be moved in such a way as to make it appear as though they're having sex.)  Why do so many guys seem to want this?  Ok, I know what you're thinking.  You're wondering if I let my avatar have sex with a guy.  No, I didn't.  That just seemed wrong in so many ways.  As a matter of fact, I found myself doing exactly what women do a lot.  I found myself hanging out with the girls because at least I knew I wouldn't be targeted for one single-minded purpose.

So, having experienced a little "life as a woman", I can tell you other guys a thing or two about it.  Women want to do other things than just have sex.  They want to pursue their intellectual interests.  They want to experience life.  They want to have a good conversation, have an interesting experience, and they don't want to be pursued by guys everywhere they turn!  (Of course, when it comes down to it, guys don't always want sex either.  No, really!  Sometimes they want to go for bike ride, read really good book, play a great video game, do some programming.  Really, guys don't think about sex all of the time.  But when they see a beautiful woman, thoughts do go right there; it's built in.)

Girls enjoy looking beautiful and, let's face it, guys want them to look beautiful.  However, just because they're beautiful, or even sexy, doesn't mean they want to have sex with any guy who just happens along.  Maybe they're busy learning about a future world.  Maybe they're learning how to create their own buildings.  Maybe they're building their own buildings.  Maybe they're just reading an interesting article in a magazine.  If some guy comes along who has similar interests and if we can work both together, then maybe things will develop, but it's also possible that the woman isn't interested in starting a conversation at all and simply wants to be left alone!

I finally realized that if I wanted to investigate the "Second Life" world without being bothered, I needed to select an avatar which was totally un-gendered.  I purchased a small blue sphere.  That works quite well!  I wonder what would happen if I started a conversation as a woman and then suddenly changed to a man?  :)

Are we alone in the universe?

"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - attributed to Arthur C. Clarke 

If we are not alone, then why haven't we heard something already? It very well could be that the distance between intelligent civilizations is simply too far and we simply haven't had the capability to receive the correct type of signals for long enough. After all, we haven't been able to receive radio waves for all that long, really. On the scale of time of the universe, whole advanced civilizations could easily miss each other by millions of years simply because their star got started that much earlier or later than the other civilization. Others who are less than 100 lightyears distant could have seen our signals by now, if they were tuned to the correct frequencies and happened to be looking in the correct direction. Even so, it would take another 100 years or so for any reply to reach us, assuming they have the technology to produce one and that we're listening on the right frequencies and in the right direction at the right time. It could simply be a grand game of chance and we simply haven't be playing it long enough. 

Here's another viewpoint I've heard mentioned before. Look at a primitive tribe in Africa who knows nothing about radio waves. Radio waves with all sorts of information could pass through them every minute and yet they simply don't know of its existence! As a matter of fact, satellites are constantly sending whole catalogues of information right through their villages, with lots of information which could easily revolutionize their lives, and yet they know nothing about it at all! What if we're the same with respect to other civilizations? What if their methods of communication (higher dimentions, hyper-space, tachyons, etc., happen be passing right though us currently and we simply don't see it. We're sitting here looking for smoke signals and they're sending radio waves.
How long would an advanced civilization last, however? Maybe they wouldn't usually get to the stage of traveling amongst the stars? Maybe something else happens first and we simply are not old enough to know what that could be? Many people have theorized that maybe an advanced civilization would blow itself up, or destroy itself in some other way, long before they would be capable of making contact with us or anyone else. The movie "Forbidden Planet" talks about one such scenario. But, maybe there's another? Maybe a truly advanced civilization stops producing radio waves after only a few hundred years? After all, sending out radio waves is rather wasteful of energy. Arthur C. Clarke, the inventor of the satellite, theorized in a later story about the possibility of a solid ring around the equator with antennas sending and receiving tight beams of information to and from the surface. Even today, scientists are busily working on the idea of beaming information directly to satellites instead of allowing the transmissions to spread out as much as they do currently, in order to save energy. 

Maybe a civilization tends to turn inward as it grows older. We, today, are finding that social interactions on the Internet, role playing games, and other forms of virtual reality, seem to be a fascinating and time consuming thing for many people. What if a truly advanced civilization could live inside an advanced virtual reality, becoming whatever they want, living wherever they want, virtually visiting far away places, far away times, even other whole virtual worlds? Would such a civilization really need to seek outside for anyone else? Maybe as a civilization advances it tends to turn more and more inward and thus disappears from the rest of the universe. If this is the norm, then we would stand a really small chance of detecting other civilizations and an even smaller chance of being recognized or visited in any way.
Maybe instead of seeking other life elsewhere in the universe, we should be developing a graph of possible futures for a civilization. We may be surprised to find that only a very small number of possible futures actually result in a civilization which is detectable!

Some comments from the previous blog: "mike", Date: 2011/01/05 Thanks for your article. I truly enjoy reading and thinking of the possibilities but I am profoundly disappointed that in this day and time of exploding knowledge & abilities in technology & communication so few people seem to be interested in these type of questions. Instead the public obsessions are in which sports teams will win this time or which celebrity is making news. I think we are looking for smoke signals and a newer form of communications just may lead to an inpouring of welcomes (wishful thinking though). Thanks again. "maureen", Date: 2011/01/05 Detectable by whom, with what instruments? The human eye cannot detect even all physical reality not to mention other possible realities. 

How the brain works, part 2

Tonight I played nay (middle eastern flute) in a middle eastern music and dance concert at UCSB (Santa Barbara, Ca., here's the URL). We had a guest artist, an oud player from New Mexico who was originally from Iraq. (You see, the university is having a middle eastern conference this weekend and the focus is on Iraq. You can read about it linked from the URL I gave above under "Performances".) The guest artist's name was Rahim Alhaj (Here's his web page). He was a really nice person and he plays amazingly well! I love the mellow sound of his oud and the way he plays the strings very softly even while he's going quickly, unlike some other people who strike the strings hard.) 

But this isn't what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about is that he told me afterward that when he first saw me sitting on stage during the rehearsal he thought to himself, "I've met this guy before somewhere!" He couldn't get it out of his head that we had definitely met somewhere before. Now, I don't think I've met him before anywhere, but I"m not sure. He, at first, suggested that maybe we had met at some airport somewhere. Well, that's a good bet if it's someone from far away because people meet quickly in airports all of the time while traveling to distance places and then never see each other again. (Someone should write a story about that sometime. About how chance meetings in airports and railroad stations, etc., can sometimes end up changing people's lives and the person who has the effect on someone will never know what effect they had. Very Buddhist, connectedness of everything in the world, etc.) Anyway, he then said what many people say these days, "maybe in a previous life..." Now, how many people who say this really truly believe in previous lives? Probably no more than half, I would think. 

So, had we met before? Maybe. Probably not. Yes, I do have my Buddhist moments and thinking of it in that way, I can't say we *didn't* meet in a previous life. But then I also have my Atheist moments (one day I'll have to try writing about how Buddhism and Atheism are compatible and even in many ways the same thing) and during those moments I have what Occam's Razor would say is a much more likely possibility, and it tells you something about how the brain works. (See, I *did* get to the topic finally!) 

You see, the brain is primarily a pattern matcher. We see evidence of this visually all of the time. Just think of all of those optical illusions we've all seen since childhood. Many of them deal with how the brain completes a pattern, fills in a missing line, etc. We also have lots of evidence that the hearing brain is a big pattern matcher as well. Think about what happens when you hear the beginning off a song you know. You tend to fill in the rest. Sometimes we hear a song which is similar to something we know and we may say, "I know this song!", only to have another person say, "Ah, you know a similar one! This one is new!" We do it with other senses as well. How many times have you tasted something which tasted familiar but knew you had never eaten it before? Then you realized what the similar item was later. You then tend to think of those two things together even if they're not really related at all, simply because your brain said, "this is like that", "this fits a pattern that I know already". How about touch? Do we do it there? I think so. We might feel some fabric and say, "Oh, that feels like silk!", even though we know it isn't. We don't put it in a category by itself even though we know it's something different. Instead, we try to clump it in with other stuff we already know. 

Researchers on how the brain works sometimes call this "clumping". We know, for example, that people can only remember, on average, about 7 things at a time. You can remember more than 7 things fairly easily, however, if you clump some of them together. It's harder to remember 7 random numbers (14, 23, 74, 89, 52, 28, 93) than it is to remember numbers in which you can see a pattern (11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77). This is because, in the first case, you're remember 7 items while in the second case you're only remember three (two digits, both the same, increasing by one). 

How many times have you met someone and said, "You remind me of someone I know. I remember. You look sorta like Joe!", or something similar? We tend to clump people we know into categories according to how they look, how they act, etc. 

So, my theory is that Rahim probably met someone who looked sorta like me and the two faces were close enough that his mind simply merged the two and said, "we've met before". It's a rather common occurance, actually. But knowing that the brain is always pattern matching, helps you see how such things can happen. It also helps you deal with those times when your brain is tricked by events or items which are so close that your brain claims they're the same (usually only until someone points out how they're different at which point you immediately see the difference and say, "oh yeah, how could I have missed that!"
This pattern matching thing is huge, actually. Once you start recognizing pattern matching and clumping when it's happening, you start to realize that it's happening all of the time in many forms. Habits, for example. (Buddhism would, at this point, mention "karma". When you do something, "good" or "bad", you build up a "habit" of acting that way. When you find yourself in a similar situation again, you will now have a small tendency to repeat the action. If you repeat it, you will then have a stronger tendency to repeat it again when the situation occurs again. In this way we all build up "habits" or "tendencies toward a particular view or action", otherwise known as "karma". There's no such thing as "good" karma or "bad" karma. There's only "karma". If you act the way you want to be, you'll eventually find yourself being that way and it won't be an act.) You see, your brain matches a pattern, fits the next thing into the overall view which you've built up over the years. You can chanage your entire view of the world but it takes a while because you need to break down all of those associations which you've built up. Eventually, you end up with a new world view and you start to fit new experiences, etc., into that instead. It definitely works. I can tell you first hand. But not tonight. 

Thanks for reading! I'd be interested in feedback if you want to give me any.
Goodnight and take care! 

How the brain works, part 1

[ The following is a blog entry from a previous blog which no longer exists. I'm moving it here. - raj ]
I want to investigate a topic which I find very interesting and which I firmly believe a large number of people are rather confused about. It's a rather large topic, so it will probably take a while to investigate it fully, but we'll see. I'll give it a start tonight (on the evening of my birthday). 

There seems to be a common belief that human emotions and "feelings" are one of our most prized possessions. We've all heard statements such as, "you should follow your feelings," and "love is what makes us human." Well, I'd like to challenge this notion. 

First of all, I think many people are confusing two different things here. Many people tend to use the word "feelings" to describe both emotions as well as intuitions. The first quote I mentioned above, "you should follow your feelings," is talking about intuition. It's saying you should pay attention to the unconscious part of your brain; that background processor you have which is constantly trying to analyze the input from your senses, trying to fit things together, make sense of patterns, etc. This is good advice, by the way. The unconscious mind is like free CPU time on a background processor. It can give a lot more thought to events, etc., because it doesn't need to bother with all of the day-to-day thinking which we do. (It's also intimately related to dreams, but more on that later.) 

The second quote, "love is what makes us human," is actually talking about a purely emotional response and this is the statement with which I have problems. I simply do not believe that "love" makes us human. I believe that all animals with any higher brain functions at all have emotions. Anyone who has had a pet dog or cat can see this clearly. 

Conversely, to what many people seem to believe, I firmly believe that emotions are produced by the lower level reptilian brain and not the higher level ape/human brain, and I have anecdotal evidence. For example, people will sometimes get mad about something and then immediately afterward say something like, "I don't know where that came from." People will also say, "It's like anger just took over and he became like an animal." We've all had experiences where we have suddenly become overwhelmed by emotion, love, anger, fear, etc., and couldn't really control it. Why is it that we don't seem to know where these emotions come from? I'll tell you. We don't know where they come from because they're coming from our lower-level reptilian brain. The response to input is coming from there and then rushing into our higher level brain functions, overwhelming us, and it takes us by surprise. 

So, if emotions from our lower level brain, then it would stand to reason that other animals would only have emotional reactions since they lack the higher level reasoning ability of humans, right? Well, look around you and you'll see evidence of this all over. Take some time to study the reactions of various animals and see if you can put yourself into their situation. Try to see the world as something which you don't understand but can only approach using terms as "scary", "friendly", "mad", "happy", etc., and you will suddenly realize that you're reacting in basically the same way as your pet! 

Cats and dogs have a very small ability to figure things out but mostly they mimic (learn) what they see. They're reactions to world events are almost purely emotional. This is why we hear about a family dog suddenly turning on someone and biting them, for example. Their brain suddenly produced an emotional reaction which said, "fight!" and they did just that. There's no reasoning going on there. (Right now, my wife is asleep with our cat curled up right beside her. When she leaves the house, the cat gets upset. When she returns, the cat is overjoyed to see her. Those are perfect expressions of "love" and "attachment". Emotions.) 

So, my first point in what will hopefully become a long investigation is that, far from being "what makes us human," it's the ability to think and reason which makes us human. Emotions are ALL the lower animals have. We have reasoning ability in addition. Reasoning is what makes us human. 

Over the next few days, notice when you suddenly feel some strong emotion and try to figure out what would have triggered it. In most, possibly all, cases you will find it was triggered by some conjunction of experiences of which you are probably barely aware. You will find that the emotion comes to you from somewhere and you can't really pin down exactly why or from where. It seems to arise of its own from deep within. (All of these terms have been used to describe the experience. I'm suggesting that there's a really good reason why. Deep down, we all know that emotions are a simpler, more basic, way of viewing the world and they come from a more primitive part of our brain which has almost nothing to do with our higher brain functions.) 

But don't confuse emotions with intuition. There are definitely NOT the same. Animals don't have intuition. They DO have emotions. It's ALL they have. 

(So, maybe we need to think again about what we value most as "human", eh?)Followup:
Apparently, a lot of scientists would agree that animals have emotions. (Notice in this article that even the argument "against" agrees that animals have emotions, but simply argues against attributing them with a human-like experience. 

After re-reading this article, I think I would change the statement that animals don't have intuition. They do seem to have a form of intuition as well as having an emotional response to what happens around them. What they don't seem to have is higher level brain functions such as logic and reason. Of course, some primates seem to have some of these higher level functions to some degree, but point of the article was simply that emotions come from the lower level parts of the brain, not the higher level parts.