Thursday, March 31, 2005
Have you ever looked at the world and thought maybe you are wrong about the whole god damn thing?
I keep thinking, as is my habit, about how the world works and I try to figure it out but lately I keep finding problems with my conception of it. My entire foundation for my subjective reality (since I have no access to objective reality if there even is one) seems to be different than the people I see around me. Am I vibrating on a different frequency than them? Is my systematic construct of the world lacking fundamental axioms that cause me to miss entire portions of the world and create those which do not exist for others?
I keep thinking about the world as a logical system of events and think that a descriptive analysis of it will allow me to piece together the links and make predictions. David Hume says our perception of cause and effect is just the observation of patterns of events. Maybe I'm assuming that cause-effect is real is cases that it is not. Maybe patterns are just coincidental similarities. Maybe the world is really just a chaotic mass and my little brain set up filters to simplify it and so every time certain random sequences in the universe happen I happen to have a hole in my filter for them and so I assume wrongly that just because I always see that sequence with the same results, that it will always happen that way. Due to my filters I don't see all of the times it happens differently and it is just chaotic, random coincidence that the sequence was generated.
In my Philosophy class I overheard two of the other students talking about something that was not class related and I had a realization. These people, each of the students and the teacher, are not just the philosophy of mathematics student/teacher constructs in my head, but I am only seeing the tip of them. Outside of class they may have relationships with one another, with other people, they have interests, fears, doubts, dreams, goals, possessions, ideas, etc. that are all hidden from the world in the class. It's like we are all operating on a whole different plane in my mind in the class. I can't even think about knowing them outside of that situation but they can break that barrier with each other.
A month ago or so, I went to check my mail and a delivery person was there filling the boxes with the mail and rather than rudely make me wait as the mailman had done in Utah, this person asked me which apartment I was. I told him, he gave me the mail, and I left. A few days ago I went again to check the mail and the mailman was there filling the boxes. He saw me there, reached in his stack, and handed me my mail. How could someone I had contact with only once for a brief moment remember me like that? Perhaps he has a photographic memory. Perhaps there is some other piece of reality that I don't see because my system of reality would have predicted the mailman forget the entire first contact within half an hour and certainly forget the apartment number in minutes.
My system has also been proving to be dead wrong in other predictions as well. I predicted nervousness, anxiety, and a gamut of other assorted emotions would rise in me along with other formalisms for the relationship when I was to meet my half-sister last Thanksgiving. I went and nothing like that happened. I recently told my mom something that I thought would make me feel guilty and embarrassed and make her mad, but no, nothing of the sort happened. Is my system falling apart? Last time I had ruptures in my system, when my parents' divorce shattered the idea that things I knew were permanent weren't necessarily permanent, it set off a whole chain reaction that has left me markedly changed comparing now to before that happened. Am I on the brink of another change? If so, is it a good thing or a bad thing? Or do those terms even have any meaning in this context?
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says that no mathematical system can be both complete and consistent. Paul Bernays explained that logic and mathematics are intertwined and each is dependent upon the other. My systems thus far to explain the world have been logical systems. Is it then fair to say that because my systems depend on logic which depends on mathematics, that I can never both completely and consistently explain the world, even in theory? Even if this isn't a valid deduction, the question still stands as a matter of thought. Is it then a futile effort to try to understand the world if we know that something will always be missing or contradictory? Science has tried to formalize the world and put it into logical and mathematical formulas with chemistry and physics, but will they have the same problem? Maybe existence and the universe are irrational afterall?
Maybe we should just tear down all the walls and barriers that these formalisms make. But we do need formalisms and structure to valuate things, to make decision trees, to do cost/benefit analysis, and even for language itself. Is there an answer?
Sometimes I question linear time in the subjective world too. A lot of times I'll find myself in a situation and feel something like déjà vu. I'll think that I've been in that very situation before or one just like it. Maybe I have. Maybe time is like a vat of one giant string of spaghetti with the two ends connected. We travel along and criss-cross the path many times. I'm not saying necessarily that it happens in some objective world like that, but it might. Our memories are constructed. We store some data and idea but we constantly reinterpret things based on new knowledge. Perhaps these déjà vu moments are just my brain linking the event to some past event that paralleled it and my perception is of this linking rather than the situation itself. Or maybe it is like the movie Dark City or Ghost in the Shell where memories are placed into us and are not real. What if every moment we are given a complete set of new memories that makes us a completely different person each time but there is some leakage that causes strange familiarities? If reincarnation is true, then if we zoom out enough in the infinite continuum of eternity, isn't that about what happens? Time is a strange thing and I don't think we even close to understand it.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
I usually don't post quiz results on here, but after taking one from Jeremy's journal and posting it in his comments, I thought more about it, especially the traits snapshot and decided to post it here as well. I think that for the most part it is fairly accurate and is a piece in the puzzle that is the system that describes me and the world that I am seeking to build through all of my mental exercises on this blog.
| Advanced Global Personality Test Results
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personality tests by similarminds.com
trait snapshot:
does not make friends easily, secretive, introverted, reclusive, observer, dislikes leadership, somewhat socially awkward, does not like to stand out, dislikes large parties, values solitude, solitary, avoidant, ambivalent about fitting in, not dominant, unassertive, suspicious, prudent, unadventurous, worrying, weird, intellectual, frequently second guesses self
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Sometimes I wish that I knew something about dream interpretation. I do think that there is a lot about the subconscious that we don't understand. One viewpoint I have heard is that the subconscious is honest with the self and is not indulgent in the self-deceit that the consciousness so actively employs. Furthermore, due to this honesty it is more aware of faltering relationships or impending problems in your life. I think it would be interesting if this viewpoint is true because it is fascinating. Sometimes I see in my dreams what I think are archetypes or symbols of things and I wonder what, if anything, they might represent in my life. Oh well, I haven't got the time to learn about it all now.
In the meantime, last night's dream:
Along with everyone else in the dream world, I was participating in a race. None of us knew what it was for; we just knew we had to get to the goal before everyone else. Somehow myself and a few people I knew got a significant headway on the rest of the group and were running through the woods. At one point we looked back and saw the tip of the masses and we sped up. We reached a lake which had several small island type masses about a metre in diameter leading out to one slightly larger with a tree on it. For some reason my companions felt compelled that we needed to get off of the racing path and get to this tree. When we got there, the stepping islands we had used to hop to it turned soggy like rotting wood and were not sufficient for our return. This sudden panic of being stuck took away whatever impulse had driven the others to the island. They spotted a rickety rowboat half-tipped over and as they approached it to try to use it to get to shore it sank through the clear water as if it had read their intentions. The universe read me as well and saw that I hadn't wanted to go to the island and suddenly I was back on shore and I saw an older native american man extending a ladder to the island to help the others back. I knew that their side trip to the island was compromising our position so I left them behind while they were rescued from the island. I found an old, concrete road bridge leading over lake, but it was covered in overgrowth. I chose to pass it anyway and ran across.
Suddenly the dream changed and I had gotten to the goal and stolen it. The goal was a small pastel striped snake which could flare out like a cobra. I had the snake in a small, clear plastic container in my hands and I ran to hide it. I didn't know who I was hiding it from or where I was taking it but I knew I had to kill it. It was an extremely venomous snake and the only one of its variety in America. I got to a small building which I entered. It had black walls and dark velvet curtains to lead between the doorways. They protested that they were closed but I told them I needed their help to kill the snake.
Although it had been repeatedly striking at the walls of the cage, causing me to fear that it could bite through the plastic, now it sat calm as if it were planning and guiding the whole world. The girl that had told me the building was closed went into the other room to explain to whoever else was there about what was going on. When they came back, one man took the container from me and allowed the snake to slide out onto the floor saying that he could not kill it if it was in the box. I knew that they had made a mistake and began to back away, not knowing how fast it could move. The snake pulled its head up and flared out its neck to look like a beautiful pastel cobra. We looked at him with mixed feelings of entrancement and fear.
The next scene showed paramedics entering the building and finding that all of the people there were stacked in a heap on the sofa and were dying of inflammation and internal hemoraging. The only exception was me, who had not been bitten but had still ended up in the stack of bodies, under all of the others. The dying ones tried to speak and say something to the paramedics with such intent that it could have been the key to understanding in the universe, but their dying bodies failed them and their words only came out in unintelligible murmurings.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Well, this weekend didn't give light to any new philosophical discoveries or gestalt moments like I usually hope for. My brother came up to visit and we played mallrats for an evening and watched a few movies. I got into a little online spat with Jeremy but Erik and I hung out with him last night and I think it has blown over (he was drunk, I was playing Newton's third law).
Some crazy shit went down on the mailing list for a club that I was in at BYU. One of the long term, major contributors got kick-banned without warning from the list for saying "rat's ass". (See the thread with the subject "Kick-banned / last request (fwd)]") Through certain methods I discovered that there is at least some evidence that the officers were nervous about him being exmormon now and took this as an opportunity to rid themselves of something they felt threatened them. I previously had respected at least some of that group since prior to my leaving I had been elected as one of them but after seeing their authoritarian and fundamentalist response to this incident, I've lost a great deal of respect for them. The previous administration, which I'd also been a part of, and the one before that were so wonderful and I admired them greatly. It's sad to see the decline of that club which had been so good when I first joined it. Seeing many of the posts on that mailing list now, it has almost become a microcosm of the BYU universe. There are, given, many intelligent people who spoke out against the banning, moreso than there would have been proportionally in the rest of BYU, but there is still a growing fundamentalist base.
Although I am not still subscribed to their mailing list myself, after hearing of my friend's situation I looked at the recent archives. I left after a big argument last spring on an off-topic thread about spirituality. Of course, given that it was a BYU list, they were very biased and most (not all, but vast majority) of the list was very closedminded and fundamentalist and I decided I didn't want to associate with them any further due to the decay. I discovered that one of the whackjobs that was involved in that debate back then is still just as crazy. Take a look at a few of his statements with regards to the ACLU (which I have been a dues paying member of for 3 years):
"A person would not be a member of ACLU without being seriously confused about
life." (http://uug.byu.edu/pipermail/uug-list/2005-March/017050.html)
"Their version of freedom is freedom to do evil - do drugs, drink alcohol, publish and view pornography, fornicate, and live in an environment free of any hint of religious restraint. I have never seen them do anything else except defend the lasciviousness that they call freedom. If you support them, you do not see the harm they do, and it is a mistake to write it off as just another 'different belief'." (http://uug.byu.edu/pipermail/uug-list/2005-March/017061.html)
Although I will readily concede that probably a majority of BYU affiliated people are not quite as psychotically authoritarian as this guy, I still assert that most of them subscribe to authoritarian ideas to a degree which far exceeds that which most of society deems acceptable. Well, I guess most of them did re-elect Bush, so maybe not.
Even though I spent 3 years living at BYU in Utah, hearing the stories and hearing what people say there still just seems unreal. For example, a man (who turned out to be doing a psychology research project for another university nearby) was kicked off of BYU campus for wearing a pink tanktop. This is not someone that signed the BYU honor code and so was not bound by their rules, but BYU wanted to protect their naïve and sheltered population from anything which might turn on a few switches in their heads. It never ceases to amaze me how many amazingly intelligent people in so many areas I have met or heard of there, yet nearly all just turn a blind eye to much of the world. It really is sad to me to see so many good people and what has potential to be a great school if restraints were removed drowned in conformity and authoritarian rule.
I think that people provide an anti-entropy force and that we are seeing the manifestation of this force. It isn't a reactionary force or attempt to balance the world out but an attempt to force order and rigidity upon everything in the world including other people. Brouwer said that language is for the imposition of will and Nietzsche said that life is a Will to Power. With the drive to control and a drive towards rigid order, everyone is constantly trying to suffocate each other. I'd like to believe there is an answer, but in a distributed, millions of parts system, though often it moves in unison like a dying beast to the music of power, is there really a way to solve it? Or must we, who see it, try to live the best we can and enjoy the world (both social and natural), knowing that as time goes by it is being destroyed?
Must we try to escape some cycle of reincarnation so that we do not have to suffer further in a dying world? What then of the beautiful people and the beautiful places and things? We may gain something better in some blissful nirvana, but to me it is like the story of Job. He got everything taken away, his family and servants killed, etc., but was given so much more back after proving his faith. However, can any number of new wives or children replace the ones he lost so that deities could play their game? What about memories and sentimental attachments to the buildings that were destroyed in pursuit of this test? Yes, yes, yes, I know that nothing is eternal, but can we just let something that is valuable to us go before its natural time? Yes, I hear you: we must escape the material world. I say to you then: go sit at a waterfall in Ireland, go walk through Muir woods in California, go hike Georgia's Providence Canyon, and then tell me that we should forsake these things. They have some mystical or spiritual significance which renders changes in us that somehow transcends the material world and I'm not willing to let go of something with that kind of energy so easily.
Friday, March 25, 2005
I think I'm feeling a mini-satori today. I'm just digging the ecstasy I'm feeling. Things are okay and I'm feeling at ease with the universe. I'm being true to what I believe and firm in my principles and it is giving me joy. Each person needs to find a good set of personal moral values (not prescribed from some pulpit) and just live in them. Then no matter what other people say to judge you, you are one with your solid pillar of principles and you're in sync with the universe.
It has always been the case in human history that there was a separation of labour and knowledge. Even in the early days of civilization it wasn't possible for one person to have in their head all of the knowledge that the society had. As the mass of human knowledge has increased exponentially in both quantity and complexity, this phenomena of specialization has only increased. Because of the simply overwhelming number of topics out there, each person chooses from the ether a few topics that interest them the most and they focus on them. In my life, this is the case as well, but instead of looking at each as isolated elements in the universe, I try to look at them systematically and apply concepts and forms across all of my interests and communications. I feel that the more concepts and words that I have as building blocks for expression, the more precisely and accurately I can communicate the idea that I mean. As Brouwer so fondly argued, language is only a tool for communication and imposition of will on others but that it could not directly reflect knowledge in intuition and is always subject to ambiguity and misinterpretation no matter how formalized. (See, that's an example of the cross-topic application of ideas as well as being relevant.) The problem with this combinatory knowledge is that with there being so many different combinations available, it is next to impossible to find people that have even some of the same combinations that I do and so it gets to the point that if I want to expand my knowledge of how the two areas interact there is uncharted territory ahead. It is frustrating sometimes to try to gain the knowledge when it seems nowhere to be found and see the limitations of our human sphere. It is, however, exciting to think that I have found the edge of explored territory where scattered here and there there may be people that have gone further, I know nothing of them. As much as we talk about the frontiers of space and the sea that haven't been explored and will yet yield much information and interesting new topics, those aren't things that I can get involved in. However, I can explore the limits of my currently constructed psyche. As is obvious, I can find them without needing chemical intervention, though there are other areas which that would aid my exploration of which may shed light on these other dark areas. One example I've found recently is in trying to find the essence of the french language. I keep combining knowledge and ideas of my french class and my second language acquisition class as well as my past philosophy classes. However, as neither my french teacher nor linguistics teacher have the philosophical background and neither the french teacher nor the linguistic teacher have specific knowledge of the other's field, I cannot get answers to the questions that I have that transcend a singular field but that I feel are necessary to understand to have a full comprehension of all fields involved. Sort of like the seeming paradox of the wave and particle theories in physics, I think that fields are best understood when looked at both as standalone and as a system interrelated to other fields. I think that each object or field has properties which are not dependent on other objects or fields as well as interrelated and contextual properties. I think this helps me to understand why it is that as each of us gains new knowledge, we only see how little we know. Each time we learn a new thing we all of the sudden see that it is related in some way to every other thing we know even if we don't know the nature of the relation. Limited in capacity, we will never understand all of the connections and as we grow in knowledge our angst will increase as the proportion of what we know to what we know exists but don't know will shrink until it is not substantially different from zero. As we shrink into oblivion, we will see all of the other people standing around cocky and thinking they know so much when we can see how little it is that they really know. In proportion to the whole or infinitude of what is out there, however, are we really any substantially more knowledgeable than they? It is easier to live with a limited idea of what is there and how small we are like they have. Is there any real reason to learn and thus open our perception to the wide range that is there? I can't explain what it is, but I think there is. I also don't think our being reduced to oblivion really takes anything away from our worth. In fact, I don't think that we really have to be worth anything to be happy that we exist and do things which give us joy. I think that it is important to have integrity and be a good person but that is not what I'm referring to by this concept of worth. I think it is important to not take advantage of other people and do good for others but again this is not the type of worth that I mean. What I mean is some universal worth where somehow we mean something to the universe. I don't need a loving God or any other transcendent force that I am worth anything to. Although a world without worth and where we are insignificant is filled with angst, the raw and unadulterated freedom that it gives is just fascinating and exhilarating and we get all of that all just because we exist. It's wonderful and amazing.
I just had the strangest thing happen to me. I was talking on the phone to my mother and she was talking about the situation with Jeremy getting arrested. She asked me my take on drugs and without hesitation I proceeded to expound my entire viewpoint on drugs including my high valuation of the motive in choosing to do them. I even admitted freely that I would consider trying drugs if I had a good reason (which I explained to her as mind expansion and having a different perspective on reality) and the right situation. I feel really weird having just admitted all of that yet not feeling at all nervous about it or as if it was something to hide.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Jeremy came back up to Athens today and when I got his message saying that he was planning to stop by my apartment to drop some things off, and especially when he told me that he was going to be staying at my apartment for a few hours, I felt invaded upon. I knew that if I had been expecting him then even if I were not there, I wouldn't have minded so much but there was something about it happening unexpectedly that triggered the invasion feeling.
I thought at first perhaps that it was due to my trust factor in Jeremy being questionable to low at the time (until I talked to him at my apartment today, I wasn't able to get the clarification of the issues that were causing the questionable trust) or perhaps that I was worried that he would assume as much control over the place as if he were still living here (use of the computer or food or shower without permission) which did turn out to be the case to some degree. However, none of those explanations quite sat right with what was really bothering me the most. My trust level in him was still high enough that I wasn't worried about property destruction/theft and most of the policiy violations I was worried about were relatively minor. So, I thought it out and came up with a theory that, while not perfect, satisfied my feelings on the issue, so I'll present the theory here.
To start, I need to define the terms I employ in the theory. While I've tried to make the definitions stand alone, some of them may be circularly dependent to get the meaning and rather than consider this a logical flaw, I just consider it indication that the definitions must be looked at systematically.
Terms:
- issue concept: Primitive issue concepts are specific behaviours, objects, and conditions. Complex issue concepts are sets which can contain primitive issue concepts and other complex issue concepts. (Examples: primitive object: wine bottle, complex object: alcoholic beverages, primitive condition: dirty dishes)
- social interface identity: the identity that you present to a specific other person. It may include only parts of your true identity or in some cases may be deceptive. Either way it is an artificially constructed interface.
- modes (bound): bounded modes are a type of scope of freedom. Each contains a specific list of what issue concepts are permitted and not permitted while in this mode. It also limits the intensity of condition issue concepts. If not specifically clarified, "mode" refers to bounded modes.
- modes (condition) Conditional modes describe what bounded modes the current environment actually falls into regardless of where the limits are set.
- class modes: The lowest common denominator (most restricted) of the union of several bounded or other class modes. For example, I may have a class node "family" which would list all issue concepts permitted and denied while any element of family is here, even if individual members have higher bounded modes. Class modes are dynamically generated by the elements and are not templates from which elements inherit properties.
- High/low modes: Because bounded modes are a collection of issue concepts, they can't really be compared linearly. They can be compared on ordinality of the set. For example if the permitted issue concepts in A mode are (x, y, z) and in B mode are (x, y), then A mode is higher than B mode. However, this does not suffice to compare (a, b) and (b, c) unless we assume that each issue concept can be quantitatively valuated or qualitatively compared with every other issue concept. While this is an unjustified assumption and could cause problems, for most applications of the theory, it isn't an issue because the deciding issue concepts are at least qualitatively comparable or not in conflict between modes.
Modes are determined for each person based on a number of factors:
- Subjective: which things I feel comfortable with with the person
- Historical construction: The issue concepts list will be limited by the social interface identity I have with the person
- External: There are certain issue concepts which may be taboo or unacceptable to the person
There is often overlap between these three factors, especially external and historical construction, however, it is important to note all three separately.
Now, for some examples of the applicability of this theory:
In the highest mode, which I will call Me mode, I am limited only by that which I subjectively choose. My choice of books on the shelf, items of clothing or underwear on the floor, number of dirty dishes on the counter, and intensity of smells is only that which I choose to handle. (however, just because the bounds are there does not mean I have to always be at the polar ends, only that they cannot be passed)
Now, suppose I define a Jeremy mode. Some issue concepts such as alcoholic beverages are still permitted compared to Me mode, however underwear on the floor or mess on the floor making it difficult to walk, or excessive smells are not permitted. It doesn't even have to be big issue concepts. Many minor things are further restricted in Jeremy mode than Me mode (because it is a relatively lower mode) regardless of the condition mode the apartment is in at any given time.
Now, suppose I define a Jeremy's dad mode. In this mode, issue concepts such as alcoholic beverages or drug related books are also not permitted. Further intensities of condition issue concepts may also be required.
Some issue concepts vary per mode and are outside of the range of higher/lower modes and are simply differences (however, in most cases they are still lower than Me mode because they are more restrictive). For example, female clothing present is an (complex) issue concept that is permitted in high intensities for modes for friends which acknowledge and accept my gender experiments. For those which acknowledge but are bothered by them, the intensity is lower. For those who do not know about them, they are not permitted in that mode.
Now, for an account of how this whole theory applies to my feelings of invasion today. When I am expecting company, I can change the current bounded mode to the bounded mode of the person or class mode of the group that is coming and then I can bring the condition mode in compliance with the dominating bounded mode. Surprises, however, present a problem because the condition mode may be higher than the bounded or class mode of the person or people that surprise me. If I am home, the modes may be similar enough that a quick shuffle will allow me to bring the condition mode into compliance. The problem that happened today with Jeremy coming is that his dad was bringing him and both were potentially going to enter into my apartment, therefore the condition mode of the apartment needed to be in compliance with the class mode that is composed of Jeremy mode and Jeremy's dad mode. Because I was away from the apartment and when I left I had been operating in Me mode, I did not know what condition the apartment was in to know if all of the issue concepts had been brought in line with the class mode group that was going to enter. Because bounded modes are only limitations, it was possible that the apartment was indeed within bounds, but because Me mode is higher than the class mode entering, I could not guarantee it.
So what it comes down to is that I was feeling invaded because I didn't know the intensities of the condition issue concepts and the presence of object issue concepts to ensure compatibility with the class mode (obviously with me not being there, behaviour issue concepts were irrelevant) and because I was powerless to assess and correct any deficiencies prior to their arrival.
Moral of the story: I need sufficient warning that I'm going to have visitors or else my stress and irritability levels will rise and if the conflict between condition mode and bounded mode is significant enough, it can create conflicts between me and the person or people.
Another interesting application of this theory is in description of this blog. Its bounded mode is the class mode with elements being the modes of all of my expected readers. It is therefore a lower mode than Me mode so it is not a completely free environment for me to write in. It is also lower than many of the individual reader's modes which explains why sometimes further information or different information is given to some people than is posted on the blog itself. The class mode of the blog however does not include as elements the modes of people that I do not expect to read it. This can cause and has caused, at least once in the past when I quoted someone out of a BYU newspaper, problems when the mode of a person that finds the blog is significantly lower than the class mode of the blog. One might argue that the bounded mode of the blog should be the class mode of the modes of all possible people that could find the blog, however, in that case you'd be looking at a blank page.
After a fairly significant period of not remembering my dreams, I finally remembered another last night and thought it was funny and strange enough to share, so here it is:
My family and I went to a very large and fancy entertainment facility. The reception hall looked like that of a very expensive hotel with all of the elaborate decoration and carpeting. We see that there are video game areas, gambling areas, bowling areas, and a swimming area amongst others and we go to the swimming area. When we get there we see multitudes of people as far as the eye can see but there are tons of pools of crystal clear water in a grid formation so that each group has their own pool. At one point while we are swimming, the dream shifts environment and the pool becomes extremely long and lit from the bottom with a dark night sky above. My sister Kelli swims and swims across it and I follow her. When she gets out at the other end I see that we are still in the entertainment place despite the distortion of environment and she gets out, goes into a little cafe, and buys a chocolate covered donut. I walk her back the long way to the pool and on the way there I find that my family is no longer in the pool but in the lobby and no explanation is given why they got out. We all head back to out little pool in the grid but when we get there we refuse to get in because the water is a completely opaque purple colour and the entire room is dark despite all of the people still congregated around their individual pools. At some point the room lights back up and our water becomes crystal clear again and we jump in. As we are in the air falling towards the water our bodies come apart into various pieces with an arm here, hips there and the dream shows our body pieces falling into the water from the viewpoint of an underwater observation point. Apparently unharmed by this as if it is just a perceptual change, we continue to swim and when we get out we are not broken into pieces. I get bored with the swimming and decide to explore and just dig this mass of people. As I get further in I notice that the area becomes basically a set of nude pools. I see one episode that I think his hilarious and run back to tell my family about. To get back, however, somehow I ended up having to walk through the gambling hall rather than through the pools. So then I finally get back to my family and tell them what I saw: Jessica Simpson (the celebrity) was crawling around on her hands and knees trying to find a place to rest, but every time she found a nook between two objects to rest in and backed up into it, some perverted man on the other side of the objects would stick his penis between them and try to put it inside of Jessica. Her repeated reaction to this invasion would be to jump like a startled pig and scuttle-crawl away in search of another resting spot. When I told my family what was happening, even my mom thought it was funny rather than being disgusted but said that that would hurt to have happen. When we left the facility, we were driving through an area of empty land looking for something to draw for an art project that we needed to do. We saw some wild chickens and I told Erik, who was driving, to pull closer to them and then we'd walk to them to draw them. Instead, he pulled up on a dirt road to right next to them and they became frightened. I hand signaled to my little sisters to go turn off the radio that was somehow blaring out of nowhere back on the main road. When we got out to draw them they were obviously too spooked and they entered into nesting holes in the ground which were much smaller than we had imagined they could fit through.
Monday, March 21, 2005
I was watching a movie, The Scent of Green Papaya, tonight and whether one detail I noticed was intentionally portrayed or just an idea in my head it inspired, I do not know. I noticed that the family in the movie, while growing poorer and poorer, even worrying about having money for food, never seemed to fear the loss of their home. This and other movies I have seen lately inspired me to wonder about land and real estate type property.
It seems that in some cultures and perhaps in the past, a family would have their plot of land and a house that was their own and was a source of stability to them. Yes, of course they could sell it and move, but other than worrying about home repairs or natural disasters, there never seems to be a sense that they will lose it. In our society, there are property taxes and all sorts of other government interferences with land and houses that one could not retreat to it and become self-sufficient. Our society now requires that you become involved in the economy. You have to play by their game and earn money to pay property taxes or else you can have it all taken away from you.
This dependency makes me afraid because it puts even the very basic needs that we all have in jeopardy if we refuse to participate in the established system. No longer can we just opt out and fend for ourselves or create our own system with our family or other like-minded individuals. The game of the establishment forces each one to be a player and sets hard rules which lure the unwilling player into many other dependent relationships, each adding more and more binds to the player. Though I would not go so far as to term in conscious conspiracy, it is, nevertheless, a self-perpetuating, cooperative destruction of the true freedom of man. We worry so much about political issues and all of these other problems in society but in our discussion, in our fights to change it, we are playing by their rules and as long as we are playing their game, they will win.
Let's listen to the tune of the harmonica while we think about it... "Fuck it" says Kesey.
Is that even still possible?
Saturday, March 19, 2005
I don't understand why romantic relationships are so sex-centric. At first glance, most would protest that this is just a result of American culture's love-hate relationship with sexuality. That, however, is a different issue from the one I am referring to. What I am concerned with is the unquestioned assumption of inherent sexuality in romantic relationships. Let me give a few examples of what I am talking about. First, the term "sexual orientation" is generally used to refer to the gender/sex of people that a person desires a romantic relationship with. However, what it really means is what gender/sex of people that a person desires sexual relations with. There is no term, and I would argue no concept, in society, or at least most people's minds to refer to a generalized desire for a romantic relationship without a sexual aspect. The romantic/love attraction and the sexual attraction are thought of as one and the same. A simple observation of society may lead one to believe that my argument is null. For example, the stereotypical woman seeks the stereotypical man who can provide for her and be a source of strength and attention. One may argue that this attraction can leave out the element of sexuality. My response is that in most cases, this woman would not be attracted to another woman who could provide a comparable level of material provision and protection and that the reason for this is that there is some sexual element. Another example of how sexuality is intertwined in romantic relationships is in the place of sex in a burgeoning relationship. Sex is not considered an independent element in this growth but is part of a continuum. It is often referred to as the "next step" or other terms which signify a linear progression and intensification rather than a general aggregation such as other experiences may be. Yet a third example is the place of sex in marriage. In many cultures/religions, a marriage can be nullified without a divorce if the marriage is not consummated or if one of the partners lacks the physical capacity to consummate the marriage. This is evidence that sex is a necessary component of a completely legitimate marriage as accepted by these cultures. A fourth example is that sex between two people that love each other is called "making love" and is considered the ultimate expression of love, which emotion is also considered a demarcating component of romantic relationships.
These examples clearly show that there is some inherent bond between sex and romantic relationships, at least in the construction which our society, and perhaps all others, accept. What then comes of conceptions in my mind of seeking relationships without regards to sex? Perhaps the Freudian extension of sexuality to include all physical contact, including cuddling, hugging, etc. can satisfy my mind while not technically transgressing the general view that this bond is present. On the physical side, however, is love really just an evolved sham creating romantic relationships as a ritual founded on sex, in which case the bond between romance and sex is immutable because romance is meaningless without its sexual foundation?
If the scientists are right about evolution and the general societal observations which seem to support it are valid, is sex really the foundation to not just romance, but all of life? It is universally accepted that for most types of organisms, new organisms are produced through sex. Throughout life, each of these organisms is driven toward the sexual act. Are the ancient Greeks right in saying that the goal of each person's life is happiness, or is it really just sex? Do people have sex because of their motivation to be happy or is happiness just an incidental byproduct which evolution has taken advantage of to lead more organisms to the act?
Although more veiled in some, and in some blatantly obvious, most, maybe all, human actions are oriented towards sex. Each person seeks the role that they are culturally taught will lead them towards it. Many men seek to be strong, to be successful, to be powerful, because these attributes they believe will make them more successful with women. Many women seek to be beautiful and seductive because they believe this will make them more successful with men. As has already been argued, the reason that they want to be successful with the opposite sex is bound with the pursuit of sex.
I think that most actions can be reduced to this motivation, however, what of those that cannot? What of monks and nuns who take vows of celibacy, including abstaining from sex? What of those, like me, that are ambivalent towards it and in some cases willfully make choices that reduce the possibility regardless of motivation? Is it merely a mentally constructed framework which is sufficiently dense as to obscure from perception the true motivation/interpretations of my actions?
I think that the very fact that I have made a post with this content validates my mother's assertion that I think too much. It also offers one explanation of her theory that my thinking too much impairs my interpersonal relations. My ambivalent relationship with sex could, as explained above, explain my lack of romantic involvement. My theory about most actions being oriented toward sex may help to explain why I avoid many other interpersonal relationships. As others are constantly caught up in these intricate action systems reducible to a drive towards sex, I subconsciously choose to avoid relationships with them either for fear of being pulled deeper into a current I am already uncomfortable enough within my own body or because I lack sufficient common interest with them due to my, possibly ill-founded, belief that my actions are not reducible to sex drive in the same quantities of those of many others.
Is there some higher motivation or are there other parallel motivations to explain the exceptional people or actions or am I merely fighting a losing battle by trying to deny my own true motivation by obscuring my vision with issues and confusions? I do not feel I can simply accept sex as the one true motivation because such realization would be greatly disturbing to me and would cause the complete dissolution of my constructed worldview including valuations of people, places, ideas, and even ideals. I tend to use this admittedly constructed worldview as the basis and content of my evolving identity. Why then can I accept, though trepidly, the idea of ego dissolution through religious or entheogenic methods but not the idea of ego dissolution through acceptance of sexuality as the base motivation?
On a lighter note, "you need to get laid" is not sufficient response to the ideas and concerns raised above.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
I don't ever want a romantic relationship or kids. It'll be hard enough having nieces and nephews. I'm so completely ambivalent towards love. On one hand I do think it is important for the world to have love and for people to love each other. The kind of love that we need is a true unconditional love to give everyone a place to rest and find sanctuary and to find comfort and acceptance of us even when we make mistakes.
I was just talking to my mum and at one point she mentioned how I have a strong network of people that love me in my direct and extended family (mostly on her side). When she told me this, I felt emotional, but not in a peaceful place of rest kind of way. It was more of an I know that they are trying and that they do love me, but it is no sanctuary. While I definitely feel their love, I can't just go to them to talk about my problems or my mistakes. I don't want to hurt them. I can't go to them with my worries, doubts, confusions about anything in my life because that would worry them, hurt them, or in some way change the pristine bond. In some ways I've changed enough without letting them in on it that there is some definite difference in what they think I am and what I actually am. I don't know why but I just can't fix the gap.
Even if I were to do so, I may find love but not the type of acceptance or encouragement that I want. If I were simpler or was content with a "normal" life then I could just play the family game and things would be fine but of course, this is me and with no conscious rebellion I still seek things in places that they don't or that are taboo. I can't play their games because I cannot follow the rules. Yet still without my choosing I am a player in the big game and many smaller games that fall within it. Because I cannot play correctly, all of the bonuses and rewards in the game are of another world and in mine are only simulacra (using the old definition, from wikipedia, "an empty form devoid of spirit, and descended to a specious or fallow representation"). I've been raised in their world with their rules and so many of my basic needs or desires are for things of their world, but because I am not of it, I grasp and things crumble.
Imagine a hallucinatory desert city full of wonders. You stare in beauty at all of the things and buildings and people but when you approach any of them or touch anything they vanish, or your hand goes through them, or it turns to sand and falls apart. You can walk around and pretend to be a citizen of the city but live unfulfilled because you can't truly be one. This world just out of your grasp seems to you to be some idealistic, imaginary reality but you see that for the others around you it is real. Not being a solipsist, you accept their existence but have to wonder what they are made of, what essence they have that you lack, and whether you'd really be willing to give up your unique position to be one of them if you had the chance. In some ways it would be the fulfillment of everything you have ever truly wanted but in some other, perhaps more important sense, you would be rejecting who you are and would cease to exist.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
In Jan Svankmajer's short Darkness/Light/Darkness which was included on the DVD of Alice that I rented, a clay man is slowly assembled piece by piece as various pieces come through the door. It starts with a hand and slowly builds up by adding the other hand, eyes, ears, a head, feet, etc. Being a european film, where they aren't afraid of sexuality, at one point a clay penis and testicle set walked in through the door and the hands attached it to the right place on the body. That gave me a mental representation of something I've noticed. Looking at the real penis/testicle assembly, it almost looks detachable from the way it hooks onto the body. I have imagined a parallel universe in which it was detachable and wondered what would be underneath. It would be neat if it could be detached and reattached as easily as the clay man in the video.
I was reading on this site and I came across a passage that I found really interesting. The author takes the traditional christian perspective that man and woman come together in marriage to form one spirit, or to be a whole unit. While I can agree to some extent, since it really is just the whole yin-yang thing in some form, I don't know if I can completely agree. Either way, it is the viewpoint I was raised on so I can relate somewhat. But the part that really hit me was when the author writes, "Cross dressing has made me more aware of what I feel I am lacking." It brings me back to one of my original dilemmas in the gender question that I never resolved... when I see a beautiful woman, am I attracted to her romantically or jealous of her? Is my gender deviance merely a way of trying to fill the void in the whole unit that I am supposed to be creating since I have been such a dismal failure at finding another person to fill it?
The best way to test it to find out would be for me to get into a healthy relationship with a girl that I loved. It couldn't be fake or else it wouldn't test what it would need to. The problem is that even in the days before I started exploring this area, I was quite unsuccessful romantically. As I explore further and discard concepts and representations of masculinity and take on feminine ideas and representations, such as the hair, the nails, and the earrings, I fit the masculine ideal that woman are, in general, attracted to, less and less, therefore narrowing the set of girls that could participate in my test.
Furthermore, as I continue to see the way relationships, both healthy and unhealthy, that the people I know have, I realize more and more that that isn't even something I really want despite the idealist, romantic idea of relationship I have in my head. The reality of them, even the good ones, is less than appealing. Another possible explanation for this shift in desire for relationship ties back into the parts of a whole idea. If, as the theory above asserts, I am trying to compensate for lack of a female companion by taking upon myself those attributes, am I not filling at least parts of the void in doing so? And with less void there, the need/desire and motivation to find someone else to fill the remaining void would decrease accordingly.
I find myself then in another catch-22. This is a theory that really needs to be evaluated before I can continue with some aspects because I think it is plausible enough that it could possibly be true. On the other hand, I can't erase the past and I've already taken a number of steps, mentally especially, that make it very difficult to be able to test the theory. And, perhaps the hardest part of all is that since the test requires another human being and the involvement of strong emotions on both parts, there are multitudes of other variables that could enter into the picture in carrying it out. For example, we know that hormones affect thought patterns and behaviours especially in high doses. Let us suppose that I was 100% female in the brain but still equipped with testosterone manufacturing organs. Physical, even non-sexual, romantic contact with a girl that I felt love towards, would send of races of testosterone and other hormones which would distort thought patterns and, being emotional, would cloud/destroy rational thought processes. At the end of that, what would it mean? Would it mean I was ever female in the brain? Would it mean I was "cured"? Would I ever return to the baseline point I was at? If not, where would it go? Chemical reactions could wreak all sorts of changes in the brain and thought processes and who knows where they would end up or if it is desirable to cause those changes? Of course, once the changes have happened they would appear very differently to me than they would before they happened. Would either feeling be more valid?
Which would be more indicative of how I feel essentially? Or, perhaps, is there no essence and all that there is is a continuum of momentary constructions of identity and subjective reality? In this case can we really make any assertation of identity or moral judgement and be able to generalize it to our life as a whole?
Sunday, March 13, 2005
In our three dimensions that we have we walk about freely, each of us in his or her own different direction in each of the planes. But, in the forth dimension, so often classified as time, we all walk lock-step and at basically the same speed in one direction. What would happen if there were a sudden global awareness of this neverending, step by step, but continuous march? If suddenly the ranks dropped out of military precision and scrambled like an Arab market... Suddenly so many perceptions would be invalid to us in our three dimensional frames of ideas. What would it look like? How would it feel? Would the panic and confusion be exhilarating?
Sometimes I think I'm there, right outside of the doorway. I just watched the brilliant surrealist Jan Svankmajer's rendition of Alice. It was filled with absurd combinations of objects to form living creatures. The absurdity of these things felt to me like I could hear the key in the door trying to turn, making clicking noises, but I stood in darkness grasping around to find it. When I feel so close to the door I begin to honestly believe that once I find the trigger, and my life is a search for it, that once I pull it then everything we see will just shatter like glass and melt into colours and in a moment we'll finally understand everything and just laugh and be and not be and this reality will fade a memory with no bad emotions and it'll be wonderful. I have to keep faith that some such trigger and door exists, for if it doesn't then this world really is just meaningless and futile. This may well be the case, but if it is, it cannot really be so bad (for would bad have meaning?) to delude yourself into some idea or goal that makes you happy? I think religions often serve this role but get caught up in some whirlwind power struggle and encage people rather than free them. Perhaps everyone should just spend their life in search of their own personal delusion. Afterall, are not the worlds of Interzone, movies, and Wonderland far more beautiful?
Saturday, March 12, 2005
I decided to get the apartment cleaned up a bit this weekend and while going through papers to get rid of I found one with a short little paragraph on it that I thought was a bit strange. I don't know when I wrote it or what the context was, but here is what it said:
Soon this gift will be taken from me and I will return to earth. The physical will become real. Pain will be real. Irritation will be real. Decay will be real.
Friday, March 11, 2005
Athens is emptying like it popped right off the earth into space where the cold space vacuum is just ripping everyone straight out. In chaotic patterns of bodies in cars they are flying off in specks and clusters all over the globe. My bus, desparate to stay in the core of the city and not get wrapped up in the chaos didn't even run its full route and I had to get out and walk part of the way home. It didn't bother me though; I dug it. The air was cool and the wind rushing all about in gusts and currents like the spacesuck was just stirring up the whole bloody thing. I walked across a small fielded area and it was empty like an african plain on the day of the apocalypse and I just felt the wind and just put my arms up in the air and yeah! I could see a few cars left in the parking lot but they were meaningless... a few people were around not yet ripped out, and I just kept walking like this empty world was all mine and it is okay. If I didn't have to come in and go back to the straight world of work I would have just stayed out there in the experience and dug it and been it.
I think I know why I laughed at everything that night and why I have at various times since then. It's quite simple really. It's a joke. The whole of reality is a joke. It's all completely absurd and we know it, but that isn't supposed to give us angst; it's supposed to be funny. Cosmo, or God if there is one or many, is the merriest prankster of them all and he/she/it/them got us good, they really did, and I'm gonna laugh my way through it all as I see so many other people still hoodwinked.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
The scorpions just about had me in a panic. I went to check on them since I hadn't seen them in a few days and when I tilted up the cave and shown the black light in I couldn't see any green. Finally I tipped the cave up high enough that I felt it was safe to grab it and pull it up. I halfway wanted to get pinched or stung just as a quick knowledge that yes, they were definitely still in there. When the cave was out, there was just substrate. I slide a fork through to make sure they weren't dead and buried but couldn't find them anywhere. I thought "scorpions can't just vanish." Finally I was down to one place left to check, the empty checkbook box that had a tiny door on it that I had put in as a cricket haven so that the crickets would have a place to hide during the day but that had a door too small for scorpions to fit through. When I lifted it up, lo and behold, there were both of them hiding in there. I sprayed the mister around to humidify and nailed them once and they definitely reacted. Appparently they had burrowed their way under the wall and were both in there. Nothing is left of the last cricket but Faustus has a very large belly now so he must have finished it off. I tore the door bigger so that they can get out without burrowing and so that I can check more easily that they are in there without disturbing them as much.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
I think that we all work toward an ideal, subconscious form of ourselves, both internally and externally. The form is subjective and each person will have a different ideal. It is like getting into shape... a person starts at one state and works toward a more ideal (in his/her mind) state. For me, this idea plays into the gender play I've been doing. My ideal, though I cannot know precisely what it is, involves at least some elements of femininity. One problem is, however, that labels such as "girl" or "woman" are misguiding and may cause me to try to fit too much into a predefined mold rather than just exploring the aspects of it and taking those which are closest to the ideal form. There is one thing that differentiates me from a transsexual person in this matter. It hails back to the Utopia vs. Return to Eden debate. The common transsexual believes that s/he is the destination gender and seeks to bring the body into this state from its deviations. For him/her it is a return to Eden as they pull back into something they believe is more natural and original mentally. For me, my vision is of a Utopia. I do accept the status quo as whatever I am an will not try to say that I am something and that I need the body fixed to be in line with it. Things are as they are in the current and I simply am. The problem comes in the fact that I feel compelled to change it, to progress, to build towards the Utopia state which may, or may not, involve some of the same physical manifestations as the Return to Eden gender variant individuals. I don't think the clinicians, and society at large really, is accepting of the Utopia viewpoint because it isn't a problem in the narrowest definition that needs to be fixed. In a wider view of it, however, it very well could be. One problem, no matter the viewpoint, is that both Eden and Utopia are mythical places and are very likely impossible to fully reach even in the analogy that I am using them.
Think about the graph of a chemical reaction. There is an initial peak that must be overcome in order to cause the reaction and it is a catalyst that helps in that process. Now, envision a person in empty space standing at the beginning of that reaction graph where the graph is just represented as a white line in space. Further, imagine a whole series of these lines going in radial symmetry around the foot of the person. The person is surrounded by potential reactions that could occur and change his/her place in the universe and his/her identity by the addition of any number of different catalysts to trigger any number of different reactions. That person is each of us in some abstract sense. Most people are content to remain in the little hollow created by the lines and only occasionally a reaction is triggered which upsets the little nest. What I want, but fear like anyone else, is a whole bundle of catalysts to come and just trigger many of them at the same time. Through the escalation of so many reactions at the same time the energy will not simply flow over and down one line but up many of them all at the same time propelling me out of the nest and into empty space. As I fly I can look back and see that not only will I have transcended the nest, but that the reaction lines that have catapulted me are falling to pieces and dissolving away as the very essence and meaning of them is destroyed by transcending the nest.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
For some strange reason a lot of things have been funny tonight. For the naysayers, no, I'm not on drugs and I didn't even have any alcohol tonight. Things were just funny. I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest again tonight and at the most random moments I just burst out laughing. I went outside to stand for a few minutes of fresh air and it was freezing cold (which, by the way, seems to enhance visual perception and clarity for me before it freezes my ass off) and as I stood thinking about how cold it was I just laughed at it. Then I came back inside to read emails and saw one that normally would have irritated me but all I could do was laugh at it. Now if only I knew whether I'm happy about something or whether I am coping with some stress, that would be useful information.
I stayed up too late last night and so figured that I was tired enough that I could fall asleep quickly without the valerian. I was wrong. My mind set about conjuring up all sorts of thoughts making it difficult to fall asleep. If it weren't for the fact that I always need to get up at a reasonable hour I would love it when this happens because these thinking periods are often my most insightful times. Last night I chose to sit up and write down some of the thoughts as they came so I'll share the fragments that I wrote down.
- Mormons have a very business oriented worldview. Their church is run like a business and their leaders are mostly ex-businessmen. Within the culture, aspiring to business is a high goal with emphasis on material success. When I cut my hair to go to BYU, I lamented it knowing that it was gone forever and that my days of it long were a thing of the past. I knew that I would have to keep it cut at BYU and that when I exited there and entered corporate America I would have to keep it short because of the conservative dress codes of businesses. As time has gone by I have seen how narrow-minded that idea is. There was always this idea that careers where long hair would be permitted as a general rule were outside of the world of business and that the workers are losers and it was stigmatized. I have become much more liberal in recent years, both politically and especially socially. When I look at their worldview, all I can do is laugh. Hell, when I look at most people's worldviews, all I can do is laugh. People see too many divisions in the world and value too much their involvement in one specific compartment they have defined. They place so much importance on all of these divisions and constructs. It causes drama, discrimination, and a big waste of time climbing imaginary ladders. Open your eyes, see that these structures and walls that you hear chants of all around you aren't there, and walk in the open field that is real. Drop out.
- Sometimes I think that I need to find love so that I can better understand other people. When I hear about things like the Clinton scandal or people being jealous or cheating in relationships, I laugh. I laugh not at the act itself but at the reaction of other people. To me what they do is no big deal and people focus too much on the lower constructs. Shit people, just exist. Maybe if I ever get a bite from the love bug and have the emotional involvement I may better understand it all.
- As I have thought over the gender thing, I have come to a conclusion. I can't be transsexual or transgender or anything like that because I lack the constructs to define it. Defining things into categories and units is a reductionism of the world. It doesn't make any sense at all.
- Society is not the free flow of information conveying a natural state. It is manufactured. It is manufactured by media, public relations, public consensus, etc. Despite my love of the books of Ayn Rand and the idealistic version of her philosophy, I'm starting to see the ills of capitalism in a big way. It isn't just the environmental pollution. It is the wholesale destruction of human soul. It destroys cultures all over the world including America by destroying land, manufacturing want, swaying values, creating debt, focusing on money rather than product, and global assimilation through globalization. People no longer create and define themselves but are created as consumers by capitalist society. I was envisioning an art project last night to describe it. I would create a life sized papier maché model of a human being using dollar bills and advertisements as the crust and leave a hollow interior visible through openings in the piece. Inside of the head I would put what looked like a rotten piece of fruit with an eye painted on it to represent the third eye.
- I was thinking about whether I should send an exit letter to get out of the mormon church officially or not. In a material sense it really doesn't matter much but I think in a spiritual/mental sense it might. I think it is important for a person to have both roots and wings in life but sometimes there are artificial tethers holding a person back in some mental sense and these should often be severed. I think my involvement with the mormon church even just through this invisible tether is holding me back in some mental sense even though it has no material power over my life.
- Anything allowed to sit undisturbed too long either cements or stagnates and must be discarded. Leaving any situation or idea alone in the minds of people will cause them to fossilize it in their minds and then the social ethereal ocean that we swim in grows a wall. Too many of these and we become enclosed and cannot move and we will eventually be molded and crushed. Many people walk around in this state of constriction. It is harder to break down the wall when it has solidified than to continually thrash and prevent its full construction. With so many bricklayers though, is it possible to prevent the eventual enclosure and destruction? Another problem that happens is stagnation. When those around you do not thrash hard enough, the walls around them grow and define their path and role and they cement and the ideas and creativity in your area of the ethereal ocean stagnate and mental rot is introduced. You must get away from these places or the rot will overpower you and the walls will enclose you too. In the 60's there were havens where the ideas and expansion flowed like wildfire like at Millbrook and on Furthur and at Berkeley. Are there still havens left in the world or has the world all become enclosed leading to a slow, choking stagnation of everyone on it?
Friday, March 04, 2005
Okay, my initial small change to the template for the images didn't really seem to help at all in my tests so tonight I made a fairly major change to how the images get loaded so it shouldn't try to process buzznet until after the page has loaded. This should help my readers be able to see the text more quickly in the event that the buzznet servers are being slow (as often happens). The bravenet button was more complicated so I left it as is for now so there could still be some delays due to it but hopefully it won't be as bad. The new method is pretty complicated so let me know if it doesn't work on your browser.
I made a very minor change to my page template today having to do with how the images are loaded on the side bar. I'm hoping that it will fairly significantly aide in the page load speeds of my blog. If it works faster for you or has any problems, let me know.
My efforts do not always go in vain. Today in french class, as we answered questions we were asked to write the answers on the board. When I sat down after answering the final question, my friend Tina told me that I had the nicest handwriting up there. I still have a lot of work to go on it but at least there is noticible progress. Now only if some of the girls I asked a while back would hurry up and send me those scanned handwriting samples...
Thursday, March 03, 2005
I've been thinking a lot about dots lately. Here is a symbolic story of their origin:
I planted little black seeds to grow the tree of life. As it grew it sprouted blue flowers that opened to release pollen. The pollen floated out of the flowers as little coloured dots drifting into the air. Seeing the beauty of the pollen I wanted to taste the nectar but the plant withered and died into a puddle of organic matter before I could partake of it.
So lately with the spring dust in the air and the blood cells floating across my eyes when I am tired, I see dots in the air and I relate them to that story. As I sat by the health center waiting for my bus I just looked at the grass. With so many pieces of grass on the lawn, at any given time several of them would move or twitch. Seeing all of these seemingly random movements out of the periphery of my vision, they appeared as little dot switches going on as they move and then off again to be quickly followed by more somewhere else. I imagined that these were coloured dots and then I wondered what it would look like if the whole world, everything that I saw could for a moment look as if it were constructed completely out of colour changing dots. I imagined how much work it would be if the wind that was moving the grass was conscious, how much mental effort it would take to coordinate the moving of each blade of grass in symphonic patterns. Then I imagined what would happen if not only the wind were conscious but if each individual blade of grass had consciousness. It is mind-blowing that the world can work in such intricate patterns with so many things going on at once with or without a consciousness ascribed to anything. I thought back to my story and about how often the seed metaphor is used to describe planting ideas into people which then can take hold and grow. The idea is used in religion and education amongst other places. These meme seeds when they grow they produce idea plants in people and the pollen comes out like spores in the form of words to memetically spread and grow. Then I thought about how the far eastern religions talk about the world in a quantum sense where the material world is not real but is just the vibration of energy appearing like a holograph. I thought about how physicists cannot decide if light takes the form of a particle or of a wave and how this could apply because the dots of physical patterns or memetic ideas could be like the particle form of the waves of energy that form the world that we see. It's incredible.
Lately I've been feeling the drive to go on a lot of purge cycles. I guess it is what is termed cleaning out the closet. I keep feeling the need to go through everything around me and integrate into my current system those things which are repositories of my past such as the boxes I have brought from home or various folders on my computer. I've also been going through documents and I find some related to a class I had in the past or about a specific event in the past that I will not relive. I went through my entire buddy list and I saw the names of people who apparently do not use the names anymore and have not signed on in years. Each of these pieces of information that I destroyed pained me rather than giving me release. When I would delete people's names from my buddy list, for example, I'd think that that little screenname represents someone in my past who I knew and loved and have memories about but who I will probably never see again and in 5-10 years I may well have forgotten that they even exist. Change is necessary but it really does pain me to see these people and events and things that I loved from my past disappearing. When I find the records on the computer, sometimes I feel like I should keep those few bits of information to keep some tie to the past that they represent but I feel compelled to delete them and so I do. Perhaps it cleans my world to remove all of these fragments and perhaps it makes me better overall but it also pains me and forever destroys some little part of me. Sometimes I feel that I am spiraling into oblivion. Each of my purge cycles that I go through throughout time involves a restructuring of my system to integrate into it all of the repositories I come up with. However, it feels like my scope is decreasing in size and that eventually there will be nothing. The number of repositories decreases as things integrate into the whole and it feels almost like reserve supplies from years past are now being used up like fossil fuels and that once they are gone I will have nothing but an engine block representation of my life that will just putter and stop. As I continue through my life I find my goals and interests are narrower than ever I had imagined. They intertwine around some centre which is me rather than splay off into the distance to attach to the stars. Many of the things I want are things that come out of my childhood and youth. I have wanted scorpions since I was young and I have them. Ever since my family switched to hamsters from gerbils so many years ago I wanted them back as a link to the past and now I have them. My hands are waving in the air trying to grab onto each of these things I have wanted for so long as some way to stay afloat and grabbing them and very often finding only sadness as their accomplishment shortens the list. It is all just shrinking, shrinking until maybe one day *poof*.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Today, throughout the day, I'd been hearing reports from people about snow falling in Athens but I hadn't seen any throughout the morning. However, when I walked out of my biology lab there was indeed snow falling. The scarcity and fleeting nature of the tiny ice forms almost convinced me that they were a mere hallucination. Their visage to my eye lasted only seconds like the little blur you see when a blood cell floats across your eye. It was only when they would, by chance, land upon the ground or someone's hair without their form changing quickly that you could see evidence that they were really there. The sun soon emerged from behind a cloud and these tiny frozen phantoms all but vanished. While I sit here at the computer and glance out the window, occasionally I see 4-5 slightly larger flakes floating through the air looking like petals from a flower whirled across the world by the wind.