On A Dynamic World

I play a lot of video games and one of the major limiting factors in games today and really from their inception, is the fact that no matter how pretty the world is, it's ultimately scripted.  The creatures and characters within the world move along a predefined path, even if that path is very wide.  You'll notice it whenever you try to do something out of bounds of what the programmers intended.  Sometimes you'll find the thing you're interacting with to repeat itself because it simply doesn't know how to respond beyond what it's been told to accept.  With artificial intelligence there is a test to see if a machine has the ability to think for itself.  So far no computer system has completely passed this test, although many have tried.  It's hard to say just when we'll find ourselves surrounded by machines that think.  The question is though, if we were to turn a test like that on ourselves how well would we actually do given a long enough testing period.

Each of us lives our life based on the experiences we've gained over time.  We have the capability to learn from these experiences and with any luck our mistakes in the past help prevent mistakes in the future.  If you're anything like me though, it doesn't really stop the mistakes from happening though.  Instead it's just a variation on a theme over and over again.  Could this be because we ourselves are limited by life parameters?  A computer has no idea how to respond to a question about theoretical physics if it has no experience with it.  It has to be programmed into its system for it to have any understanding.  Our brains are very much the same way.  If you were to ask me a question about theoretical physics I'd do roughly as well as a computer that could speak.  So let's say both the computer and I are given some experience and we're now able to respond to questions regarding the theory of everything.  Our answers would again be limited to the knowledge we've been given combined with our previous experiences.  As a rational creature, I may be able to make intuitive leaps in logic based on seemingly unrelated fields of study.  The computer would also be able answer in its own way.  Given time though, eventually we'd both come to the upper limit of our knowledge and experience.

When we meet new people for the first time we may find them refreshing and interesting because at least initially, they are outside our experience.  What they say or do may seem like a mystery until we get to know them better.  As we get to know them we can start to predict how they'll react to certain situations.  If we spend a really long time with them we may start to know them better than they know themselves.  The things they do become almost repetitive.  That's not exactly a bad thing either.  No person has endless experience, even if we wish we did.  On a long enough timeline everyone will come to a point where the well is dry.  If that's the case then just how dynamic are we compared to some video game character or robot that's being tested for its ability to think on its own?  We look a computer system and decide through a complex series of tests that it doesn't think and yet if we were to extend the same kind of test to ourselves it's likely we'd eventually come to a point where we'd be hard pressed to say if we have intelligent behavior.  What if there is something else out there in the universe that has its own standards of determining if something is intelligent?  Something with standards so far beyond what we can comprehend that we'd be looked at roughly the same way we look at a calculator.  Yes we can do simple tasks, but we can't "think".  Does that call into question our abilities or our standards?  Just how sure can we be when our only basis for intelligent thought is how everything compares to our own minds?

On Escape

I love television. There are many times where I hate that I love it. For as long as I can remember it was this wonderful other world where anything could happen. Well happen within budget for television. When I was little I would wake up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons. Even though it was Saturday and the sun wouldn't be up for hours, I was awake and excited to see what would happen on this week's episode. Thinking about it, I can tie specific television shows to the various times of my life. The Flintstones are forever associated with summer in Wisconsin, where I had to barter with my grandmother over just how much television time I could have before it "rotted my eyes." Happy Days kept me company right after I moved away for college. It's probably not exactly healthy to have television shows be so inherently embedded in my life, but they are my escape. That got me thinking about how just about everything in our lives are a form of escape from something.

I should preface this whole idea with the fact that I don't exactly believe that escape is a bad thing. It's most likely something we all need at various times in our lives. It can almost be equated to sleep, a necessary recharging in order to maintain any semblance of normalcy. Sleep itself could be considered an inescapable escape from reality. So is it possible that everything is just a means to get away from something else? As I've mentioned before life requires death in order to live. Maybe we need to constantly be escaping from something in order to maintain some kind of balance. Television is an escape into another world. One that's funnier, or scarier, or more interesting, or at least better lit than my own life. Music is there to drown out the silence. Children help us outlive our own mortality. Vacations allow us to leave our every day lives.

The thing about escapes is that they are our chance to break free, even if it's only for a little while. Most of the time we have to come back. Back to the silence. Back to the reality that some day we will die. Back to our daily life. And to be honest maybe it's not such a bad thing to have to return. In a strange way the fleetingness of any escape makes it that much sweeter while it does last. Although what would life be like if there was no need for escape?

On Divergence

There have been several movies where some mysterious stranger appears and gives the main character a chance to change a singular moment in their life. Then they get to see how different things would have been if they had gone left instead of right. What would life be like if they had married that girl they loved in college? How would it be if they had not chosen money over family? Usually in the movie it's done to help show the main character the importance of what's missing in their life or what they only think is missing. Each of us has those moments where it's very obvious that a choice was made and our life went down one path rather than another. Life is made up of nearly endless choices and it's hard to know how the seemingly little choices could have a big effect on our lives. Still there are those big choices that would have lead us to drastically different places, if only we had decided to choose something else. The thing is that those changes in what we choose could have erased the life we knew. Which also means that there are an almost unlimited number of lives out there that we never lived.

Now I suppose it's a moot point to even think about because none of us can ever really go back and take a different route. Even if we're given a chance to retry something it's already tainted by our knowledge of at least one potential outcome. In that regard we only ever get a chance to make a choice once. Anything after that is a different choice because not only is the situation technically different, so are we by that point. There are those that say knowing what they know now, they'd still do it the same way, but again that's only because we know that even when times are difficult that things will eventually work themselves out. Every one of our decisions and experiences create the person that we are at this precise moment. Changing even one of those is essentially changing us in some way.

At least for me I start slowly working my way backwards as I examine the various divergence points in my life. What if I hadn't taken that phone call a few months ago? I wouldn't be where I am now. What if I had never quit my job to move to the desert for school? I could be somewhere wondering what my life would have been like if I had taken a chance and ditching the known for the unknown. What if I had picked love instead of the practical? My life would be a million miles away from where it is at this moment. The questions can go on forever because there will always be those points where we're aware of the choice we could have made. Or no matter those choices I could have ended up where I am now. Granted I wouldn't be the same person I am now, but maybe we are where we're supposed to be and no matter our choices we end up in the same spot eventually, only the journey to that point is different.

If there are an infinite number of possibilities all existing at the same time, then it's possible that somewhere out there a version of yourself is wondering what life would be like if they had picked the choices you went with. That would mean you're living the life someone wishes they had but can never have.

On Under the Sun

It's been said that "This has all happened before, and it will happen again." That can be kind of a strange concept for some people because we'd like to believe that our lives are distinct and what we're doing isn't something that's been done before. The thing is though it's entirely possible that there is nothing new under the sun. If you think about it everything we do now is influenced by what we've done before. I'm not just talking about a single person, but the whole of humanity. It's next to impossible to escape the influence of not only our world's history, but our genetic history as well. If that's the case then could it be there are no more truly unique ideas left to be had?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure for the person who is out there right now dreaming up things the world has never seen before it must seem like no one else has had the same thought. There are close to seven billion people on the planet and each of us has a entirely exclusive view on the world. So while each of us experiences the world slightly differently than the person next to us, the law of large numbers implies that there is a small chance that somewhere out there someone may be thinking exactly what you're thinking right now. Granted that person may have already thought of it long before you were born or they could be a baby at this moment and will grow up to eventually have the same exact thought that's going through your mind at this moment. If that's possible for one person and a single thought, then wouldn't that mean every thought or idea can also fall under the same concept? Is everything we do, say, or think just a derivative of what's already happened before?

Do you remember the first time you fell in love? Maybe you had heard about it before or even seen it with people around you, but it wasn't until you experienced for yourself did the notion really take hold. Depending on your age it could have felt like not only were you experiencing it for the first time, but no one else in the history of the world felt what you were feeling at the time. The thing is though, people were falling in and out of love for thousands of years before you caught up to it. At the time it was the first moment you ever felt anything like it and for some of us every relationship is just a variation on that initial feeling. Even our idea of love is guided by how we felt the first time. If that's the case then can love be a new feeling or just a recap of our first experience?

There is an old myth about a patent office commissioner, who on the eve of 1899 becoming 1900 said that everything that could be invented had already been invented. That there was nothing left to discover or create. Humanity had reached its apex. It's an old story told usually to prove that no matter how far we think we've come, there is still more to discover. I don't disagree that a hundred years from now people will see and experience things we couldn't even dream of. The people a century from now may look at those wonders and take them for granted, in very much the same way we regard email or traveling thousands of miles in a matter of hours. Those things are commonplace to us now, but there was a time when they were only dreams. Still an email is just a message from one to another. The means of delivery have changed, but not much else. Those boys were the first to have controlled and powered flight and flew over a hundred feet. Within ten years airplanes were delivering packages. Within twenty years there were commercial flights for those willing to pay. The Wright Brothers are given the credit for being the first and many took their ideas and went to the next step. Still the Wright Brothers weren't the first to conceive of the idea of human flight. That had been dreamed up long before they got around to their tests.

There is an idea about the universe known as eternal return. The general idea is that the universe is made up of a finite amount of matter. The matter has a limit, but time itself is unlimited. From this the universe has no starting or ending state, because the matter that makes up the universe is constantly changing its state. Since the number of possible changes is also finite, eventually the same state will recur. This really all means that time is not linear, but it's more cyclical. All that is a complex way of saying that the universe is in a constant state of recurrence. What has happened will happen again given enough time. The whole thing can call into question the idea of free will. If everything has already happened or been done before by someone else under similar circumstances then are our choices really our own or just a matter of eventuality? Then again maybe it doesn't matter if it's all been done before and will all be done again afterwards. For us, at this moment now, it's new and unique. Maybe that's the only thing that matters.

On Ancient Evil

I really enjoy the concept of the supernatural. The idea that there are things out there that are just beyond our comprehension is somewhat appealing to me. In a way it gives me a bit of comfort to know that there is more to life than just what we're presented. Maybe those in charge don't have all the answers. Maybe science, which is quickly becoming the new religion, can't explain everything out there. There is mystery left in the universe and maybe there always will be. There is a flip side to that comfort though. In the vast ocean of space and time there must be things out there in the darkness that we would consider to be evil. In thirteen billion years there must have been things that have come before us. Things that we couldn't comprehend. The motivations of these things would seem evil to us. However, if you think about it, our actions would seem evil to an ant when we destroy their homes and lives for our own benefit or just because we can.

Before we get into that there is question regarding people. There are really two schools of thought on the nature of humanity. The first is that people are basically good, who want to do good, but occasionally do bad things. The other is that people are essentially bad, who do whatever benefits them most or what they feel they can get away with without consequence, but occasionally do good things. Maybe it's possible that everyone is one or the other, but there is most likely an overlap between the two. There is an ever-present argument about nature vs nurture. Some believe that people are simply products of their environments. Others feels that most behavior is innate and that we're born with certain predilections for evil. Of course with anything there are exceptions that prove the rule and exceptions to every exception. Not everyone who experiences sexual abuse perpetuates the cycle of violence so it's not always easy to identify where the root of evil comes from. I do believe that give a person enough horrific experiences they're going to adapt to those situations to a point where that's all they know. Their response to those experiences can be equally horrifying, but for that person it's all they can think to do in order to survive. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Then maybe evil is also.

The idea of evil can be somewhat subjective even though people often have a pretty black and white notion of how things are supposed to be classified. Killing a baby; probably evil. Torturing a puppy; most likely done with evil intent. Genocide; unquestionably evil? Taken out of context just about anything can be misconstrued. The people performing genocide may not think what they're doing is evil. In their mind they may believe they're purifying the world. Several religious groups have attempted it and at the time they were doing what they thought was right, even if their methods were brutal. The Serbians and Albanians have been in a centuries old conflict with each other. I'm guessing both sides see the other as the evil one. Both sides have done horrific things to each other, some as revenge for past aggressions. If given the opportunity to permanently remove the other side, it's very likely they would take it, regardless of the cost. In that situation is any one side in the right or is the whole thing just blanketed in evil? If someone killed a family member of yours would it be considered evil to burn down their house in retaliation? What if you found out that your family member had stolen from them in the first place? There is a saying that violence begets violence and in that evil must predicate more evil.

If you're like me, then you like to eat meat. I eat meat because it's delicious and more or less good for you. We were given canine teeth for a reason and it wasn't for just tearing into a piece of broccoli. When I eat a steak I don't feel that I'm doing anything wrong. For me it's a necessary part of my diet so that I can survive. Could I get mostly the same nutrients from somewhere else? Maybe, but I don't want to. A strict Hindu may see my actions as evil because I'm consuming a sacred animal for my own benefit. Even a vegan could look at my diet and say that I'm evil for putting my life above another living creature when we both deserve to live on this planet without harm. Now while I don't agree with either assessment of my choice of food, I do understand how it could appear to someone else. It goes back to the point that evil may be tied directly to perception and might not be an absolute. Is evil simply a concept used to classify actions based on how we specifically feel about them?

Going back to the beginning though, one has to wonder about the things that are out in the world, things that we don't fully understand, which could be seen as being evil. Many religions have some figurative concept of evil such as the Devil, which could be just a representation of human sin or opposition to God. In many cases there is this idea that there is malevolent being working to spread evil for the sake of evil. Maybe both theories are partially correct. As I mentioned, evil may only be question of perception of the act. If you were brought into a world that only knew evil then would it be possible for you to see something that is good as being the opposite of your sense of right and wrong?

There are plenty of entertaining stories out there about people fighting evil. It's pretty common in movies, television shows, and books for characters to face off against some great evil. The demon hunters have been fighting monsters for four seasons, eventually the battle has been ratcheted up to a point where fighting a rogue yeti just isn't going to hold the audience's attention any longer. So they're put up against something larger, such as Lucifer himself. Of course the stars of the show are going to somehow win. It doesn't matter that Satan has been around since before creation, these two plucky anti-heroes will manage to beat him back to hell. Since it's a piece of fiction we accept it, depending on how well it's written. If you think about it though it borders on the unbelievable though. Something that was ancient before the Earth was even formed would have millenniums of experience that we couldn't even grasp. How is someone with roughly twenty five years of life going to sort out how to outfox something like that?

If there are things like that in the world then they've probably been here long before we arrived and will be here well after we've shut off the lights. There is some good news though. If evil exists then good also exists out there. Both could just be ideas we use to describe its impact on the world around it. Or they could exist as something more and something we will always wonder about. That can't be a bad thing.

On Dreams

When you're dreaming, are you alive? That question has always stuck with me because it got me wondering where we go when we're dreaming. I suppose technically we're still here, but we've gotten lost in our own minds. In most cases we can't control our dreams and are more or less just along for the ride that our subconscious has laid out in front of us. We have no control and it's essentially required reading. Our minds need to dream in order to function properly. There are a lot of theories on what our dreams mean or how they're constructed. It could be they're simply a mash-up of our conscious thoughts combined with those tiny thoughts that hide in the back of our minds. Together they are molded into some kind of narrative that we are able to understand. Well maybe not always understand, but at least recognize. Some people believe they have a handle on what specific images mean in dreams and maybe they're right, but all things mean something else to the individual. Animals in a dream may typically represent something for most people, but for someone with unique experiences regarding animals, it may mean something entirely different. Granted we all have unique experiences with anything in the world so then how can there ever be one set reference guide to what something in a dream means?

Notice that no matter how vivid your dream is, it tends to fade quickly once you're awake? It's almost like you're not supposed to bring it back with you to the conscious world. It was only meant for that time when you're asleep. There was a time when I tried to capture my dreams in a journal when I woke up, hoping to look back on them with eyes that were awake. The problem is that for me a lot of my dreams can't be relayed into words. They tend to be images shaped by thoughts and emotions and attempting to put them into words would be an exercise in futility. Plus not every night resulted in some seemingly cosmic journey through my deepest thoughts. Some nights were mundane, just like there are some days that pass by with little to look back on. So once again the dreams are only visible at night like fireflies.

Have you ever attempted to explain a dream to someone else? It's a lot like the problem with writing them down, there is so much lost in translation. You may get the basic plot out, but the impact it may have had could be lost if they don't share the same ties to the subject matter as you. There is a difference between reading about a tornado's destruction and living through one touching down near you. You can never fully share the whole experience with someone else unless they've been through it as well. So what's really going on when we're dreaming? Is our mind trying to tell us something? Are the thoughts of the day being sorted out after hours in a way that will make sense to us in the morning? If so then why do dreams seem to lead to more questions?

I mentioned how dreams fade, but there are a select few that stick with us for some reason. Life is made up of experiences that we carry with us. Some of them are good and some of them are bad. We carry them all with us, but we only consciously remember a handful in comparison to all the memories we have stashed in our mind. What's special about those experiences that we choose to remember? In some cases it seems like there is no choice at all. We simply remember it while other things get filed away, even if we'd prefer to keep them up front for easy access. I've talked about how perception shapes memory and what we remember may not always be exactly what happened. In the end it may not matter what exactly happened because we lack the ability to go back and verify one way or another. So we're left with only our memories to guide us through life, regardless of if they're accurate or not. If you were to try and classify experience it could be narrowed down to a few categories: real & factual, real & perceived, or manufactured. I'm simplifying of course, but ultimately the events in our life once they pass can be broken down into those groups. You can look back on yesterday and review the events of the day and say to yourself everything was real & factual. Next week, next month, or next year could you still say that? Somewhere along the way those memories get pushed aside to make room for new information. So what we once were so sure of as being real & factual get shifted into real & perceived without us even knowing it. There could eventually come a time when even that is called into question and we start to wonder if it was all just manufactured by our minds. If that can happen with so-called "real" memories then what's to say that the opposite couldn't be true? What started out as a manufactured experience eventually is regarded as something that was real. After a certain amount of time can our brain even tell the difference anymore? In a sense the dream becomes reality.

There is another kind of dream though. It's not the kind that we only experience when we're asleep. It's the hope we have for ourselves. It's something we wish for, even if it's not achievable. In some causes those kinds of dreams can haunt us long after we originally thought of them. They can be the driving force for some people's lives, which could be a good thing. Once someone looked up at the sky and wished they could fly. Instead of just accepting that it was a dream, they went on a mission to make it a reality. It just shows how powerful our minds can be when a simple idea alters the world around us. The sad part about these kinds of dreams is that they too can fade given the right circumstances. Dreams, like memories, can get lost in the shuffle. A child can dream of becoming an astronaut and eventually forget that the dream was ever there. Instead it's been replaced with something else. Maybe something that seems more achievable or less whimsical. Not ever dream can be realized, in fact most probably don't. Reality takes precedent over those fleeting thoughts. If a person created the means for people to fly based on a dream then what's to say that our dreams can't also shape reality? Maybe the limit is only there because we put it there.

On The Maker

This isn't to go into the various iterations of God, but rather the idea that there is something out there that created us, or at the very least influenced life. When I was young I believed in the Christian version of God because that's how I was raised. Then as I got older and more cynical I stopped believing in anything. Everything felt like chaos and there was no reason why anything happened, good or bad. The idea of God felt like a fairy tale told to children to keep them from having sex or doing anything worthwhile because it scared the old people. While I was in college I entertained the idea that aliens planted us here as a sort of experiment. It seemed as likely as some mythical man in the clouds who essentially created man out of nothing and woman from pieces left over. Lately I've been starting to wonder if there isn't something that could be beyond our understanding. Something that operates on a level that makes us seem insignificant, which if you think about how large the universe is, really isn't that hard. Most people have heard about the near mathematical certainty that life exists elsewhere in the universe. Just the sheer number of planets that are out there indicates that something somewhere is also alive and possibly asking the same questions we are.

I can imagine thousands of years ago there were events that couldn't be explained. It's human nature to question things and try to understand the world around us. So with the lack of definitive answers, ancient man came up with his own about how things were made. At the time it was impossible for them to grasp the idea that Earth and everything on it was just a speck in an endless ocean of space. Certain things must have seemed like magic. Magic is really just science we don't yet understand. Look at all the things today that we pass off as impossible or label as paranormal. In a thousand years we may have a better understanding of our reality. I'm sure there will always be questions or things that defy explanation. I think that's really the nature of things. So the concept of God was created to help explain the unexplainable. Who knows maybe there is something to those beliefs and something is out there. I just don't know that anyone has ever gotten it completely right, if they were even close in the first place.

If there is something all powerful out there then it's probably so incomprehensible to us that our brains may turn into jelly trying to understand what it is. Plus maybe it's not all powerful, but to us it might as well be. I've talked about our perception of time being a major limitation for us. Imagine if being omnipotent was really just able to see time in both directions. For us that would be god-like. Add to that an understanding of how reality could be shaped by those experiencing it and you'd have something so much more evolved than us we'd look like sea monkeys to it. We as a species like to believe we're so advanced and compared to everything else on this planet we may be. In the grand scheme of things we're pretty young and might as well be a teenager telling our parents how the world really works when we have no idea what's out there. For all we know there could have been whole civilizations that have risen and fallen a billion years before we crawled out of the mud. If that's the case were they "made" by the same thing that created us? Is that what God does, goes around randomly making new life and letting it do its own thing?

I'm not saying it's impossible for something to have created us, but imagine the power something like would have to have. Do you honestly believe that something like that would care about what we do on our little planet? Its motivations are beyond alien. It would be like us giving a crap about some microbes on an ant hill in Africa. What happens to them has very little impact on our daily lives. In fact most of the time we're not even fully aware that they're out there until something points it out to us. Plus there is the possibility that The Maker didn't really make us at all. Maybe instead it just gave us a little nudge and that was enough for us. If you think about it, what's more likely, that an ancient being created us as a fully formed human and didn't imbue us with more than a rudimentary understanding of the world around us. Or that through a subtle manipulation of events and circumstances it was able to ensure that life was able to spark on this planet, which by most standards should have been just another molten rock spinning in space. From there it was up to life to find a way to survive and even thrive. Ok both sound completely unlikely, but here we are so something happened. Maybe it was all just chance and the perfect confluence of events allowed life to exist.

Getting deeper into it all, what if there is more than one all powerful deity-like thing out there? There is the assumption that it's just one thing behind the curtain pulling the strings. What's to say that there couldn't be more, some of which are operating on different levels. Or even stranger, what if it's not a thing at all, but rather a series of things that operate in conjunction with each other to create a larger being? It could be that within this cloud there are several layers to it. Much like our own bodies there are so many pieces that operate independently of each other, but at the same time need each other to continue on. Those individual portions could be influencing reality in their own way, without the larger portion being aware.

Books and movies always try to bring the idea of God down to something we'd understand. God takes on a human form. God gets involved with the day to day of a single person. God loves skeeball. Whatever it is, it's basically anthropomorphizing something that defies our understanding. In reality it would probably be like us trying to talk to a starfish.

So who knows if there is something out there that moved reality in a certain way that it would be considered our maker. It could be that all this is just something that happened by chance on some random Tuesday a hundred billion years ago. It's the question that will keep us wondering about ourselves and where we come from and maybe it's a question without answers because we may never fully understand it.

On Cursive

When I was in elementary school we were taught how to write in cursive. We were told that as adults that's how everyone writes. It was as though printing was for children and no one would take you seriously if you didn't have nice hand writing. Really it came down to potential mockery from scribes that caused us to learn it. For me it was painful and slow. In school the focus was more on the process than anything else. It didn't matter that I had a hard time reading it, what mattered was that the N had two humps when it connected to another letter and only one hump when it ended a word. I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but at some point in school people stopped making a big deal about writing in cursive. You could if you still wanted to, but for the most part it wasn't required for assignments. Maybe it was a hold over from the previous generation because both of my parents write in cursive. Looking back at my education, there are so many things that we had to learn that have little meaning in my life today.

I'm from the last generation to know what it was like to not have computers around all the time. We used them a little bit up through middle school, but it wasn't until high school that I got any real exposure to them beyond just a novelty. So when I was taught to type it was on a typewriter, making me a part of a group of people who were probably the last to have to deal with ribbons and typebars. While learning to type someone asked the question "Why are the keys arranged in this way?". The answer we were given is that originally the keys were arranged alphabetically, but the people were typing too fast and it jammed up the typebars. To slow down typing the keys were rearranged into the layout that exists today. At the time it seemed like a good enough reason to make the change. Now I look at it as a antiquated way to get around a hardware issue that doesn't exist anymore. A computer doesn't have typebars so it doesn't matter how fast you type, it won't jam. Granted the computer will have any number of other problems, but two pieces of metal smooshed together isn't one of them. That little problem permanently changed how we do things, even though most people learning to type today have no idea why.

And speaking of computers, it used to be that if you wanted to use one you had to have some knowledge of DOS. It was the underlying architecture of that pretty little interface everyone was using. These days you could ask your basic computer user what dir means or how to use it and you'd get a blank stare back. The good news is that it's not a bad thing if you don't know DOS. It's no longer required. You can be a power user and never touch a DOS window. So what do I do with that knowledge if it's no longer necessary? It's not like you can pitch that information over the side to clear room for something else. It's up there forever, even if you can't remember it. There are so many things we're taught that end up not being used. If it were possible, ask all the people from your high school graduating class how often they use Algebra. Try even asking the people you know now. Most will probably say that they use it very little. At the time we were told that Algebra was the key to everything, but then again they had to justify it being taught for three years in high school. If you're like most of us, you can probably do simple math, but even that is being slowly replaced by those little machines we carry around in our pockets. There were several math teachers who insisted that using a calculator would essentially make your brain lazy. Turns out they were right. Most people can't figure out how to add 15% to a dinner check without the calculator on their phone.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't be taught math, but maybe it's time to address the fact that people need to learn more practical usage of it. What good is it to teach kids the quadratic equation when they don't know how to balance their checkbook? It seems that more and more young people are entering the world ill-prepared for reality. I was talking about language recently and how the best way to really learn it is to immerse yourself in it. I took two years of German in high school. In the end I learned that not only could I not speak German if a gun was pointed at my head, I couldn't even tell you the word for gun while it was being cocked. I'm guessing a part of that was because I sat next to a hot girl so the class could have been explaining the secrets of the universe and I wouldn't have learned anything. The other part was that reading about a language in a book does very little to prepare you for how people really speak that language. Maybe it was like a taste test. You try out how the foreign language tastes in your mouth and if you want to learn more about how to speak it you'll take it in college, where the real education comes from.

When I was learning to drive my father made sure that I learned how to drive a manual transmission. It wasn't because I had to, it was more that I should know how, even if I wouldn't be using it. As it is I've been driving for over eighteen years and have only spent ten hours driving a stick shift. Obviously it turned out to be something that wasn't required in my life. It's possible that all those seemingly useless things they taught us in school were a sort of preparation. You may never use those skills, but it's important that you learn them because you never know what situation may come up that requires you to have a least a basic understanding of a specific subject matter. At least that way you have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. Imagine what our schools would be like if they taught practical knowledge rather than theoretical abstracts. Then again if they only taught practical skills and usage we might not have all the wonderful ideas that exist today. I would hope that someday we'll find equilibrium between the two schools of thought.

On Things We Think, But Don't Say

There have been situations where someone is talking to me and for a moment I can tell exactly what they're going to say next. Or even more common than that is when someone is trying to think of a word or phrase and I can practically see the word appear in my head. Sometimes I'll help them out, but more often than not I keep my mouth shut because I want to see if we were thinking the same thing. How is it that we can tell what another person is thinking without them saying so? Sure some of it comes down to simply knowing the person to a degree that you know how they think rather than what they think. Still there are times where it feels as though it's more than having a hunch someone is about to say something. Maybe it's possible that our thoughts aren't simply in our heads. I'm sure to some that may sound like telepathy, but it's not that controlled. Our brain is this incredibly complex organic machine that's run by electricity. That would mean our thoughts are potentially electrical signals traveling at the speed of light throughout our mind. If you've ever lived close to an AM radio tower you know that the signal gets into everything, even if it's not meant to. When I was a kid you could pick up the phone and hear the radio in the background. Same goes for an open television channel. The channel itself isn't broadcasting anything so it behaves like an open microphone picking up whatever ambient broadcasts are nearby. It's possible that our own brains do that with other people's thoughts. Now obviously it's not always something we pick up on or even transmit out beyond our own mind, but occasionally we might be "tuned in".

Some people I know like to joke about how their brain and mouth have no filter. Instead they just sort of say most everything they think. That may feel somewhat liberating because they never really have to censor themselves. The truth is that everyone does check themselves to some degree. Even if you're brutally honest about everything, it's very rare that your thoughts get translated into words exactly. One might pick and choose the right phrase from any number of possibilities. The reason for that isn't always to be polite, but more because think about how you think. I might be in the minority on this one, but I don't always think in words. In a lot of cases it's images of half-formed ideas that defy explanation. It takes conscious effort to translate that flurry of thoughts into something someone else could possibly understand. And those are just the things we choose to share with other people for whatever reason. There is so much we think of that we keep to ourselves.

It's interesting the various pieces of information that we notice and store away for later reference, especially when it comes to other people. For instance, when you're first starting a relationship with someone there is so much information about a person coming at you. It's all new and if you like them, it all seems wonderful. It's only later that we start to realize that it's not all wonderful. That's usually after the infatuation phase has ended. All those little details we know about a person and choose to accept until the moment comes that we're not happy with them. Then those things that we once were able to accept get turned into verbal weapons. When Andy first started dating Trish he told her that he rode a bicycle and didn't drive. There was a moment where she may have thought it was a little odd for a grown man to only have a bicycle, but because she liked him, she was willing to accept that aspect of him. It wasn't until later when they were fighting that she threw it back in his face. So it's possible that she was willing to overlook it because it was a slightly weird nuance that made him who he was. She was willing to overlook it right up until the moment she decided to use it against him. I think we've all been in situations like that, where we pull out old pieces of information in an effort to hurt another person. Certain ideas about a person may be acceptable at one moment, but not in the next. My point is that those things may always up there, we just choose to not say them for whatever reason. Does that mean the negative thoughts are somewhere in there too, even if they're not quite formulated yet?

Going back to what I mentioned before about the possibility that our thoughts aren't always confined to just our own brain. In a sense we're broadcasting something out into the world. It might not be thoughts, but it could be feelings or unseen chemicals that carry information within. If that's true then those negative thoughts might be leaking out as well. There have been times when a person you know is in a bad mood or has some intense things on their mind. You can tell by looking at them. Sometimes it's subtle physical indicators that give it away, but sometimes it's something else. It's something you can't quite quantify or explain. You just know something isn't right. In those situations are we receiving information from some other source? That could mean that even if we don't say something out loud, we're still technically "saying" it in some other way. If any of that's true then we might want to think twice about thinking because the person you're standing next to might be unconsciously listening.

On Language

We learn our speech patterns from our parents and siblings. Really anyone who was around while we were learning how to speak has a major influence on how we talk now. In fact the way we learn to talk is just watching and listening to people who already know which words mean what. It's been said that is the most effective way to learn a different language. Sure you can take courses or listen to CDs like Rosetta Stone and those are probably helpful, but the best way to really get into it is to immerse yourself in the new language. I may have mentioned this before, but I was told a long time ago that to really cement a different language in your head is to not think of a word's equivalent in English. For instance don't think that Milk in Spanish is Leche. Instead know that Leche is milk. When you picture a glass of milk, know that it's leche. It's kind of a hard concept for people because it's in our nature to try and find comparisons to what we already know.

We tend to mimic those around us, even if we're doing it unconsciously. That's how people of a certain group form accents. One person says something a specific way and other people may adopt it in such a way that everyone says it that way. Eventually that's just how people talk. If you've spent an extended amount of time with people who have an accent you may notice yourself starting to pick up their speech patterns, but eventually you'll revert back to how you used to talk once you're away from it. It makes me wonder if our brains form permanent speech patterns at an early age and if so, what does it take to alter them. I know people that were raised in another country and have been in the US for twenty years or more and they still have an accent from their country of origin. What is it that makes it so a speech pattern is more or less our default? Our speech patterns are as unique as our fingerprints.

While we're learning how to talk we start to notice that certain words have more impact than others. At first we're just so excited to be saying anything that we say everything, without knowing what it means exactly. It's only by testing out different words do we start to realize how they affect other people. I remember as a kid realizing what the word Hate meant. Before I knew the word I already knew that I hated certain things. I just didn't know how to say it. Then there was a point when I found out just how powerful a word it was when I told one of my parents that I hated them. As a child I didn't fully grasp that saying that was a bad thing. At the time I was probably mad at them and didn't like them very much so I said the word I associated with that. I can still picture the reaction they had to me saying it. If I had punched them in the face, it would have been less shocking. And as a child you start to keep track of things that generate a big effect. So if I was angry with my parents I'd throw out the word Hate like a verbal grenade because I knew it would hurt them. In a weird way it was like I was handed a loaded gun. I didn't know the kind of power I held.

Words themselves don't really have meaning. Well they do, but what's more important is the intended meaning or intention behind the word. You can make any word into a bad one by changing your intention as you use it. I could turn the word Smurf into something as bad as Fuck, even though to someone else using it, it may mean something completely different. And I used Smurf as my example because those little blue guys in fact did just that. I've known several women who can't stand the word Bitch. For them it's one of the worst things you could call a woman and that's because the intention behind the word was so ugly and demeaning. Then again there are other women who use it so much that it's essentially lost any of its power.

There are some words out there that once you say them, you know they're bad. Just the sound of them indicates something mean or crude. Then there are words that sound like they should be bad, but aren't. I remember reading a Stephen King novel back when I was a kid. I came across a word that I hadn't seen before. In the story it was used as an insult, but it had also been used in another way that confused me. So being me I decided to go ask my mom what it meant. "Mom, what does Cunt mean?" I'm guessing that was a bit of a shock. Needless to say, she told me to go look it up for myself, which saved her from attempting to explain what it was and where exactly it would be located. Who decides that a word is bad anyway? Somewhere along the way people had to collectively decide that this word was bad and this word wasn't. I think as a society we associate negative things to certain words, even if the word was originally never intended to be treated badly. The word Fuck for instance is a bad word for a good thing. Of course it's been bastardized so much that like Smurf, it can have just about any connotation.

Notice how certain words are no longer as taboo as they once were. George Carlin had a nice list of seven words that would never be used on television. Strange how 30 years after he said that you can watch FX, which is essentially basic cable, and hear most of those words. Does that mean we're getting to a point where we no longer have words that are "bad", just words that people tolerate to a certain extent?

On Darkness

When I was young I wasn't afraid of the dark. I was more afraid of what could be in the dark. It's that bit of unknown that scares everyone. Even if you're one who likes surprises and new things, the something, which can't be seen, that's waiting just beyond the light is terrifying. In the end the thing we fear is what we imagine to be the worst.

I grew up in a world of darkness. That's not being dramatic either. More than half the year was spent without very much light. Some days the most you'd get would be three to four hours of light. It got to be that you'd cherish what light you got and distract yourself from the fact that it was night at 3:00 in the afternoon. You got used to it because given enough time, people will get used to just about anything. Plus at the time I had nothing else to compare it to, so I didn't know that seventeen hours of darkness wasn't usual for most people. So it got to be that you accepted that your days were actually nights.

There were times when I was just bored with television or my toys. I needed to be outside of the house. I had spent all day in school and being inside was driving me mad. I'd get on my snow pants and coat and go outside. The light above the garage door would illuminate this strange desolate world that was our front yard. In order to break the boredom I would run around in the freezing cold. No matter what I did though, I would never get too far away from that light. It's not like I couldn't find my way back without it, but it was something of a beacon to let me know that safety was right there. It was easy to imagine that given the right circumstances that the cold, dark, frozen world might be there for good. That summer might never come or somehow I wouldn't be around to see it. Even still I ran around in the darkness, enjoying that slight bit of fear that reminded me that I was alive.

As I got older I went further and further into that blackness. It got to a point where I preferred the dark to the light. Being away from the light meant that I had a kind of freedom that I normally couldn't have. I could do what I wanted. I could say what I wanted. There was no one else around to say otherwise. I was alone in the dark and yet I wasn't lonely. I would stand out there, not able to see what was twenty feet in front of me, and not be afraid. Maybe I should have been because there were certainly dangers, but at the time it didn't matter. To this day I prefer night and the seemingly endless possibilities that comes with it. The fact that you can't see what's out there means you're not limited by anything. Instead everything is possible and maybe a little bit dangerous, but it's never boring.

Nietzsche said "When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you", which I suppose could be interpreted to mean that we become the very thing we fight against. Taken another way when you stare into the darkness and see nothing, are you looking outward or just seeing what's inside?

On Off

Have you ever had an off day? If you're like most people then probably yes. For some reason everything you do or say just don't sync up with everything else around you. So you get that feeling that things aren't quite right. I've been wondering what causes days like that. Is it something you've done or failed to do that put you into that situation? Is the world secretly working against you? And more importantly, what can you do to get things working right again?

There is the saying "waking up on the wrong side of the bed", which is usually associated with being in a bad mood, but I've taken to thinking about it a little differently. What if that one little detail threw something off? What if you weren't supposed to get up on that side of the bed, metaphorically? Instead of zigging, you zagged and for the rest of the day you're paying for that cosmic mistake. If that's possible, then you would be trying to play catch up back to where you were supposed to be. Life is full of chaos, which isn't as bad as it sounds. It just means there are so many things happening, not just to us, but around us, that it's nearly impossible to predict what could or would happen. While I don't believe in fate or destiny, I do believe that there are some things that are meant to be, if only because several unseen factors have forced the situation to turn out that way. I guess maybe that is just another definition of fate. Even if that's true, it doesn't prevent the use of free will. We are able to make choices that can change the course of our lives. Still maybe it's only the illusion of free will because everything has led us to that particular moment and what we think is our choice, is no choice at all. Maybe it's in those moments when we go against what was "supposed" to be that we drift into the off.

I suppose the cause is important, but in most cases you don't realize why you're in the situation you're in until it's passed. So what do you do while you're in it? I can't speak for anyone else, but I tend to fight against it. If something doesn't feel right, then I'm going to do what I can to correct the situation. The thing with that is that you can't fix something if you don't know what the problem is? Sure you might stumble upon the solution, but it's more likely that you're going to bumble around, possibly making things worse along the way. And you can't exactly go with it because it doesn't feel right. So you're stuck in this time that's all askew. Hopefully things will right themselves and you'll get back to where you're supposed to be.

What happens though when it lasts for more than just a day? Sure an off day can be chalked up to maybe one thing being not quite right, but if it goes on for longer then maybe it's not just getting up on the wrong side of the bed that's thrown you off. If you're still sticking with my theory, then maybe you're not where you're supposed to be and there is no easy fix or reset. I've had times where it felt like no matter what I was doing, it wasn't quite right and in some cases, just plain wrong. I knew this, but felt powerless to prevent it from happening. Sitting here I've been trying to think of how those situations resolved themselves. In most cases it was nothing that I did to make things better. It just sort of worked itself out. I guess there can be something said about the universe being somewhat self-correcting, although for some that may seem like a bit of a cop-out. Also there is the problem that if the universe is constantly moving and shifting certain events, what happens if the change is counter to what you want or need? Sometimes what we want is very different from what we need and it's easy to confuse the two. It could be that the choice we made to get what we wanted moved us out of position for what we needed and the feeling of being out of place isn't just a feeling, but a very real mismatch of time and space. If that's the case then it's probably very important for you figure out where things went astray, otherwise you might never get back to where you're supposed to be. That is assuming we're supposed to be anywhere and not right where we are right now.

On Questions

It used to be that like any detective, I would ask questions to find out the information I wanted to know. In my mind I couldn't think of another more direct way of getting the details. It was also how I showed my interest. If I asked you questions about something that was because I wanted to know. When there weren't any questions, then I probably didn't care. The problem with that was there were some people that took it as an interrogation rather than interest. It didn't matter how benign the question may have been, to them, it was as though I were trying to invade their privacy. Not being told this, I continued my usual ask-a-question approach.

As a kid I remember one of my parents coming back from a parent/teacher conference and telling me that the teacher had said I was inquisitive. At the time I took it as a compliment because it meant I was always looking for answers. As I got older I started to wonder if maybe the term inquisitive didn't mean the same thing as it did when I was little. Maybe it was just French for "annoying". When I was in Sunday school we had gotten to the part where Cain had killed Abel. Cain was worried that if others found him, they would kill him. So God marked Cain as a form of protection. When I heard this my hand shot up. "What others?" I wasn't all that concerned with why Cain had killed his brother, but more of who was even alive to punish him after the fact. The answer I was given that there were other people. We had just sat through the whole story about how Adam and Eve had two sons, but I didn't remember hearing about anyone else. As far as we had been told there were only four people in the world and suddenly there was concern that Cain wouldn't be able to walk the Earth because someone may figure out what he had done. Where did all these other people come from? And if Adam and Eve were the first two people then technically anyone else that was born would be brother and sister to Cain. Weren't they important enough to have names? You can see how this line of questioning opened up a whole new kettle of frogs. My life has been a series of those kinds of situations where I'm asking what I believe to be an important question, but everyone else involved is getting annoyed.

Recently I've taken a new approach in which I try to avoid asking questions unless absolutely necessary. I treat every situation like I'm talking to the cops. I say as little as possible, if anything. It turns out that while the question may be relevant to me, the answer isn't always something that someone wants to give. What is an innocent question of interest comes across as prying. Regardless of if the perception of my intention was mistaken, at least one person in the situation was getting upset. So I decided to more or less stop with the questions.

I've read a bit about Asperger Syndrome, which simply put is a form of extreme self-involvement. People with this condition have trouble with social interaction and lack a certain sense of empathy. One person described his childhood with a story about how he would talk endlessly about one subject to someone, not realizing the fact that the other person wasn't interested, or at least not as interested as he was. It would never occur to him that someone wouldn't care about what he was talking about. When he got older he found it hard to relate with people. He would be talking to people and focus on the "wrong" detail of the conversation. A woman was having an affair with a man who drove a motorcycle. His mind would jump to the motorcycle. What type was it? How fast did it go? Could he get a ride on it? He would completely miss the point of the statement. He also went on to say that he didn't understand those small talk type questions like "How are you?" or "How is your wife?" In his mind he assumed that if the person wanted him to know, they would tell him about it. That's how he did things, so why didn't everyone else?

Now I'm not saying I have Aspergers or anything close to it, but I can relate with what he was talking about. I am self-involved, not because I have some syndrome, but mostly because I'm an asshole. I have to remind myself to show interest in someone else. Normally it doesn't occur to me to ask how someone's day was. It's not because I don't care (well sometimes I don't care), but more because I figure if you want me to know then you'll tell me. I think somewhere along the way I went from one extreme of not showing interest to showing too much. And now I'm moving back towards my default of appearing as though I don't care. These days I tend to ask only questions that I have to. If I can get the information some other way, then I'll go with that. It's also about the information itself. Sometimes it's not important for me to know, even if I feel it is. In some way I've tried to let go of my constant need for knowing. I'm sure to some that come off as being aloof, which may be true. There are really two reason for it though. One is a form of protection. I've had too many experiences where someone got offended by my questions. So maybe it's best to avoid them all together. The second is that for the most part I can get by without knowing. The problem with that is that I sink further into my head. The question is still there, even if I don't ask it out loud. Without any suitable answer from someone then I'll just create my own theory and move on to other things.

I've found that for the most part that answers will present themselves regardless of if I ask questions. In some cases you'll even get answers to questions you didn't know to ask just by keeping your mouth shut. Now I'm not saying that I won't ever ask about something. Instead I try to limit myself to only what's necessary. The rest will be provided. Or it won't. I suppose either way life goes on. So don't be offended if I don't ask about your day or how your weekend was? In most cases I'd like to hear about it, if you wanted to share, but unless you initiate it, then I'll just go on the assumption that it's none of my business.

On Life

So what is the point of living? That's not meant as a hopeless question, but more of one that is meant to make you think about what's important to you. I think there is a difference between living and existing. Too many people are simply floating along through life with no purpose. That's not to say that everything you do has to have some deep meaning, still it's good to have a reason to get out of bed every day other than to collect a paycheck. When asked what do you want from life many people will probably answer that they want to be happy. While I don't disagree with that sentiment I don't think it's really happiness people want. I'm happy when I eat tacos or watching a good movie with friends, but I need more than that from life. That thing people confuse for happiness should be called joy or passion. I know both of those terms can come off as cheesy. Think about the things in your life that you're passionate about (and not just the sweaty kind), those things are often what give you the most joy. Everyone needs something that fulfills them otherwise you're just existing rather than living. I think all too often people give up on what gives them joy because it's not always practical. It's not a bad thing to be practical for a time because let's face it, it's a requirement to get through life. Still a life without passion or joy is a life without hope.

I've spent a lot of time wondering what's the meaning of life. Why are we here and more importantly, why are we aware that we are here? Does a shark think about those things? They've been around for millions of years and seem to be doing just fine without pondering the finer points of their existence. For all their evolutionary perfection they haven't moved beyond the need for food and procreation. Then again we as humans have created so many things in our lives that are important only to us as individuals. I know many people who can't figure out if they're living to work or working to live. Widgets will be important to you if you work in a widget factory, but to someone else it's as worrisome as a cloudy day. Ask someone with kids what they cared about before they had children. Maybe that's what life is about, finding what's important to you. Still I often wonder about the things that are important and why they take priority in our lives.

Like many people I know what I like. I've spent years knowing what flavors or movies or even colors I like. The thing is that I don't remember exactly when I knew this. It feels like it's always been that way. There had to be a time when I hadn't tried sushi or Frank Sinatra's music was unknown to me. I just don't remember what my life was like before I figured out that I enjoyed them. My favorite place to eat in Arizona has a pretty strange mix of food. It's Chinese, Mexican, and Jamaican. You're able to come up with all kinds of combinations of food. The first time I ever ate there I was overwhelmed by the choices so I just ordered what my friend was getting. Turns out the meal was fantastic and for the last twelve years I've been going there I've ordered the exact same thing every time. Now I know there are so many other things I could be eating, but I found what I like and for a long time I thought if I made the effort to go there I should stick with what I enjoy because it's familiar. It's good to know what things in life you're fond of, but at the same time doing so can lead you to limit yourself to only what you know. This year I have decided to free myself from my past, at least in the fact that I'm not going to limit myself only to what I know I like. I know that I'll enjoy the 7 & 9 Combo, but ordering that when I know I'll like it means that I could potentially be losing out on an opportunity to try something new. Maybe my new favorite thing has been sitting next to that familiar stand-by all this time and I never bothered to try and find it.

For a long time I was really good at talking myself out of living. When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there I wanted to be somewhere else. Then after it was all done I would regret not having made the most of the situation. I can recall whole years that were filled with times like that. You can't dwell on the road not taken because you are where you're supposed to be right now, even if you don't like it. However, if you find yourself tired of winding up in the same old destination maybe it's time to start trying something else. This often means wandering outside the comfort zone and that's a scary thing for many people, especially since often times there is a reason why something is comfortable. It's relatively safe. Going outside of that could mean some pain, physical, emotional, or otherwise. That doesn't mean completely throwing caution to the wind. There has to be a balance. For me I'm trying to say "yes" more often and if I do say "no" I try to at least know why rather than have it be my default answer to a situation. At least now I know if I like or dislike something because I actually experienced it rather than relying on the belief that I probably wouldn't have liked in in the first place. Life is all about experiences and with that comes the need to try things that are new, even if it's something as trivial as ordering the fish instead of the chicken.

On Death

I'm starting to wonder if death isn't such a bad thing. I know we've been brought up to believe that death is something to be feared, but death is really just a part of life. If you think about it, without death there wouldn't be any life. Just about everything we eat comes from something living, even that tofu was once a plant that had to die in order to be turned into a cube of food-like substance. And that's the way things go. Something has to die so something else can live and eventually that something else dies too. When I was younger I was afraid of dying. Maybe most people are afraid of death simply because we have no idea what happens afterwards. No one who has experienced it can tell us what to expect. There have been reports of near-death experiences where someone sees a bright light or a tunnel, but even if those reports are true, I have a feeling that it's not death itself, rather the road to it.

There are a few possibilities when it comes to what happens when we die. If you're Christian or religious there is the belief that there is some kind of afterlife, be it heaven or whatever. When you die you get to experience bliss and are surrounded by all your loved ones. Maybe that's true, but a part of me wonders if that's just a story told to people so that death isn't so scary. Don't worry about dying because afterwards everything will be wonderful. There is another belief that when you die you're reincarnated as someone or something else. Scientists have shown that energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred or changed. This is like money, or at least the value of money. You hand a dollar over to someone, the money isn't lost, it just moves on to somewhere else. The value remains the same. Then again I guess someone could destroy the dollar since it is just paper, but you get the idea of what I'm saying. So if our "soul" is just another form of energy, like an electro-magnetic field, then when our bodies die that energy has to go somewhere else. Some believe that goes into a new body. A question I had heard awhile ago went like this. In 1700 there were around six hundred million people on the planet. Three hundred years later there were ten times that many. If a soul is constantly being transfered after death, where did all those other souls come from? Speaking strictly from an energy stand-point that is huge leap in growth. It's hard to say what the original source is for all that new energy.

The other possibility for what happens is nothing. It could be when we die we simply cease to exist. Our body dies and it's like someone turns out the lights on our consciousness. The idea of not existing is what scared me the most for a long time. Life is all we know, or at least all we can remember if there was something before this. It's what we're comfortable with. Again, no one can tell us what happens afterwards so there is a tendency to be afraid of the unknown. I don't want to cease to exist, but I suppose when it happens I won't be around to care one way or another.

One could argue that there are ghosts or spirits, which contribute to the notion that there has to be something beyond this world. Maybe those things are indications of something else. We understand so little about our own world that I have a feeling we understand even less about the worlds and realities around us. If ghosts do exist then given the number of people who have died and even more to the point, people who have died badly, must number in the hundreds of millions. All six hundred million people from 1700 are dead and at least some of them had experiences that got them stuck here. A ghost could be nothing more than the echo of life. So the ghost of your grandmother might not actually be her, but rather an emotional resonance of who she was. They say ghosts, at least the bad ones, are stuck in some kind of loop, repeating the horrible event that lead to them dying. Because of this they're trapped between worlds. I tend to think of them more like psychic scars. Given time it could heal on its own.

Getting back to my original thought, maybe death isn't so bad. Some believe paradise is waiting for them. Others think we might get another go at things until we get them right. Or there would be nothing, which given how some people live, could be a huge relief. We are sad when someone dies because we no longer get to see them. Everything we knew about them came to an end, sometimes abruptly. People say that someone who died is in a better place. I don't know if they're really in a better place, but more a different place. Maybe this whole thing called life is just a giant preamble to something more and all our fear about death is like ancient man being afraid of the thunder because they didn't understand it. Then again, maybe this is all we get and we need to make the best of it because when the show is over there is no encore.

On Time

I'm starting to think that I'm operating outside of time. I seriously no longer have any concept of time. Days of the week mean next to nothing to me, which tends to be a problem when I try to go somewhere only to realize that it's actually Saturday and everyone else is out and about too. For over two years I had nothing that even came close to resembling a schedule. I woke up when I was no longer tired and there were several times where I found myself awake for 24-48 hours in a stretch. The whole thing has left my internal clock flashing 12:00 over and over again. And to make things even more confusing I've started a job where my schedule feels like the opposite of everyone else. I'm going into the office hours before the sun will rise. It's before the rooster would think about waking up. Add to that working those same hours on weekends means that Friday is my Monday. So I typically have no idea when I am.

It seems that a lot of people are just killing time. The problem with that is they're killing time while looking forward to nothing. Sure they may be waiting for the weekend, but how different are the weekends from the weekdays? When you're waiting for a movie to start or sitting in a doctor's waiting room you're looking for ways to kill time because something is about to happen, you just have excess time on your hands. If you're killing time every day then maybe it's a sign that you need something to do. What's the point of always watching the clock while you're at work just so you can go home and watch the clock until it's time to go to bed so you can do it all over again?

Which makes me wonder if time isn't running in a line at all. What if it's all sort of circling back on itself over and over again? I mean if we can remember the past then how come we can't remember the future? If you believe in the idea that all time is always happening then it would stand to reason that events that haven't happened in our perception should be remembered as well as those that have already happened. Is that what Deja vu is? Just a brief glimpse into something that's already happened and we're remembering it somehow? If time is always happening then it would be nice if we could get some insight to things up the road so we can make some changes. Kind of like holding your finger on a page while reading one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books. You choose to go right. You were eaten by a bear. With that knowledge you flip back and decide to go left instead.

I guess the trick to time is not thinking of it as something that you need to kill in order to get to the next thing. They say time flies when you're having fun and that's because you're not thinking about how much time is going by, but instead of thinking about the fun itself. So the moment you start seeing time as something that has to be counted you've already partially defeated the purpose.

Often I've wondered how people spend their time. When I was younger I thought for sure I'd be given some kind of knowledge of what to do with myself when I was older. Apparently I never got that memo. So I'm always asking people what they do with their time. Turns out my time spent isn't all that much different from most people. Even when someone has kids there's just a lot of almost empty calories as far as time spent is concerned. Watching television. Surfing the internet. Playing games. Reading books. Chores. Other various hobbies. I'm not saying any of those things are necessarily bad, but all can be treated as things done just to get through a few hours before something else happens.

We've created all these gadgets to save time. All these processes to be more efficient. We've done all this and yet we're still always busy and it feels like there's less time than before. So is there really less time or are we just terrible in how we spend it? It makes me wonder what we'd do with ourselves if we didn't have to do certain things. If we didn't have to eat what would we do with the time we'd save by not having to gather food or money to buy food? No matter how advanced we think we are, there are always going to be the basics of survival that take up a majority of our time. We'd like to believe that we're above the lion, who spends its days looking to eat. We're not that far ahead of them when instead of hiding in the grass waiting for a slow gazelle we're stalking through some office waiting for our paycheck so we can buy a steak.

Maybe some day we will evolve beyond what we are now and we'll look back at all of this with different eyes. It makes me think of the closing lyrics for an old song.

"Now it's been ten thousand years, man has cried a billion tears for what he never knew. Now man's reign is through, but through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight. So very far away. Maybe it's only yesterday"

On The Apocalypse

Well I suppose it has to happen at some point. The end of the world as we know it. No not the end of the world because in most cases Earth will continue to be here long after we're gone. It bothers me when people say the end of the world because short of our planet being totally vaporized into space dust, it's going to keep spinning around the Sun whether it can support life or not. There is the the chance in about 12 billion years that humans are still on the planet when the Sun finally runs out of hydrogen to fuse and then goes through helium fusion and becomes a Red Giant, where it expands out to the orbit of Mars. Even then it would take awhile before Earth felt some lasting effects. Long story short it would take so many billions of years for that to happen that man as we know it will have become something quite different than what we are now.

Anyway pick your ending. Zombie invasion, hit by an asteroid (or meteor), global climate meltdown, or good old fashion nuclear winter. According to most science fiction there are really two ways things can go in the future. Either there will be an apocalypse and the world will be turned into burnt out shell where people fight to survive and it's questioned if mankind will burn out as well. The other option is that civilization turns into some kind of utopia. The caveat with option two is that often times you have to go through option one to get to the society of bliss.

In most of the disaster movies there are only about twenty minutes worth of signs that something is wrong. And the only ones to notice it are the quirky scientist guys that are amazingly smart, but somehow aren't reputable enough for anyone to take their work seriously until the core of the Earth has stopped spinning or The White House is covered in an ice storm that won't end for two years. The more likely scenario is that the events that are leading to the end of the world (as we know it) have already been set in motion. It's not going to be everything fine one day and the next we're in a panic because the sky is raining fire. Even when the dead rise from their graves there's always going to be a couple days of reports that corpses are running amok. So try to watch the news at least once a week to get a heads up on those sort of things.

The part that interests me is how people will react in the face of such an event. Some will be in denial that anything could be happening. The scope of the event will be just too large for their brains to handle. And it's hard to blame them because of the constant barrage of things we're told we should be afraid of. While I don't believe H1N1 is going to be a pandemic that will wipe out humanity, I do wonder if people think H3N3 could be. Beware of Captain Trips. Then you have the other group of people. These are the ones who see what's happening and just deal with it. Maybe they stock up on canned food and shotguns (which is probably a good idea anyway). Maybe they're just quick enough to avoid the initial wave of undead and get setup on a nice fortified island of safety. These people will do whatever is necessary to survive.

The really depressing part about surviving the apocalypse is that's all you're doing. You're just surviving. In most of the stories about the end of the world the people in it are just trying to make it to tomorrow. There aren't a lot of spare moments spent on hopes and dreams. Maybe that's how things were a few thousand years ago. Less time was spent on worrying about your feelings or if your company will sell another dozen widgets and more time was spent on finding a clean water source or where your next meal will come from. I'm not saying that things were better back then, but it was a much simpler definition of wants versus needs.

Maybe all the survivors are doing is surviving because they know how far things have been set backwards. If you think about it, this is the most advanced our society has ever been, to our knowledge anyway. That means we have so much farther to fall should some catastrophic event happen. If something were to kill all electronic devices in 1879 the biggest hit would be the first commercial power station in San Francisco. At least as far as regular people could tell. For the most part it wouldn't be a lasting setback to the future of man. You kill power today and the effects are instantaneous. Our reliance on electronics makes us even more susceptible to drastic reversals in progress as a society. Imagine what life would be like if an EMP hit most of America. Even if we were capable of replacing the electronics that were destroyed, the time that we're down could lead to chaos. If it happened in the summer you'd lose people in the south. If it happened in the winter you'd lose people in the north. A week without lights, or phones, or the blessed Internet and society as we know it could start to crumble around the edges. The longer we spend in the dark, the more feral we become.

And that's just an electromagnetic pulse. Imagine if at the start of the industrial revolution there was a cataclysmic event that set everything back 200 years. Would things progress the same way that they were going in the first place? I know life finds a way to survive, but how does it find its way to progress beyond just survival? What happens to a society that is forced to go backwards and start over? Do we learn from the mistakes we made? Maybe there will be those who look at technology as the root of the problem and prefer we go back to a more nomadic existence. Maybe we rebuild and in time we get back to where we are now. New York City is built on the remains of the old city. So it is possible.

There are so many things that could finish us off that if you thought about it for too long you might go a little crazy. People like to think we have the means to change the world, but really we just have the means to change things enough that we can't live on the planet anymore. So we can create our own apocalypse either with weapons of mass destruction or through the inadvertent creation of some super virus. Personally I think the Large Hadron Collider has some potential to warp all matter as we know it. The Earth itself could have some global problem be it climate changes or killer trees. And if that's not enough you have other outside forces (think meteor, not aliens). I guess it just comes down to enjoying what you have while you have it because we could be already on our way to the end of things and just not know it yet.

On Comic Worlds

I love comics and believe there is a lot of potential for stories to be told in them. All too often though in the mainstream titles there is a limitation to what can be done. You can't have too many lasting changes otherwise you might alienate certain readers. Part of it is that you don't want to upset the fan boys, who are the ones paying cover price for comics and not just buying them in trades. I can understand not wanting to disregard your core audience, but in attempting to placate them means the ability to have progression is lost. Well at least seriously hindered. Add to that there is always that desire to draw in new readers. Many of the characters are iconic. There is a standard for each title that has to be maintained so that your typical person off the street won't be overwhelmed. Spider-Man is always the misunderstood hero. Batman is always fighting crime because of a sense of loss from his murdered parents. The X-Men are a band of renegade heroes that society doesn't understand and even hates.

There have even been several resets within comics to make sure things don't get too far ahead of themselves. Spider-Man got married over 20 years ago. He revealed his identity to the world. He had left his job at The Daily Bugle and became a teacher. Thanks to "magic" all that's been erased. He's back to living with the seemingly ageless and perpetually sick Aunt May. No one knows his identity and his marriage never existed. Not divorced. Just gone. It was felt that readers wouldn't be able to identify with a married Spider-Man. The guy dresses in blue and red spandex. Anyone who could identify with him is in need of serious help. Plus most serious comic readers aren't teenagers anymore. They're middle aged men. Some of whom have wives of their own. The mutant population was in the millions. They lived on islands and even had an entire district in New York City that was like Chinatown, but with mutants. It got to be that mutants weren't really special anymore. So again with "magic" all the mutants were gone (except of course for all the main characters and popular ones that brings in money). Mutants are again this weird little subset of species with their backs against the wall. The biggest resets are death itself. It's been joked about that no one stays dead in the comic world. The only real exceptions seem to be Uncle Ben and Thomas & Martha Wayne. They only stay dead to drive the main character to keep doing what they're doing. Hal Jordan dies saving the universe. He is replaced as Green Lantern by Kyle Rayner. Ten years later Hal Jordan is returned to life and restored as the primary Green Lantern. Nearly every character has been "killed" only to come back. Some take longer than others. Captain America's World War II sidekick, Bucky Barnes, was dead for nearly 40 years before coming back. Jason Todd, the second Robin, stayed dead for half that time. How someone cheats or beats death varies in its believability and quality, but the end result is the same: return things back to how they were.

It makes me wonder what these various comic worlds would look like if there was actual progression within them. Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four has always been called one of the smartest men in the world. In several comics he’s making quick comments about some random invention that’s for lack of a better word, fantastic. (Side note: The Thing has been essentially trapped in his rocky form for the better part of 40 years. Reed should have been able to come up with a cure by now. Ben being stuck as The Thing supposedly makes for a more interesting character, but it’s been 40 years. I think it’s safe to say that well has been tapped dry. In a world of make believe it comes off as unbelievable.) Their costumes aren’t even costumes. They’re unstable molecules which conform to the wearer’s body and don’t get destroyed when Human Torch bursts into flames. It also makes it easier for the artist so they don't have to draw fabric, but that’s really beside the point. He’s created super computers to help with his experiments. He has a flying car that can fly across the US in a short amount of time. Imagine if a good-natured scientist, who is already insanely rich was coming up with these breakthroughs every day. Would we still be using computers or driving in cars that burned gasoline or flying like cattle in a plane that takes hours to get you two states over? Hank Pym named subatomic particles after himself. These Pym Particles allow for size-alteration. Think of the medical advances that could be done by shrinking something. Cancer cells could be reduced to nothing. Imagine the applications of making something giant sized. Food grown at regular size could be expanded in size as needed. World hunger would be a memory. Tony Stark invented a suit of armor that essentially allows the wearer to fly, have super strength, and even go into space. The world of prosthetics would be drastically different. Stark even provided Misty Knight with a cybernetic hand to replace the one she lost. There are normally offhand comments about its expense, but with any technology the first is always the most expensive. So Cancer is gone. World hunger is gone. Reliance on fossil fuels is gone. If you’re hurt, you can be rebuilt to a point where you’re actually better than before. With those types of inventions why is the world still basically the same? Sure it’s possible that various governments or evil organizations could stop the spread of these advances. People sure do like their status quo (kind of the whole point of what I’m writing). Still at some point there would have to be some sign of advancement with just the sheer number of inventions being done.

Speaking of evil organizations, you’d think they too would have progressed beyond just a bunch of henchmen grouped together listening to a leader rant about how he’s going to take over the world. Think about what happens if you ever took over the world. Can you imagine the amount of administration that would go into something like that? It’s not like these things just take care of themselves and unless you want to be the ruler of a dead planet there is a lot of general upkeep to deal with. In a recent reboot of G.I. Joe Cobra Commander was revealed to be someone who thought of himself as a patriot. He was using terrorist actions to take back his country from what he thought was a corrupt government. In his mind he was essentially leading a revolution in the same way the colonists broke from the English. This felt more believable than just some former used car salesman who managed to convince everyone that he was going to rule the world. Of course eventually the comic turned back into the typical story of how Cobra comes up with some insane and outlandish plan and the Joes foil it again. It could have been an interesting twist on who was really the bad guy.

While we’re on the subject of bad guys, there are several instances where you’re forced to suspend disbelief. Considering these are worlds where people can teleport through force of will or manipulate the weather with a thought, it’s saying a lot that something is hard to believe. Lex Luthor was a criminal mastermind responsible for numerous deaths. He was sent to prison on more than one occasion for various crimes. Despite this he was somehow elected President. Granted given his past he was still not the worst President ever elected, but come on. How does that happen? Anyway he eventually wanders off the reservation in attempt to kill Superman and is removed from office. Once again he’s known as a criminal, an ex-President criminal at that. Still given time he’s cleared of all charges and attempts to return to being what most people know him as, just another businessman. As of right now he’s in full bad guy mode, but I’m sure given enough time he’ll somehow be restored back to evil billionaire bent on destroying Superman. He's one of the most well known people in Metropolis and it's expected that people will just forget all the horrible things he's done in the past. I'm a relative nobody and I still have a gym hounding me for membership dues from ten years ago. They never forget.

Another example of disbelief is one of Batman’s most known villains, (although the same can really be said about most villains) The Joker. He’s been around from the very beginning and is the complete antithesis of Batman, which I suppose is what makes him so popular not just among readers, but with writers as well. He’s killed countless people in countless ways, including the previously mentioned Robin (although since Jason Todd eventually got better from being dead, I guess it would only be considered attempted murder). Every time he’s caught by Batman and sent to Arkham Asylum, where given enough issues in between, he escapes to do it all over again. There comes a point where rationality has to supersede morality. Batman has a major no-killing rule even though he’s a vigilante and has no problem breaking bones, removing teeth, and causing serious psychological trauma to criminals. So of course the worst Joker ever has to worry about is getting beat up and tossed into a padded cell. This man will continue to spread pain and death as long as he’s alive so why is he allowed to live? No wonder Gotham City is always depicted as a festering cesspool. The criminals know that sure they may get hurt once and awhile, but just wait a bit and you’ll be able to keep doing what you’ve been doing. There is a Punisher series under the MAX label, which has taken Frank Castle out of the regular Marvel Universe and kept him in a seemingly self-contained world. It actually frees him up to do what he’s supposed to. He doesn’t go around beating up thugs, leaving them tied up for the cops to pick up. Instead he ends the threat by ending them. Now his character is very much on the extreme side of things, but I have to believe there could be a more reasonable middle ground. Cops are issued weapons and are expected to kill if needed. That doesn’t mean they’re killing every single criminal they come across. If you have a mass murderer who has killed before and is in the process of killing again, you don’t wring your hands about how crossing some invisible line is going to make you as bad as them. It’s such a lame argument and really just used as an excuse to make sure that the popular characters never are eliminated.

So with all that said, I’d love to see what these various comic worlds would look like if a writer actually attempted to expand on what things would really be like. What would the world be like with amazing technology that advances society into tomorrow? The world would have real consequences because death is a permanent state, not some place where you rest for a bit so you can become popular again. The villains have true motivations beyond just they’re evil, it’s what they do. They should be people, not sharks. The world should keep spinning and things shouldn’t always be the same.