Monday, April 9, 2012
On Fractions
I heard this theory in a movie once that maybe our souls are only fractions of the original souls. Not all that long ago there weren't even a million people on the planet, each supposedly with their own unique soul. Fast forward to today where we've crossed over seven billion people on the planet. Where did the souls for all these people come from? If you believe that our souls are just some form of energy then you probably accept the idea that energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred or transformed. The same is true about the creation of energy. It had to come from somewhere. So either we're drawing our soul's energy from some seemingly endless cosmic vat or we're cleaving off a piece with each new person. In that situation then wouldn't it stand to reason that those of us born in the last 50,000 years are a fraction of what the people before us were? If we're born incomplete then that may explain why many of us feel scattered and lost. We're looking for something that makes us whole again. It could also be why we seek out companionship so much.
If you were get a chance to read about some of the alien conspiracies out there you'll eventually come across the one that believes our race has been infiltrated by lizard people who look like humans, but aren't. It sounds like something from a bad science fiction story (that they've made into a TV mini-series). It's strange that some people truly believe this is the case and that these lizard people are here to do whatever lizard people do, all of it bad. Now I don't believe there are alien lizard people hiding in plain sight, but I do think it's a somewhat interesting tip of an iceberg. There is an idea that each of us has something called a Reptilian Brain. This part of our brain is all about survival, with no consideration for emotion. Instead its only function is to worry about fight, flight, food, and reproduction. Basically pure instinct. What if instead of lizard people there are those who are controlled by their reptilian brain more than anything else? Combined with the idea that we're already fragments of souls, incomplete and constantly hunting for a sense of wholeness, you have a person who by many standards wouldn't be quite human. Sure they may look human and a majority of the time they may act human, but it's a mask they wear. We call those people sociopaths. Someone who doesn't know (or care) about right and wrong. They simply do whatever they want regardless of consequence or impact on other people. I've talked about how people with Asperger's tend to lack empathy. This doesn't make them a bad person. Their brains simply do not work in a way that processes something like empathy. Does that mean another part of their brain is more dominant? Now I'm not saying that sociopaths aren't responsible for who they are, but I wonder if maybe they're simply people whose reptilian brains are in charge.
It's sometimes hard to imagine what's really controlling who we are. From one perspective we're simply a bundle of electrified chemicals that course through a body, simulating a sense of self and awareness. Reality as we know it could just be chemistry working overtime to make sure that we keep on existing for the sake of existing. Our whole lives could be nothing more than a feeble attempt at trying to create perpetual motion. If that's true then what we think of as a soul is really just our power source. It's that thing that animates those chemicals and nothing more. If you were to damage the system everything that we are could be lost. Someone with massive head trauma may never fully recover, meaning the person they were is gone forever. That kind of goes against the idea that we have souls since all it takes to fundamentally change who we are is interruption of a few key chemicals for a short period of time. It doesn't even take an injury to change our personalities. Add alcohol or drugs to the system and some people become someone else. One could argue that they've always been that person, but it's hard to say since a person may never know what they'd become if you introduced them to a foreign chemical.
On the other side though is the idea that our body is just a vessel for our soul or spirit. We are greater than the sum of our parts. While our bodies may be precariously held together the thing that makes us who we are will never change. The vehicle that carries us could become damaged and we may find ourselves trapped inside ourselves, we will never change. That is of course assuming that we were ever whole to begin with.
If you were get a chance to read about some of the alien conspiracies out there you'll eventually come across the one that believes our race has been infiltrated by lizard people who look like humans, but aren't. It sounds like something from a bad science fiction story (that they've made into a TV mini-series). It's strange that some people truly believe this is the case and that these lizard people are here to do whatever lizard people do, all of it bad. Now I don't believe there are alien lizard people hiding in plain sight, but I do think it's a somewhat interesting tip of an iceberg. There is an idea that each of us has something called a Reptilian Brain. This part of our brain is all about survival, with no consideration for emotion. Instead its only function is to worry about fight, flight, food, and reproduction. Basically pure instinct. What if instead of lizard people there are those who are controlled by their reptilian brain more than anything else? Combined with the idea that we're already fragments of souls, incomplete and constantly hunting for a sense of wholeness, you have a person who by many standards wouldn't be quite human. Sure they may look human and a majority of the time they may act human, but it's a mask they wear. We call those people sociopaths. Someone who doesn't know (or care) about right and wrong. They simply do whatever they want regardless of consequence or impact on other people. I've talked about how people with Asperger's tend to lack empathy. This doesn't make them a bad person. Their brains simply do not work in a way that processes something like empathy. Does that mean another part of their brain is more dominant? Now I'm not saying that sociopaths aren't responsible for who they are, but I wonder if maybe they're simply people whose reptilian brains are in charge.
It's sometimes hard to imagine what's really controlling who we are. From one perspective we're simply a bundle of electrified chemicals that course through a body, simulating a sense of self and awareness. Reality as we know it could just be chemistry working overtime to make sure that we keep on existing for the sake of existing. Our whole lives could be nothing more than a feeble attempt at trying to create perpetual motion. If that's true then what we think of as a soul is really just our power source. It's that thing that animates those chemicals and nothing more. If you were to damage the system everything that we are could be lost. Someone with massive head trauma may never fully recover, meaning the person they were is gone forever. That kind of goes against the idea that we have souls since all it takes to fundamentally change who we are is interruption of a few key chemicals for a short period of time. It doesn't even take an injury to change our personalities. Add alcohol or drugs to the system and some people become someone else. One could argue that they've always been that person, but it's hard to say since a person may never know what they'd become if you introduced them to a foreign chemical.
On the other side though is the idea that our body is just a vessel for our soul or spirit. We are greater than the sum of our parts. While our bodies may be precariously held together the thing that makes us who we are will never change. The vehicle that carries us could become damaged and we may find ourselves trapped inside ourselves, we will never change. That is of course assuming that we were ever whole to begin with.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
On Commerce
When I was a kid they made us watch these educational movies about how commerce worked. It was a series of cartoons about these islanders who were essentially creating an economy. People would do services so that they could get shells, which represented something of value. It was a great way to show kids kind of how things were supposed to work. The money in your pocket doesn't really have value, but the gold behind the money does. So really the dollar bill you carried around was like having a note from your mom saying it's ok to give you something of value because we promise we're good for it. I don't really remember how far along the cartoons got, but I'd like to think eventually those islanders would go through some of the same stuff we as a real society face in today's world. Now I get the basic idea that everything has to have value. Nothing comes for free. There is a cost associated with all things and we've chosen to assign monetary values to most things in our society. It seems to be one of the easiest way to keep track of things. At least on the surface anyway. The deeper you get into how things really work, the more you see that it's all precariously held together.
When you're little your parents more or less pay for everything. The food you eat and the clothes you wear. Even where you live is paid for by them. From a strictly financial standpoint it seems odd that people would randomly say "Hey let's add another 25 year's worth of new bills to our lives!" When we leave home we start to see just how much was covered for us. You want to eat, you need to come up with the money to pay for the food. You want to live in that small one room apartment that smells like feet, you need to gather up a month's worth of rent for the luxury of not sleeping outside. The way we've dealt with this is going out and getting a job. We provide a service, and mostly our time, and get some money for it. It sounds good and it makes us feel like we're contributing. Contributing to what though? Most of us do a job that is little more than a cog in a giant machine. That's not meant to be demeaning or anything, it's just the simple facts. I do my job so that guy can do his job so she can do her job and they can do their jobs. Our jobs have become this weird hamster wheel of disconnectedness. Each one requires the other in order to keep functioning, but they have nothing to do with each other.
While we're on the subject let's talk about as a society we're mostly just become a group of individuals, all working towards our own goals. Now I have no problem with people looking out for themselves and the people they care about. I do it. Everyone does it. Communists would like you to believe that everyone should work together for the betterment of everyone, but in most real cases it's just an elaborate way to make sure this group has more than that group. We like to believe that capitalism (what we call democracy) is the better way. The idea is that if you work hard then you'll be rewarded. If you are lazy then you'll be punished or at least less rewarded. Still most of us will never move beyond our current class standing. If you started out at middle class, then it's very likely you'll stay at middle class. Sure you may become Upper middle class, but let's face it, that's just another way of saying you're in the middle with the pack. If you're poor you'll probably stay poor and if you have money you'll probably continue to have money. Again this isn't meant at some cynical look at the world. It's just how it is most of the time. So if we're working our jobs and we're basically in it for ourselves then as a society what are we working towards?
Sometimes I like to imagine what the world would be like if we stopped focusing so much on what we could get right now and start looking at what we could get in the future if we worked together. It's hard to do because many of us are chasing that dollar. Our whole society seems to not only be built around it, but actually encourages it, sometimes to the detriment of society. A patent was originally designed to give the inventor time to recoup their expenses and make profit off their invention. A limited time. It was never meant to be a lifetime patent. A pharmaceutics company will spend millions of dollars creating that first pill. The second pill will cost them eighteen cents. The patent is a way of rewarding their effort and making it so someone else doesn't come along and start cashing in on what they spend money developing. That makes sense to me. Somewhere along the way though it became more important to make money than actually achieve anything of substance. Now I know that's not true for all companies, but it's very common for a company to worry more about making money for its shareholders than it is about contributing to the overall betterment of society. Look at what's known as intellectual property. It's now become ok to patent an idea. Not an actual invention, but just the idea of an invention. This is what happens when more and more work is being done in the computer world. Programs are running the world. Those programs were developed by people and took a lot of effort to created. Someone should be rewarded for their work. Again, for a limited time. Companies now are making it their business to keep renewing copyrights and patents in order to keep squeezing every bit of money out of them. In fact some companies make it their business to sue people who infringe on their intellectual property.
So rather than working together and building something that will make us all greater than we currently are, we work as individuals to make sure that at the very least we're going to get everything we want. I know it's a hard concept to embrace because let's face it, there is a cost to everything. Unity and contributing towards advancing society doesn't exactly pay the bills and there will always be bills (although there shouldn't be). I've talked before about how shows like Star Trek show us a world where people actually all truly contribute to society in hopes that it progresses us as a species. It's a fantastical idea and we may never achieve, but I have to hope that someday we'll look beyond our immediate gratification and see there is more out there. Until then we'll continue to be cogs in the machine, slowly earning the money we need so that we can survive long enough to come in tomorrow and keep the machine running.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
On Good...or Good Enough
What makes a person good? I've talked about evil before and it's sometimes fairly obvious why something is evil, but even then it's all really subjective and based on the point of view at the time. So what makes someone a good person, if there is such a thing? Maybe it's in the things they do. People are often judged by their actions so it's the most apparent indicator that someone is good. Maybe it goes deeper than that. What if the actions are only what's on the surface? It could be that true goodness is tied to intent. I've talked about cheating before. Some people think that cheating really only occurs when sex is involved, or at least physical contact. I personally think it's something more. If you enter a situation with the intention of cheating, but something prevents it from happening then you're still a cheater. Just because you didn't or couldn't act on it doesn't change what you intended to do. Some may think that's a little harsh and if you were to apply those kind of standards to other aspects of life then we have a lot of cheaters, killers, and thieves walking around who simply haven't acted on what's in their hearts. That actually brings up the question of: Is good just the absence of evil or is evil simply the absence of good intention?
If you were to ask the average person if they thought they were good, most would probably say for the most part they are. They may say that they're a bit of an asshole at times, but most people have moments where they're not exactly nice. More to the point, most people think what they're doing is right, or at least justified. So to them their actions, and in turn themselves, are good. Or at least good enough. Now for the most part there are some general accepted forms of being good. Helping people, thinking of more than just yourself, and actively trying to spread love/joy/happiness to the world around you. In most societies those things are considered to be virtuous. However, to someone who would rather see the destruction of a people, place, or thing would the good person really be good for them? For them it would likely run contrary to what they ultimately want and while you may not be able to go as far as to say for them good is evil, you couldn't exactly say that a good person is held in good standing. This goes back to the argument that maybe good and evil is only in the eye of the beholder.
Still it doesn't really answer the question of what makes a person good. It also kind of circles the point of what makes us different from the animals or a machine that could emulate our behavior. One might say what differentiates us is the fact that we use rational thought and logic. That we sense the world around us and understand our place within it. I can tell you right now if that's what separates us from the animals or a machine then I'm next to failing as a human because I rarely know my place in the world and am even less likely to use rational thought. One may also say that rational thought isn't enough to set us apart. It takes something more. It takes love, compassion, or empathy to be a truly good person. Without these traits then we're no better than some reptile or robot.
I won't get too much into love because I've talked about it before, but I will talk about empathy. I'd like to believe that most people are at least somewhat empathetic when it comes to people around them. Now I know it's hard with so many people on the planet and life moving so fast. If you allow yourself to empathize with everyone and everything you'd drown in a sea of emotion. Still with the people closest to us we understand how they're feeling or how something impacts their life. It's when we use that understanding to guide our own actions that we start to get closer to the idea of being good. Now before I get too far I want to mention something. When a child is growing up the first few years of their life they're in their own little self-contained world. They have no real comprehension of the people around them. They can only really understand their own experiences and needs. This can be a hard concept for some people to accept because for an adult it looks like the child is being selfish. And in a way they are, but they have no idea that there's anything else out there that matters. As they get older they start grasp the concept that the world isn't all about them, but they are a part of something larger. Now it's true that some people never really learn this because they still somehow believe that the most important thing is themselves. To be fair, for the strictest sense of survival, they're right. Assuming we only get the one body and one life then you should always be the most important thing in your world. If you cease to exist then your world also ceases to exist and all the other things you care about go away, at least as far as you can perceive. So if a child for the first five or so years lacks empathy what does that mean as far as the whole good thing is concerned? Most people would argue that a child is innocent and thereby good by default until something causes them to stop being good.
I've read a bit about Asperger's and some of the main traits with it are a lack of understanding social cues, extreme self-involvement, and a lack of empathy. If you tweaked things a little bit one way you'd have someone that would be considered a sociopath. One of the things several people with Asperger's have done to help them fit in and behave more 'normal' is to copy what other people are doing. It may not ever enter into their mind to ask how someone's weekend was, but after awhile they may train themselves to ask because they know it's kind of a social awareness that many people have come to expect. So for the person with Asperger's they're not asking how the weekend was because they want to know, they're asking because they know they should want to know. You can't throw out a blanket statement that says anyone who lacks empathy isn't a good person because someone with Asperger's or a child couldn't rationally be held to that standard. Still it does bring up the question though what is the standard?
We've all seen movies or read stories about someone who started out with the best of intentions and somewhere along the way they paved their own road to hell. I said before a cheater is based largely on their intention. So what happens when the intentions were good, but somehow the actions get corrupted? Arlo said there aren't any good guys. There aren't any bad guys or innocent guys. It's all just a bunch of guys. Meaning no one can be really classified as good or bad. Everyone is just sort of doing whatever whenever. It's almost cynical to think about, but probably not that far from reality. So you may think of yourself as a good person and maybe on most days you are, but if you're honest with yourself, you know there are days when that goodness takes a backseat and you do something that isn't even in the same zip code as being good. Does that make you a bad person? Not necessarily. There's an old question about if people are mostly good and sometimes do bad things or generally bad and occasionally do good things. How you judge the world also shows a bit about who you are. I'd like to think that if a person tends to try and do good and be good and has generally good intentions towards the world that we could go ahead and say they're a good person. Still my standards for what is 'good' may be different than yours so maybe there is no real way to know, except what's in our own mind. Then again, maybe that's all that ever matters.
If you were to ask the average person if they thought they were good, most would probably say for the most part they are. They may say that they're a bit of an asshole at times, but most people have moments where they're not exactly nice. More to the point, most people think what they're doing is right, or at least justified. So to them their actions, and in turn themselves, are good. Or at least good enough. Now for the most part there are some general accepted forms of being good. Helping people, thinking of more than just yourself, and actively trying to spread love/joy/happiness to the world around you. In most societies those things are considered to be virtuous. However, to someone who would rather see the destruction of a people, place, or thing would the good person really be good for them? For them it would likely run contrary to what they ultimately want and while you may not be able to go as far as to say for them good is evil, you couldn't exactly say that a good person is held in good standing. This goes back to the argument that maybe good and evil is only in the eye of the beholder.
Still it doesn't really answer the question of what makes a person good. It also kind of circles the point of what makes us different from the animals or a machine that could emulate our behavior. One might say what differentiates us is the fact that we use rational thought and logic. That we sense the world around us and understand our place within it. I can tell you right now if that's what separates us from the animals or a machine then I'm next to failing as a human because I rarely know my place in the world and am even less likely to use rational thought. One may also say that rational thought isn't enough to set us apart. It takes something more. It takes love, compassion, or empathy to be a truly good person. Without these traits then we're no better than some reptile or robot.
I won't get too much into love because I've talked about it before, but I will talk about empathy. I'd like to believe that most people are at least somewhat empathetic when it comes to people around them. Now I know it's hard with so many people on the planet and life moving so fast. If you allow yourself to empathize with everyone and everything you'd drown in a sea of emotion. Still with the people closest to us we understand how they're feeling or how something impacts their life. It's when we use that understanding to guide our own actions that we start to get closer to the idea of being good. Now before I get too far I want to mention something. When a child is growing up the first few years of their life they're in their own little self-contained world. They have no real comprehension of the people around them. They can only really understand their own experiences and needs. This can be a hard concept for some people to accept because for an adult it looks like the child is being selfish. And in a way they are, but they have no idea that there's anything else out there that matters. As they get older they start grasp the concept that the world isn't all about them, but they are a part of something larger. Now it's true that some people never really learn this because they still somehow believe that the most important thing is themselves. To be fair, for the strictest sense of survival, they're right. Assuming we only get the one body and one life then you should always be the most important thing in your world. If you cease to exist then your world also ceases to exist and all the other things you care about go away, at least as far as you can perceive. So if a child for the first five or so years lacks empathy what does that mean as far as the whole good thing is concerned? Most people would argue that a child is innocent and thereby good by default until something causes them to stop being good.
I've read a bit about Asperger's and some of the main traits with it are a lack of understanding social cues, extreme self-involvement, and a lack of empathy. If you tweaked things a little bit one way you'd have someone that would be considered a sociopath. One of the things several people with Asperger's have done to help them fit in and behave more 'normal' is to copy what other people are doing. It may not ever enter into their mind to ask how someone's weekend was, but after awhile they may train themselves to ask because they know it's kind of a social awareness that many people have come to expect. So for the person with Asperger's they're not asking how the weekend was because they want to know, they're asking because they know they should want to know. You can't throw out a blanket statement that says anyone who lacks empathy isn't a good person because someone with Asperger's or a child couldn't rationally be held to that standard. Still it does bring up the question though what is the standard?
We've all seen movies or read stories about someone who started out with the best of intentions and somewhere along the way they paved their own road to hell. I said before a cheater is based largely on their intention. So what happens when the intentions were good, but somehow the actions get corrupted? Arlo said there aren't any good guys. There aren't any bad guys or innocent guys. It's all just a bunch of guys. Meaning no one can be really classified as good or bad. Everyone is just sort of doing whatever whenever. It's almost cynical to think about, but probably not that far from reality. So you may think of yourself as a good person and maybe on most days you are, but if you're honest with yourself, you know there are days when that goodness takes a backseat and you do something that isn't even in the same zip code as being good. Does that make you a bad person? Not necessarily. There's an old question about if people are mostly good and sometimes do bad things or generally bad and occasionally do good things. How you judge the world also shows a bit about who you are. I'd like to think that if a person tends to try and do good and be good and has generally good intentions towards the world that we could go ahead and say they're a good person. Still my standards for what is 'good' may be different than yours so maybe there is no real way to know, except what's in our own mind. Then again, maybe that's all that ever matters.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
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