At every moment do the right thing.

Tags

Always be kind., Always do the right thing, Be kind

At every moment in your conscious life to have the intent to do the next indicated right thing is a great way to live. The world is an infinitely complex place and it is impossible to know what will be happening in the next moment, and thus to decide in the moment what the next indicated thing will be can be difficult. But decide we must because the moments inevitably move on and doing nothing is as much an action as is continuing to do what one is already doing as a perceived inertia of the moment. Inaction is an action too. However, doing something totally unique in response to the perceived situation usually requires some kind of preexisting habits that will assert themselves as thoughts in response to what is perceived.

Thus, to successfully do what turns out, on later consideration, to be the next right thing is to some extent dependent upon an accurate perception of the situation presented to one’s consciousness. That perception is itself dependent upon what came before the moment which itself is dependent upon not only the physical reality but the potential ones and it vanishes into complexity. In interpersonal situations, such as typical conversation, this isn’t much of a problem but when we are reacting to professionally produced media, in all its forms, that has been carefully programmed to control our perceptions, their setup becomes critical. Advertising and political presentations are carefully honed to manipulate our perception of reality. Those people want us to react positively to what they present to us and thus to behave at their whim. They intend for us to buy their commercial product or to support and vote for their view of what is a public benefit.

How to do the next indicated right thing isn’t always easy to discern. There is a slight variation on that idea that we have been discussing that attempts to define the right thing. The right thing is a human value judgment that is defined by human values. The right things are themselves infinitely variable. Sometimes we are talking about the Earth environment, and sometimes about the planet Saturn’s environment. That is why the Cassini spacecraft was intentionally collided with Saturn in such a way that it was incinerated. That was to kill any possible transfer of an Earth life form that might be on the spaceship. That was a very remote right thing to do.

Usually, it is in face-to-face interpersonal relationships that we are concerned with the right thing to do. But it is complicated, and perhaps a better thought to cultivate into a habit is when facing a situation to always do the kind thing. That thought will, when cultivated into a habit, automatically take the other person’s needs into account and thus when behaving that way you will be doing the right thing, at least in that person’s reality, and in yours. Perhaps to do the right thing …

Be kind. Always be kind.

Advertisements

Do I matter?

Tags

Do I matter?, Do you matter?, Does anything matter?, Things do matter if they are interesting.

The great existential question of our personal existence always comes back to, “Do I matter?” That can be subdivided into several categories, such as, do I matter to myself, my family, my friends, my species, my Earth, my Universe? This hierarchical relationship is based on propinquity, that is, closeness to my physical being, and generally, we feel our responsibility to be more relaxed for those categories with the greater physical distance from our bodily selves.

But, no, that can’t be a good definition because we are infinitely bound to our Universe, and only a few of us ever break the bonds to our Earth such as the astronauts, and they are more dependent on civilization functioning quite well even to survive. Most of us can get along physically for a while with modest help from our species by just behaving ourselves. Our friends can give us the conversational social support that we seem to need to be comfortable living within a society. Our family shares with us the physical things like shelter, food, and physical security to maintain our physical lives.

Then we come to ourselves. But, what is that? Our body? Yes, that’s important; for without that functioning reasonably well we couldn’t exist. Is it our brain that is the thing that really matters? Well, yes that’s important too, but isn’t that just part of our body and no more important to our functioning than any of the other vital organs? Is our brain any more important than our spleen? Perhaps it’s the mind that is critical to our mattering, that is, the thoughts and habits that we have self-created through our biological heritage, our social environment while developing and our ponderings over our actions in response to our environment that turn into habits that create our importance … at least to ourselves.

Or, does our real life satisfaction come from our relationship to others, at least to others who are important to us and whom we feel that we are important to? We can have many different kinds of relationships with others and every one of them is going to be unique. We want our relationships to be unique but not so unique that they feel dangerous. We want to feel comfortable with what is happening but not so comfortable that it is boring. We want to feel that we are interesting to those people we are relating to so they will be willing to interact with us.

All of this requires a balancing of a potential infinity of variations, but those must be within the bounds that I can cope with, but they must be interesting to matter to me.

It always comes back to I and we, but where do our dogs and cats fit in?

The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece – line 99

Tags

Do your work with skill and diligence., Line 99 from Seven Sages of Greece, Lines from the Seven Sages, Seven Sages of Ancient Greece

Okay, I’m being outrageous by my modifying the sayings of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece in any way. Those sayings, or suggestions if you prefer, are usually only two words long and thus to my mind beg for interpretation. Line number 99 was  particularly challenging for interpretation, having something to do with glory and one’s personal relationship with an emotional response to that kind of public acclaim. Perhaps Alexander the Great, who spoke that same language and conquered most of the world known to him only a few hundred years after those things were written down at Delphi, would not have had a problem understanding what struggling with glory would be like. I don’t have that problem!

I’ve done things but never anything that would bring glory to me. In actual fact, the closest I’ve come to having to cope with glory recently was getting a bouquet of flowers last week, where I finally get an award. I have very little desire for acclaim or even attention and generally avoid even speaking up when there are more than a few people present. I avoid seeking or accepting positions of power or responsibility and generally reject them when about to be forced upon me. Thus it seems strange to me that I am writing this book Love Your Life which includes these rewrites of the Sayings of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece. But that is what I am doing, so when I come to my own line #99 it gives me more of a mental pause than most of the others.

Do your work with skill and diligence. What can that mean to me? What does it mean to do the mental preparations which I recommend in preparation for the future activity? I have known people whom I would call skillful and diligent but I usually associate those qualities with old tradesmen. One of my old friends was a carpenter and I marveled at his scrap pile of the pieces of wood he threw away after cutting what he was making for the job. Even his discarded scrap pieces were beautifully formed. That demonstrated skill with a saw. I saw this again a couple of months ago when a lineman was working on top of the utility pole above my house. These two people were like master piano players at their chosen craft. When thinking of this trait in a social realm where you can see skill and diligence in action, on TV watch some of the old politicians or newsmen recover from difficult situations. These things require years of careful and dedicated thought and honing of skills.

I ramble on but I do think that cultivating skill and diligence in your chosen activities is a worthwhile thing to do. Sloppy uncaring actions must lead to an uncomfortable relationship with other people and with one’s entire reality.

I reject things that don’t make sense to me.

Tags

Move toward health., Things don't make sense.

Isn’t it is fair and reasonable to reject ideas that don’t make sense to me? That seems like it ought to be at the core of all honest mental operations and yet there is a problem. Just because something doesn’t make sense at the moment doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t make sense if I pursue the background information and reasoning that leads to the idea. I remember in high school being confronted with the Pythagorean theorem that in a right triangle the sum of the square of the sides equaled the square of the hypotenuse. It was presented to us after we had worked through some other more elementary problems and I wasn’t comfortable with the details of some of those ideas. However, when I worked out the problem in physical drawings moving from the extremes at either end of the angular setups and compared them with the obvious 3 x 4 and 5 setups I then felt more comfortable with the intervening angles that were more difficult to compute.

I am wondering if this same process might not get me through many other ideas, perhaps non-mathematical ones. A big one for example: is it necessary for there to be an intelligence to create and maintain the processes of the Universe? When I think on the mechanical processes of the environment it appears that they obey the principles of mechanical laws. The processes of biology are much more complicated, but when looked at they too seem to obey their natural proclivities. Even mental processes which are more obscure in the details of their operations seem to obey the laws of nature and of their particular natures. Even complex human social activities are based on human mental operations, and those on animal proclivities, and those on natural mechanical processes. Those social things are based in beings that are impossible to dissect without destroying their functioning and so are difficult to make any form of absolute sense out of. But just because it is difficult to the point of impossibility to lay out their natural development to where we can totally understand its processes doesn’t mean or imply that those natural processes are not there. We don’t need to resort to fantastic and usually simplistic explanations to satisfy our minds.

Taking some social event as complex as say World War II and saying that it was God’s will makes it too easy to say that America’s response to North Korea’s provocative firing of potentially atomic bomb-tipped missiles toward us is also controlled by God’s will. Terrible events might be triggered by minuscule irrational miscalculations made by humans that might be easily avoided by a moment of rational thought and caution. But, if there are people involved in the decisions who make their decisions based on flimsy evidence and fall back on blind faith, then catastrophe is much more likely. Eventually, the attitude to risk that lets the dice fall as they may will be much to the detriment of the people involved. When the situation becomes too complex to think through all the possibilities, the best rational solution is probably to…

Choose to move toward everything that will bring health and happiness.

Should we be concerned with truth?

Tags

Should we be concerned with truth?, Socrates Cafe, Socrates Cafe discussion, truth, What is the meaning of life?

This evening our Socrates Cafe question was, “Should we be concerned with truth?” The other suggestions for the discussion were: “What is emotional intelligence?” “What is the antidote to greed?” Are the truths of, Science, Religion, Philosophy etc. circular.” “What does success look like?”

We had eleven people in attendance, which is a good number for having a conversation about such questions. The basic variations of truth were considered in some depth, the Big T Truths, and the little t truths. The varieties of truths from interpersonal ones, to public ones, to philosophical ones, but the most traction seemed to be on the religious ones because they were so compelling to so many people. The various religions have their truths which are often in direct contradiction to other religions truths and that leads to unending and unresolvable conflicts.

There was a little discussion of scientific truths and a bit of sentiment stated that those truths are constantly changing and therefore can’t be trusted. I countered that argument with a statement that the arguments that the public hears about are about details. There is deep agreement about most scientific wisdom. I spoke of comparing most people’s concept of time based on the year and the necessity of adjusting the clocks because of variations in the rotation speed. I then mentioned the ability of scientists working with time to measure it with to a trillionth of a second accuracy, which is far more accurate than Earth-based time.

Comparing scientific controversy over issues to religious controversy over issues was discussed and came down to comparing questions of testable facts to statements of untestable veracity. Science is about natural reality and religion is about human projections of what projected reality might be.

Those arguments are probably fun to talk about and unresolvable. We all had a good time. Sometimes at the end of our facilitated conversations, we have an open discussion for a half hour and tonight we followed that with a round-robin one minute personal summary by each person.

My short statement was: “What truths are important?” My answer was those truths that will hurt us if we get them wrong. And, what would be those kinds of truths? If we do things that will injure our body or mind the violation of those truths about our physical and mental health will hurt us. Most people die of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Therefore, how to prevent or cope with those diseases are the truths we should be most concerned with.

My answer to big T Truth may not sound philosophical like “What is the meaning of life?” but it has more impact than endless words.

We humans can choose our ultimate purpose

Tags

A Self Actualizing Universe, Big Actualizing, Big Bang, Big Crunch, Not a Brave New World

“‘We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.’ This seems a little more human but it too isn’t living a life full of vigor but a groveling way to find a greater meaning than what is presented by the world we physically inhabit.” A quote from my post in Philosophers Squared – Henri Bergson.

The Universe is moving from a Big Bang to a Big Bust of some sort or another. But, that End Time is really a super-distant time in human terms. We as organic beings,  even much more highly more evolved organic beings, don’t have a chance to have any meaningful contact with that distant time. Or to be a more practical definition halfway to that distant ultimate end of time. I choose halfway because at the halfway point things are probably very much the same as they were at the quarter point and the three-quarter point, and thus the halfway point is typical of the entirety of the process.

Time had a precise beginning moment, the Big Bang, and will have a precise ending moment, the Big Crunch, and thus the halfway point would have a precise moment in existence even if it were unknowable and without any physically defining characteristics. Let’s call it the Big Actualizing, and that moment would probably be indistinguishable from billions of years before or after that instant.

We humans and our organic offspring need a constant renewal through sequential births to even exist, and that process of renewal is very turbulent, and thus the creatures that are members of that species process and are compelled to adapt to their environment to survive through the reproductive process. If we consider our present state of evolution of the Universe to be the halfway point, which it almost certainly isn’t, then to impact the ultimate moment of Big Crunch we organic beings would have to maintain some method of communication over some twelve billion years. That seems totally unrealistic for protean beings such as ourselves.

Therefore, if we are to have a meaningful impact on the Universe, it must be through our silicon-based brethren. If we are to survive our super weapons of organic destruction we must convert our intellectual selves into self-reproducing silicon-based beings. Those beings can be designed to be identical to their ancestors and can thus be transmitted over vast distances of time and space and can even be broadcast by radio waves to other similar silicon-based life on distant galaxies. And, once there, be reproduced in their ultimate original purity if that is considered to be beneficial.

I propose not a Brave New World but a Self Actualizing Universe.

Have normal people lost contact with reality?

Tags

Don't obey laws., Fireworks, People are going crazy!, Voluntary dangerous behaviours.

Most of the people I encounter appear to be normal and sane and yet I routinely encounter what appears to me to be irrational behavior. I am shocked at how many new expensive automobiles there are downtown, and yet the public refuses to vote for money to pave the streets properly. Also, when building new houses even the concrete turns to gravel within a few months of occupancy. And, on the 4th of July when there is a clear and present fire danger created by hot dry weather people are setting off fireworks. There is presently a fuss over a teenager who was seen tossing firecrackers into the brush and caused a fire that burned about twelve miles of forest along the scenic Columbia River Gorge. That isn’t close to my home but the smoke from the forest fires has been such a health hazard that some people are publicly wearing face masks. I have a high-quality one in my pocket and have worn it when the smoke is particularly bad.

Those are just a few of the many self-destructive behaviors that the local public seems to tolerate or even encourage. Our city of Bend, Oregon, is largely forested with old-growth ponderosa trees on the west side of town and junipers on the far-east side, and the houses are built in such a way as to preserve the trees. It makes the town look very nice, but a massive city fire is inevitable in the long run. The city is as flammable as the forests to the west of town, and they have had multiple fires this summer. If those fires can’t be stopped there is the probability that those same kinds of forest fires here in town will be just as difficult to put out. I was almost a victim of the Oakland, California, fire of 1991 which burned some 3,000 homes. That fire wasn’t put out by the firefighters but by the fact that after burning for five days a heavy fog finally blew in from the ocean and moistened everything.

I have complained, on this blog earlier, that people were rolling through STOP signs at fairly high speeds. Earlier today I saw a personal friend, whom I love and respect for his good sense, do that. In an unrelated event this morning a guy came out of a restaurant parking lot driveway right in front of me at a goodly speed. Obviously, he hurried a bit so we wouldn’t collide and I only had to slow down a little. Of course, he politely got out of my way by turning at the next intersection. I don’t confront these actions in the slightest, only note them in my tally of questionable behaviors.

I sometimes hear people proudly proclaim that they don’t obey laws.

Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz – book review

Tags

Book review, Everybody Lies, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

This book explores a new method for detecting and measuring lying. It is based on the newly available big data dumps accessible from Google and other collectors of massive online data. Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz explores people’s spinning of their truth in such subjects as mental illness, human sexuality, child abuse, abortion, advertising, religion, health (p. 14). One of the points of this book is we have to follow the Big Data wherever it leads and act accordingly (p. 283).

One of the easy observations in the book to discuss was research on who can you trust to pay back the money loaned to them (p. 258). The research was based on large numbers of loan applications and payback records. The researchers found a list of ten words/phrases commonly used on loan applications, five that correlate with who repaid the loans and five with who defaulted. Stephens-Davidowitz challenges the reader to spot those words on the list suggesting who will pay and who won’t: God, lower interest rate, after-tax, promise, will pay, hospital, debt-free, graduate, minimum payment, thank you. Give it a try and give some general reason for your decisions.

The actual results based on who repaid seem to my mind to indicate those who took absolute responsibility for their past, present and future actions. Those who defaulted put the responsibility on factors external to their present self. It is a subtle point but observe if you feel the tonality of a shifting of personal responsibility in the words: God, will pay, hospital, promise, thank you. It comes down to – God will take care of it not me – the debt will be paid in the ill-defined future – the hospital will cure my problem – a promise is a heart-felt emotion and not a monetary payment – thank you is asking the reader to be nice in return.

If you like that kind of thinking this book will be helpful but I suspect that most people will find it threatening.

There are still lessons to be learned by seeing reality clearly.

A solution to the coming CO2 crisis

Tags

Argus Dome, CO2 condensation and storage, CO2 crisis, Dome A Antarctica

Okay, this is going to be speculative, but we are facing an existential threat to civilization if not humanity, and therefore we must explore the more outré options. What I am proposing is creating a CO2 recovery station on the Argus dome (-80.3667, 77.353) in Antarctica. That place is the highest and sometimes the coldest place on the surface of the Earth. In the coldest day of its winter, the temperatures may reach as low as July 2005: −82.5 °C (−116.5 °F). You can go there now for a webcam view. One of my previous posts on this location for the permanent storage of seeds: Dome Argus in Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth.

Antarctica Ice Flow showing the Argus Dome (in blue area just below RC of “East AntaRCtica”)

The advantage of pulling CO2 out of the air at this location is because when the air is that cold it will not take as much energy to create pressures necessary to reach the temperature of condensation. At the elevation of 4,093 m (13,428 ft) the CO2 will not condense but it is closer to condensing. There will need to be an input of energy to create liquid or solid CO2. It is very costly to bring in diesel fuel to power a generator to run a compressor to liquefy the air to create the liquid CO2 and other liquids. A large windmill would probably function better in the dark of Antarctic winter. It will be necessary to have the temperature near -100 °C to cause deposition back to solid CO2. Obviously, all of this is very costly, but the energy needed to pull the CO2 out of the air is far less than the energy released by burning of the fossil fuel from which the CO2 came into the atmosphere. Thus a carbon tax would be imposed to balance the cost of burning the fuel. Ha, lots of luck with that.

Another possibility, and this is reaching, is to create an automatic cold spot at the Argus dome that is so very cold that the CO2 would solidify out of the air. That isn’t impossible because at that location in the dead of winter the sky temperature is approaching absolute zero. Thus a black surface, protected from the wind by a couple of layers of glass, would itself radiate energy and drop to a very low temperature. It would be lower than -100 °C and might be low enough that a self-sustaining removal of CO2 from the atmosphere would take place.

Desperate times call for desperate efforts.

A long hard slog

Tags

A long hard slog, Clockwork purple, Mark-28, Me and the H-bomb

Clockwork Purple

10 AM August 28, 2017 at Ahonu and Aingeal’s home

The Atlantean Irish by Bob Quinn

Page by Gail – 129. Line by Charles – 12. The prompt will be –

It will be a long hard slog

Timer set for 47 minutes starting now. Done 11:02

---

It was 10:05 AM, between classes in Nuclear Weapons School there at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas. Our class of recent USAF pilots had all graduated from one of the half-dozen flight schools at other Air Force bases and had been given B-47 bombers as our combat assignment. We were in training to become America’s most powerful defense ever created, that of providing a twenty-four-hour cap of fully armed H-bombers flying randomly around the North Pole.

In between graduating from flight school and this bomber assignment, I had spent a month at Stead Air Force Base survival school near Reno, Nevada, learning how to survive a winter in such places as Siberia and Northern Canada. The idea of that training was that since I would be spending my next four years flying around Canada with some H-bombs I should learn how to survive on the ground. It was possible that something might happen and I might need to get out of my plane and walk around in that frosty wilderness for a while. There were plans to pick us up but that might take a while. So it would be helpful for me to spend a month learning the basics of how to survive. The classroom information was interesting, and the three days spent in a simulated Chinese Prisoner of War jail was an interesting challenge. It was a long hard slog spending most of a week running around in the High Sierras during the last week of January 1960 with only two days’ supply of WW II K-rations for food. I lost several pounds from hunger, but I had a good time with many stories to tell from that assignment. However, a much bigger problem soon fell on my twenty-three-year-old shoulders.

I found myself now confronted with an actual H-bomb lying there on a special wagon in a room full of other bombs. Some were a little smaller, some were very big and the new one I was looking at was then called a Mark-28. It was called a wooden bomb because it was supposed to be as safe as a log, with all sorts of safety devices that prevented an accidental detonation. All the same, it was designed to be super-reliable when it was detonated and it would kill almost everyone for eight miles in every direction.

Yikes! That’s sixteen miles across. I started thinking. And thinking that I would be carrying several of these things around and at someone else’s command, I would go kill perhaps several million people, almost all of whom were just living their daily lives. That wasn’t defending my country, that was far worse than the most extreme murders by the Nazis. If totally successful in deploying those bombs I would personally kill as many people as Genghis Khan. I was being asked to become the greatest murderer of all history when told to do so.

No. I don’t want to do that. No. I don’t want to have anything to do with that. Yes, I would rather spend 10 years in jail than be responsible in any way for participating in that mass murder and with the retaliations bringing about the destruction of civilization.

My Captain to whom I gave my first letter of resignation said it will be a long hard slog getting out of the responsibility, and indeed it was.

But two years later my buddies were all fueled up and loaded up with H-bombs, sitting in their B-47s, engines running, just waiting for the GO from President Kennedy. It was a crisis in Cuba and the Russians were sending in missiles that would soon be too close to Washington DC for comfort. It turns out Kennedy and General Lemay had drawn an invisible line in the Atlantic Ocean, and if that Russian ship carrying those missiles had crossed that line the launch had already been agreed upon.

I sometimes wonder if my singular refusal to go fly with those H-bombs reached the ears and minds of those decision-making people. It was a long hard slog and I still am in that mud.

---

If you want to have a sleepless night see your locality on a radius of destruction map.