Stardate 5AUG2041

Wow. Well I hardly imagine I will still be alive at that time…. But here goes…. to the writing group prompt: Write your diary entry for a date 20 years from now.

Not that this image has anything to do with twenty years in the future, but I always enjoy a chance to show people the hidden worlds revealed by my scanning electron microscope. This is the ball joint enabling motion of a bumblebee’s antenna. Note the varying length of the hairs. Those that would cause interference otherwise are shorter! I just came across a report on some research showing that these short hairs actually lubricate the interface of these joints!

Eighty three years old.

Impossible.

Several friends have birthdays this week.

In a few days will be the birthday of the person who used to be my favorite aunt. I suppose she’s still my favorite among my parents female siblings, but none of them really care to keep any communication going with me.

It’s likely my fault. I never did feel like I fit in with the family, and for most of my life, friends have been more important than family.

Despite what many social scientists have shown is an astounding 25% of American families with estranged children, it still seems like most people, including those of my first circle of friends, prioritize family time. That is ok. At age 83, I find myself more and more satisfied with my dead friends who never met me, supplementing, but of course never supplanting, the remaining live ones.

Yes, the dead friends. The writers, some, if not most, or even almost all, of them long dead before my birth, keep me company. And anyway, the cosmologists assure us that time, as we understand it passing, is an illusion.

The only reality is eternity.

What has been, as well as what will be, is already always here.

As John Newton wrote, “When we’ve been here 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we’d first begun.”

All we have to do in order to let this fact of our reality sink in is go outside on a clear, moonless (dark!) night. Admittedly, this is not that frequent in Michigan, so one must plan in advance to be able to take advantage of it. But, on finding yourself outside on such a clear moonless night, look up and think about when the light from any six visible stars started its photonic journey to our retinas.

Hmm, seems like I have been writing for a third person. Who is that? Is it my own ghost? Is it the universal soul? Who the heck do I think will ever read this?

Who?

You?

medication pills isolated on yellow background — Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Not directly related to my content, except at the macro-scale of the question mark!

I have never contemplated…

Bronze Snake Charmer Figurine from India. Nothing like a pipe and cobra to encourage contemplation!

Such a pleasure to be able to return to my Thursday writing group. The prompt was:

“I have never contemplated…” Hmm…I dug right in. SOC (stream of consciousness). Other members of the group apparently experience my writing as a flood of words. They think I type fast. They are not the only ones who think so, but I have always made errors and the severe arthritis in my right hand in particular means the typos are more numerous than ever. “Nevertheless, she persisted….”

I have never contemplated not contemplating a significant decision. And that is just the problem. Because I have learned, through painful experience, that it’s just the things that we don’t know that we should be contemplating that are going to, as they say, nip us in the ass, or, more politely, become a sea of alligators surrounding us.

You may or may not have noticed that the writer of this paragraph has changed from the first person singular to the first person plural, and now to the second person. Shortly, the writer will change from this hated second person narrative, allowed by conservative writing pundits only to poets writing in the love lost genre, to the omniscient third person.

Getting back to the subject at hand, the contemplationless situations in the writer’s life, is easy. That is due to the fact that all humans have no choice but to participate in the human condition. Thus, each of us has much, indeed most, of our life in common with all other humans.

So just what is the nature of this thing called the human condition? The root cause of it all is consciousness. A way to explain human consciousness is the ability to keep multiple things and viewpoints in mind simultaneously. Thus, humans have always, since Eve staked the claim for choice, been able to eat, or not eat, the apple, whereas a chimpanzee faced with the same apple, in similar nominal circumstances, admittedly here left to the reader / listener to define, will eat the apple.

Other animals, for the most part, crows, ravens, elephants and some others intentionally habituated to the human world excepted, are simply driven by nature’s preprogrammed instructions. And here is the problem. We have to choose our actions.

Have you noticed that I changed back to the first person, moving in a single paragraph among different points of view? Tough bananas for those writing instructors who don’t like that. I am convinced that this paragraph is perfectly clear and not confusing at all. And if it is confusing, it’s because you, dear reader, are in a rush. Slow down for goodness’ sake, and take in these pearls of understanding.

So, if individuals take not the time to consciously choose, then the subconscious mind will take over the choosing function, which will then closely resemble that of a hard programmed member of the animal kingdom. Modern humans have this situation compounded by the fact that we have multiple layers, only partially overlapping, of loyalties, demanding that we move in direction x, y or z.

This compels the thoughtful contemplators among us to create a personal value hierarchy, or valuarchy. More on this later.

Love and The Chakras

Love is an emotion.

Love, at one level, is an evolved and amplified version of the simple light (good) – dark (bad) sensory – will (desire) couple that was gifted or developed (depending on your worldview) by the earliest eukaryotic lifeforms.
Merwegon the Wise

Say Whaaaat???

What the heck did that mean????

All lifeforms, if they / we are to survive and have a chance at thriving, must have a link between the necessities and some form of pleasure. (We have to enjoy eating, for example, at least when we are justifiably hungry.)

Even if you are a Christian Fundamentalist Bible Thumper who has the literal version of the 6 day creation story etched in your DNA, you must admit, sticking with your love of Truth, that God re-used the blueprints for the earlier lifeforms again and again, with small tweaks eventually adding up to big changes.

As life forms evolved, more and more complex systems developed within individual species. These complex systems worked to enhance our survivability and thrivability within whatever environment we found ourselves.

The complex systems likewise developed within the micro-environment of its “bag of skin.” That means that sensory input systems interacted with developing hormonal, nutrition assimilation, procreation, etc. systems, to allow the emergence of more and more adaptable life forms.

In other words, life was able to leave the seas, and took over the land and atmosphere as well.
Merwegon the Wise

All of this change has been driven by the precursor of the complex spectrum of attraction emotions we call love. Thus, the Hindu sages who systematized the Chakra system rightfully chose the heart and love as the center of the Kundalini Serpent, which represents the Chakra Syste m

So How Do All The Rest of the Chakras Work to Support the Central or Original Chakra?

Love, or attraction, as we have already noted, must be linked with pleasure so that will (desire) works for survival, thrival, and procreation (reproduction of the life form).

Love, central Chakra 4, thus exists for the primary purpose of survival, Chakra 1. Chakra 4 is thus, at one level, an upgraded, automated, empowered and empowering system that overall enhances chances of survival.

When the lifeform is complex, and it evolves the ability to adapt to multiple environments, the responses to various situations must allow for different branches of a decision tree to be followed.
Merwegon The Wise

If the individual moves to a different physical or cultural environment, different responses may be called for in nominally similar circumstances.

Hence, Chakra 5, associated with the intellect!

In humans, greater intellects can hold, compare and contrast a greater number of simultaneous inputs. The procreating individual or couple, or in the case of some fungi, trinity, who uses their intellect (maybe we should specify consciousness) wisely will do better in life!

But, without a will, Chakra 3, to overcome obstacles, the entity might give up and die.

When all is going well, the procreating entity will successfully produce new copies of its species, or perhaps be the male bird that fertilized the female bird who laid the egg of the first domestic chicken. (See Neil DeGrass Tyson on which came first, the chicken or the egg….), with or without the direct micro-management of God. Hence, Chakra 2, sexuality and reproduction, is inevitably linked with survival (#1 below) and will (or desire, #3 above) supported by, or more accurately, in a self-reinforcing feedback loop with Chakras 4 (love) and 5 (intellect).

Now Chakras 6 and 7? That’s another story!

Write about what you don’t know!

Write about what you don’t know. I just realized that is the opposite advice from what people usually give. Well, it’s not going to be hard for me. Anyway, that was the prompt in my creative writing group this morning. It was good to see several people LIVE IN BODIES for the first time since CoVid. It was good to have real raspberry truffle decaf at Sozo’s. Here are a few things that I don’t know!

If I don’t know what this afternoon will bring, the same is true no less for tomorrow’s delivery.

I am glad that I invented the idea of Celebrating Uncertainty when I wrote my science fiction novel for NaNoWriMo in 2011. It helps drag me up from the deeper doom I would otherwise be forced to explore when faced with difficulties and the choices that accompany them. What, for example, will I do about the tooth that broke yesterday? I don’t know. Unfortunately for me, as a materials engineer, I am exceedingly aware that tooth enamel is very brittle. A chomp on something hard is likely to remove another big chunk. When will a painful crack get down to the nerves? I don’t know. Feeling the uncertainty helps me empathize with those who, like me, don’t have dental insurance, and who, unlike me, don’t have a choice in the matter.

What else don’t I know? Will the few new clients that have come to my business bring interesting projects that will pay the bills? Despite a burst of activity in March, new inquiries are evaporating as the doubt about the infrastructure bill in Congress comes to the forefront of corporate decision makers. Should I, a mere month after I decided I would keep the business, give up and do something else? I don’t know. But I just applied for some PPP money, so if I get it, I will have some breathing room before I have to worry about the fact that I DON’T KNOW!

What would I do, or try to do, if I did close the business? Hopefully, finish my failure analysis book, get it published, and try to follow in the path of Chris Yared, who solicited and received a Forward from a relevant person, published her book, scheduled a launch event through a bookstore, and is now writing articles and accepting speaking gigs to promote the book.

There are multiple other books I would like to write. The Idiot’s Guide to Critical Thinking, for example, although I couldn’t call it that unless Penguin agreed to publish it. Citizen Science for the Spiritually Minded. I haven’t tried that hard, but the Union of Concerned Scientists and Audubon have their own ideas of what Citizen Science is, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of overlap with my own. Why? I don’t know. Would I have success if I write it? I don’t know. Will I have more luck finding people to give me feedback on this potential book than I have on my current projects? I don’t know. One thing I do know. Thanks to the forces of the universe for my writing groups.

What is a fact?

What is a fact? How can we tell if something is a fact? What about something being factual? Is there a difference? What is the opposite of a fact? Sometimes considering the opposite can help us define the thing of interest. One opposite of a fact is an opinion.

For example, a circle is round. But a cylinder is also round, and so is a sphere. From certain viewpoints, a cylinder could look like a rectangle, a trapezoid, or some other type of polygon. From certain viewpoints, a circle could look like an ellipse, or even a line. If the cylinder looks like a rectangle or a circle looks like a line, are we still seeing a round object? How would we know? If we are able to acquire different viewing angles, maybe we could figure it out, but if not, we’re stuck in our ignorance.

If we are looking directly at an object, we have one type of data. If we are looking at a picture of an object, we have a different type of data. Looking at the single picture, we might not know if something is circular, elliptical, cylindrical, or spherical. If we are looking directly at the object, if we can handle it, we can figure out quickly if it is two or three dimensions. We can look from different angles, and readily determine if it is a cylinder or a cube.

If we think we are seeing a cylinder, but it’s a picture, and we can’t be sure, then we would be demonstrating intelligence to admit uncertainty. We would say that it’s our opinion. We could say we believe it is a picture of a cylinder. In the best cases, belief is founded on data. But sometimes, belief is totally founded on faith because an authority told us. That is different from faith based on our own personal experience, even if our experience is supplemented by teachings from an authoritative source.

Sorting out facts and opinions is a difficult task. In order to learn to distinguish facts from opinions, it’s wise to start with simple facts. Like describing simple physical objects. The pen I used to write two checks a few minutes ago is mostly purple, and it has silver colored accents. The pen is a cylindrical shape, with one pointed (tapered) end, from which protrudes the rolling ball that transfers the ink to the paper. The other end is a slightly smaller diameter cylinder, with a hemi-spherical flexible tip. That reminds me that most of the rest of the pen is rigid. There is an arm that protrudes slightly from the untapered end, which is folded to be more or less parallel to the length of the main cylinder itself. It is silver colored, and shiny like the other silver accents. Everything I have said up to now is a fact. If anyone else looked at this pen, unless they wanted to pick an argument, or were unfamiliar with my language, or did not know what a pen is (or is for) they would agree. But in some sense, unless I have used it to write with, which I have, I can’t be sure it’s really a pen. It could be a prop for some demonstration. And that small flexible tip makes this object into a stylus for use on a phone screen, in addition to being a pen. So my calling it a pen in a way may be considered to be an opinion. In any case calling it a pen is not the same type of fact that calling it purple or cylindrical is. And truthfully calling it purple is dependent not only on the cylindrical object itself, but on the light in which it is viewed. Knowing that it is purple is a conclusion that a human with unimpaired color vision could determine, in the right light. But other organisms might see a different color, because different animals see colors differently. Finally, even men and women humans see colors differently. Many men, even those who are not colorblind at all, see fewer colors than women.

I have run into people encouraging us to reach out and speak to people who have different beliefs from those we hold. I have spent a lot of time doing so. I was involved in interfaith dialogue for many years. But with a breakdown in agreement about which facts are true, I don’t think we have much hope until we re-establish some sort of agreement on basic facts. The sentences in this post are made up of words. The post has layers of sentences and then paragraphs. The sentences convey meaning, for anyone who speaks English and wants to try to understand them. The individual meanings conveyed in the sentences and paragraphs are trying to encourage each reader to do a thought experiment, by describing a familiar object.

Appearance, heft, size, etc. are facts that most can agree to. Whether it’s a good pen, a nice pen, a useful pen, a stupid stylus, an ugly weapon, or mightier than a sword? Those are all definitely opinions.

Note all the features I failed to mention: The knurled pattern toward the ink end, the arc shape of the arm, as well as the fact that the protruding part is not at the far end of this arm. The “silver accents” most likely are chrome plating, but I don’t have proof as of now. Maybe, some time in the future, I will put this pen in my electron microscope, which has a microchemical analyzer, to see if I am right! We have some hints that the main body of cylinder is really a cylinder, due to the coloration change along the upper and lower edges of the rectangle. But they are only hints. You are looking at a photo. You can’t tell if you are looking at a picture of a real pen, or a picture of a picture of a pen.

Epistemologia

How do we know what we think we know? The first step is realize that we need to figure out how to evaluate the reliability of our thoughts. 30% of the USA has fallen into a massive, delusion, pulling everyone into the vortex of confusion. How do we start to climb out of it?

The First

In the Now, is the Known.
In the Now, is the Unknown.
In the Now, is the Knowable.
In the Now, is also the Unknowable.

For the Now is what’s known.
And of the Unknown, it may be Knowable or Unknowable.

Today’s Known may be tomorrow’s Unknown, just as
yesterday’s Unknown has sometimes become today’s Known
and other times, been recognized as the Unknowable.

The Known, the Unknown, and the Knowable, are Children of Time.
But the Unknowable is eternal.

The Second

Even as the Unknowable is eternal, it changes,
One day, we may meet some other who knows,
or figure it out for ourselves,
thereby changing ourselves.

Yet even at that meeting, the Unknowable will laugh,
as one who knows itself eternal, always sowing
a new crop of questions.

For there will always be a mystery, and it’s name is the Unknowable.
In the past, we hid the mystery, as we were the babes of eternity.

But now we are bold enough to hold the truest mystery up
as our lamp, whether it attract the demons or repel them.

We have walked enough roads to renounce the pseudo mysteries,
in favor of the real ones.

The Third

If we look with quick eyes, we will find the revealed truths of another.
A steadier gaze is required to find our own self evident truths.
All sons and daughters of the Known,
we must remember that even if
the revealed truth seems to walk with a steadier gait,
our own truth may be more reliable.

In either case, for good results, we must properly define
the conditions in which we found our truth.
That’s the hard part. Harder than finding the truth in the first place.

An always imperfect process, always leaving a piece of the
Unknown for someone else to study.

Because self evident truth is not available to the casual observer.
And no truth worth the name is everywhere eternal.

Consequences of Critical Thinking

Chapter 2 of David Levy’s popular text book warns us that concepts must be judged by their consequences, rather than trying to fit them in to a rigid pigeonhole of true or false.

Sadly, the Republicans have made full use of this theory, but without paying attention to the other tenets of critical thinking: ensuring a relevant and comprehensive frame of reference.

While a few Republicans have started saying “Life” must refer to more than the fetal stage of humanity, Democrats have failed to make hundreds of points about the damage that Trump and Friends have done to the environment and industrial safety, to name just two subjects. Science is only of interest to Trump if it’s related to enhancing the military.

But that isn’t how science works. The whole reason for the strength and power of science is that it gives humans an epistemologically robust way to understand and influence the world.

Science has had beneficial and detrimental effects on humanity over the years. If we include the early technological achievements of humanity, domestication of plants and animals, then civilization, we got complexity, choice, and more chances for expression of our individual potential. But at the cost of the creation of a huge social underclass, deprived, to varying degrees, over the last 10,000 years, of many of the sweet fruits the upper tip of this complex hierarchy enjoy.

Education, and particularly science education, is the basic foundation for any remedy to humanity’s ills.

Teaching illogical faith based “facts” to young children rots the structure to which any future knowledge will be fastened. If Mary was a literal physical virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, then no facts that we can discover or verify for ourselves are ever necessarily relevant. If 3=1, then no facts that we can discover or verify for ourselves are ever necessarily relevant.

Illogical faith based facts corrode any potential for developing knowledge in the absence of a group of similarly brainwashed people.

If God is individually protecting people from CoVid19, why bother with masks? The lessons of the great plagues of 600+ years ago, that even the cardinals were not immune to the bacteria, seem to be lost on the evangelical right. It’s medical science, a PORTION of the web of scientific progress, that has, over many centuries, allowed us to regain the lifespan of our “primitive” ancestors.

Science, more than literature, religion, history, allows humanity to double, and triple (etc.) check, our theories and ideas.

Neils Bohr, the great physicist, taught that the opposite of a fact is a lie, but the opposite of a GREAT TRUTH is ANOTHER GREAT TRUTH.

Values are great truths. But the society that doesn’t base its values on a factual foundation is eventually in for rough going.

I hope that those people who are aligned with a fact based reality can find a way to help the rest of the world clean their glasses. That includes me. It’s been very depressing to hear people saying that they are voting based on their 401k or their friend’s jobs making military equipment so we can sell it to the Saudis to kill starving baby Yeminis. That sure is Pro Life. (The last sentence is sarcastic, for those who are challenged in those matters.)

A Little Dose of Wisdom

The days with the pall of CoVid19 hanging over us Americans are stretching on far longer than most of us hoped or expected back in April, when we saw the Chinese beat back the spread of the dangerous disease in Wuhan in less than two months.

I certainly do not agree with our president’s approach to managing (mis-managing) the situation, but he is correct to point to China for the source of the disease. China has long been the outstanding source of communicable diseases in the modern world, due to the intimate mixing of human waste in the human food production network, aided and abetted by migrating birds who stop in the fish farm ponds, etc. It’s time that China stop these practices, as well as the live wild animal meat markets that appear to have been the direct source of this particular disease. That said, as David Levy implies (in his book Tools for Critical Thinking: Meta-thougths for Psychology), when we are discussing human affairs, it is incumbent to consider the effects of our actions, rather than trying to fit ideas into boxes labeled true or false. So just because almost all new infectious diseases (not Ebola) start in China, it’s not a reason to call it the Chinese Virus. Because the consequences of doing that are, on American soil anyway, increases in discrimination and violence and hate crimes toward Chinese people, or people who look Chinese.

How do we gain the discernment, the wisdom, to know how to sort out the shit from the Shinola, as the old saying went. The spin from the facts. The lies from the reality. How do we gain that discernment?

We start out by acknowledging that we, as humans, take a lot of short cuts when we fill our brains with knowledge, and that some of what we think we know must have been incorporated into our beliefs before it was properly understood.

Then, we move on to take action to correct the false information.

Tom Lombardo, who is now running the Center for Future Consciousness, has written a very clearly articulated and concise description of why and how we need to embrace the wisdom of looking to the future. Tom’s prescription for a better world calls for rejection (to my happiness) of the New Age concept of what he calls “Presentism.”

As a person with a very low level of cheerfulness hormones (my pen name, Shona Moonbeam, is tongue-in-cheek) I really don’t care for advice that tells me to focus on the present. The present is mostly boring and tedious, if not outright painful. But by making an effort to remember my whole life, past up to now, and hopes and dreams for the future, I feel more significant. Maybe I shouldn’t care about that, but so much of life feels dreary and difficult, that I do care to make my own edited version of my life for frequent playback. And I do hope that my struggles will ease those of some future people down the road.

What’s Wrong about the Concept of Make American Great Again?

Check out Tom’s new essay, entitled Make America Great Again? Yes, that is a question mark. The article hits home on a lot of relevant and important topics.