Some Things I have Learned

The other day I was sitting still (calm mind, calm body) and took a few moments to contemplate some things that I have learned during my 51-1/2 years on earth.  I list them here in no particular order, with no particular scheme and with the absolute belief that I have learned much more than this, but these are what came to mind at the time.

It is highly desirable to embrace your HONEST nature, but try making some changes within a reasonable scope - as this exercise does not simply improve you as a person, but more importantly builds character and confidence.

Follow your gut instinct in life's most serious or dangerous situations, however - otherwise ignore your impulses when making every day decisions.  Instead rely on an abundance of objective information and even the opinions of others.

Be Polite

Travel

Friends =>  Quality over Quantity
Acquaintances => Quantity over Quality, Networking is Real

Read as much and as often as possible

Meditate and Exercise consistently and in a disciplined way

Live, Love and Laugh - ESPECIALLY laugh.  Live in the Present.  Love those most that love you in return and animals too.

Make time to seriously contemplate the mysteries of your existence and your present state, but minimize time spent fantasizing about the future.

Learn to Let Go

Forgive yourself.  Don't let yourself off of the hook for bad behavior, but be like a good parent to yourself.  Correct and forgive.  Self loathing is possibly the worst form of sin.

Only kill what you eat or that which is an immediate threat to your life.

Intermission #3 - A Summary of My DNA analysis from the National Geographic "Genographic Project"

I chose to participate in the National Geographic, "Genographic Project" for several reasons.  First, I was and am curious about everything, so this was just one more THING to wonder about and learn about, both how the process would work and what information about myself I may uncover.  Secondly, while I was pretty certain that my pre-American ancestors were from Germany (paternally) and South Eastern Europe (maternally), there were some inconsistent stories and even interesting physical attributes that brought some of this vague understanding into question.  People in America, often talk about their European, Asian or African heritage (even if their family immigrated to the US generations ago) as part of their personal identity.  When these guessing games would start, many people would guess that I was either "Italian", "Greek" or "Jewish" due in part I suppose to certain stereotypical physical characteristics.  (My large nose and ease with which I tan included)  Lastly, most non-Africans have some non-human DNA remnants from either or both the Neanderthal or Denisovan species, due to inbreeding during the largest waves of human emigration from Africa and into Asia and Europe between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago.  I was therefore curious as to how "human" I am.

It is very important to understand the verbiage of this analysis.  Nowhere can or does this DNA analysis say that a person is X% one or another ethnicity, but rather it compares my DNA samples to those of sample found in migrating groups and in current world populations and is an active and ongoing project to determine how patterns in DNA changed as humans migrated out of Africa and spread across the world.  The language used to describe specific points of understand is precise and is meant to be so.

So anyway, here is what I learned:

(1) The average person with European migratory ancestry has about 2.1% Neanderthal DNA.  I happen to have 1.6%.  The average Euro-Asian has about 2% Denisovan DNA and I have 1.0%. Oddly, that makes me slightly more "human" than most of the people reading this blog post, other than Africans or direct disendants of Africans who happen to be the only people on the planet that are in fact 100% human.

(2) When compared to samples gathered from around the globe, my DNA fits a pattern of migration that includes 41% Northern Europe (density center in Northern Germany), 40% Mediterranean (density center in Northern Greece and Serbia), 18% South West Asian (density center in Persia a.k.a. Iran).

(3)  The modern country with the most people with similar Paternal DNA patterns is Germany (no suprise there, given what I've been told).  The modern country with the most people with similar Maternal DNA patterns is Romania.  Not far off from what I have been told, but a bit more Southern and Asiatic than I was led to believe (no worries).

(4) Weirdly, the country with the most people who have the same combination of my Paternal and Maternal DNA pattern is Ireland even though no one in my family has ever claimed to have relatives in Ireland.  I guess many of my German-Romanian ancestors got stuck in a pub in Ireland on their way to the US and never left.  Probably due to the Guinness.

 In the end this little experiment both added to the library of migratory knowledge about our species and gave me something interesting to read.  The fact is, that ALL of our ancestors can be genetically traced to a very small, common group of people in Africa who were the very first "us".  The rest of the migratory stories are just as interesting and varied as is eye, skin and hair color.

Personally, I found it interesting that my grand parents, great-grandparents and great-great grandparents were able to pass along both an oral history of "where we were from" as well as a chemical history and in my case the two matched pretty closely.

Reflection # 9 - Listing the Sources of Your Attachments

It may seem that with this post I am on a "Buddhism" kick.  I do find a lot of interesting things about Eastern Religions (as I do with Western ones) and as Albert Einstein admitted, as we progress as a society in science, math, philosophy and psychology, Buddhism seems to have the greatest chance of surviving.  I think that is mostly due to the fact that it started out as a non-mystical, non-theistic life philosophy and therefore many of its core ideas do not require a departure from rational thought or an expression of faith.  I have studied Buddhism now for at least 30 years, so this is no fad for me.

One of the main focal points for Buddhists is the ending of suffering, to include most importantly, our own personal suffering.  The Buddha, we are told, discovered that suffering comes from attachment to material things, social norms and cultural devices as well as personal expectations of ourselves and each other.  By stripping yourself of all attachments, you will end your own suffering and then be free to help reduce or end the suffering of other humans and sentient beings in general.

A few weeks ago, I did an exercise of personal reflection and wrote down the things that I am attached to.  I modified the scope of attachment to include broad categories or more of the things in my mind or thinking or socialization that drove the various attachments, not necessarily the material items (like a house, job, family, money) - rather I chose to try and work at a deeper more fundamental level.

Warning - Digression:  I like listing things and I like scratching things off of lists that are not base or fundamental enough.  I find that this practice helps me in many areas of my life.

Anyway, I would like to challenge you to make your own list.  Review it, contemplate it, refine it and see if, how and when the things on your list interfere with your happiness, success and overall feeling of peace and contentment. It is just a little homework, nothing to be afraid of.

Things that Drive My Attachments:

My Neurosis: narcissistic, anxious, depressed 
My Desires/Addictions: alcohol, sex, leisure time, food

Seeking Acceptance: wanting unconditional love, feeling insecure, wanting to be understood 
My Persona: tough, smart, funny, experienced

My Guilt: for past acts, both the significantly terrible and the minor transgressions

My Fear: of failure and the of not providing for myself and others, financially and emotionally 
Wanting to be unique: standout, different, “a character”, remembered, even mystical/other worldly

My Hatred: of the fact that things are imperfect Concept versus Reality (Weltschmerz)

My Career: control, money, sense of accomplishment

Wondering what people truly think of me, my behaviors and my intentions, beyond my “persona”

This list is VERY personal and a few people may think that I am over sharing here, however that is the power of writing these things down.  They are real, they are known by yourself and others and they do in fact have the power to inhibit your true sense of peace and happiness, especially if you can not or will not acknowledge them.

A Return to Writing After My Surgery - Three Topics to Explore and Hey - I gained an insight the other day !

Most of my (limited) group of readers know that I had some significant surgery on July 28th and it has taken me this long to recover enough to be interested in writing again.

This post may seem a bit redundant to my last one, but since time has passed, I think that it might make sense to repeat a few things and add some color commentary.

On a side note, looking at the statistics for readership there are some folks in Eastern Europe and Western Asia that read this blog.  Now, I do not know if they are different people who are just browsing the blogger site or if I actually have fans in Russia, Turkey and other West Asian countries.  If so, please send me a note or comment, I'd like to hear from you.

In my last post back on July 19th, I discussed the possibility of at least three future topics:

(1) How does morality and ethics play out in a pre-determined, atheist worldview?
(2) Why not "just give up" if everything is pre-determined?
(3) Attachment vs Happiness, do Eastern Philosophies know something that we don't?

Toward the 3rd topic I have been (slowly) reading a book titled, "The Book of Not Knowing" by Peter Ralston.  It is a fun book for me to read, as he is attempting to walk the reader through the Eastern process of cleansing yourself of your "made up self" in order to discover your "real self".  This idea that we are mostly what we have been told, taught and think about versus what we "really are" has always gotten my neurons firing, so I am enjoying the read.

This brings me to the insight that I gained the other day whilst reading this particular book.  In it he is trying to offer a variety of analogies to explain to the reader the mechanics of how humans develop their sense, view and concept of the society, culture, world and self.

To summarize, he noted that if you watch a kitten (or kittens) play, they chase, fight, run and jump during their play.  These skills are necessary for cats in order for them to both hunt for food and defend themselves.  Adult cats also seem to enjoy play and while they do it less often, it would appear that their play helps them maintain these important survival skills. 

If you watch a child or children play, they often play "pretend".  They can imagine that a shoe box is a boat and grandma's floor is the ocean.  If you interrupt their play, they return to the "real world" of mommy and daddy (sometimes unhappily) and therefore demonstrate that they are not hallucinating or psychotic per se', however why do they play pretend?  In fact why do adults fantasize?  It might be that kids (and even adults) are "practicing some skills" that are required for success and as adults these skills may need maintenance, just like in adult cats.  Those skills (playing pretend) would most aptly be defined as creating our worldview, our sense of self and our persona as an individual human.  There is nothing fundamentally real about "who we are" other than the molecules that make up our current state of mass.  Everything that we believe about ourselves is created in our minds.  Tall, short, skinny, fat, pretty, ugly, smart, dumb, funny, boring, confident, shy are all constructs that we have made up - often with the help of our familes, friends and society in general.

I thought that this explaination was cool and it stuck with me as being important to ponder and incorporate into how I think about myself and other people.

This made me wonder about a thought experiment whereby you would take a fresh new human and attempt to remove all forms of feedback from them regarding their behavior, gender, intelligence, attractiveness and social "fit".  What would you end up with?  My first thought (like most parents or even non-parent adults who can't stand feral children) is that you'd have a "caveman".  Then I wondered two more things.  Would you REALLY have a "caveman" child if they received ZERO feedbac?  I often find that some of the most irritating children that I run across receive all sorts of feedback and most of it is conflicting or non-specific, in other words, chaotic.  The second thought was that whichever outcome on the spectrum of caveman to shy polite and calm (which actual cave people were more apt to be like, based on what we know of ancient humans), the child WOULD possibly reflect what "real" humans are like, deep down inside all of us, under all of our trappings and manners and pretense.  I think that would be an interesting thing to know!

Relection #8 - So am I done?

After attempting to give a summation of how my belief system has matured and for the most part settled in over 50 years of life, the next question is "where do I go from here?"

It is obviously difficult to really put into a few hundred words all of the events, thoughts and the reflections on those events and thoughts that make up a person's mindset.  I felt the desire to get something down on paper and I did that in these last several posts.

Now, I just continue on reading, thinking, reflecting and learning.  This work will most likely result in a simple refining of my current worldview, but there is always the possibility that I could completely change my views, in time - who knows?  Like I say in my tag line, this Blog is About Me and For Me, so my narcissistic approach to writing it is intentional.

One thing that I have tried to convince myself of is the concept of "good enough".  For some reason or another (poor nurturing, too much nurturing or some mental or emotional defect), sometimes I just can't let things be.  I have very little problem with letting go of things that OTHER people do, but I often can't let go of the imperfect things that I do.

Sometimes these things are material, like the three slabs (out of 144) that drive me nuts on the patio that I built that are not quite right (un-level and awkward) and sometimes these things are emotional, like guilt about how I treated someone wrongly in the past.  While I totally and completely agree with the Buddhist concept that one of the keys to peace is letting go, being able to comprehend something intellectually and being able to actually behave in accordance with what you know is best are often two different things.

So, I think that I need to explore this idea of Attachment v Happiness some more.

Additionally, two things about my belief system that worry other people, but don't bother me at all, are "where do Morality and Ethics fit in?" and "if you think that everything is determined why don't you Give Up?".

I mentioned (briefly) both of these topics in previous posts.  These are fairly interesting and important topics to discuss and while many people have written volumes on them, I am confident that I can express a view of each that doesn't require a 350 page manifesto.

So ........ Am I done?  ...  No chance !!

Intermission #2 - Peas and the Tolerance Spectrum

I have decided to use my hatred for peas as an analog for what I mean when I speak about tolerance and intolerance.
Many things in our Universe appear to be relative and not absolute.  So, just like most things, my hatred for peas is NOT absolute. If it was, I would not likely be able to function in the world, as I encounter peas far more often than I'd like.  So in order to rationally continue on with my life, I occasionally MUST tolerate peas.

This does not mean that I do not hate peas.  I despise their taste, texture, smell, shape and color.  I try my best to avoid peas.  I do not intentionally purchase items with peas in them.  I do not order anything off of a restaurant menu that mentions peas in the description, even if and when I am assured by the wait staff that the peas can be optional (they never are, those little bastards find my plate, they always find my plate).

I have mentioned in other writings that tolerance is not very becoming to a philosophical belief or religious viewpoint, because in the end, most dogma (certainly) and powerful ideas or beliefs (usually) require a large amount of buy-in, in order to be accepted as worthwhile.  Buying into one thing, forces us to exclude others.  That is just the way it is and what logic dictates.

Well then, how much tolerance is too much tolerance?  I don't know.  I only know two things about tolerance: (1) Without Tolerance, existence would be virtually impossible, unless the Universe was in fact only me existing in my mind and (2) With Tolerance our belief systems are diluted, illogical and internally inconsistent.

 Is there something in the way that I manage peas that may help me understand a functioning variety of intolerance?  Maybe I should explore some George-to-pea interaction scenarios to find out.

Avoidance:  To some extent, I find that this strategy takes the most over all energy.  Although the energy spent at any given moment is barely measurable, the total amount of energy that I have spent in my life avoiding peas is quite significant.  I discussed above how I avoid peas, I don't have them in the house, I don't buy them and I am vigilant at restaurants, picnics and other food encounters.  I even risk irritating (at best) and alienating (at worst) those whom I care about the most, in order to employ this strategy effectively.  This strategy seems to work well 99%+ of the time, as it seems now that I reflect on it, I often go weeks on end without encountering peas.

Acknowledge and Separate:  When I run across a pea (and I eventually do), I have to acknowledge it.  I have learned over the years how to quickly separate myself from peas.  Strategies include, plate shielding, mechanical separation (usually with a fork or spoon), napkin hiding and others.  This strategy works when I have let my guard down, but do not have an easy option of running away without losing face.  Although there IS a fine line between separation and avoidance here.  Anyway, I suppose that these seemingly inevitable encounters with peas happen to me a few times per year.  Let's call it less than 1%.

Acknowledge and Ignore:  As much as I hate to admit it, I have been in situations where I am in a weak or compromised state (usually very hungry and tired) and I accidentally allow myself to be exposed to a large, overwhelming horde of peas.  Typically in this state, I first attempt to weigh my avoidance or separation options, only to realize that I either have to go hungry or actually risk eating peas.  Under this scenario, I DO often perform some separation, especially when it is easy and doesn't waste much of the food, but invariably, I end up eating some peas, just out of pure laziness, poor coordination and hunger.  To mask their horrid taste, I make sure to utilize whatever meat or acceptable vegetable items are mixed in with the peas in the best way possible.  Sometimes, I swallow the stew or soup whole to avoid tasting or chewing them altogether.  Now that I am an adult, well fed and financially stable, this scenario RARELY if EVER happens any more.  I find it interesting that a modest amount of wealth, some education, the ability to think clearly and the freedom to act rationally, help me virtually never have an encounter with my most hated food.

Acknowledge and Destroy: I have never actually employed this strategy, but I suppose if I won $100,000,000 in the Lotto, I could waste that money attempting to eradicate peas from the planet.  I am sure that it would take trillions of dollars to make a real dent in the pea population and even then, peas would find their way back.  While this strategy seems ridiculous, irrational and immoral, I find it amazing just how many people, countries, religions and other groups attempt to employ it.  Of all of the strategies, acknowledge and destroy requires the most belief and commitment.  The intensity of feeling, thought and action required to employ this strategy consistently requires an almost brain-washed level of belief in something greater than ourselves or beyond our comprehension.  Those employing this strategy would have to offer up sacred writings and symbols worth dying for*, in order to promote such a high risk - low reward approach to a "problem".  Some people would be compelled to give their own lives for the cause and those people would have to be revered by ALL in order to continue the propagation of the idea that this strategy makes any sense.

Wow, I guess I really don't hate peas that much after all ................







(I wanted to give my readers more credit than this and I apologize to those that find the footnote unnecessary.  I am sorry, but I feared more that the point may be missed by some others)
* ",,,sacred writings and symbols worth dying for." 

    A Book
    An Idea
    A Poem
    A Flag
    An Emblem, Symbol or Relic
    A Person or Vestige
    A Document or Declaration
    A Sacred or Special Piece of Land


Disclaimer:  Any relation that your brain draws between this blog post and recent world events is purely incidental and in fact your damn fault, not mine...... you pea lover!

  

Reflection #7 - The Process of Elimination - Part C "Free Will to Determinism"

Simultaneously with the Christian to Agnostic to Atheist evolution, I was going through a Free Will to Deterministic evolution.  This one however, was actually far more emotional and bothersome for several reasons.  The first major stumbling block was that many religious teachings more or less reside on the deterministic side of things and while free will creeps in (in Christianity in the choosing to be saved thing and Buddhism and Hinduism with the Karma thing), the mystical side of those religions talk an awful lot about how things are predetermined, prophesied and "known", so the preponderance of the evidence for any/all/most religions seemed to me to be that things ARE determined.  So there was a religious "taint" on determinism for  me and since I hated religion during most of this time, I allowed that emotion to override my use of logic. 

The second unfortunate thing for me was being born in America and fed the American dream the American ideal, American exceptional-ism, from birth all the way through the Golden Age of Ronald Reagan.  All of these concepts, lies, ideas and myths had one clear thing in common.  You made your own way, your own life, your own wealth = Free Will


As I further developed my method for thinking about these things, I started questioning my assumptions that Determinism had to:
(1) be related in some way to religion or mysticism and
(2) clearly defied common sense and everyday experience

For me, these realizations are probably the most proud achievements of my intellectual life.

Going back a few posts, I mentioned the idea that when you take humans out of the equation, the idea of Free Will seems to carry much less clout.  Most (like 99.9999999999999%) of the stuff in the Universe appear to carry on without any care or influence of Free Will.  It is only the self aware beings that seem to care about or create the illusion of Free Will. Comets and stars and planets and the weather all seem to behave according to Predetermined (or at least Determined) laws of the physical Universe.

When I meditate on the origin and purpose of the Universe, it seems clear that the Universe exists for itself and itself alone.  Whether or not there are multiple universes that exist, whether or not they are similar to, but not exactly like ours (slightly differing physical laws projecting their outcomes over billions of years), or we are a one off - all there ever is and ever will be universe, the unfolding of this Universe is tells us much about the nature of universes  in general.

While we don't, probably can't and never will know everything, we know a lot.  The things we don't know, like the exact, "real" origin of our Universe, actually hold less importance if you look at them through the lens of Determinism.  We are just here, we know mostly how we got here and we know that without any intervention from an extra-universal force, the Universe will last another trillion years or more. 

From what we can make out so far about the Universe, its main "purpose" (which is sadly a personification) seems to be quite simple.  The purpose of the Universe is to continually increase its entropy until it no longer exists.  We don't know or probably can't understand the details of the earliest days, but our Universe clearly started in a state of VERY low entropy and since that time the "physical laws" inherent in this Universe require the average entropy of the Universe to be ever increasing and (most likely) at an increasing rate.  These facts, make it easy to predict that in some very distant future, the entropy of the Universe will be such that all things that we understand to "be" (matter and energy) will no longer exist.  There are questions about the "fabric" of space-time and we don't know what dark matter or dark energy are, HOWEVER through inductive observation, we do know that even these conceptual "things" seem to follow the ever increasing entropy model. 

Therefore, simply put ALL things must be predetermined.  The Universe will unfold as it will and your choice of which socks to wear must be part of that process, no matter how ridiculous that sounds on the surface of it.

Some very smart people argue that there may be a "Planck Scale"* where free will is allowed to take place because those decisions are small enough not to impact any general outcomes that would violate the natural laws and the fate of the whole Universe.  To me, this is just another sophisticated way to trick ourselves into believing that we have some control, it attempts to put the human back into the equation, an equation into which we don't belong.  Our role is clearly spelled out as has been since the beginning.  It is ridiculous to think that while the overall fate of the Universe is predetermined some individual acts are not, simply so we can sleep better at night.


In conclusion:  I am convinced that an Atheistic, Deterministic view of our Universe seems to be the most correct explanation for things, based on the process of elimination.  

FIRST NOTE:  Please realize that I realize that being born in America was like a lotto win, in a messed up world, there are few places as awesome, healthy and safe as the US.

SECOND NOTE:  Sadly our history texts only spent 1, exactly 1 page each on the topic of "Manifest Destiny" that was a popular excuse for our behavior back in the early days of colonial America.  Even back then (5th grade History),  I saw the irony of Free Will Politicians who loved to evoke the "Founders", but never really spent time explaining the paradox of Free Will and Economic Choice with the idea that somehow it was "God's plan" that we almost wipe out an entire race of humans (Indigenous Americans) and exploit abundant and cheap natural resources for personal gain.

Final SIDE NOTE:  If our understanding of the Universe changes dramatically I will be dead and my thoughts on the matter will be absorbed along with the worshipers of Sun Gods and the Flat Earth Crowd, but if you trace back the scientific history of mankind, many fundamental truths were hinted at, poked, prodded and "almost known" quite a way back.  It normally took technology to catch up to thought to shed the most proper light on any given subject.  The ancients believed in atoms, that matter was made up of mostly space and that matter and energy were somehow interchangeable, but until the 1800s, we didn't have ways to show that these ideas were correct.

* Planck Scale is a concept used in Quantum Mechanics to "explain" the border line between the Quantum World and the Macro World.  It is a way of saying, we don't understand how quantum uncertainty collapses into a final state of what REALLY is for large objects.  Large in this case being atoms.