Ramblings from a train

It is important to say; you can never approach any matter truly objectively - we've all been taught our own particular socio-religious conventions & institutions, and, unless you are a very young child, you will always have some bias. Even that isn't quite true, language itself can add bias or alter perceptions depending on its structure & grammatical rules.

Because of this schism in human perceptions, I've always found travelling and visiting other places can give you a new angle on the way others do and think things.

It's tough to say what I find so attractive about travelling. I am quite a solitary guy so it isn't necessarily about meeting new people, although it's nice when it happens. I enjoy seeing the beauty of the land, and nature is in it's very essence gorgeous, as are we all. I suppose in fact I do go to see people, but exactly that, to watch, to observe, find out how different demographics view the world and the differences in societies. Maybe I hope this will imbue me with a greater understanding of our species as a whole and allow me to gauge where we're headed.

The problem is, I think we are headed for disaster, not for the planet, but disaster for humanity, and we're going to take a lot of nature with us too. The environment has been so altered by man's attempt to control nature, to 'tame' it out of fear it'll consume us and make chaos out of our nice structured little world. It is because of this and some warped sense of head long 'progress' that we find ourselves on the brink of ecological genocide.

But man grew from this earth, from this universe, so why do we find ourselves so at odds with nature? It seems to be a deep-rooted fear somehow that what we've started will be reclaimed, taken back by nature. We kill weeds for the sake of neatness, we are wiping out the bee population through reckless meddling for our own benefit, we are destroying the forests through greed & ignorance.

The bee issue is a particularly pressing one. If bees disappear because of us we are only serving ourselves a delayed death sentence. You see everything is interconnected in nature, what may seem to us as conflict (like the predator/prey relationship) is actually symbiosis when you look at the big picture. In fact, when we start breaking down the whole web of web and start classifying relationship & form we totally lose sight of the absolute interconnectedness of everything. Every forest we destroy, every piece of land paved over for our convenience is another nail in the coffin for both us and much of this web.

We have to start thinking about where we as a species want to be down the stream of time. Do we have to survive? This is a big question - why do we need to survive as a species? This goes back to what I said before about underlying bias. Most of us, at least in the West, have been raised and told 'you must survive'. Why? Is this a genetic pressure? Or do we cling to life like it's a life raft in a raging sea?

When I was a boy I used to think it would be great to live out of the land, to go back to our hunter gatherer roots and live in the jungle, surrounded by beauty, living in some kind of harmony with the voices of Gaia, as it were. Unfortunately I think we've come too far down the road we as a species are travelling for that to happen.

Let's have a look at what brought us here in the first place - 'progress'. Why do we feel everything should get 'better', which is such a subjective term by the way? We are never happy just stopping, taking a collective deep breath and then analysing what we really desire and what we actually need and what makes more sense looking ahead. I suppose that is because many of us do not know what we need or what we desire. This is entirely normal and nothing to fear, but most of us, I'd say probably over most of the world, have been implanted with the desire of material wealth, having a lot of pieces of paper which you can use to buy things. But where does the money actually go? What do we use it for? To buy objects which we use as luxury items, and then dispose of after we've had our fun. There is a culture in the West in particular that you can buy happiness through gadgets, fast cars, status symbols etc. Many of us, and I know people like this, will tire very quickly of their 'life enriching devices' and then buy another to fill some kind of hole they feel inside. This is fundamentally unsustainable. Not only is it crazy but it's damaging the environment even more, more carbon in the atmosphere, more plastic choking the shores and tundra of this earth and strangling life. And fundamentally what an empty life that is, to exist to buy, to be a good consumer and never to appreciate anything natural, to spend ones life in a concrete jungle always looking for the next 'treat'. What we really need is food, drink, shelter, companionship. The rest can go to hell as far as I'm concerned.

I think experience is the only "real" thing in our lives, personally I want to try everything there is to try, and by that I mean all sensations, tastes, textures, smells, sounds, FEELINGS! What more could you possibly want from life? And if you want a family and all the responsibilities that go with that, good for you, go for it, but do it because you want to, not out of some sense of duty or some twisted loyalty to your family name or even your genes.

Ultimately, as I intimated earlier, I think we're destined for doom as a species, but does it matter? Science has brought us to the point where we now know an asteroid or comet will eventually wipe us out if we 'stand still' so everyone is dashing around like idiots trying to force 'progress' on everything. We ARE nature, if we go, we'll be back around, in some other form maybe even on another planet. And we'll likely make the same mistakes again and repeat the cycle over and over, but why is that such a problem? Why can't we just enjoy experience & life and forget saving ourselves from every possibility of danger? By enjoy, I don't mean just enjoy per se, what I mean is we should all be natural. Feelings come to us by themselves, if we want to weep, we should, not hold it back because of some daft macho motion that 'boys don't cry'. That's society talking right there, not reality, not what you feel! So you are free to enjoy, or to be sad, angry, frustrated, the entire gamut of emotions, because fundamentally this is what we are after all.

When you think about it past and present are abstractions, there is only an endless now, so when people say 'live in the moment', it may sound like a cliché, but where else do you exist?

Calm down dear - Meditation

Meditation is something I'm sure we've all heard of, but not everyone takes it seriously (there's the classic stereotype of someone sitting in the Lotus position and humming loudly). I must admit I had my doubts, but it can be an effective tool to explore your spirituality, moreover, it may be able to make you feel better about life as a whole.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm no expert. However I believe I've reached a meditative state of mind several times in my life.
        I'd like to think I've found inner peace, however I know deep down this isn't really true. At times though, when I'm meditating, reading about some incredible new scientific discovery, or just listening to a spine chilling piece of music, I get a snippet of calm & a nanosecond of realisation where I am the very Universe itself and all energy, matter & eternity plays out in my head before my mind returns to the Earth*.
*Your experience may vary!
 
For me, sometimes just taking a step back out of your own brain, even for a femtosecond, can bring comfort; seeing the whole of which you're a part, or even seeing the whole that IS you if you believe that can bring some clarity to your thoughts and order your mind.

All you really need to do meditation is time and focus. What you get out of it will depend on what you put in and may also depend on your own preconceptions. Easiest meditation technique I've found is the breathing technique, but there are plenty of others out there.

The object of mediation is to clear the mind of all extraneous thought, what I like to with the breathing technique is imagine all the clutter in my head being swept up on the intake of your breath and forced out when you exhale. This has proven a fairly effective way of clearing your mind (can also help with sleep too) or certainly my mind at any rate.

I'm sorry if this goes over peoples heads or they don't understand what I'm getting at.
There's so much more I want to explain - maybe writing a book is in order, but for the moment, you'll have to do with a single statement of explanation.

"I am the Universe, you are the Universe, we are the Universe, we are legion"

N

Philosophy or Neuro-speculation?

Thought I'd attempt to expand on what I touched on in my last post about the conscious mind and what we think of as ourselves.

Reading an inspiring book at the moment that I believe really nails this. It's called Natural Born Cyborgs by Andy Clark*. Attempting to sum up what is expressed in several chapters won't be easy, but I feel I should try nevertheless.

In my previous post I touched on what I called the subconscious. Turns out, this autonomic system could be more "me" than "I" could ever could have guessed. Our minds may actually be more an amalgum of all our neural and mental capabilities than any particular part of my brain that I can label as "me".

Think about all the concepts, ideas and needs that run through your consciousness every minute/hour/day. The conscious self isn't the part of you which is creating these abstractions for the most part it seems. There is no "central" point in physicality inside your brain which organises and sorts them, they just "pop" into your head. "Thoughts" jossle for attention in this chaotic system. The "background" running of this remarkable software construct is the real powerhouse. Think of the conscious self as the "frontend" of a vast biological database that houses all our knowledge, memories, skills etc.

The brain has remarkable plasticity. Think about, after learning a new 'skill', say tying your shoelaces, it becomes "second nature"; we don't consciously think of what we must do, in a sense the subterran mind learns and stores this knowledge, and applies this when necessary, without our conscious mind having to do anything except set the goal "tie your laces". You can also apply this to many, many other things.

One that keeps occuring to me is the adaptation after buying new shoes. We will often stumble and trip over our feet when our brain has not adapted to the new dimensions or parameters of new footwear. In this case our conscious mind will have to occasionally intervene to prevent us from injuring ourselves. Over time, the subconscious or subterran mind will adapt, and we no longer have to consciously think about how far we raise our legs or feet when walking in said shoes to avoid stumbling or falling - the shoes have become part of our body in some sense, at least to the "unconscious" part of our minds.

Another example is to imagine the "skill" acquired from learning a simple task, say throwing a ball of paper into a bin. Once again, if our subconscious mind has been "trained" sufficiently, we don't consciously judge the trajectory or weight of the object to be thrown, our "automonous" subsystems kick in and do all sorts of complicated maths in the background, that enable our conscious mind to simply set a goal and "do it".

I could go on and on, but the concept is much better explored in the aforementioned book than I could manage in a few paragraphs. Needless to say, what we think of as ourselves does not even seem to scratch the surface. There is so much more to "I", than my consciousness could realise.

This I suspect can be attributed to the haphazard way evolution has "put together" our minds, overlapping, intertwining subsystems, the sum of which allows us to perform some remarkable feats.

Also covered in this book are some truely remarkable concepts on how spoken and to a certain extent writen language can actually structure and rewire parts of the brain, and allow us to accomplish more than would have ever been possible without it. It may be what allows us to analyse and be critical of our own thoughts.
    When you think, and please, if you have any experience to the contrary, please prove me wrong, you think in your native language, in my case English. Trying to conceptualise thinking without language doesn't seem perceptually possible to us. But to animals, or certainly mammals at least, this must be the "natural" way of thinking. I speculate for these animals the subconscious, with all its evolutionally programmed responses, may be what "thinks". But it cannot be called "reasoning"; it seems we humans are unique in being the only animals (at least as far as we can know) to be able to "think critically". Language may provide the structure to our brains, a software framework, if you will, that allows this process to occur.

This of course brings forth the question, how did we start using language? But that may warrant a much longer explanation or critique than I would wish to tag on the end of this post.

As you can see, what makes us tick inside our own heads is absolutely fascinating and, once understood, can really help us understand what it is to be human. It can help us "find ourselves" in the truest sense of the term.

N

*Amazon link to book here

Who Wrote The Bible

While looking for some entertainment/enlightenment, found this documentary on origins of the bible, kind of got to what I've been trying to find out for a little while.

Now, if you can poke up with the presenter's constantly nodding head when asking questions, you're doing better than me. This guy is a Christian, but when he actually discovers the ridiculous truth behind the holy book, it doesn't seem to shake him.. and I just can't understand why! There's so many modifications, rewrites and omissions to the holy book you can't possible see any of it as true, surely!? Of course I do not share his blind faith. If the book was written by men.. and men who were at times far removed from what they were writing about, I cannot possibly believe it to be any sort of truth. Again, this seems to be a tale of misinformation, control and sensationalism, and actually, sometimes just plain fascism. Anyway.. interesting documentary.. watch it here

Next for a bit of light relief I watched Religulous, which was absolutely hilarious. I wouldn't call this a documentary, because to be honest it is very biased towards non-believers and has quite a few inconsistencies in it. It's more pure comedy than anything else. The answers that come from some of the questions asked of believers are downright stupid/disgraceful, but it had me absolutely pissing myself I must admit. Good for a laugh, not much fact, just common sense.

Anyway, I will try to dig up some more stuff soon, have been out of the loop for a while, just starting to get back to feeling ok again now.

Ciao!

Space Race 2.0

I didn't necessarily desire for this to be all about religion, just about the truth. Truth is, there is a new space race going on this century, between private companies. In my opinion in twenty years time there will definitely be space hotels, and infrastructure for getting there. Not only that, people will then be looking beyond low Earth orbit and out into the solar system proper. The next century will be a very exciting time for humanity, and I intend to be around to watch most of it!



Video courtesy of Spacevidcast.com

Virgin Galactic have successfully dropped and glided Space Ship 2, aka VSS Enterprise, to a safe landing in the Mojave desert. While its a great milestone in their program, there's an awful lot else going on in the commercial space department this year.

Space Adventures have signed an agreement with Armadillo Aerospace for the supply of launch vehicles for space tourism, and are offering flights for around $100,000, roughly half the price of Virgin Galactic.

Recently, Russian company Orbital Technology has announced it is looking to put inflatable hotels into low earth orbit within the decade, providing some much needed competition for Bigelow Aerospace.

Boeing have announced they are manufacturing a human rated 'space taxi' that will sit atop currently available rockets, very similar to SpaceX's Dragon capsule. In their demonstration video however, the space station itself appears to be a mockup of Bigelow Aerospace's planned habitats, which has lead to speculation the two companies may have already come to some sort of arrangement.

The Google Lunar X Prize teams have been working hard and are starting to get to the point of booking their flights to the moon. Team ARCA successfully tested their pre-rocket balloon system, which lifts the rocket high into the atmosphere before launching it, saving considerable fuel and effort getting through the majority of the atmosphere

Scientology - The 'Supressive' Truth

People REALLY need to watch this Panorama documentary on Scientology - if you have an hour to spare please do, more people need to understand the truth



Thinking that my assertion in my last post that Scientology is all about money might be slightly false, or just needed clarifying, I went in search of truth, but in this case it wasn't beautiful.

Yes, the entire religion is based around money. You have to pay to ascend the rungs of the religion. They have celebrities endorsing them that have been pampered and groomed into believing this scam. I will not be watching ANY more Tom Cruise movies, that's for sure. The abuse the 'church' puts any member who decides to take a stand against this fascist farce is unbelievable.

These people are scum

I will be removing Scientology from my list of religions, because its like Buddhism alright, but the currency is not enlightenment, it is money, the tools are not love, compassion and forgiveness, it is alienation, intimidation, fear, misinformation and blackmail. You will hear more about this gang of criminals in the near future when I find out more dirt

Religion

I have been trying to familiarise myself with the different types of religion that have been or that are prevalent now. After a fair bit of reading, this is my further categorisation of those religions. The first job in understanding where these concepts arose from is to split the religions or belief systems into two different groups.

Monotheistic religions
These religions attribute all power and influence to one deity. This being is 'all-powerful' in the strongest meaning of the term. If you're wondering what Abrahamic means - see Abrahamic religions

Christianity - Abrahamic
Islam - Abrahamic
Judaism - Abrahamic
Zoroastrianism
Mandaeism - Part Abrahamic, recognises certain elements of other Abrahamic religions
Bahá'í Faith - everyone is right, majority if not all prophets from all religions are manifestations of God - massive amount of sitting on the fence here
Hinduism - both monotheistic and polytheistic, some believe that all deities (devas & devis) or avatars are one specific all-mighty being (the name differs from one denomination). Others believe the deities are indeed separate.


Polytheistic/Other
The following belief systems are a little more complex, and to lump them together like this is not pretty, but practical. It basically shows us the modern alternatives to monotheistic faiths, which after all, are the more common (or fashionable!). Polytheistic faiths, of course, were much more prevalent in classical times; the Greek and Roman belief systems were certainly polytheistic in a sense, but they were more like Hinduism in their acceptance of a 'more' supreme deity (i.e Zeus), or group of deities (the Roman archaic triad, for example).


Buddhism - has four deities called Brahmas, the concepts of reincarnation and betterment of the soul (and consequently a better 'physical form') through enlightenment and meditation. Despite this the soul does not appear to be able to attain deity-like status.
Hinduism - see above
Taoism - spiritual belief free of deities, belief in understanding the universe by understanding yourself and your own mind.

Scientology has been removed, because its not a religion, its a scam, and a pretty big one at that - more info on the post above



Now I realise this is not a complete set of religious beliefs, but I feel it is more important, now I have a broad feeling for belief systems, to begin to analyse their origins and the similarities that may lie within. That's for the next post, when I'll probably start by looking at similarities in the Abrahamic religions and try and delve into their actual origins.