C O S M O S

"If we look at the marvelous motions of the stars, the miraculous beauty and "complexity of the universe, we can not imagine a lesser creating cause than God. The entire creation bears the unmistakable imprint of God. What mind, if not a "divine one, can create and organize the infinite beauty of the universe and life?"

That reasoning shows that we (OR gOD himself) created God reduced to our limited size and wishful thinking.

Why do stars and other heavenly bodies stay in their trajectories without hitting each other?
A plan (as we understand it) was not needed for today's harmony of the heavenly spheres.
What looks like created by design is only what remains at the end of a chaotic elimination process, in which all the bodies that could hit each other did so, and destroyed themselves. Probably the famous "BIG BANG" acd the mind bogglin g imagination roughly similar to an astronomic amount of dust thrown out of an astronomic bucket to slowly float into and onto and from any astronomic directions... in a dimension beyond our understaneing, where any star-like speck of that "dust" is as big as any star or "galaxy"...

What we can see in the sky in the clairest sky at night are like the astronomiically immense "specks" of one or the endless number of "galaxies"...
There is our percepti on of what we know nothing about, beycase is is beyond our comprehension...

nor about existence of each other, because they are out of each other's orbits.
Human body and mind might be too complex for being the product of chance as we understand itl. Sure, if the universe had started with the living cell and man as its goals.Most unlikely.
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The present variety is the result of virtually infinitely varied combinations, permutations and probabilities.

If we throw a bucket of dust into the air, the dust floats, descends with chaotic irregularity and patterns, and settles in extremely complex patterns of individual positions and paths, which is unique and practically impos sible for us to repro duce and repeat with particle by particle and path by path precision, exactly as happened the first time.
Nothing divine about it.
But we have to imagine a god as the only one able to throw the dust into the air to reach the countless precise patterns of floating, descending/ascending and settling that we really obtained by chance....

Life and man may well be the unplanned and unplannable products of chance. This is easier to vaguely sense than to explain.

First, give a reasonable definition of God, then I will answer.|If we could, we would be gods ourselves...)

But then, if we can really define him (her or it), he (she or it) is limited by our limited and limitig imagination and mental stature...

I have to say again and again, because we stilll talk about Him without knowing..

Rather, we are programmed by "nature" to wish and enjoy whatever se rves survival and reproduction purposes.

That accomplished, we are removed or "deactivated". Dead or ready to die sooner or later: eternity can wait.

The very act of procreation shows the pattern in brief.
It starts with love, romance, the most intense desires and strivings to reach the physical goal (pleasure) of mating.

After copulation, the male of most species we know loses interest, either immediately or after a period proportionate to his sublimation of the mating urge.

The female focuses her interest on the child
This interest (by the female primarily, and by the male in most cases) continues until the child becomes self - susta ining.

The intensity of this interest, in the form of most tender and self - sacrificing love, is highest when the child is youngest and helpless.

Our ambition is to make the child strong and independent.
The more we succeed in it, the less tender the relationship becomes.

We give love, expect love, but our expression of this love unwittingly aims to creating a situation in which the love itself is often marginalized by the result.

Then, as he (or she, of course) grows into adulthood, he becomes as "real" as most human beings have been for untold thousands of years.

We are programmed to behave in total ignorance of the truth because our primary function i s reproductive, not cognitive or judgmental.

The gods allow us to toy with love, riches, knowledge, empires and pebbles on the beach,... as long as we multiply, generations after generations, herded like cattle into the unlimited chain of lives and deaths, as far as we are "allowed to know".

The explanation that our aim is reproduction still doesn't give an answer to the meaning of life, which includes multiplication anyhow.

We may want to say, for instance, that the purpose of earthworms is to transform earth into fertile earth, by processing it through their bodies.

I am tempted to think that perhaps no earthworm would accept this explanation of his life-purpose.
Nor have we heard a better explanation from any worm.
Probably worms are better off because they have no questions that create the necessity of superfluous answers.

But we do the same as the worms, in our own scale: I have no statistics to impress anyone with, but we surely process more than 100X tons (?) of food and drinks through our bodies within 60- 100 years, and they survive us as processed earth............ Similarly, we process who knows how many thousands of cubic meters of air, which survives us as CO2 & Co., nitrogen, oxygen , and other gases...

And what is wrong about worms? They may be entropically ~~far more advanced than we.~~
Only God knows,

If we take a drop of water from a "normal"or infinitely large ocean, we separate it, not only physically, from the rest of the ocean, but also as an individual concept, for reasoning and analytical purposes.
We can also find an immense microcosm in that drop.
But, in so doing, we should not be lured into attributing a beginning and an end to the arbitrarily isolated drop.
In fact, when the drop is returned into the ocean, not only its begin and end disappear, but the drop itself seems to vanish and suddenly gtoow into existence within the ocean, as one with it, or disappear into some "death" or "non - existence".
The "end", "death", or "non - existence", occurs only to our arbitrary image of the "drop", not to the drop itself.
We have the same arbitrary conceptions of the "beginning" and "death" of what we designate as "life", which also dissolves into existence, without the silly angels severely encumbered by harps and wings that can neither play nor fly in outerspace.

Before our "life", after it , and around it (i.e.: what we are incapable of perceiving during our "life") there is the infinite COSMIC LIFE or cosmic ocean (sky included) in time and space of which what we perceive as "life" is but a drop that is and vanishes at the same time...

Our "life" is no more than (yet no less than) a space and time blend of the total which everyone of us is, from an infinitely distant past into an infinitely lasting future.
We may not understand it, but it is there just the same.
Considering the temporal and spatial limits of our "life", this same "life", compared with the rest (infinitely before, after, and surrounding us), is so insignificant, that focusing on it is like focusing on nothing..
.............................................................................................. [A super-human could describe the above and below vastly better than my prattle, but it would still be a better prattle...]
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The nothingness is not outside of our "life", but - comparatively our "life" itself, as an infinitesimal point in the universal space/time.
It exists even if we don't understand it.
We don't attribute our concept of "life" to a rock, a drop of water, or a crystal.
That is the same as to say that a recorded disk is not playing or moving because it turns one revolution in 1,000 centuries instead of 33 revolutions per minute.
It does not play or move for our awareness, merely because our senses and perceptions only function at a certain speed (relative or absolute).
To hear a one - revolution - per - 1000 - years recorded disk, we would have to "live" 33,000 years just as we "live" now one minute (all these numbers are arbitrary, just totry to render a concept).
Or, if we consider the revolution of an electron around the atom nucleus as one year for proportionately small men living on the electron, our record turning at 33 revolutions per minute of our time would seem immobile and silent to them: even more than our one revolution - per - -1000 - years record to us...
An entire life of those hypothetical electron people (wow!) would be so fast for us that we couldn't even perceive its very appearance and disappearance, just as we would appear like lifeless galaxies to them.
Our very "life" is an infinitesimal to the COSMIC LIFE to which it belongs, as a drop to the infinite cosmic ocean.
It is from focusing exclusively on such a small and fast "life" that we consider the universal COSMIC LIFE before, after, and around it as lifeless: a "lifeless" status only to this "life"'s perception; just as a rock seems to have no life to us.
If we co uld observe ourselves in a slow - motion replica, so that one human life - span would be slowed down to , say, one trillion centuries (a little more or less day doesn't matter), we would look and feel - to our present perception as lifeless as a rock.
But our real essence lives of a COSMIC LIFE lasting infinitely longer (sounds like nonsense only becayse we lack not only the proper words, but also the concepts) than one trillion centuries.
Yet, with "these- here-and-now perceptions", we only comprehend the microcosm of "this- here-and now-life".
We are limited by our present biosphere. Therefore, we cannot see COSMIC LIFE in the "pre - life" or around us, and we call it "death" in the "after - life".
In our COSMIC LIFE, we have (or "will have" or "would have") an infinitely higher perception beyond our present capabilities.
On this scale, even a god - any god we can think of- becomes a sub-infantile assumption of an infinitesimally l imited perception.
For those yet to be "born", and for those who are "dead", our "life" is an infinitesimal of the infinity - eternity or space-time cocktail.
The above should need no further comment or understanding.
There is one development, however, if an anthropomorphic dimension is made to prevail in the total interpretation.
It goes as follows:
For us temporarily within this "life", there is the function of evolving our awareness of COSMIC LIFE, so that our limited "life" can expand in the noosphere (sphere of knowledge), to the point that thought will not only unite mankind, but also fuse our limited "life" with the COSMIC LIFE, just like the drop blends with the ocean.

Only 2,500 years ago, the Orientals developed a philosophy, which, from cosmic awareness, shrinks our life endeavors, thoughts and feelings into the ideal nothingness of Nirvana (which was later distorted into as many variations as necessary for primitive human comprehension) .
Mankind, however, may be developing an increasing awareness and knowledge which is bound to expand our life (and all its activities, passions and - above all thoughts) into the COSMIC LIFE.
The human biosphere is in the process of gradual mutation into a multidimensional noosphere.
Human "life"'s inchoate awareness of COSMIC LIFE is creating this expanding sphere of knowledge and awareness.
We could be the human gods of this creation.

Up there, one minor god was overheard saying to another god:

There is a phase of existence called LIFE by one species of its exponents who call themselves HUMANS.
There are millions of other life forms.
Life is a SPACE-TIME BLEND cycle going through birth, growth, reproduction death, in an environment consisting primarily of cold solid matter, gravity, water, nitrogen, oxygen and a time-space interaction.
Like most forms of life, as humans are made of mainly water-dispersed substabces, they are bound to the surface of the solid matter by gravity, and are continuously immersed either in water or in primarily gaseous nitrogen with oxygen, which they must "breath", that is: intake and expel alternatively continuously. They cannot survive outside of temperatures close to closely to water's freezing point and slightly warmer.
As they cannot escape gravity, they move along the solid matter surface by means of motions of their aqueous bodies.
"Life" extends from one point called "birth" to a point called "death" in a one-directional irreversible motion called "time".
Time also dictates the succession ( or time- positioning) of everything from birth to death. This order is fixed permanently within life and any kind of life perception.

In addition to continuous breathing, bodies need continuous "feeding", which is assimilation of other bodies they must "kill" (violently terminate the life - cycle) for the purpose.
Feeding is done by "eating", which is a mashing of the killed body to reduce it to parts small enough to be gradually assimilated through a hole called "mouth".
This process ends with the elimination of unassimilated waste, through another body hole, in larger quantities than what is assimilated.
Breathing and feeding sustain human life and growth until end (death).
The continuation of life happens by "reproduction", which is obtained by ”mating” that is injection of a "seed" by a "male" human into the "female" human.
This happens with the greatest physical pleasure the body can experience, in order to induce the male to doing it.
The seed grows inside the female's body and becomes a new human being, who begins and continues a new life cycle outside of the female body.
Humans cannot effectively communicate outside of some matter vibrations called "sound", or electromagnetic waves of the narrow wavelength range perceivable by the human "eyes".
In the sound case, the matter - vibrations groups are called "speech", which comprises many thousands of "words", each formed by vibrations of a specialized part of the body. Each word is a crude and vague symbol of a category of material or conceptual objects. For instance, "dog", "rock", "water" are the only available symbols each denoting (or presuming to denote) a vast complex of perspectives, combinations, phases and abstractions. Then, artificial concepts expressed as "justice", "truth", "god" are used as substitutes for realities that are beyond a limited human perception called "understanding", "mind" or "reason". These words do not clarify each other, but are invented by humans only as attempts to represent what the others cannot.
The above words are taken from one of the thousands of different word groups, called "languages", used by different human groups. This and the above chosen word - group are called "English" by their users. Users of different word - groups
(= "languages') do not understand each - other without translators.
Human memories are limited to the short life - cycle of every individual. Therefore, they use an artificial external permanent word recording called "writing", consisting of visible symbols of their words stored permanently in stacked sheets of thin flat flexible material that is manufactured for the purpose. This, however, is meaningless until a considerable part of their life span is spent to learn how to understand, absorb and use those external records.
The humans are the form of life that is causing the most noticeable changes in their environment.
They are most lethal in many conflict with each other and with other life forms, but they are also vulnerable.
Their methods to cope with the environment are not to adapt their own nature but to create artificial means like clothing, dwellings, means of transportation and communication, tools and very elaborate forms of energy usage that contrast with the environment. These means have caused an immensely complex artificial life structures and a simultaneous human dependence on them.
Clothing, for instance, consists of one or more layers of skin covering manufactured fabrics covering the body for protection or ornament e. Consequently, the temperature - range their bodies can survive unprotected shrinks to progressively narrower limits.
They build artificial dwellings in sharp contrast with the surroundings and develop countless survival tools that further distance them from natural survival.
Now humans can no longer live in the natural world, but in the artificial substitute of it, as in a living death or dead reality.
Many gods may have gone through the human life phase, but its duration is so minu te and insignificant that it is lost among the unperceivable trillions of details of immortal reality.
This is, after all, just an idle moment in which a god dwells on forgettable microcosm fantasies.

It seems that life has no use for wisdom.
Wisdom is achieved mostly with old age.
When we get there, we are closest to death.

Life wants: growth at the expense of other lives.
[So, we are a pest for other forms of life].

Copulation for reproduction, and death after copulation and/or reproduction.
The male preying mantis is immediately devoured alive by his female copulation partner.
I have not been devoured yet by the female who may want to devour me.. Did she forget or is she hesitating?
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=== One could say, death is life.
.= = Or: life comes from death.
All we eat is something that lived and was killed.
Life is only a transitory aspect of reality.
It could be said that the longer we live and love life, the more we diverge from reality.
Man's intense awareness and a lifeless rock are the two extremes: Man is on one end opposite to reality as we perceive it.
Loving, suffering, joy and pain are on the uncomfortable extreme opposite to reality.
Our anthropomorphic view convinces us that intelligence is the apex of existence.
The rock doesn't even care to comment , for it will remain there unchanged while we have lived, multiplied, died and rotted away.

Animals on the lower [we think] end of the evolutionary scale are closer to reality: their feelings are limited, and so their curse to feel joy or suffering, as we understand them.

The yogy practices to eliminate his own feelings, wishes and goals seem to confirm the evolution in a sense opposite to what we were raised to believe.
Yoga suggests: seek not happiness but the absence of happiness and suffering, wishes and pains... until we become like... rocks and air...

We can already observe absence of emotional suffering in many animals: a lion may kill and eat the young of a gazelle in the gazelle's presence; the surviving gazelles observe the scene with something that looks almost like indifference [what else is safer?], if compared with our crying and suffering.

Probably our evolution should proceed from our present intellect to the Hindu or Buddhist annihilation of feelings and free merging with the cosmos.

We live as if we were not to die. We act as if we controlled sex, and we end up like digestive tracts in almost any human gathering and celebration.
Yet, death is more real than life.
Death is the passage onto THE REALTY that lasts infinitely longer than life, situated before, during, and after life, within and without.
It sounds confusing as I am writing beyond my means, because it is so to our comprehension.

Life results to be no more than an insignificantly small particle of an eternity that includes the before - birth and the after - death.

Life also seems to contain several invitations to death, as well as its own anti-death messages.
For instance, on one hand we have the pain messages, given by the body when wounds, hurts and other death threatening occurrences happen.
Life seems to offer pleasures that are death baits: drugs, alcohol, delicious foods, unrestrained love-making and most pleasures are death- inviting causes of debilitation and decay.

These death baits could also be considered as entropic stimuli. As life is an island of negative entropy, life is then a cancer growing inside of the universal entropic reality.

Now, going to the extreme consequences, we could consider an appropriate God as the symbol or the supreme regulator of the entropic dynamics.
Since what is negative for our conventional pro-life, wisdom is positive in the entropic context, I wonder whether the real divinity of the real essence (that is, the entropic one) results to be closer to our familiar God or to our Satan... Which one is truly entropic?...

Life is a blend of space and time factors, among other things. If we travel in time, we move in space and time within human life.
In space we can move in all directions (gravity permitting?), but we can only move forward in time, and we don't know where we will travel in the next minutes, hours or years.

Time is a personal, subjective, "ego" perception. We have no conception of time outside of ourselves.
Should we learn to time - travel backward (if we know what it means), we would become younger as we go. Should we move to the years of our babyhood, we would become the babies we were (oh yeah?). Further back, we would become sperms and/or ova... and then cells, molecules of our parent(s)...
We couldn't go further than our life span or less. But even that would be a problem.
In fact, I don't know how we could travel more than a few
seconds or minutes :backward". We don't know what our thoughts or actions will be in the next (future) seconds, minutes or hours.

So, as we travel backward and become a few minutes younger, at that point we are where we did not know we were later going to travel back in time or even think of it.
So: we start moving backward, and a few minutes later (that is: earlier...) the whole think stops for lack of appropriate awareness...

Thus, the only way we could travel in time, as it is generally understood, would be by freezing, or fixating, our age, body, thoughts and life in one pattern that remains [really?] totally unaffected by the time travel.

How would we do it, and what would it consist of?

We would then remain the adults we are when meeting the babies we were...
This would only be possible if the past we explore and our traveling present were to coexist as two parallel realities in which the present could observe the past, but never communicate with it, because we had to remove ourselves from its coordinates and patterns. And the past could never perceive the present (that is: its future).

From this, we can extrapolate the simultaneous coexistence of an indefinite number of realities we are unaware of .
The question still remains whether someone in some of the other realities can be aware of us.
If so, he would be in still another situation or dimension with awareness possibilities we cannot fathom yet.

Time could be seen merely as a form of change or motion. Do change or motion differ in the framework of time? Is there any possibility of "time" if it is not concomitant with change and/or motion?
Can time be represented in other way than displacement in space?
Isn't time and motion (change) the same?

There is no motion at the absolute zero temperature. Is time possible at that temperature? If it is, how could it be measured and/or represented if not with motion? But there is no motion at the absolute zero...
So, if I travel in time, I move through time without undergoing any motion (internal, external, or otherwise) myself. That is necessary , so that I don't change in age (that is, in time as aging motion). Or will I age at my present rate, and always in the same direction in time (by becoming constantly biologically older), whether I move "forward" (a direction arbitrarily called "future", whose mere awareness would change my present from knowing consequences I could not know otherwise, without counting that the resulting changes of my present would change and eliminate the future while I am perceiving it...) or "backward" (toward the "past").
So, two different time speeds and directions will (that is: should) interplay without influencing each other.
This way, if I move to the time of my childhood, not only I see people who are dead today (and meet them? Or just see them from another dimension?), but also myself when I was a child.
Are there then, in such case, two of me?
And:
A) Do I see myself returning to yesterday (not today exactly)? Then: 3 of me?
B) If I remain with myself the child and grow with him toward today... How many "me" are there?
C) If I remain with myself the child from day 1 (day of my arrival from the "future", which is today as of today) till day 10, then return to today, then back to day 5..., do I see the myself of the first trip and myself the child? 3 of me? And so on 4, 5....?

If time travel will ever be possible, there are at least 2 hypothesis:

1) If time travel allows us to contact life and things of the time with travel to, we may already have the proof that such contact is either impossible or not allowed (this latter is less likely, for I cannot imagine a perfect world of travelers without "law breakers"), at least with our life form, and in travel toward the past. Otherwise, we would have already experienced (or, more exactly, "perceived") self-revealing visitors from the future. Known history doesn't show any.
2) If time travel is only possible in another dimension, such a dimension must function like a universe different from ours, presumably coexistent with ours, but in a dimension we are presently unable to perceive and comprehend.
In such a case: (1) what and which one is this dimension? (2) If any, we have no proof that such a time travel is impossible.
In case (2), how can I ever come back to my original place, of "self", if, in order to travel back and forward, each time I must go on a different dimension?
This may mean that, when time travel becomes possible, it will mean something entirely different from what we mean now with "time travel".

From any perspective, one could even die and come back to life to any point of time and life. Since, at that point, one does not know when death comes, one would not know that he has already died (that is: "he will have already died") once, or many times...

It seems to me that time is a corollary of life, or a dimension that does not exist outside of life. That would make time travel impossible outside of aging or regressing into our own past...

On the other hand, a time "manipulation" (as a simultaneous coexistence of facts far distant in time) can be conceived when we observe a star 100 or 2000 light - years away: we perceive (or see) now what happened 100 or 2000 years ago, and what is happening there now coexists with our present perception (which makes the "then" exist "now" at least as a sort of reenactment of itself), without reaching it before 100 - 2000 years in the future (within our present possibilities).
That is: "seeing" the 2000 - years - ago - star NOW and perceiving the same star as - is - now, through another perceptual channel, at the same time.
This is one of the blueprints for time travel.
A primary parameter of this blueprint is the speed of light.
Suppose, for instance, that we want to go to the 28 December 1235 AD at a certain place.
If we can spot a point "XYZ" in space to where the images of that place have traveled (I presume with the speed of light) for the duration of the time from then (28 Dec. 1235) to today (including our time to reach "XYZ" and back with the captured images), then we have the conceptual solution. We should have a technology far beyond our present means, but at least our imagination can reach so far.
Possible or not, this method would at least show one of the reasons why we could observe ourselves in early childhood, or an ancient Mesopotamian woman teaching her child, without any awareness or interaction from them.

Some scrambled thoughts about time:
We cannot measure time without motion. A watch, the sun the stars, a river give us the measure of time.
What if they all stop frozen (absolute zero Kelvin)?
What if I lie motionless in a room where nothing moves? I perceive time only because my cells, molecules and atoms move. If they stop moving, I am dead and I perceive nothing, for there is nothing for "me" to perceive.
If we are all dead, all humans and life, who is there to measure time? Does time, then, still exist?
Is time, then, just a product of perception, or concept, or invention?
If it is our invention, could we disinvent it? Could it be possible?
Time cannot exist without space and life, for time is a consequence of life, perception and space.
When we die, time stops for us, but "continues" for those who live on.
That is, a billion or trillion years can pass for whoever lives, but that same time is nothing for us who are dead. Thus, at the same time, one trillion years or millennia things can happen for any life or motion/time form, but nothing at all for us dead ones (or for our perception, for we "are" insofar as we perceive), not even one millionth of a second.
We may become "ourselves", or simply "perception", again, after all those millennia, but those millennia are not even an instant for us. Perhaps our life is nothing but that kind of "return to perception", the "previous perception" ("life") being so remote in kind and/or time, that remembering the previous is futile and meaningless. Furthermore, in that dimension, "previous", "future" and "present" are something between interchangeable and meaningless.

The key to the explanation of time lies in an interaction or other relation- between space (relationship between 2 or more points), life (time - conditioned growth, change, multiplication) and perception (time exists only if perceived).

If we want results, we must have rules that can be depended upon.
The alternative is an interminable bickering, argumentations and changes beyond recognition.

Our reason uses an adversary method that finds no conclusion. Any "truth" only survives until a new objection destroys it.
This is, after all, the history of philosophy.

Faith and dedication offer more results - good or bad -than freedom, knowledge and independence.
Therefore authoritarian religions get results: Democratic religion is an oxymoronl.
Catholicism, Islam, traditional monasteries, taboos...
Hardly any religion succeeds without strict rules.
Many Protestant sects, for instance, change continuously, because their faith has no indisputable approach.
The only factor that endures with them is the Bible (in most cases), because they don't dare to change it. But the Bible lends itself to all sorts of distorted interpretations.

Of the non - religious organizations and endeavors, also the authoritarian are the sure survivors: business, the government agencies.
This indicates that reasoning is not sufficient to find the truth and justice.

During the French Revolution (1789-1799), the churches were marginalized and altars were erected to the Goddess of Reason.
Even a worship ritual was organized, like a subconscious irrational support of the rational.
It failed miserably.

For thousands of years, the "Age of Reason" has been advocated.
Then, the Age of Love.
Neither came, although both were recognized as indispensable for mankind.
Both failed, like most vanished religions.
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Probably, we came up with all those failed ideas, ideals, theories, philosophies and religions, because we were unable to focus on reality.
Those ideas and religions are just easier substitutes for reality, somehow like addictive drugs.

Now, we have addiction to Christianity, Islam, communism, capitalism, freedom, patriotism, competition, democracy, equality...

We are unable to face the "cold turkey" of withdrawal from these dopes.
We are now so far from reality, that any objection against our basic faiths would leave us in shambles. We would feel like dogs in a church. Probably that is what we ought to come down to, in order to start anew, in the direction that would get us away from hatred, love, freedom, slavery, false, true, good, bad... or even life and death.
What is beyond the new threshold?

Someone there, in the distant future, will probably sense that this is a call to them, but only a faint move in the right direction, because we don't even possess the language that could focus toward the opening of the new vision.
We should not even say "the new vision", for it is not new at all: it is "new" only relatively to our habit of calling new anything that we happen to discover, even if it has been there since time immemorial.

The peak of man's worth is supposed to be REASON. But that is exactly what has proven to be as reliable as quicksand.
What is "discovered" by reason as inarguable, is sooner or later demolished by new twists of that same reason.
Our triumphing Christianity is beset by as many diverging sects as there are reasoning theologians. The only enduring elements are those that allow no dispute.

Our courts of law are a daily proof that the unleashed reason in the "adversary system" to find justice and truth can only allow the victory of the more skillful.

Justice and truth are left out.
Probably they are important only in the light of our judgment, but "irrelevant" in the context of a higher level of evolution.

Wars keep occurring because the reasoning adversaries cannot reach a convincing conclusion.
They all use reason to search truth and justice, to no avail.
Again and again, nothing survives if it is submitted to the ravages of reasoning.

The history of communes proves the corroding effect of reasoning processes from the most distant past to the present.
They are the graveyards of all attempts to implement any ideal societal concept based on freedom and reasoned interpretation of any theory.

Only the cocietis based on dogmatic rules could survive.
Most of them, if not all, are of rigid religious nature. This seems to be odd in an era in which religion
has lost its luster.

Where can we go from the realization that reason, believed to be the highest of our attributes, must be substituted by something that we have not yet discovered?

Much of what we write is like clichés and platitudes, because it has been said by others before.
So, why bother?
Yet, we could be reminded that clichés are truths so accepted that everyone knows them.

They are discredited because they are mentioned too often out of place, or as if they were original thoughts.
We discredit them instead of those who misuse them.
We attack and defend clichés with platitudes.

Thoughts like "Life is short" are certainly not original, but often we must express them as necessary remainders, as known facts with another perspective, or as support for related thoughts...

Those who want to sit on top without ascent must discredit the laborious path upward.
As this path is paved with established truths, the easiest way to discredit it is to label the truths as clichés .
It works for them, and we pay the bills.

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SINUOUS HAPPINESS

Happiness by itself is ephemeral.
Whatever joy or happiness we can imagine cannot last indefinitely. Its effectiveness diminishes until it vanishes into nothing or boredom.
In many cases, if not all, its persistence beyond its capability of giving us pleasure may become a source of discomfort or even suffering.
On the opposite extreme, it seems that pain or suffering are not diminished by persistence.

One of the common delusions is the belief that we can find enduring happiness in doing what we like.
Even if we find happiness that way, it is only for short. Then, it fades out, like the pleasure of love - making.

Probably happiness was originally sublimed from elemental pleasures like orgasm, tasting food, fresh water, rest or victory.
They fade away after their peak. They seem to indicate that happiness, or pleasure builds up and persists only during the ascent toward the top.
Once reached the goal, the pleasure only lingers a short while.

The secret of happiness is in liking what we do, rather than doing what we like.

If we learn to like what we do, we elicit and infuse happiness from a source within ourselves, which is virtually inexhaustible.
The pleasure of getting something done, for instance, can be applied to anything we do. Therefore, the pleasure depends on our attitude rather than on what is being done.
What makes the difference is the doer, not the action itself.

Learning to enjoy what we do is an act of will.
Doing what we like depends on the uncontrollable probability that the object of our action has in itself the power to give us pleasure.

The pursuit of happiness is a mirage, for happiness does not materialize as a goal, but only as a consequence of achieving something we strive for, and continue forward... and higher.
Liking what we happen to be doing is the same as enjoying something worth striving for. It has a reliable endurance in the fact that it induces us to like what we have to do. That helps us control the result of our striving and derive happiness from it.
There is no better way to enjoy enduring happiness, nor can happiness be more enduring.

Doing what we like is no guaranty that we keep liking it, as we meet the unavoidable nuisances of reality.

Doing what we like is something that mostly hides in a wishful future.

As we don't like our present, we hope for something else and conclude we would like to enjoy it. Since we only know what we have experienced, what we think will give us happiness is something we don't know.

We could then say that thinking of doing what we like is an escape from reality.
As what we like to do is reached, it becomes reality and we don't like it any more.
The happiness of reaching the Promised Land does not translate into happiness of living there.

Happiness is then a question of taste and lies within ourselves.
On the other hand, happiness is dynamic, like the Red Queen Race. It is not static.
Happiness is liking what we do, if what we do goes on and on and higher...

In World War 2,
I made many unforgettable experiences that I forgot, and forgettable experiences that I remember.

Now is Feb. 21, 2008; I was born 1-1-1924.
Ishould remember what year (1943 or -44?) I was studying chemical engineering in the university of Padova. Mussolini fell... Confusion... I had been conscripted to be trained as lieutenent of the Artigl2ieria Alpina...
The Germans invaded Italy, my birth place and where I lived...
Whom was I to report to?
I went by train to my ancest ral home at Via Torre, 52 in S. Maria Capua Vetere, about 800 km, south of Northern Italy, almost 30 km north of Napoli.

The Germans captured me in a round-up of Italian war prisoners and put me to work for their troops anout 100 km (I presume) morth of there. During a bombing by American or Britich airplaines on an aitalian village, I escaped with 3 other Italians of my area and the four of us started a blind escape from German and Allied (American and British) troops who might suspect us as loyal to the Germans or Fascists. During that blind uncharted escape (away from inhabited and/or occupied zones), we , Marcello (meeicine student), Massimo (humanities student) Mimmi (laborer) and I had the forgettble experience I remember most vividly and cannot describe properly because i have no appropriate definitions for our feelings there.
We stumbled on a barn with a cocrete floor on which was an enormous pile of dried figs...We were more starving than ever before...
We just dove into that paradise of the most delicious meal ever... (yes: the highest quality superbly dried figs): insane and moaning with food delight..(never before so in my life)
........... Then..., one of us hollered: "THE BOMB IS TICKING!!' ........One instant later we were all so far away... who knows wheere... but alive....
Each of us with all our pockets full of dried figs... then the most delicions food in the world ...
Not "per se". but in our own momentary version; Both PLEASURE AND HAPPINESS, which turned into ephemeral pleasure...........
Sudden;y we philosophized how happiness(rather than pleasure) only comes from within.
That's all.

That happiness was a PLEASURE by itself; and, as such, of short duration, like an orgasm, which also reaches the "non plus
ultra" hichest PEAK of 10 (in the intrnal source scale from 1 to 10), which is often spent in seconds.
The most remarkable was about the degrees of happiness I could feel during that period, compared to similar levels of before and after.
During that period of terrors, being pursued by some German soldiers who acted as confused as we (I think), they deliberately behaved like blithering fools because they really wanted to spare us. Therefore, they shot into the air from their truck... and were mad that we were too scared to know how to escape into the nearby woods... with their weapons aiming at us.
yelled with my hands up: "Warum? Wir sind weder Feinde noch Verraeter!!!" ("why? we are neither enemies nor trtaitors"!!). It worked, or I wouldn't be here now.

Great peaks of joy were reached when we could find a clean hay stack under a deserted barn roof...
The comfort, the blissful rest, the healthy sleep were simply delicious, not by themselves, but as interpreted by us, even knowing that the German soldiers had orders to shoot escaping prisoners.

Happiness generates only inside of us in a range between 0 and 10, but we must distinguish enduring happiness within from sterile pleasure from without.,There is nothing external that can cause in us a reaction lower than 0 or higher than 10 inside of us.
So far, I called that 10 "the dried figs syndrome" and let the specialists pontificate about it.

I think, no joy was more intense and riotous as the one we wallowed in when we succeeded in hiding (from the pursuing German soldiers who could have killed us on sight) as we wee hiding inside wooden coffins in a mortician's place.
Yet, the happiness I personally felt in that occasion (and in all other peaks of happiness until today) did not surpass the level of my "dried figs syndrome".

Or, we could equate our capacity for happiness to that of a vase: no matter whether it is filled with water, honey, gold dust or mud, its capacity is always the same. Our happiness is the vase; its measure is the capacity, not the contents quality.

The sheer joy of simple camaraderie, friendly faces, the warmth of sharing life-and-death successes, fears, efforts... were feelings that I now remember with nostalgia, with a sad realization that that was a "real" way to live and feel that I would like to experience again.
Why?

I was born and raised in a prosperous environment, with comforts and refinements that should have rendered those experiences painful rather than joyous.
Probably, the comparison I really felt was with the suffering inflicted to us by the captivity. Or, the suffering had freed me of the expectations of comforts and enabled me to appreciate deliverance.

That may explain why many "primitive" or "ungrateful" people stubbornly refuse to accept the great opportunities for "happiness" and "progress" we offer. Our sophisticated ways, superior knowledge make the path to happiness more complicate0 for them.
Why should they go to all our troubles to achieve the same (probably not even that) degree of contentment that they reach now with much less effort? |
That could also explain why my instinct longs for those experiences that were so genuine and uncorrupted by the intricacies of our society.

Indeed, any "progress" beyond the primordial tasks of survival, food search and mating adds unnecessary complications to life. These complications are unnatural. Therefore, we are at least uncomfortable in coping with them.

For millions of years, our happiness has consisted of winning the life struggle: survival, food, mating.
Everything beyond that is, evolutionarily, a last - minute development that has not even taken a reliable shape.

The ultimate truth is hidden in the twilight between life and death, between suffering and joy... with the space in between narrowed to a thin line containing nothing of normal events of life routine.
Truth is hidden by the every-day indifferent events that place us in a flat status without the awareness of danger, struggle, life-and-death clash with nothing in between to stimulate our senses and perception.

There is something in suffering that shows the precious dividing edge of life and death, the meaning of VITAL REALITY, WORTH FOCUSING - ON.
There is like an instinct of happiness, exhilaration, a vital elan, like a shot of adrenalin caused by the confrontation of life and death.
It pushed us forward and higher. Even at the peak of happiness from success, we sink into suffering if we dwell and rest.

Nature preserves... and we sublime this instinctive feeling. Anything else between life, death, mating, hunger, thirst, fear, joy... is what we have put together in the everyday civilized life. It is unnatural in its rest and oblivion of life - and - death, in its flat security. It is monotonous and boring. Vivid colors fuse into a dull gray. Life rots in it.

The truism that happiness is within ourselves rather than in external goals or objects is so important that the perspectives to analyze it are never too many.

We could consider the happiness the jailed man feels he would find in "outside" situations which free people don't appreciate at all.
The ex - jailbird would get used to the freedom and become as unhappy as anyone else. But that reiterates that happiness is within, in the personal interpretation of whatever factors we consider.

The same condition that makes one vibrantly happy may induce somebody else to suicide.
The external condition is the same; the opposite reactions indicate that the cause dwells inside the people affected because the goal is like a mirage that vanishes if we don't strive beyond.

There is a threshold between poverty and wealth, lack and pres ence of something, beyond which the desirability of the success declines like a law of diminishing returns.
It is not clear whether that threshold is a matter of time that wears off the joy of obtaining the coveted, or of quantities obtained in each step, or of any other manner of obtaining.

It seems, for instance, that one should achieve the desired goal in steps not larger or more rapid than one can learn to appreciate. Learning how to use something is also learning how to be happy with it to go further..

"Most people lead a life of silent desperation" is a catchy statement, but it could also be appropriate.

It applies to the endless cases of frustrated fun, epressing ddisappointments, demolished high expectations, surprising letdowns, boredom-to-death in paradise...
They are common and multiform experiences.

We all know of the vacation that turns into a total disaster; of the picnic where everything goes wrong; the boring party; the solitary desperation of single - bars pilgrimage; the expensive poor- food dinner...

On a higher end, there is the bleak marriage, the empty career, the hollow triumph, the loneliness on the top...
On a "low" level, people plagued by poverty, powerlessness, almost any kind of failure,experience unhappiness to a degree that is probably not worse than that of people who live with the blessings of success, wealth or other advantages.

The "fortunate" are attributed more happiness only because of the general opinion and because many of the "fortunate" see as much advantage in appearing happy as the "unfortunate" in displaying their unhappiness.
The difference is that the "fortunate" cannot talk themselves into enjoying the happiness they declare, whereas those who find expedient to claim unhappiness need very little effort to really suffer what they display.

Very often, when people are helped out of predicaments, deprivation or suffering, their level of expectations is raised, and their ability to enjoy life is lowered.
This also happens when the life standard is raised.
It seems to tie in with the fact that the joy of obtaining something is diminished in proportion to how easily it is obtained.

When I was a child, I lived in a house that local standards, in Southern Italy, consider comfortable, upper-class and enviable. The fact that it didn't have any air conditioning and central heating did not disturb me (wearing heavy clothing was much more comfortable than heating the whole house in the local mild snow-free winters climate) just as the same lack did not disturb Peter the Great, a Chinese Ming emperor, or any pope, Louis XIV of France or Henry the VIII in England much colder climates.
In winter, we just wore warm clothing, which, by the way, were more expensive in their times than now.
An enjoyable experience was to sit in front of a big fireplace or around a brazier, which are typically inefficient heating devises. It gave a feeling of coziness, peace; it presumably promoted friendliness, pleasurable togetherness, relaxing meditation and conversation...

Today, central heating is a standard in USA. In proportion to the above mentioned conditions, it should cause ecstasy, at least physical happiness. Instead, we merely consider it a basic necessity. The expectations have been raised so much above reality that Chicago's welfare rules consider heating below 68°F inhuman or illegal. This causes complaints, suits, and legal complications that would not exist if politicians had not produced unhappiness by raising expectations.

These and other raised expectations give people more opportunities to blame their unhappiness on artificial sources, which render the real reasons still more difficult to detect. New pundits, then, add their learned explanations based on such false premises, and the distress becomes endemic.

In my contacts as a chemist and businessman with large scientific and government organizations, civil or military, financed by private or public funds, I was always impressed by the mediocre use they make of their means, as opposed to the better results that smaller entrepreneurs would obtain with the same means.

I deal a lot with physicists, researchers in electronic, "hi tech", builders and other fields engaged in all sorts of theoretical and practical projects.
Most of the programs are very expensive and would require strict expense controls.
The nature of the involved organization, however, is such that many financial controls are just wishful thinking.
Scientists engaged in creative work are frequently stifled by too many controls.

On the other hand, one attitude seems to be common to most people involved in those environments: the lack of enthusiasm and eagerness other people would have if they were given those powerful means too easily.

Everyone who deals with small entrepreneurs knows how long a small firm dreams and saves in order to obtain a piece of equipment, or any added facility, including a new "human resource", which those large organizations get as a matter of daily routine.
And they are shocked by the "waste" occurring in the larger organizations.

"If I only had one fraction of those means", they say, "I would get ten times their results"...

It is true in principle.
Give me those means, I would say, and I will show what can be done with them...
But only after receiving those means, I find out what their limits are.
There are numerous ways to describe how the dreamed results are more alive in our hopes than reality, such as the cycle of most research projects, but there is a consideration that connects them with our hopes for happiness and the reality of it.

Our enthusiasm, like happiness, is deflated by dwelling on the achieved goal.
The similarity with the erotic cycle is striking.
The intensity of desire and the expectations are the highest before achieving union with the beloved; or, more crudely, before copulation.
Then, life together becomes as gray as the rest of reality.

The same happens with riches: they don't seem to deliver the happiness one expected from them.
We begin with: "If I had one million...". Then, when we have it: so what?
Without further plans, what we wish is no longer so desirable when we have obtained it, because only part of what we hoped for, if at all, is found in the simple result.

Our happiness is always crippled by the surprise that every success is only the beginning of another ascent or "problem".

Therefore, people who have the means are not as enthusiastic and inspired as one would expect before obtaining the means.

I have seen primitive people awed to the highest by the "miracles" of civilization.
A simple mirror caused hours of ecstasy. We know of the beads enthusiastically accepted by primitives in exchange for gold. Add to them electricity, automobiles, a modern house and all the peripherals... Make them maintenance and tax - free...
We know that the so favored primitive man would soon become jaded and bored if he could not reach for more and more...
Many of our immigrants jump with astonishing ease from the stone age to skyscrapers and union strikes.

The nature of hope includes expecting more from what we don't have than from what it can produce. Only those who have obtained it know the reality.

Or, we could say that those who know the reality are seldom enthusiastic about it...

Or, again, happiness is within us, not in the reality outside.
Too many forget: "what next"?

There is one way that proves that I am right if the whole world disagrees with me.
Case in point:

In a nationally famous chain book store, I found a printed sign that urged the customers to put every book "back in it's shelf".
My shock was that the sign was not a local spelling mistake, but a company - wide printed poster. Then, as it would have been unacceptable in a machine shop or other "non - cultural" place, it was unforgivable in a book store.
I brought it to the attention of the store manager, with my comments that such a sign in a book - store was like an obscenity in a church.

One week passed. The sign was still there unchanged.
I told the manager that leaving such a sign unchanged would not only make the misspelling look correct to the unwary, but it would crystallize indifference in the knowledgeable and lower their linguistic awareness.
The manager's reaction was courteous, but indifferent.

Weeks later, the sign was still there like before...
That confirmed my fear: the more indifference met my claim, the more entrenched the error became, and the more people agreed with the indifference or approval of the wrong spelling.
I was admittedly convincing about a negative chain reaction of one little mistake spawning consequences that were growing simultaneously worse, more tolerated and less noticeable.

This would render my protest the more peevish and the less acce ptable, the longer I persisted in it.
The longer the situation persisted, the more damaging were the consequence, indifference or passive opposition...

Brought to the extreme, the above means that, in such cases, the m ore opposition I find, the more it proves that my objection was correct.
So much fuss about "its" and "it's"?
Some of the largest trees have the smallest seeds.

History has recorded our indifference to the warnings against social injustice, against citizens' indifference itself, the Jewish or Vietnamese Holocausts, the Afghan, Russian; Ucranian and other "worse than the Jewish Holocaust" massacres, the population explosion or decay.
When first warned of each of them, the "general public" reacted to them similarly as to the "it's", in spite of all claims.

How on earth can I compare the reaction to a genocide and to an "it's"?
Go ahead, prove me wrong.
That proves me right.
The same outraged reaction I feel front of a well meant TV exhortation to the general audience:
THIS WEEK END: GO TO YOUR CHURCH, SYNAGOGUE OR MOSQUE.

Asking for pious chaos ???…

The man from the lower societal or racial stratum who approaches us with unctuous or humble deference can be touching. We may feel empathy and the desire to show him our understanding and brotherhood.

We feel and want to show that brotherly perception as equals, not as the upper kind granting something out of generosity. We want to go out of our way to assure him that he doesn't have to be deferential just because we have or "know" more...

On the other hand, take those who demand and thus cause deep seated hostility in those who prefer to act out of love rather than beeng compelled.

Consider the beautiful woman who looks angelic and is a sadistic criminal, the one who looks chaste and is a whore...
Observe the adorable child who grows up as ugly as any adult...
How many men (or women) do we know who are really devoted, loyal, virtuous?
Most women become mothers, and automatically enjoy the sacred esteem and worship bestowed to mother, flag and apple pie...

The most beautiful face in the world can become monstrous with a simple acid splash, fire accident, or for many other reasons...
The threshold between the worst and the best is sometime so tenuous that it challenges our sanity, our very existence...
The same thing can cause peace or war the way it is presented, not the way it is.

If the consequences are so dreadful, it is possible that we have our evaluation so twisted that we should re-evaluate what we call frivolous and what we consider essential.

We may want to return to the old question of substance and form, or on another level of right and might.

We have decided that substance and right should have the attributes of justice, and that appearance, power, luck have no merit weight....
In reality, our behavior respects luck not less than talent or hard work, because the result of either can be or look the same.
The reality involved is indisputably in the result, but the truth about the path to the goal is not that clear.
This effort to "explain" our behavior doesn't justify it.

What then about a flawless face and a burned one? Our loving the former and rejecting the latter is a surrender to a superficial fact that we allow to creep on us like a value - judgment.
We can say that our rejection of the burned face is of the same nature as the rejection expressed by pain...
It is still not right.

But what is this concept of "right"? It is so vague that it interferes with finding a solution out of our dangerous extremes of brotherhood and hostility, right and might, beauty and ugliness, luck and merit, substance and form, good and evil...

Again, we have distorted reality into the simple things we can understand.

Old cliché.
Seen on the street from a mountain, skyscraper or airplane, thousands of people look like insignificant ants that really don't matter. They can die, be bombed.., and we perceive no relevant difference. What they do, feel or say means nothing. No more than what ants do, feel or say... Any difference among them is also insignificant.
Then, everything changes if we live among them on their level and size. Each of them becomes a uniquel y important individuals , whose existence affects ours in numerous ways.

The insignificance from afar and the life/death importance from w ithin, are both valid and contradictory. Their difference is attributable to the relative perspectives.
It appears, however, that the importance of the individual is only ephemeral, like life, as much as we hate to admit it.
As death "equalizes" everything forever (?), it seems to suggest that the final perspective is the one that makes us as undistinguishable as ants seen from afar.
Why their life and individuality? Is life also a pulsating phenomenon like the expanding universe? Are both equally insignificant and all - important simultaneously, as well as other attributes that we cannot fathom, all with equal importance and insignificance at the same time?..
Are we individuals programmed to develop an individuality that is evoked so that we are motivated to struggle, survive, mate and procreate at the service of life reproduction?
Will this life-growth expand and finally fuse into the universal reality like a drop into the ocean?
Let's go now back to the top of the skyscraper to watch those ant-like people down in the streets..., and I realize that I am one of them...
At this point, we contemplate the impact of the sudden realization that we are so insignificant..., and remaining speechless , and the paradox leaves us with nothing more to say.
Apparently, the speechlessness says it all as the ultimate no answer to the ontological (about nature of being and reality) question.

We reach the same no-answer when we follow the life of a human being who goes through an exceptional process of growth, learning, intellectual and spiritual evolution with fantastic developments . Soon, he will be able to reveal the wonders of his contributions to the world, with consequent gigantic leaps forward in civilization...
Yet, one night, a dope addict enters his house and shoots him in a daze of heroin derangement... In a fraction of a second, the great man is dead: as if he had never existed, all of his historic and cultural contributions have no more existed...
No one will ever know about him or even miss him...
|That innsinuates our insignificance and the difference between a saint and a doped humanoid vanishes...

Why so, why is death possible and so easy in an instant, and life so complicated, arduous and long to develop?
Why can an insignificant mosquito (like the one who allegedly killed Alexander the Great about 24 centuries ago) change the history of mankind by simply biting a man able to originate and develop world shaking events?
Probably, life is a slowly developing cancer (or what?) that reality can remove with a sweeping act of cleansing that we may want to call death, killing or destruction.

Wanna want to reason the other way around?
***************************************************************** ***** ****
Meanings and values have no existence of their own. Their existence is a mere postulate of human beliefs.

The more knowledge advances, the more religion recedes (or "is transformed").

Magic spells are a clue that our instincts preceded our reason in recognizing the fusion of words, thoughts and emotions.
The power of words to evoke and guide feelings, reasoning and actions is evident in religion, leadership, inspiration, teaching.
The Holy Book starts with: "In the beginning there was the word".

Our logics system has failed too often. There is no logical position that is impregnable on logical terms: it can always be countered and invalidated by an opposing view.
Courts of law and politics are typical examples. No matter how convinced and eloquent one side is, normally, the adversary side mostly remains equally convinced of the opposite.

Theefore the "adversary system" is a presunptuous delusion supported by those who make a living with it.
Logics works only when guided by values and premises previously agreed upon. That is the flaw of logics.
Furthermore, is the evidence that logic can serve values, or that values can serve logic?.
Inane quetion calling for an inane answer...

Knowledge of undisputed ideas, like mathematical principles (supposedly), is the same in all men who share them.
This unites men the more, the more knowledge they share.
That is the converging point of mankind: When all men are united in the same validated and [proven knowledge, that very knowledge
becomes the immense ocean where the individual human beings find the sparmanent solution, like drops rejoining the ocean.

Between us and truth - knowledge can be a very long path.
We have no idea whether we are at the beginning or end of that path. At any rate, no matter where we are, we believe that we know the truth.
Our concepts of human rights, justice, freedom, equality, brotherhood, democracy are all a clue of our weakness: in them we expect the solutions of our problems: from our fellow men.
Yet, we are born, grow and die as individuals. Since we exist and function as single units, we proceed outside of the justice, freedom, equality and other concepts that can only be invoked by our interdependence with our fellow-men.
Our main religions, Christianity and Islam, demand our solutions from our brethrens, yet they make the individuals responsible.
Or is the Buddhist quasi-entropic interpretation the solution we should seek?

A clue to our blindness is our way of living as if we were not to die.
One of our subliminal means to avoid death as a goal is our belief in the afterlife.
That is, we create the ideas we choose to believe as reality.
We are in the phase in which we perceive the world the way we want to see it.
We don't know whether the world we see is a reliable perception.
The blind perceives the truth not less than the one with good sight.

World, truth, reality are only words, just like seeing, feeling, perceiving; so is existence not only the world, or truth, or reality, but all of them together, and each concept is so changed that each includes all the others.
And not only all the others, but also their opposites and what lies in between.
Being and not being, life and death, are then only words that are simply in the existence, regardless of our interpretation.

Sometime, our inorganic cosmos started with some gravitational push - pull, blended with heat - cold and relative mass - space-time interplay.
All with attributes of infinity or limitlessness in curved or straight dimensions.
Then, somewhere, began a biologic cycle with life: reproduction and multiplication that menaces to approach or reach a geometric progression in growth.
It may well be the birth of a new universe. Insignificant now, compared to the inorganic universe, but a biologic geometric progression has the potential of swallowing the present universe...
It is like a drama that is already unfolding: insects, humans, fish, birds, microorganisms, bacteria, plants, plankton...
Who will emerge dominant or determinant?
Can humans ultimately prevail?
Will then humans fuse in common thoughts and mutate into the universe of thought?

Once, while watching a 100 - year old movie, I was so impressed by the images of those people laughing, moving and talking as if they were alive "here and now", that I felt like crying to them:
"Hey, don't you realize that you are all dead?".
Immediately, my mind heard their mocking reply:
"Don't you realize that you have not yet been born?".

Choose a spot on the map. It gives no idea of the people, life and activities there. Go there, and all sort of people come into existence who, from our perspective, did not exist before we perceived them. A place, a room, all kinds of details come to life....
How many people, families, villages and even huge cities don't exist simply because we don't have any perception of them...
Apparently existence, like time, is a matter of perception.
How many people have said it before?
Am I the 100th monkey?

Life cannot have much meaning, since it is so vulnerable to accident.

If the ancient people had seen an airplane crossing the sky, or a man using a machine gun, a telephone, radio, TV, turning an electric light on, they would have considered it divine and either worshiped or feared it, or reacted in an ecstatic mood. This mood seems to have 2 sides: one is absolutely extraneous to us, it does not affect, improve or damage us in any way; the other is a state of mind or perception (probably still to be defined as a word) we feel ecstatic about, like a reassurance that what we would love to discover is true: the marvelous, the impossible is suddenly possible... It is imagination come true, regardless of whether we get anything tangible out of it.
Do we have needs that we cannot measure, define or describe as such?
Are they similar to the artistic experience? Then, what is the artistic experience?
But the artistic experience is tangible and perhaps immutable, even if it doesn't affect us in a measurable way.
Yet, it does.
The airplane, telephone, TV are ephemeral as marvels, when we learn their nature. Works of art are not ephemeral when analyzed.
Is it then like the narcotic or extended perception experience?..

Odd humans... Odd gravity... Things don't stay put. They "fall": enormous waste of means to hold them together.
Sex, food, breathing. They must happen or we are extinguished.
Birth is excruciatingly laborious.
Humans cannot survive as they are: clothes, houses built in strange contrast with the environment. Money, industry.
They produce innumerable things to complicate their life, like cars that stick to the earth and need artificial flat surfaces to move on.
- Food is the death of other life. Awkward speech, radio, writing, books, pictures (they have no other means to communicate, store and recall images, experience, ideas and events).
Present, past and future are separated. They can only go from present to present in the direction from past to future. Strange relationships: family hierarchy, government, police.
They can do anything without others' awareness. So, they need cumbersome records, police, government.

Look at life: being born, kill, kill, kill, eat, eat, eat.., copulate, die.
When we look at any animal, we see them eat, search or hunt for food, or copulate..., and anything they do is connected with that.
It seems they have only two thinks in mind: eat (after killing proteins or carbohydrates, + water) and copulate.
Plants seem to be doing the same, but in a better style.
Do atoms do it too, or are they a superior or inferior form of existence because they don't have to do it?
When life forms die, they are free of the urges to eat, survive, multiply.
Since life, in which those necessities are essential, is an insignificant nothing between an infinity before and an infinity thereafter, it seems that what is before and after life must be the eternal reality.
That eternal reality is in continuous motion and change of pulsations, expanding and contracting universes...
What is the meaning of it all?
Must it have a meaning, just because meaning is a brainy anthropomorphic requirement?

Life, time, and awareness are more than symbiotic: none of them can exist without the others. They are not only interdependent, but limiting. What we don't perceive does not exist (to our awareness at least).
Both life and awareness are impossible without the time attribute, which, however, only exists because of them.
Outside of life (before my birth and after my death), I am not limited by the reaches of awareness, time and perception, nor limited by my ego.
What is billions of centuries away is neither away nor present, because only living perception can measure time/space and be limited by them and awareness.
What is billions of light years away is just as unperceived as what I am sitting on, and I am not even sitting on anything.
On one extreme is the limiting life/time/awareness perception, on the other is the unlimited/indefinable/unperceivable of non - life that needs or knows no awareness.
Crazy? Which one?

We have an ominous entropic clue: no matter how large and complicated is whatever we have built, and no matter how long it took us to build it, in most cases, we can destroy it in seconds or minutes.

First thought: after my life, I am or will end up where my essence was before my life.
Second thought: annihilation comes with death.
Before my life, I was a sperm/ovum. Before that, my "I" origin went back, from and through, all generations, until the first cell before the primordial form of life that preceded my evolution chain.
That is more complicated, but "truer" than "before and after life ". Meanwhile, something of me continues in my progeny.
Third thought: "Before and after life" is only then valid, if we consider life as "time -and-space awareness" as we know it.
The above may seem too complicated until we read deeper.

Feb. 28-2008

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"OCHLOCRACY" is "Rule by mediocrity" or "rule by the mob", in the decaying phase of "democracy", which means "rule by the people".

Both terms are fron Grece, reputed to have fiest full-flrdged democracy roughly as we know it, (since over 26 centuries ago).

At this point, we should be reminded that "democracy" is still a decaying compromise from autocracy ( vested in different permanent or tentative forms. like rule by a kuhg, emperor, dictator, highest priest, etc, which woud be ideal if the suprime ruler were not generally exposed to corruptiion, decay and degeration...
But the vicious circle is bound to sink even lower than ochlocracy, unless... what? How do we save ourselves from the present rotting (now affecting even cours and churches), which is afraid of any umequivocal commitment (to...what they betray yet?)

=== A definitely lethal attack against the family is now in full swing through the nefarious family law's synergistic combination of "no-fault divorce" and forced 50/50% partition of the marital property which was very seldom 50/50% earned (misogynists and feminists should not be judges in family courts).
=== The forced 50/50 wealth partition in a divorce can easily be a crassly unjust provision that may look just and fair at first sight, for at least two reasons: (1) First, it favors the one spouse (edpecially if she/he is a predatoey shyster who violates the law without witnesses, gahers and corrupts false witnesses) is guilty of witnwss-free adultery, mental cruelty, even sadism, dissipation, incompetence, unwitnesse violencce and abuses falsely attributed to the innocent spouse, cynicism, parasitism, dishonesty, and all possible infamies (voraciously promoted by shysters who thereby gain juisy fees, in spite of the official assurances to the contrary.
I have been onr oh those absolutely inocently charged with guilt perpetratee by the oppoeing [arty against me in the most nefatious wats. Moreover, if I appea, no matter is decided in the appeal, Iwill be returned to the judge who considerd "irrelevant" my truthful statements. I am assured, those decisions are a plague ol countless trials..... ABSOLUTELY, COMPLETELY INNOVENT VVICTIMIZED
INNOCENTS

One spouse can be victimiZed and innocent, and yet condemmned to pay to thieves the price of what tgey stole from him.her.

spendthrift and worse yet... and he/she can still be entitled to ha lf of the remaining wealth... Remember that especially the petitioner has NO FAULT by legal definition and reality.... All objections to it are dismissed with obtusely cynical designation, like: "irrelevant" and "this is the way it is". This marginalizes one or both parents in a family and the family itself is destroyed...
This destroyed the Greek nation in the second century b. c., until Rome made it a Roman province and madethe Greeks full Roman citizens, and so restored the amily with "Patria Potestas" rules that created the typical patriarchal family pattern of the Western World, beside finally stopping the various Asian attempts to conquer Europe.

WITHOUT THAT, (believe it or not) THERE WOULD BE NOW NEITHER EUTOPE, NOR AMERICA, but the same hordes of Asiatic marauders as for many thousands of years before (when Eutope was mere,y the Axian west end into the Artlantid Ocean), and the same cannibals or whatever (and no horses to boot) in the American continent.

=== LAWS DISPLACE MORALITY
When children are raised and educated, they learn about a life according to the Ten Commandments in one form or another.
Then "real life" surprises them with one shock after another.
Reality becomes one "tnat- is-the-way-it-is" after another.
Court cases become like card games in which the petitioner and the defendant learn the rules only after the game has is over...
Morality and logic must yield to th rules of the game, which prevaios mercilessly even if the court decision is blatantly unrealistic.
who has won and who has lost how much.
The lawyers on both sides always win at least their arbutrary fees, no matter who loses or gains how much... Then, the court game is so primitive that it only handles truth when it is simplistically squeezed into a "guilty/not-guilty" dualism.
Which American Law students benefit from History, Jurisprudence, Philosophy, Phylology, Semantics, Oontology, Epistemology, Latin... ?
Very few, and mostly only some history and jurisprudence, but starting only with the Pilgrims... and the Pilgrims were mostly only Bible readers...
There are many honorable and perhaps holy ministers, but they are unable to talk as loud as the "politically correct" ones, let alone those who advertise "God told me last night..."

There are several holy clergymen and honorable lawyers, but the sanctimonious maniacs and shysters get many more votes... in the very churches and courts themselves.

=== Is it 16:05 or 4:05 p. m.?
=== Clothing, shoes, etc. measure...
=== Martin Ljther obliterated by Martin Luther King;
=== Sunday the torst day of the week?
=== Religion or 'fomatting children?
=== Princess Di sybdrome brings USA and U.K. with her.
=== Football, Baseball, golh show that some habits are as powerfil as religioatc. We could im[lant habits and morelity form early childoog into our children,
Freud and my e dreams.
===Restore the cult of virginity.
=== Raise majrity to 23 or 25 for men. Leave it at 18 or 21 for women.
===

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