Memeverse

I just had a little game idea that would promote greater awareness about the language we use to convey certain thoughts and encourage people to think more about what they believe and what they’re saying.

There are a lot of myths circulating among people and some of them are literally mind numbing. They keep using a particular term or a particular sentence or even a slogan without really thinking about what it means to them and what does it truly refer to in reality.

The game would basically keep popping up such myth-full sentences and ask you to fix it, to write down what it really means and if there is nothing beneath it then what is the equivalent. I think an example will best illustrate what I mean.

Starting with a simple sentence:

• Democracy is freedom.
• Fix: Democracy is mob rule.

Here is a little more challenging one.

• Government is here to protect you.
• Fix: People calling themselves the government think they need to protect you.

Not a very effective argument against government perhaps, but it does seem to reflect the truth much better and that’s the whole point. I think that if people thought about what particular sentences really refer to, to basically dismantle the abstractnesses which cover up what’s beneath, they would soon by themselves realize certain fact that they may have never been aware of before.

In case of this particular sentence, saying that “government is here to protect you” implies that there is someone or something called government that is “here” to protect you or that it exists for your protection. This isn’t quite clear unless your thinking is fuzzy and you’re fine with it remaining fuzzy. Who or what is “government”?

The fix demystifies “government” as people, the group of people. “Here” is removed because the place doesn’t seem to have any relevancy to the intended meaning, unless it did in which case we could leave “here” in so the sentence would be “People calling themselves the government think they are here to protect you”. Also the myth that they exist to protect you, as if it’s their sole purpose in life or as if it was an absolute truth, is removed and replaced by that they think they need to protect you.

Indeed, people in government are often led by genuine beliefs. Obviously, I find those beliefs to be extremely irrational, but that’s what’s leading their actions.

I’m not sure what kind of programming would be required for this kind of game to be made, but I’d allow multiple “correct” answers for the fixed sentence because various people may form their sentences in various ways. It could also contain direct equivalents to particular words which would always apply, such as in above case where “government” is replaced by “people calling themselves the government”. This kind of substitution would probably work in most sentences.

Other substitutions may include replacing “public good” with “individual liberty” or “personal liberty” (public good doesn’t really exist.. it’s only individuals which we can be concerned with), “nation” with “group of people calling themselves a nation”, “taxes” with “theft” or “stealing”, “president with “a person calling him/herself the president”, “law” for “rules forced by one group of people to another” or “rules forced by one person on another” etc.

Anyway, I just wanted to express that idea.

Cheers

It is interesting how both The Borg and The Dominion, two of the greatest evil adversaries in Star Trek are portrayed to desire one thing above all else: order. The Borg assimilate everything they find valuable to their collective, valuable according to their own view of order. Everything then becomes a part of a bigger whole and without a shred of individualism. Just as it was once said in Hitler’s Germany; Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler. The same can be literally said for The Borg and The Borg queen. Perfection that Borg so adamantly pursues is in fact the most extreme form of totalitarianism possible.

The Dominion, on the other hand, was founded by a race of shapeshifters who were once exploring the galaxy and finding many “solids” (non shapeshifting beings) to be quite fearful and thereby violent to them (or so they believe). Shapeshifters then begun perceiving all “solids” as a threat and that became a part of their own order of things. Instead of being the hunted now they are the hunters. Instead of being controlled now they are in control. The Dominion is portrayed to be a powerful force in the gamma quadrant, of course, with a job of establishing order upon chaos.

Now while these are fictions, they do come from the creative minds of certain human individuals and they do therefore reflect particular characteristics of the reality as we know it, a reality in which we ourselves have repeatedly established governments in order to do exactly the same thing that these fictive organizations were portrayed to exist for: establish order upon chaos.

The concept of government exists as part of an ideology that can be summed up as a “Religion of Order”. This “religion” consists of these three core beliefs:

1. A certain limited set of beliefs constitutes and defines “order”. Everything else is the opposite; chaos.

This is essentially a perpetual self administered delusion, that things we currently believe to be true are the only things that really are true absolutely, that things we currently believe are right are the only things that could ever be right, that things that do not conform to our current set of beliefs belong to the realm of chaos.

This is a result of a fundamentally closed minded, self defeating and self limiting idea which lives, like a virus, in the minds of the masses on this planet.

2. All that does not conform to this order (defined by the above set of beliefs) is wrong or evil.

This merely follows from the limited view of reality above. In addition to branding things that don’t conform as “chaos” we introduce a strong moral judgment of the non-conforming as absolutely and uncompromisingly wrong, evil, thereby worth fighting against by any means necessary.

3. Force is justified against all such evil

What else to expect from such a limited yet absolutist view? If force and violence is what it takes to purity everything that belongs to “chaos” so be it. If you don’t conform to “the order” you must be punished. This is why followers of The Religion of Order tend to eventually one way or another persecute everyone who lives in defiance or non-conformity to the order they designated as such.

I could say that all governments are guilty of being a part of this religion, but governments are nothing but just people who assumed the roles that this religion naturally provisions for; essentially the role of preaching the order (law), teaching conformity (public education and propaganda) and doing enforcement (force, violence). Governments would be meaningless without the people who give them their support and they give them their support exactly because they too believe in this religion of order - they actually agree that order, conformity and force are necessary and good and are usually utterly ignorant of the flaw inherent in this philosophy.

The flaw is that it is ultimately self defeating. It deprives from the natural tendencies and potential of the most basic unit of every human “order”: the human individual. This is how it crumbles. Sooner or later you find that believing in this religion only got you shafted, unless you were lucky, devious or foolishly hotheaded enough to actually be a successful power grubbing politician or managed to combine your ingenuity with political protectionism to build a corporate empire. But we know those people are in a minority, or else why would we speak of a divide between rich and poor, right?

So why do the rest of us, the majority who repeatedly gets shafted by this religion, still believe in it? Why do we still follow it? Why do we feed its power? I can only think of two basic reasons: ignorance or fear.

The first is probably most prevalent. As long as you conform, for instance not break any laws no matter how stupid some of them seemed, you don’t have anything to be afraid of, or at least that’s what you believe. But that’s where the story ends. You live your life within those confines and think of no better way. Your ignorance is bliss, until the almost inevitable consequences of such mind imprisoning mentality hit you - and they almost always do.

The second is fear. Even if you are a bit more inquisitive and less ignorant and find that there is a lot things wrong about “the system”, the order of things, you fear the very ideas that could set your mind free as “dangerous ideas”. You fear that if you refuse to conform one way or another you will end up punished in some way by the ignorant followers of the order.

The trouble is, we’re so deep into this problem that it indeed is hard to blame an individual for feeling either of the above two ways. This religion of order is like a pan religion whose ideas managed to pull through many other religions as well as among the supposedly non-religious people. Order, Conformism and Force. Many christians believe it. Many muslims believe it. Many atheists believe it. Too many believe it for too long. The idea has one way or another been perpetuated throughout centuries.

Yet, if we get stuck in this perpetual ignorance or fear, waiting for “better times” we will only see history repeat itself, because that is what happens when we have this single core set of beliefs governing billions of people on Earth for such an indefinite amount of time. Times change and technology changes yet the fundamental belief remains, the belief that is the very cause of “history repeating itself”. As various “orders” collide we have power struggles, wars, fascism, economic collapses etc. It will never be truly any different if we never finally wake up to the reality of what is behind all this:

The Religion of Order

It created more chaos than “chaos” itself could. When are you gonna wake up to that reality?

I am getting to the bottom of why anarcho-capitalism can work. Let’s start by defining “nature”, “laws of nature” and “human nature”.

Nature is everything in the universe which is not by human (non-artificial, existence of which is independent and completely agnostic to humans and their conditions and affairs).

Laws of nature are all processes and properties which are beyond human control and which no human can escape.

Human nature are therefore all processes and properties applicable to humans which are beyond their control and escape.

Since anarcho-capitalism is essentially a proposed system of human interaction (a “social system”) the last definition, “human nature”, is most relevant here. Some of the fundamental properties and processes which fit the above definition are the following:

1. Humans are living, self-aware beings capable of thinking, choosing and acting. Since this is their nature they are entitled to self-ownership, liberty and property as the product of their actions.

2. A human being, in any given moment, always acts in pursuit of to him or her maximum value.

3. A human being sees destruction of his or her value as immoral or “wrong” and construction of the same as moral or “right”.

4. What one human sees as a value can differ from what another human sees.

So in summary, all humans live, think, choose and act in pursuit of what is most valuable to them at any given moment while considering the destruction of the same as morally wrong, but what is most valuable differs from person to person.

One thing that we learn from nature as we understand it so far is that it always pursues the path of least resistance. To a particular human, what is most valuable is usually most motivating. Therefore pursuit of this value is also going to be the “easiest” thing to do, the most cost-effective thing to do. It may not seem so at first because most of us tend to have a limited perception of “value”. We therefore say that sometimes pursuing a moral path is harder and will encounter more resistance.

However, if one is set “against the odds” yet still proceeds this just means that proceeding is more valuable to him or her than giving up or conversely that not proceeding would encounter more mental resistance than proceeding. External obstacles are already taken into the value equation of this individual and deemed less resisting than the mental resistance he would encounter should he proceed otherwise or more worth than the mental reward he would feel should he proceed otherwise.

One of the most relevant principles involved with anarcho-capitalism is non-coercion. What is coercion? It is the process by which individual A attempts to affect the value judgment of individual B by the threat of force, in order to induce an action (s)he desires an individual B to take. “Force” here is defined as destruction of something individual B finds valuable, from his life to his property.

Coercion will fail if individual B finds mental reward of resisting the aggressor to be higher than the mental reward of giving in to the aggressor. Coercion, unsurprisingly, usually succeeds since avoiding harm or termination to life is usually found more mentally rewarding than getting killed or harmed. However, this is a choice between value destruction and value destruction, two wrongs - two evils of which individual B has to choose one which he deems lesser. If coercion fails anything of value to individual B that was threatened by the aggressor, from life to property, may be destroyed. If coercion succeeds, it is still individual B’s freedom which was destroyed.

And by nature of existing every individual values his freedom, to the extent to which he is aware of being entitled to it.

Anarcho-capitalism is fundamentally about establishing a laissez faire free market of individual humans. This market is self-regulating because it depends on the value pursuits of each individual in it. And since everyone has different values, but everyone seeks to maximize them, trade of values usually occurs. It is devoid of coercion because coercion means destruction of liberty, which is of value to every individual. When one individual in a free market exercises coercion (s)he is acting against the freedom value of an individual and therefore against the fundamental value of the market to which this individual belongs to, BUT also against the freedom of his/her own. This is because at that point the harmed individual, or its family, will be entitled to seek the aggressor and force him to pay the reparations. This is the only case in which force is not deemed destructive, because it merely restores the value destruction of an individual to which the force was initiated.

What this means is that coercion in a free market has a value price which involves not only the reparations that the aggressor is potentially going to be forced to pay, but the loss of freedom as well, something valuable to every individual. Since all humans act in pursuit of maximum value, coercion will be employed only when this is the method by which an individual believes he will achieve maximum value (which can be of both moral and physical kind). Given the abundance of other methods available in a market of individuals who trade in pursuit of value, this option is very likely to be unpopular, deemed too expensive, too much of a hassle, too risky or simply too immoral.

In addition, considering that anarcho-capitalists wont succeed in building such a free market without convincing enough people to believe that coercion is immoral (because this is the only way they can stop believing in the justifiability of government) it follows that if a laissez faire free market is established it will be consisted of people who largely find non-coercion to be immoral and furthermore risky, expensive and unpopular. Compared with the fact that coercion in a current government-led society is a norm rather than an act unlikely to happen, free market is degrees of magnitude more desirable to anyone who cares about pursuing the maximum of his values - hence every human.

Free Market is the path of least resistance *because* it is a path with least coercion.

And the only way it could not be the path of least resistance is if people were not acting in pursuit of maximum value - which is impossible - because acting this way is human nature - inescapable.

In summary, there is a connection between human nature and the moral of non-coercion in that by the virtue of being what they are humans are more likely to find the path of non-coercion to be the path of least resistance than any other method of pursuing the maximum of value.

This may seem to be a merely philosophical and theoretical statement, but it relies on certain fundamental testable axioms which if proven true prove the statement above. Those axioms are the presented definition of nature, natural laws, the three descriptions of processes and properties inherent in human nature and the link between coercion and destruction of value.

“What is the meaning of life?”

I’ve come to find that this is actually quite a silly question because it is akin to asking what is the meaning of light. Well, duh, it shines! The meaning of life is life itself - just living. And there is nothing more profound to it than that. Of course, we can look deeper into the reasoning behind this.

Well, as science and technology continue to advance at a rapid pace we are increasingly becoming aware of ourselves as machines. We begin to doubt the existence of soul and free will when we consider that whatever we do and whatever we think is actually just part of the way our program runs - the software of our brain which we are getting closer and closer to recreating ourselves. How do we have free will or freedom of choice if our every “choice” is actually just another switch in our programming, executed based on the input provided to it by our sensors to the world around us and information we gathered through them in our past sensory experiences. Science removes mystery from things. That’s what it does. And once it removes the mystery from how our mind works, we begin to feel naked. Is it really that we’re just a sum of our parts?

Yup. Looks like we are.

And this is where we get back to our original issue. We are alive. We have life. Why do we say so? Because we feel it. We feel life in ourselves. We feel alive. So objectively speaking it may be that we are just sum of our parts and that we are just machines. It may even be that our feelings are just a result of a yet another subroutine in our brain software. But the fact that we are the ones who feel those subroutines running our brain is what matters to our life, because this is what makes us alive! And the importance of this living to us, alive beings, is all the more amplified by the existence of so many other alive beings which share the same predicament. We are not alone. We interact with each other, create societies, cultures and civilizations - all around the fact that we are all alive and want to be as alive as we can be.

Because the meaning of life is to live, for if we don’t live, we MIGHT as well be merely machines executing commands from our neocortex based on the sensory inputs from the surroundings.

What is the meaning of “meaning” anyway? I found that trying to answer this question is a real eye opener that makes things quite clear. Meaning is irrelevant outside of a living being. A rock on Mars means absolutely nothing objectively speaking. Mars itself means absolutely nothing objectively speaking. Pluto is neither a planet nor an asteroid, objectively speaking. It all “means” nothing when there is nobody for it to mean something to.

But if you come to Mars and pick up that meaningless rock, you would immediately assign meaning to it. It might be the first rock you picked up on Mars and therefore this fact is what would give this rock a meaning to you. You might put it in your room back on Earth in a special place and cherish it every day as it reminds you of your first visit to Mars. But.. it’s just a rock. Heck, it’s not even a “rock”. Calling it a “rock” or calling it anything is just something we do. Objectively speaking, that rock is just matter.. just a piece of the universe, just a bunch of moleculs in some sort of a structure.

So, speaking of meaning. Objectively speaking nothing makes sense. For something to make sense we first have to have a being with a brain that feels life within itself, to which that something would make some sense. A flower doesn’t smell until someone smells it. It merely emits something, which a living being could interpret as smell or might as well interpret as the weapon of mass destruction.

So, whatever we are objectively speaking, the fact that we feel alive is enough for us to be at peace with the fact that at the same time we are “just” a machine programmed to function in a particular way, by “god” or “natural selection” or something else. The fact that we feel alive IS the thing that adds meaning to everything, the thing which makes something make sense, the thing which makes us assign meaning to our lives, to our societies, to our past, present and future - the thing which makes us want to feel alive even more, and hence grow and grow and keep growing and evolving into beings that are even more self aware than we are right now.

So, what is the meaning of YOUR life? Well, if meaning of life in general is to live, and to live is to feel, and to feel means to feel the desire to feel good. The meaning of your life is therefore in the pursuit and achievement of the ultimate “feelgood”. This is not hedonism, mind you. Hedonism, or mere pursuit of quick pleasure is just one level of “feelgood”, not the deep and profound one which you will know once you feel it - which people usually describe as the sense of accomplishment. You will find a way to feel this way once you look into yourself, who you are right now: what are your interests, skills, desires and beliefs. Once you know who are you and who you want to be you will also know what is it that you need to accomplish to feel accomplished, to feel that ultimate “feelgood” - that you have fulfilled your meaning and left a legacy to others like you to build their meaning on.

This is a beautiful thing. If demystifying ourselves does not scare us into meaninglessness, but rather gives us even more power to mean something and something more - then there is no end to what we could become. For finding ourselves naked did not make us less of who we are - but more. We shine on our own, because we are alive and we radiate life to others around us. Sentient Life is the magic of the universe, now demystified. We are it. And it are us.

Asking myself what do I want I would split that question in two:

1. What do I want for the world?

2. What do I want for myself?

Of course, most if not all answers could fit both, but this is still a way to make answers more clear.

WHAT DO I WANT FOR THE WORLD?

Freedomware must rule! - Literally, it must be a standard, a social norm, ultimately perhaps even a rule. Software distributed under terms which deny most basic property rights (by way of denying full control over your own computer devices) should be remembered as merely a relic of the past, a dark age in the software industry. Real innovation and real world changing empowerment is in Freedomware. I want all proprietary software businesses to be replaced by those running a model around Freedomware, models you might today know by the moniker of “Open Source”.

RIAA and MPAA as we know them must die - These worldwide (no, not just american) organizations are today doing more for the oppression of creativity than their promotion. Simultaneously the copyright law which they helped turn into an utter dystopian joke criminalizes most people in the western world for *gasp* sharing! This just has to change, as soon as possible. If they don’t intend to loosen up and reform themselves into organizations which would encourage sharing in a digital world, then they simply must move along, for the future then has no place for them. All digital culture must be free for, at the very least, non-commercial sharing.

I want rampant technological evolution to accelerate even more, but more responsibly! - Yes, it is already accelerating, and we’re all impressed by how fast we’re progressing. But who is to say this is fast enough? There are no alien planets that we know of which could serve as a reference. With so many world problems to solve, some of which really starting to strangle our necks, we need more, better and efficient tools than ever.
BUT, technology should not be developed in a way that worsens these problems. In other words, it should not be used to pollute the Earth even more or to restrict people’s freedoms and privacy even further beyond their control. Green tech, responsible and sustainable development and free access (to knowledge and technology) are the key words!

Furthermore, I wish scientists and developers to have a fully open mind. In that name, I would like to add another key phrase: Anything is possible! Nano replicators? Warping to the stars? Teleportation? Strong AI? Artificial gravity? Yes! Natural universe has the elements. We have the intelligence. All we have to do is connect the dots. If we’re not “smart” enough today, there is no guarantee we wont be smart enough in the future.

I want us to go to space! - I want as many people as possible to see Earth from orbit, within my life time. I will go too. I want space stations in orbit and around moon. I want us to colonize Moon and Mars. I want us to, eventually, warp to the stars. I believe that humans, if they have any future, it is in space as much as on the Earth. I want us to continue exploring beyond Earth and I believe this to be a natural, even inevitable, course of our continued evolution.

I want people to be less indifferent, more aware and open minded. - Basically, there’s more to fun than what is commonly considered as fun. Nowadays it is unfortunately a very common occurrence for people to be stamped out as “geeks”, “wackos” etc. and subsequently ridiculed just for being different and thinking in different ways. When you talk about philosophy a lot, the “deep stuff”, you end up feeling like you have to apologize for being so enthused about it. Ever had that feeling when you tried to express your enthusiasm about something not-so-mainstream and felt like nobody gives a rats ass? While it may simply be that they just aren’t personally genuinely interested in what you have to say, I believe this phenomenon goes much further - some things are just too taboo, for whatever reason, for anyone to really feel free to express themselves without totally getting dissociated.

We have to be more open minded, accepting and overall aware. Being different is common to all of us, so why escape those differences? Let’s embrace them, and learn from them.

WHAT DO I WANT FOR MYSELF:

Successfully continue a personal self improvement process. - This simply means not giving up or giving in to the flow at any point in time, or at least until the “flow” becomes the good life I want to build. It starts with keeping up to my new schedule and new habits I’m trying to develop and keeping the positive mentality I want to maintain.

A nice, futuristic, off-the-grid, environmentalist medium sized house with a terrace and a telescope on top. - Here is one materialist desire. I would love to live in such a house. It would feel like living in a space ship, totally futuristic, cool looking yet genially simple. I would have a remote control for various functions in the house. The terrace on top would be great for star gazing or just relaxing on the sun or fresh air. The telescope could ideally be both portable and possible to “plug in” to be controlled remotely from inside the house, displaying the image on a computer screen below if I wish so (which makes it very easy to instantaneously record or even stream live over the internet).

Off the grid means that it would have to be fully powered without dependence on the standard electricity grids. A combination of solar panels and some other renewable source (if even necessary) would do.

This may seem like a million dollar kind of dream, but considering that technology actually exists for all of this and that for each expensive way of accomplishing it there is at least one cheaper alternative that can be found on the internet (heck, darn it, you can build a solar panel out of the old TV set, save up on electricity until you buy a real panel, for just one example). It is not necessarily such a luxury anymore. One just has to be determined. I’m not going to pursue this dream immediately, but once the business is good and financials healthy I see no reason not to pursue this gradually. It is also a good example setter for others - a green yet high tech life.

A zero-emitions, sustainable energy powered car. - It just adds to the picture above. Air car, water car or electric car? Shall I say more? I already pledged not to buy a car until it can be the one of this kind.

Find someone…. - Well.. let’s just say I’m single, and I don’t plan on staying one forever. Everybody needs someone closes to share this phenomenal life with.

So this is it. The reason I asked myself these questions is because it seemed helpful for finding a most accurate answer to this question: “Given the things I love to do (including my skills and interests) and my overall purpose, what do I want to achieve next?” The answer will give me a pointer towards the proper goals I need to set in front of Libervis Network in the future.

I hope to find this answer VERY soon now. And once I do, some exciting things might be getting done around Libervis Net, because I’ll be getting down to it right away! What’s to stop me? I have the goal, it is the right goal, I believe in it and I have the skills and interests to achieve it. All it needs is doing!

So you see, this “wishful thinking” is actually about things that will happen, as far as I’m concerned! Wooohoo!

Cheers

I just watched a movie with my sisters about Human Trafficking, something that they found on TV. It quite vividly portrays how powerful and real an international chain of human trafficking is - literally enslaving people, mostly for sexual exploitation.

While every aspect of this is representative of pure evil and total in-humanism, what feels especially threatening is that nobody can really claim to be completely safe. Be in the wrong place and at the wrong time and you can become a victim, or one of your relatives or friends etc.

I often talk about philosophical topics, analysing the reality, humanism and humanity’s evolution, freedom and environmentalism. It is about problems and setting up the mind set that could produce solutions and consequently, improvements to this world. But when I see things like this, the cynism in me gets so much boost… as if it hadn’t have enough already. There is so much evil in this world, magnitudes more than we are even aware of, worse than we can probably begin to imagine when considered in whole, evil that is only produced by - humans.

So I begin to wonder and I begin to understand, not necessarily condone, but understand why so many people turn to God, or illusion of one at least. When it becomes so unbearable, when it starts feeling hopeless, you have to manufacture a hope to hold on to. People who are, as I speak tonight, slaves living in a literal hell that their fellow humans prepared for them, do not have much to hold on to. I can wholeheartedly understand why religion gets born out of this. Pity that, as every evil seems to breed more evil, religious institutions (and other groups, mind you) prey on it for their petty agendas or some twisted kind of pleasure.

The chain of evil seems to have no ending, probably because it is a circle, one with an incredibly large radius I might add.

So what is one to do, when really looking at this reality in the eye, really understanding that it is there, that it exists, that it destroys and consumes living sentient beings, that it destroys humanity from the inside, that it feeds on it - what is the proper conclusion? What is the proper reaction? What is the proper action to undertake?

You can become a lifetime activist, if you have the stamina. Or you can become a bigger and bigger cynic. In all honesty these kinds of realizations breed mostly negative emotions in me - and a separatist and vengeful instinct. I feel this desire for a clean slate, but I realize that every pursuit of such an ideal will only result in more evil. The only way you can have a clean slate is by stamping out those deemed, according to a certain rule set as “evil” and eradicating them - a very religious approach indeed. When the saviour comes he shall take his children up on the heavens and let down a burning fire to all the evil beings that are left behind - to cleanse the Earth and allow for a fresh start.

How fucking charming.

Obviously, radical types of solutions like that one are not solutions at all. It means exaggerating the amount of suffering and destruction that already exists to a level that merely accelerates our destruction. So where are the solutions?

Faced with such an immense power of evil in this world, no other solution seems attainable within our life time, or multitude of life times even. It is so rooted that every where you look, if you just allow yourself to think enough to see the implications of every group of people you walk by, every building you see, every vehicle that drives by, every piece of equipment you are using, every sentence of your language - you might find evil somewhere in there - in its history, in its reason for being, in its purpose of existence. How?

Any group of people could involve “tortured souls”, abused people or abusers. You don’t know that it does, but you don’t know that it doesn’t either. In a world in which these things happen, you are forced to this kind of uncertainty, to suspicion and ultimately caution or fear - and the root of this is, in simplistic but fundamental term, that human evil.

Same story for buildings which could be built by the sweat and blood of overworked workers working for an unfair greedy corporation. A vehicle could be driving a next “shipment” of slaves down that grey road. A piece of equipment you are using could be produced in sweatshops employing cheap overworked children or be made out of environmentally toxic material when ultimately wasted. The language you speak in may be (and almost always is) the language in which name murders in “national” wars have been fought.

I know, this is cynical to the extreme. I know you might say this is seeing only the bad in the world while ignoring the good. And ultimately I am aware that the logic here would dictate awareness not of only one, but both sides of the coin. See evil, but see good too. Balance the two for your own sanity and for the preservation of your human self as someone who is capable enough to make a difference.

But when it appears as if the evil greately outnumbers the good, or even worse, infiltrates what is perceived as good, deceives you as good.. that’s where things become tricky.

An example? Most people in the western world would probably still believe that democracy is a good thing and that this is what we have in our countries and states, that we are free people, free nations which can choose their leaders and if they do bad punish them by NOT choosing them. It is good. How many people out there could swear how they are helping themselves and their country by voting on elections, how they are exercising their right to make a difference etc. They see it as good, almost without any question about it. It’s as good as the sunlight, as good as an act of kindness. It’s good.

Yet it is evil. You are brainwashed. You are blind. There is no real choice. In Croatia, we only had two real choices both of which are so similar that it is hard to imagine how can this be called a *choice*. Even the more marginal parties don’t offer anything radically different. The most vivid example of that may be the fact that all of these parties are hell bent on bringing the country into the supposedly “democratic” European Union while MOST PEOPLE OPPOSE EU!

And in US? You really think democrats and republicans are so different? You really think you have a choice in the matter? You really think you’re changing the course in any significant way by voting for either of them?

Democracy. Yeah right. Just another stage. Just another way of making people believe they are free to choose, that they live in a free country, while they are being led in a direction of which they are not only oblivious about, but incapable of affecting.

And I could go on and on about evil impersonating good. How can you go by in this world trying to see good in everything, or even a balance between good and evil, and be sure that what you think you see is really what you see?

The conclusion to which this leads to might be “well fsck it then, I don’t care anymore, I’ll just take care about myself and my family”. Indeed, the instinct, the final instinct, is to cacoon ourselves into safety, a degree of isolationism. But where does that lead us?

I have no answers. I feel there are no satisfactory answers. There are only ideals, hopes, like religion something you must hold on to for the sake of your own sanity and sense of accomplishment. Do what you love to do and what you think is right. Do what you believe will make a world a better place, even if it never becomes a Good World.

And Evolution created the heaven and the Earth, and saw that it was…. EVIL. Now some humans.. one in a million, are trying to rectify that mistake. But the odds are looking insurmountable. And many shall give up or give in.

I just had a thought about emotions. Just listening to music of particular kind can completely change the polarity of my current perception of the world. It can be a shade of negative or it can be a shade of positive. Then I thought, what if I felt nothing? What if I could see the world without looking through the cloud of emotions?

But we don’t seem to be able to do it. We often believe we do things that are reasonable, that are logical, that are not based on emotions, but how often is this really the case? In majority of cases I think we’re actually guided by what we feel is right or what we like or love. In fact, we often base our reasoning directly on some sort of emotions. A good example may be common perceptions of what is moral and what is not.

What if we had no emotions? What if we were guided by reason and logic alone? How would our life be like? We would assess every situation we find ourselves in and act based upon our logic. We would in essence always do the right thing, always do what is most logical. Perhaps a world would be a better place for we would probably already, far far ago, come to the logical conclusion that war is not a way to grow, that alcohol, smoking, drugs, violence and many other self-destructive activities are simply not reasonable. We might be living in a sterilized, clean, peaceful and advanced society, perhaps more advanced than we are today, presuming that we set continuous advancement as a logical course of our evolution.

No, we would not be quite like Vulcans in Star Trek. Vulcans strive to be logical and to suppress emotions, but they do have them. In fact, their natural emotions are much higher and more intense than humans, which is why they developed a whole belief system based around suppression of emotions, so that they can keep themselves from lowly savage instincts that emotions often put them to.

Instead, a human without any emotions would probably be like a machine that we ourselves may soon be able to create, an android that is self-aware. Data from Star Trek is an excellent example here. Of course, then we wouldn’t be humans, if humans are defined as emotional beings.

And that brings us to an interesting intersection. Data in Star Trek constantly keeps striving to be more like humans, and as we are watching the series we can see various interesting points being revealed on the emotion - no-emotion relations that at some points makes us envy Data, the emotionless android, and at other points cherish the fact that we can feel.

And yet, even envy is an emotion.

In the end of any discussion about pros and cons of emotions perhaps it would be inevitable to conclude that it is both a blessing and a curse, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. I wonder how much of our culture is inspired by emotion? How many scientific discoveries? It seems that for every negative outcome of an emotion-inspired or affected activity there is a positive to be found.

Pity that we still have to deal with the curse. Between a positive and a negative the strive is and always should be towards the positive, the good. Therefore when faced with both a blessing and a curse we don’t just accept the curse, we try to ban it.

And how to do that?

Perhaps now, Vulcans have something to say about that. It is all about control or controlled suppression of certain emotions. It is about putting the logic and reason in us in place of an executive director of all of the rest that is in us - the ocean of emotion.

Controlled by emotion or controlled emotion. It’s a choice between being trapped and being free.

But it may be one of the toughest disciplines for us to master. And we all have our ways.

That statement is a paradox. If change is the only truth than that truth can change as well. This is, however, a statement that is ultimately produced by what is essentially a wholesomely anti-dogmatic view - a dogma that contests its very own essence.

However, as the wheel of this particular paradox continues to spin (or chase its own tail rather) it emanates the power that can, if embraced, allow us to evolve much further and even much faster. Those who embrace this value into their views and living are what I would call perpetual journeyers, perpetual explorers and even sometimes perpetual dreamers. They are constantly living on an edge between perceived reality and the unknown that can alter it.  They accept that their personal truth is never absolute, that the reality they know is never fixed and that theirs is only one, perhaps unique, among the truths that exist in our world and beyond.

I would suspect that such people would have good empathic skills, very high tolerance and a very high level of curiosity. They would, by all means, be excellent diplomats and peace makers. The unknown does not scare them, it excites their imagination and challenges their logical processing. At the same time they are content with the possibility of there being things which will always be unknown to them. Life after death? They don’t have to imagine an answer to a question just because they couldn’t find a real one.

Considering their ongoing openness towards change of what they know, albeit balanced with the reasoning they possess in that knowledge, they are capable of learning and adapting quickly, crossing the boundaries and making breakthroughs and hence evolving their thinking faster than those who tend to get stuck in the comfort zone of their current beliefs. An open minded people.

Those are the humans I’d like to see more.

Here is a toast… for the journey!

[video width="400" height="300"]http://www.memeverse.com/misc/FactsvsPersonality_trek.ogg[/video]

By default our instincts seem to be tuned towards appreciating truth and detesting lies. We have an universal fundamental sense of ethics which pretty much always prefers to know and believe the truth rather than a lie.

But how exactly do we know what is the truth? What is our process of determining this? And isn’t the very existence of this process in our minds a potential corrupter of our knowing of the truth?

The truth is believed to be completely objective, existing despite anyone’s perception of it. Believe what we wish, the truth is the truth and will never cease to be what it is. Your belief alone cannot alter it.

Is there a human being who can objectively claim to know the truth? Isn’t that very question already skewed from the beginning? A human? Objective?

To attempt an objective analysis a human being would have to completely disregard their own subjectivity, but I wonder if this is really possible. What will a human be left with if he is stripped of his subjectivity? Based on what exactly would such a human analyze the reality? I would dare to suggest that without its subjectivity, a human is not a human anymore.

Isn’t whatever we learn and experience feeding our subjectivity, not our objectivity? No two persons are the same for no two persons experience and learn same things at the same times and in same situations. How can then any human hope to be completely objective when he is from the beginning, by simply being, subjective. As data finally concluded, “a person fills in the missing pieces of the puzzle with his own personality resulting in a conclusion based as much on instinct and intuition as on fact”. Isn’t that the real truth? (No pun intended, but, it is there.)

If our “conclusion” is always based on a combination of our personality, our subjectivity and the facts we know as such, this conclusion can hardly ever be considered objective and always contains a significant risk of being simply false. Faced with this realization we can never hope to know the complete objective truth on pretty much anything, especially considerably complicated issues such as those usually addressed by (a)theology. We can only get so far. We can strive to be as close as we possibly can, but to at any point assume that we know the complete truth is, in the face of this realization, quite overconfident and foolish.

This may be one of the greatest testaments to the importance of an ongoing open and perpetual conversation between all humans in a constant state of exploration. Any conclusion reached is merely a milestone on a road to the forever escaping singularity that is the truth.

Truth Relativity

The truth I have referred to above would be the absolute and universal truth, if such a thing exists. There is, however, something we could call a relative truth. Sometimes in our language we refer to something known as “the truth of the matter” or “the truth of yourself”. This must be the relative truth, relative to the matter at hand or a person in question.

Maybe, just as Einstein determined the theory of relativity in physics, we could get to know such a concept as the relativity of truthiness, or relativity of reality. While we can continue believing in the existence of an absolute truth and an absolute reality, the fact is that a lot of the reality which we really perceive is the one which we create ourselves, collectively in this world we call Earth, in this region of space we call the Solar System and pretty much anywhere else that we might find ourselves going.

We talk to each other, we act upon each other and our environment. By merely existing we are affecting it and the “truth of the matter”, the truth of the universe around us. As we converse with each other in our striving to get as close to the holy grail that is the absolute truth and knowing of absolute reality, we are creating a perception of reality and effectively a collective reality of our own. No matter if it is at least slightly different from the, to us escapable, absolute reality, it is what a significant portion of us finds to be true, and hence in our collective common sense it is the truth.

A century from now this truth may change yet again.

This may be one of the greatest testaments to the importance of keeping an open mind and embracing change as the only constant in our universe. Isn’t it interesting that, as our common collective sense may currently tell us, the objectively real universe is always changing just as our perception of it does (our current relative “truth” about it). That change is the only constant in the universe may be the biggest fact of all, but don’t get too stuck on it. That fact too is changeable by itself, literally.

All of this simply underscores that if humans care about the concept of truth, the best thing that they can be are explorers and journeyers - perpetually. The fulfillment does not come from the realization of absolute truth because when will you ever be sure you really have it? It will come from any discovery in itself, no matter how small or big it is, as long as it is significant to the discoverer.

I hope this ramble made ANY sense. After all I’m just one of those explorers stumbling on a thought or two every now and then. Maybe you’ll have a thought or two after reading this as well.

Video quote posted under fair use!