To those who have been reading, thanks. I'm sorry about my two week haiatus, in case you got bored, but anyway, back to work.
I don't know if there is a God (I don't think that anyone really knows), and I certainly don't know if God plays dice. If S/He/It does, then S/He/It always knows what's coming.
Rolling dice is, and has been for a while, a metaphor for a thing that human beings like to call "chance."
You have to understand that I put "chance" in quotation marks to make a point, because it isn't how we think about something being random. Randomness (like in a game of dice or cards), is not random in the way that we think about it. Randomness (or the concept of it) is the understanding that human beings are simply not smart enough to calculate the complex cause and effect relationship that a dice goes through when it is tossed on a street corner, the effect being the number that comes up.
I'll simplify it for a second, to break it down. (honestly, it's too hard for me to think about it if I get into to much detail, and it's way to hard to read)
Let's say that a dice bounces 6 times: three times in your hand, three times on the surface.
S = shake (or bounce in hand)
B = bounce on the surface
O = Outcome
S1 + S2 + S3 + B1 + B2 + B3 = O
So the sum of the events adds up to the result that is the outcome (O).
What get's complicated it that there are millions of little events. Each of the shakes isn't really a cause, it's an effect. I'll throw it in a math formula again, so that it makes more sense:
B = a x f x r
or
B = afr
Where
a = angle of the surface
f = the force which the dice makes contact
r = rotation of the dice
What I'm trying to say, to get straight to the point, is that all "chance" is, all the things that we think of as "random," are just our way of removing the frustration that we, as human beings, are incapable of picking apart the intricacies of the event. So we make are best guess based on the data we can understand.
Everything that happens is an effect, it has causes that can be defined, isolated and understood. Whether the human mind is always able to do that is another issue, after all, we do have a limited capacity for thought (we're not omnipotent).
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Friday, July 6, 2007
A Butterfly
My little brother and I watch a show called "Scrubs," mostly the reruns from older seasons on Comedy Central.
I know that the show is a hit or miss for a lot of people, but it's not always about the humor or the emotional content of a show, and sometimes ideas and connections come from weird places. Trust me, a TV show on Comedy Central is one of the last places I expected to be posting on this blog about.
In the third season of Scrubs there is an episode called "My Butterfly." The focal point of the episode is, as the title might suggest, about a butterfly, but more specifically about the way in which even where a butterfly lands can affect someone's entire day.
What the episode tries to emphasize is the little things and, while the narrator might not be entirely aware of this, there are even subtler things than the outcome of a butterfly's landing that impact his day.
Think about it like this:
If someone smiles at you on the bus, you might be in a good mood. Your being in a good mood might cause you to be a bit more forgiving on that particular morning, being particularly tolerant of a late person, whether a co-worker or an employee. Whatever.
Your tolerance of that person might raise their self-confidence and motivate them. Their personal motivation might lead to an improvement in their work (because it's a well known fact that when people are confident they work better) and that might lead to success for the company, for that individual and all those surrounding them. If that is, say, an employee of yours, that's good for you directly, but even if it's a co-worker, the benefit that your co-workers have indirectly on you is significant because they keep things moving in the company, which means you have a job.
Imagine working under conditions where you are happy and everything is going ideally. It's nice, pleasant, even if it's work.
When you are working in conditions that you don't like, it's like your own personal hell.
Sometimes, a smile on a bus or a subway train or on the street is the difference. Sometimes it's a friendly greeting. Sometimes it's a butterfly flapping it's wings a little bit longer.
It's not always that simple, in fact it's usually not that simple, but it remains true that the impact we have on those events, both in benefitting from them and distributing them (made much easier when we are benefitting from them) is incredible.
This is just my opinion, just my outlook, but it seems like it's really important (when you think about things this way) that you are conscious of how others percieve you. Not necessarily in what they think of you as far as how you look and who you are, but in terms of how you feel about them and, as a result, how that makes them feel about themselves and the rest of the world.
That consciousness is something that takes a lot of time (I am fairly sure that I'm going to be working on it the rest of my life, maybe longer if I'm lucky). It's just something to think about when you don't feel like appearing happy, when you don't feel oblidged to do it today, because you don't want to. Think about the impact that it will have on others.
As far as I'm concerned (I'm not the Dalai Lama, so I'm not necessarily concerned the same way a guy like him is, but it's still relevant) karma isn't just about the big things you do and the gifts that you give, physically speaking. It's about how consistently you make people feel welcomed in your own way. It's about how you greet people and your ability to be conscious of how everything you do affects those people because, trust me, it does.
If a butterfly affects people, you can be sure that you do.
I know that the show is a hit or miss for a lot of people, but it's not always about the humor or the emotional content of a show, and sometimes ideas and connections come from weird places. Trust me, a TV show on Comedy Central is one of the last places I expected to be posting on this blog about.
In the third season of Scrubs there is an episode called "My Butterfly." The focal point of the episode is, as the title might suggest, about a butterfly, but more specifically about the way in which even where a butterfly lands can affect someone's entire day.
What the episode tries to emphasize is the little things and, while the narrator might not be entirely aware of this, there are even subtler things than the outcome of a butterfly's landing that impact his day.
Think about it like this:
If someone smiles at you on the bus, you might be in a good mood. Your being in a good mood might cause you to be a bit more forgiving on that particular morning, being particularly tolerant of a late person, whether a co-worker or an employee. Whatever.
Your tolerance of that person might raise their self-confidence and motivate them. Their personal motivation might lead to an improvement in their work (because it's a well known fact that when people are confident they work better) and that might lead to success for the company, for that individual and all those surrounding them. If that is, say, an employee of yours, that's good for you directly, but even if it's a co-worker, the benefit that your co-workers have indirectly on you is significant because they keep things moving in the company, which means you have a job.
Imagine working under conditions where you are happy and everything is going ideally. It's nice, pleasant, even if it's work.
When you are working in conditions that you don't like, it's like your own personal hell.
Sometimes, a smile on a bus or a subway train or on the street is the difference. Sometimes it's a friendly greeting. Sometimes it's a butterfly flapping it's wings a little bit longer.
It's not always that simple, in fact it's usually not that simple, but it remains true that the impact we have on those events, both in benefitting from them and distributing them (made much easier when we are benefitting from them) is incredible.
This is just my opinion, just my outlook, but it seems like it's really important (when you think about things this way) that you are conscious of how others percieve you. Not necessarily in what they think of you as far as how you look and who you are, but in terms of how you feel about them and, as a result, how that makes them feel about themselves and the rest of the world.
That consciousness is something that takes a lot of time (I am fairly sure that I'm going to be working on it the rest of my life, maybe longer if I'm lucky). It's just something to think about when you don't feel like appearing happy, when you don't feel oblidged to do it today, because you don't want to. Think about the impact that it will have on others.
As far as I'm concerned (I'm not the Dalai Lama, so I'm not necessarily concerned the same way a guy like him is, but it's still relevant) karma isn't just about the big things you do and the gifts that you give, physically speaking. It's about how consistently you make people feel welcomed in your own way. It's about how you greet people and your ability to be conscious of how everything you do affects those people because, trust me, it does.
If a butterfly affects people, you can be sure that you do.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Honestly
As a writer, someone who is offering their opinion to you, I don't think that you come here to listen to be babble about right and wrong, so I will try and avoid babbling.
Some people may already be aware, some may not, but I am 16, which means that my first election falls on the 2008 presendential election. I should probably say that, because of this, I am paying some attention to the things that are going on right now.
My political beliefs are one thing, what I want to write about on this blog is another.
I believe that people are defined by their personal experiences. That is what I am writing about, that is what I consider the product of the constant individual evolution.
As a result, I try and minimize what I tell people unless they ask. I try to avoid being assertive, because, as a teenager, I know what it is like to constantly have people question the validity of your experiences.
I don't want to say that politicians ALL do that, but I will say that anyone who speaks about what someone can and cannot do while in a nation fundamentally based on freedom has managed to befuddle me, as does anyone who preaches a Gospel (of any sort of religious affiliation) on the pedestal of a political system that strictly express the wish to seperate church and state.
Perhaps I've made it obvious that I am confused by "right wing" politics. That isn't to say that I don't find democrats equally as frustrating. Trust me, I do, but the fact remains that I, based on the simple fundamentals I am trying to lay out here, cannot support anyone who would invalidate the experiences of another (especially of women in situations where they feel an abortion is necessary) without having been their.
If they had an experience that might offer them the ability to empathize. If they, say, had been a poor underclass impregnated teenager who had risen from the pinnacle of modern politics while raising an illegitimate child and constantly being told that they weren't good enough, that what they were doing was wrong and that they were damned to failure in life and death because of the choices they felt need to be made (like, say, raising a baby without a father), then that would be fine.
Hell, if any of them had ever given birth I might be able to see a slight bit of human empathy.
The point is that if you learn anything, it's that Judeo-Christian values teaches a single value above all else: discretion. It's this simple:
Do not preach unless you have first sat in the pews.
Do not tell someone what to do unless you have done it first.
To be metaphoric:
Don't tell someone to jump into water you haven't been in already.
I will try to keep everything fundamental, based on the truths that this whole thing is about and give you the opportunity to expand your own opinions.
As someone who has had to opportunity to preach virtues many times, I have done it some times and refrained others, I find that it is best to only preach advice that you have found true for yourself, and I have found that I should only take advice from those who have taken it themselves.
Trust me, it provides the most reliable and most consisten results.
Some people may already be aware, some may not, but I am 16, which means that my first election falls on the 2008 presendential election. I should probably say that, because of this, I am paying some attention to the things that are going on right now.
My political beliefs are one thing, what I want to write about on this blog is another.
I believe that people are defined by their personal experiences. That is what I am writing about, that is what I consider the product of the constant individual evolution.
As a result, I try and minimize what I tell people unless they ask. I try to avoid being assertive, because, as a teenager, I know what it is like to constantly have people question the validity of your experiences.
I don't want to say that politicians ALL do that, but I will say that anyone who speaks about what someone can and cannot do while in a nation fundamentally based on freedom has managed to befuddle me, as does anyone who preaches a Gospel (of any sort of religious affiliation) on the pedestal of a political system that strictly express the wish to seperate church and state.
Perhaps I've made it obvious that I am confused by "right wing" politics. That isn't to say that I don't find democrats equally as frustrating. Trust me, I do, but the fact remains that I, based on the simple fundamentals I am trying to lay out here, cannot support anyone who would invalidate the experiences of another (especially of women in situations where they feel an abortion is necessary) without having been their.
If they had an experience that might offer them the ability to empathize. If they, say, had been a poor underclass impregnated teenager who had risen from the pinnacle of modern politics while raising an illegitimate child and constantly being told that they weren't good enough, that what they were doing was wrong and that they were damned to failure in life and death because of the choices they felt need to be made (like, say, raising a baby without a father), then that would be fine.
Hell, if any of them had ever given birth I might be able to see a slight bit of human empathy.
The point is that if you learn anything, it's that Judeo-Christian values teaches a single value above all else: discretion. It's this simple:
Do not preach unless you have first sat in the pews.
Do not tell someone what to do unless you have done it first.
To be metaphoric:
Don't tell someone to jump into water you haven't been in already.
I will try to keep everything fundamental, based on the truths that this whole thing is about and give you the opportunity to expand your own opinions.
As someone who has had to opportunity to preach virtues many times, I have done it some times and refrained others, I find that it is best to only preach advice that you have found true for yourself, and I have found that I should only take advice from those who have taken it themselves.
Trust me, it provides the most reliable and most consisten results.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Ideas and Where They Come From
Ideas all come from some place. They are effects of events that have happened in our lives. That is one of the fundamental principles that I'm trying to explain.
Thich Nhat Hahn writes in "Being Peace" about how things are made up of non-things, that is to say that each tree is made up of bark, sap and leaves (superficially, not even beginning to dive into the molecular complications of something like that).
Ideas come from things that are not, at least initially, even parts of the idea (just like the way trees draw in carbon from the air). These things start as experiences that are eventually expressed through "I," the individual.
When you think something, or say something or write something down, you might not always think about where the ideas come from. I definitely don't think actively about everything that leads me to come to conclusions. That's difficult and takes alot of time, and by the time I've done it, I might have forgotten what I was going to say or write in the first place. I just want to recognize that things come from places besides me first, that I am not really creating anything, just changing it and linking it together, synthesizing it, in a sense.
Think about it like this: How do you get 7?
3 + 4 = 7
7 is made up of 3 and 4, which, as Thich Nhat Hahn said, are non-7 elements, but these things start to get really complicated when you think that 7 isn't just limited to 3 and 4.
2 + 5 = 7
1 + 6 = 7
Okay, but what about when we don't just think about it in terms of synthesizing 2 experiences?
1 + 2 + 3 +1 = 7
2 + 2 + 2 + 1 = 7
3 + 3 + 1 = 7
What if we don't just limit ourselves by thinking about it in terms of addition?
2 x 3 + 1 = 7
4 x 2 - 1 = 7
49 / 7 = 7
24 / 6 + 3 = 7
There are an infinite number of ways to get to 7, because there are an infinite number of places to start and there are a great deal of operations that we can use to change those numbers to get them to 7.
Like I said, it's pretty easy for me to forget what an idea was once I start considering where it came from.
What if, though, we think of ourselves like an idea?
I have said before that we are evolving beings, constantly changing as a result of our moment to moment experiments. What I mean is that where we started is undefinable now (because that first figure existed long before we were born), and operations continue to change it, so, like an idea, we are pushed through a series of operations to change who we are.
7 is a relatively simple idea, but as an individual it seems ridiculous to use something as simple as 7 as a metaphor for who we are, right?
Even a 5 or 6 digit number like 90,790 (my birthday, just as an example) seems like an indequate example. It seems like it would have to be something like pi to 50 places. That's fine, we are complex organisms and to use a base 10 system to explain our existence is probably inadequate anyway.
That seemed like a tangent to me, but I hope it was helpful anyway. I just wanted to offer you chance to see how our ideas (as simple as 7 and as complicated as an emotion like anger or disdain or pleasure) come from our experiences, but I think it's important that we come from those experiences too, that we are a product of things that happen to us and our experiences are an expression of that.
Hope that was helpful for getting a little handle on the idea I've been throwing around (for lack of a more wild verb) in the last few posts).
Thich Nhat Hahn writes in "Being Peace" about how things are made up of non-things, that is to say that each tree is made up of bark, sap and leaves (superficially, not even beginning to dive into the molecular complications of something like that).
Ideas come from things that are not, at least initially, even parts of the idea (just like the way trees draw in carbon from the air). These things start as experiences that are eventually expressed through "I," the individual.
When you think something, or say something or write something down, you might not always think about where the ideas come from. I definitely don't think actively about everything that leads me to come to conclusions. That's difficult and takes alot of time, and by the time I've done it, I might have forgotten what I was going to say or write in the first place. I just want to recognize that things come from places besides me first, that I am not really creating anything, just changing it and linking it together, synthesizing it, in a sense.
Think about it like this: How do you get 7?
3 + 4 = 7
7 is made up of 3 and 4, which, as Thich Nhat Hahn said, are non-7 elements, but these things start to get really complicated when you think that 7 isn't just limited to 3 and 4.
2 + 5 = 7
1 + 6 = 7
Okay, but what about when we don't just think about it in terms of synthesizing 2 experiences?
1 + 2 + 3 +1 = 7
2 + 2 + 2 + 1 = 7
3 + 3 + 1 = 7
What if we don't just limit ourselves by thinking about it in terms of addition?
2 x 3 + 1 = 7
4 x 2 - 1 = 7
49 / 7 = 7
24 / 6 + 3 = 7
There are an infinite number of ways to get to 7, because there are an infinite number of places to start and there are a great deal of operations that we can use to change those numbers to get them to 7.
Like I said, it's pretty easy for me to forget what an idea was once I start considering where it came from.
What if, though, we think of ourselves like an idea?
I have said before that we are evolving beings, constantly changing as a result of our moment to moment experiments. What I mean is that where we started is undefinable now (because that first figure existed long before we were born), and operations continue to change it, so, like an idea, we are pushed through a series of operations to change who we are.
7 is a relatively simple idea, but as an individual it seems ridiculous to use something as simple as 7 as a metaphor for who we are, right?
Even a 5 or 6 digit number like 90,790 (my birthday, just as an example) seems like an indequate example. It seems like it would have to be something like pi to 50 places. That's fine, we are complex organisms and to use a base 10 system to explain our existence is probably inadequate anyway.
That seemed like a tangent to me, but I hope it was helpful anyway. I just wanted to offer you chance to see how our ideas (as simple as 7 and as complicated as an emotion like anger or disdain or pleasure) come from our experiences, but I think it's important that we come from those experiences too, that we are a product of things that happen to us and our experiences are an expression of that.
Hope that was helpful for getting a little handle on the idea I've been throwing around (for lack of a more wild verb) in the last few posts).
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