Being Human: The Nature of the Journey

The nature of the journey

The religious journey is the pursuit of truth,

back to our source of being,

the original meaning,

that elusive end to which we never arrive,

yet by which

our paths are so greatly illuminated.

The greatest wonder of it all

is that we’ve never left the source to get back to it,

but we have deceived ourselves most artfully

We are religious animals. We have a deeply profound need to belong with “The Other.” It begins at conception when two genetic banks of information mingle (male and female), then develop into a colony of cells that continue to split off into other colonies of various form and function, yet all within the same mass, on the wall of the uterus of a mother. Other processes and time contribute to development, until a time when we are propelled through a narrow channel from the comfort of this small and secure place and out into a world of noise, cold, other beings, and apart from our source of dependence and nurturance. In our nubile state, we are still completely dependent on “The Other,” in this case our mother. We cannot feed nor protect our fragile fleshy bodies from the elements, nor move about in any fruitful way, in order to survive. Our instincts are to whelp for attention until we are attended to. Without “The Other” at this stage in our human development we would surely die. It is almost as if we’ve been taken from the womb prematurely. We were, before our conception, and the mingling of two genetic banks of information, without a sense, without a clue, and never separate from the whole of things. Our consciousness was that of the cosmos, if it has one. We were of a perpetual cosmic process.

What a mad trick, to be endowed with conscious mind that would eventually perceive itself as–not only separate from the whole–but a unique and reflective being unto itself. It is a trick, intentioned or not, for we are truly NOT independent from the whole. We’ve never left the ecosystem that produced us. We’ve merely transformed in shape and function. The paradox of human existence is this, that we are of one indistinguishable flow, though in a transient form of human existence for some duration of time, before expiring. The energy and matter that was an individual “me” is soon dissipated among the ecosystem once more to recombine with other cosmic elements into other forms and functions. Even in our most supreme state of human independence, we are dependent upon the air, water, plants and animals, other people and a desirable climate. We are compelled to belong with each other. Even the hermit in a cave cannot exist without having learned some skills from another or to use some tools and appliances that were manufactured by another.

Beyond our early development, we socialize with a larger group–from our primary care giver to a family, extending to a tribe or clan, to a community of friends and associates, to a city-state of interdependent organizations and structures, to a nation, and now to a world.

It is no wonder then, that early humans, perceived all of the activities of nature as being animated by “The Other” for our development dictated to us that we could not exist without “The Other.” At birth, we had lost our Cosmic identity, we had no sense of being part of the whole of things. The development of reflective thought occured within the context of our mutual dependence with each other. When the earth turned, presenting the illusion that the sun traveled across the sky, day after day after day, it was perceived not only as moving, but as being moved by an anthropomorphized being, a super human, a god.

All immediately intangible events were explained through an anthropomorphic projection of our own childhood experience– perhaps a providing parent, a mentoring friend, an anonymous and/or alien specter ,or a suspicious or harmful enemy. Our minds are full of archetypes of legend and lore. Then, as today, organized religion was married to the State, through which the distribution of goods and services were controlled by an elite and powerful few, controlling the masses through their religious dogmas, implying a work ethic that would benefit the elite and powerful through the toil of the masses, and whipping up a combination of nationalism and religious duty to compel men into cannon fodder to war for the extension of the empire and the extermination of competing states and religions. In some cases, the religion WAS the state, as in the long and bloody reign of many a Catholic pope.

In other cases, the State was all, as in China under the bloody dictatorship of Mao, where a grotesque distortion of communism was misused to slaughter millions in the name of Mao. Communism is an ideology in which a community benefits from the work of each other in an egalitarian government in which all are equal, without a hierarchy of social classes.. In “communist” China, there was no equality. Those who controlled the State controlled the people. There was a ruling class, a lot of propaganda, and a peasant class. Those who demonstrated allegience to the State rose in power within the misnamed Communist Party. It was, in truth, an elitist party. Nothing communal about it. The Cultural Revolution under Mao, which led to the slaughter of millions and the destruction of surrounding societies as in Tibet, ended with Mao’s death. The elitist dictatorial government structure remained. The so-called “Communist” Party is still the party of power, but capitalism has exploded in China, which is now becoming the most lucrative economic power in the world. It is the major manufacturer and exporter of goods in the world.. The Chinese religious legends and lore have been altered to satisfy the State, but many traditional archetypes persist. In other countries, legends and lore of old are infusing with products of a technological entertainment and communications revolution.

Today’s legends and lore are an abstract compilation of marketing ads, films, video games, books, and ancient religious texts. The traditional archetypes have been morphed into manipulative advertising and propaganda by corporations and governments to persuade the common citizens of earth’s lands to buy their products and services, labor in their factories, and act as cannon fodder in their warring disputes over corporate control of energy sources and natural resources. In this sense, the manipulation of the masses has not changed, but the means of delivering propaganda and manipulative ads has become one of the leading industries of the empire. It has become a sophisticated and highly professional field of business and government.

It is my mission to help people fend off the propaganda, the intertwining manipulations of religion and politics, the distorted and persuasive advertising, by learning to be good researchers. My goal is to educate people to dissieminate fact from fiction, to find the truth among the spinning rhetoric of politicians and their corporate news affiliates, to follow the money trails to see who benefits from a war, a bending of environmental law that harms citizens, the exploitation of dwindling fossil fuels, and more.

To this end, I advocate three guiding elements–reason, human compassion, and desire for peace. For tools, I recommend a computer and an Internet access service, your mind, and the ability to suspend your preconceived notions about the way you believe the world of governments, religion and corporations function in the world.

I recommend the Scientific Method which begins any study without assumptions. One begins with observation, which leads to a question. The question is then presented as a hypothesis. The Scientific Method is applied to keep us honest. We seek not to PROVE our hypthesis, but to prove its opposite–the NULL hypothesis. Thus, reason and skepticism guide to consider NOT how our assumptions may be correct, but to analyze the variable elements that can confound what our assumptions are, or may imply.

I understand the faith that so many devote to their religions, vehicles of moral truths transmitted through ritual and tradition, some for millennia. Religion is, more often than not, the central focal point of a culture, of that culture’s families, and therefore of an individual’s sense of belonging. The irrational attachment with which one adheres to these important social belief systems is what we call faith. Faith, without reason, can only lead to group-think, ostracization and/or denouncement of those outside of the faith, and–in the extreme case–war. Within an irrational religious faith lie the seeds of prejudice, intolerance, bigotry, discrimination and persecution of others. An irrational faith carries with it a sense of arrogant self-righteousness that condemns the rich diversity of humanity that exists outside of itself. A healthy faith is based on reason, adapts to the facts of the universe in which it arises, and reconciles its tenets to reality. An unhealthy faith will deny the reality of the natural world, will be intolerant of other cosmic possibilities and those who believe in them, and become a dangerous threat to the family of Man. One need only to read a scholarly book of human history to see the calamity that irrational and bigoted faith has had upon human civilizations.

It is for this reason, that I left organized religion so many years ago, that my mind would not be consumed by a singular irrational explanation of our human existence within the Cosmos, that it could explore ideas, philosophies, facts and fictions, untethered by the preconceived notions of dogma, doctrine, or creed.

A single word can be packed with a multitude of preconceived notions. Example? “God”. To some a fatherly, white bearded heavenly creator, who made humankind in his image out of loneliness, and observes and intercedes upon his creation from some heavenly throne. Does one dare ask how, within an eternal realm of existence , this being can separate out a moment in which to suddenly feel lonely? To others, a faceless spirit moving through the Cosmos as a constant creative force. To others, a supernatural entity that can take on a human form by which to redeem the creatures it created that had chosen to exist in ways not tolerable to this entity. To still others, an animating force in each and every form of this physical universe. And, yet to others, a concept projected from a human mind to explain the events of natural phenomena. Thing move. Things happen. Some ONE has to be moving them and making them happen. Lastly, to others (such as myself) a projected irrational fantasy-being of one’s self, to provide comfort and security in the face of fear, anguish and the absence of reasonable explanation. Human belief in gods diminishes according to the level of one’s education, utility of reason, understanding of science, and intellectual development.

http://www.objectivethought.com/atheism/iqstats.html

To be a “truth walker” one is compelled to leave a standing position.

Amen.

MH

What McCain Missed About John Hagee

John Hagee, popular fundamentalist Christian minister, known for professing outrageous things in the public arena, was finally chastised by a political candidate, but not for the many odd things he announces in modern day, but comments he made over a decade ago. I’ve tuned Hagee in on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBS) for the shear entertainmnet value. It is laughable to me that anyone could profess the prophetic writings of an ancient religious book after living in a society that makes available so many scholarly works on the myths, legends, history and theologies of these sixty-six books (sans the Apocrychas), politically decided upon by the hashing out of various Christian factions nearly two millennia past at the canonical councils. And we can thank the imperial march of Roman troops into so many lands, upsetting so many cultures and various other religions, for the spread of Christendom, not to mention the centuries of bloody Christian Crusades and torturous inquisitions throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and on into the desecration of the native peoples of the “New World.”

Nonetheless, a majority of American profess their beliefs in this book–the Jewish books of the Old Testament with a New Testament addendum–augmentations, distortions, manipulations and additions by authors professing a faith in a resurrected Messiah.  Paul, of which much of the New Testament is comprised of his letters to various congregations, makes no mention of the earthly man, Jesus, only to a netherworld demigod called Jesus Christ.  Paul visited Jerusalem on several occasions, but never makes mention of it being the place where his son-god spent his last earthly days.  In fact, Paul makes no mention of a Jesus in Jerusalem at all, nor of his many works and teachings.  Curious, but very, very true.  Yet, I would be surprised if many professed believers in the New Testament writings would even acknowledge this fact.

According to research by Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason— sixty-two percent of these “ believers” do not know the names of the four gospels of the New Testament nor that Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament, much less the mysterious omissions of any reference to an earthly man named Jesus by the Apostle Paul. As a biblical researcher and reader of scholarly critical analyses of these ancient texts, I am always struck with wonder how people could so readily profess a belief in that about which they know so little. But, Fox News also also attracts a wide number of believing news viewers even after more than a decade of selling lies, deceits and misinterpretations of fact, so I shouldn’t be too awe-struck by the prevalence of ignorance in people who rely upon unreliable resources for their information.

The books of Ezekiel and Daniel of the Old Testament and the Revelation of John which closes out the New Testament make so many obvious references to the astrological zodiacal wheel of symbols and meanings that it is laughable that anyone would include these books as part of their “ infallible Word of God.” But, then Genesis’s two creation stories are confused and confounded in the minds of many, the plurality of gods of Genesis 5, whose “sons of the gods intermarried with the daughters of men” is dismissed by many “believers” as a mystery not to be understood. Their offspring, the Nephilum, were the “giants and heroes of old.” The similarities of Samson to other heroic figures such as Hercules brings to mind Joseph Campbell’s great works on religious mythologies, especially the book, The Hero of a Thousand Faces.” The Noahic flood myth is so nearly the same story from Babylonia written twelve hundred years before it that it is unconscionable that biblical readers who learn this haven’t seen the lack of historical validity to their books of faith. Not to mention the myth of King Sargon I of Babylonia who, as an infant, was placed in a basket of reeds and pitch and set afloat down the river to save him from slaughter, and he was rescued by a handmaiden and rose to be the leader of a great nation. Moses anyone?

Yet, John Hagee, and many like him, can stand up before a massive throng of thousands of people and profess to know the meanings of what he interprets to be predictions for the world drawn from this collection of arcane, disjointed, historically confused concoctions of infused mythologies, theologies and meanings. A majority of American believe that the end of the world is near. Forty percent, or more, believe in a notion called the “Rapture,” in which it is believed that Jesus will return and many people will simply disappear from the earth to be “taken up into the sky” (to another planet? Another dimension? The “believers” are vague on just where their heaven is, because—I guess—their professed god is not a very clear provider of meanings and directions). Hagee aligns himself with the Zionists of Israel, believing that Jerusalem will be the centerpiece of a great war, led by Jesus, against the evildoers of the earth, in the final battles of Armageddon. And he will point, in great geographical detail , to places on a map of the Middle East and reference them to obscure and ahistorical phrases of biblical passages.

Thus, the United States, populated by a majority of people who believe in these nonsensical things, deserves a George W. Bush as their president, the least mentally capable and most intellectually challenged president in the history of the United States. Susan Jacoby got it right. This IS the age of American Unreason. I call it the New American Dark Age, and if there is light at the end of the tunnel, it is very, very dim at this writing. Superstitious religious theology mingled and mired with nationalistic jingoism prevails over science and reason. Unchallenged public political statements become the social dogma of the masses while the money trails and corporate capitalist lusts for power point to a whole different set of facts behind the geopolitics of the world than what the masses believe. The Constitution of the United States is readily shredded through the passage of right-stripping legislation, unread by the congressional representatives who pass them into law. Torture is now a policy of the American government, as well as abducting people into renditions and prisons, without the right of habeas corpus, dure process of law, right to an attorney, or even being charged with a crime.

John McCain denounces Hagee for his discriminatory and bigoted remarks, but doesn’t question any of the thousands of ridiculous statements about history, morality and world events made by Hagee over the past several years. The American Dark Age continues.

Amen. MH Pathfinder

Crossing Platforms in Midstream III

“…and man will be made dirigible, and let loose the body as a placenta for the soul.” — James Joyce, from The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

What a technological era! Within a few years, our computers will have main brains consisting of central processing units containing hundreds of cores. The calculating potentials for hundreds of parallel, or transactional, processes occurring at one time will greatly speed up and greatly enhance how our external minds will be able to manipulate data. Will they be able to loop outside of their own mental processes and reflect back upon them, as a human being does?

It is not only humans who can strangely loop out of their minds to reflect back upon them and the thoughts that are generated (Thank you, Douglas Hofstadter, i.e., STRANGE LOOPS). Many species can, but humans seem to do it with the great flare of their massive cerebral cortexes. To lesser degrees, animals with minds as simple as insects (still very complex, but simpler than ours) do some looping, and thus make calculated decisions, utilizing varying degrees of fuzzy logic. Where does consciousness come into play here? Is self-referential loopiness the key to consciousness, or is there more to this? Cognitive scientists are still asking the questions, and to this day not enough is known about the neural networks and how they fire electrochemical messages to each other to fully understand what consciousness is.

Suffice to say that some of our loopiness, our fuzzy logic, is now being externailzed into forms of silicone, plastics and metals, fired by electricity, and performing multiple calculations and processes in an instant. We are about to make some quantum leaps forward in this externalization of thought. A massive project by Microsoft is in play to build software for multiple core processors. It is being done in a gothic cathedral on the outskirst of Barcelona, Spain, where a supercomputer running on 10,000 processor cores with twenty terabytes of storage will be the arena for new software production. New ways of performing tasks will be devised. Transactional calculations instead of parallel processes may be devised to create the elaborate programs and multimedia products from software manufacturers.

So, what is it to be human? What makes us distinctly different from other specieis, and is humanness transferrable to the mechanized minds of robots and computers that we are now creating? Such questions have been the topic of many a Phillip K. Dick novel, as well as the basis for movies, such as Steven Spielberg’s AI (artificial intelligence), in which a self-conscious robotic child wants desparately to be loved, and to love, as a real boy (yes, an updated Pinocchio story).

We extend our minds and bodies into plastic and metal forms to explore the planets and beyond in space, into the depths of the oceans, and to zoom into the realm of subatomic worlds. How much of our humanness is contained in these extended minds and bodies? When will such an “extension” be considered as an entity unto itself?

We are, perhaps, decades away from being able to answer these questions, or even to pose them substantially, but it is certain that our humanness contains as much of our externalized dreams that now exist as our synthesized world as it does what is within us. We have created a network of exansive and shared learning through these devices, such as the one on wich I am typing this message, to be sent out over the global airwaves of broadband Internet, and into the minds of others, at least those who can understand my American English, or be able to translate it using a language translating program.

The amazement continues.

Amen.

MH Pathfinder

Tedium ad Nauseum…And Yet, Patience is Learned

For me, there is no greater Zen Master for patience, understanding and tolerance…

…than a computer.  I know.  I know.   It isn’t human.  How can I possibly learn from a computer?  Feel for a computer?  Relate to a machine?

  Well, for one thing, it allows me to be less anthropocentric.  I can demonstrate compassion and patience, even for a non-living, inorganic machine that is only doing what it is programmed to do, with little in the way of conscious thought, save for a bit of fuzzy logic that allows some of its programs to extrapolate and learn.  There may be ideosyncratic differences twixt the languages I understand and some of my computer’s programming languages, but if I make the attempt to understand and learn what it is trying to say, I can get to know what this machine expects from me.  Most of all, the computer is an imperfect thing that is programmed to to interrupt my processes, correct my processes, and consume my time with often necessary tasks and inquiries, but with a rude and impassionate sense of timing.  This morning, for instance, was a diversion into my credit card acccount, where a merchant had double-charged me for a restaurant bill.  This consumed a half hour of extra time without resolution of the problem which is still pending.  I had hoped to spend the morning writing a longer blog post, and not about these issues.  I was also diverted into maintenance issues in my email client program, as well as tweaking my scanner/copier/printer for clearer automatic text scans.  All of these things consumed most of my two-hour vested time for computing and Internet.  I am not angry, nor disappointed, nor frustrated, for all of the diversions were necessary for various reasons and will make my computing, account management,  and online time easier for future sessions.

I have a great appreciation for the artistic minds that can focus upon a specific task, be it writing, painting or sculpting, and not be diverted by other things.  A writer with a computer must either be putting many computing processes on hold to focus on word processing, or he or she owns a MAC, which thus negates the extraneous computing updates and tweaks that seem to plague most of us Windows system users.  I write with a PC, and use the extraneous and nagging update/tweaking/bug-fixing processes as a focal point from which to write, to learn, and to report on my lessons.

I am out of time, at this point however, and I haven’t begun to express my thoughts.

Lesson learned today?  Put off until tomorrow even those things which you could have done today.

Amen.

MH Pathfinder

Crossing Platforms in Midstream…Again!

The fickled finger of fate has poked me in the eye again, and thus another Zen Master beckons to me to learn.

I was completely set on converting my HP Special Edition L2005US Lance Armstrong Livestrong laptop computer into a complete Ubuntu system. A major obstacle had been eliminated. My Broadcom wireless network card was now flashed with compatibility via Ubuntu’s hardware manager and my Canon PIXMA MP150 printer became compatible. Until today, the laptop was a dual-boot system with Ubuntu as the default and Windows Vista, which is necessary for my Quicken home and business files and professional programs not yet made for use in a Linux operating system.

For the past week, since my last post, I’ve experienced some very slow Ubuntu wireless network connection, at times not even able to connect to a single web address. Rebooting into Windows Vista resulted in the reliable and fast cable Internet connection I’ve consistently experienced in this system. A second nagging problem is apparently still not resolved in Ubuntu. That is reliable use of the Synaptics touchpad with a laptop keyboard. When typing text, the cursor jumps to another line and space…while in mid-typing. In contacting fellow users on Ubuntu forums, it is apparent that the bug still exists. None of the suggested fixes has worked.

Today, after several failed attempts to create fixes to the above two problems, I…once again…decided to remove Ubuntu from my hard drive, and restore my second partion to a second NTFS logical drive. What I did discover, along the way, is that the previous method of restoring a Windows Master Boot Record does not apply in Windows Vista. When one installs Ubuntu as the second operating system alongside a Windows Vista system, Ubuntu creates a boot-up menu called GRUB. By default, Ubuntu will start in 30 seconds, unless I click on Windows Vista from the menu.

If one decides to remove Ubuntu from the hard drives, you must first repair the Master Boot Record to allow Windows Vista to boot at startup. In order to repair the MBR (Master Boot Record), Windows is booted from the operating system DVD, then click on REPAIR YOUR COMPUTER, then click on Command Prompt. At the command prompt, type bootrec.exe /FixMbr/ It should say operation complete, or something like that. Then type “exit” and restart the computer. Windows Vista will now boot up, without any boot menu or Ubuntu as an option. After Windows Vista has booted up, click on the Start button, right-click on COMPUTER, and choose manage. From the manage console choose drive management. You will see your Windows partition, and two non-descript partions. These two partitions are the Ubuntu root and swap partitions. Right-click on each of them, and choose Delete Volume. The two blank partitions will become one. At that point, you can right-click on the blank partition and choose Format. After the partition is formatted, you will have deleted any hint of Ubuntu or whatever else was on the partition. Your system is now fully restored to a single-boot Windows Vista system.

There is no escaping the fact that Windows Vista is very superior operating system. In Internet and network functions, software compatibility, ability to use Microsoft Office’s FrontPage web editor, by far and away the easiest creative instrument for web page editing and publishing, even for those with no HTML knowledge or experience.  It’s a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor AND the FrontPage extensions allow one to make a change on one page that will ripple through relevant links to that change,  appropriately and quickly,  throughout the entire website.

Each venture away from Windows toward Ubuntu and other Linux distributions makes me appreciative that there are cooperative projects bringing operating systems and software to the developing world.  These operating systems are improving quickly.  Yet, each venture away from Windows brings me back to it, realizing how dependent we are, and how much many of us want, a universal operating system that works and performs efficiently, and does the things that we want to do with our computers.  Windows is still it.  Vista is a greatly improved product that is much more user friendly than previous versions, and with many built-in management tools to ensure that it operates smoothly with the least amount of technical problems and interruptions.

Windows Vista Home Basic on my HP Special Edition L2005US Lance Armstrong Livestrong notebook.  I added memory to bring it up to 2 gigs RAM, installed a fast 7200 rpm 80 gig hard drive and replaced the DVD burner with a Samsung DVDRW/CDRW burner.   Ubuntu will reappear from time to time, but for now, it is a single boot Windows system.  My desktop is dual boot with Ubuntu as the default operating system.

The best of both worlds, commercial and cooperative.

Amen.

MH

Crossing Platforms in Midstream

I know that most of you out there are content with Bill Gates child, Windows, reaching a new stage every few months and a new version of itself every few years. We are creatures of habit, after all, and when we become accustomed to an operating system with its nuances and complexities, we are not too quick to change the software underpinnings of our work and home computers. It’s enough to contend with the vast amount of learning processes on one operating system and its features, without challenging our minds and anxiety levels with yet another. We would, after all,like to get some actual work done.
A small percentage have opted for the user-friendly MAC computer and its OS operating system, based on the UNIX platform. It’s reportedly easy to access, and to learn, without having to go behind the scenes of the operating system. Still, one has to learn to navigate the folder and file structure, to know where the programs and system utilities are, and still to contend with updates, albeit not as frequently as Windows users. Even Windows updates are usually automatic, loading up in the background of our broadband network connections.

A growing number of users, especially in Europe and Asia, have discovered a different operating system, LINUX. LINUX is not new, its based on the UNIX code upon which the MAC OS operating system is built, and is, in fact, the original code for operating systems everywhere. In fact, there are literally thousands of distributions built upon the LINUX platform, which is built upon the UNIX language. These distributions are products of cooperative projects of developers and programmers. The UNIX code, and LINUX operating system which is built upon it, is “OPEN SOURCE” which means it is available to everyone to use, to alter, to improve, and to share with others. The result is a wide variety of LINUX distributions, each with its own amenities and distinguishing characteristics, and packages of software. Most LINUX distributions are packaged with many open source programs, such as OPEN OFFICE, MOZILLA FIREFOX browser and THUNDERBIRD email client, as well as many multimedia, Internet and other office programs and utilities.

There are hundreds of free and commercial repositories of available open source and commercial programs to add to one’s LINUX system. There are a number of open source and free software advocates who are working to prevent an encroachment of commercial interests who would attempt to control, and charge fees, for use of their software, and thus threaten the free and open source software availability to the public. Thus, members of the open source software movement encourage users to use open source software only. This would be a great suggestion if the many multimedia Internet broadcasts, even from alternative news and information sources, were producing their material in open source software formats. Most of them are not, but mp3 and wmv files can be played in many open source media players. Realplayer streaming formats, however, require a Realplayer program to hear or see them. We users will, as we do with corporations and our government, simply have to keep close watch and collectively work to protect and maintain the free and open source software enviroment.

One of the most popular of LINUX-based distributions is the UBUNTU operating system package, which I am running on my laptop, as a dual-boot system which allows me to boot from either UBUNTU or Windows Vista. I have been runnng UBUNTU on my desktop computer in my home office for the past two years. UBUNTU has been improving by leaps and bounds with each new revision. The current version is UBUNTU 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. The greatest improvement to UBUNTU, as far as I’m concerned, is the Restricted Drivers manager which includes a Broadcom wireless network card firmware update. For the past four years I have wanted a LINUX distribution on my laptop, but could only use one with an external network card. Finally, my HP Special Edition L2005US Lance Armstrong Livestrong notebook computer is fully compatible with UBUNTU Linux. I just installed it yesterday after reading about the Broadcom network card incompatibility issue being solved. Delightful.

What is it about LINUX operating systems that I love the most? They are free to the public, they work well in older computers with little storage space and without a need for an abundance of RAM memory, and they are developed through cooperative and creative efforts. If a working family can afford an inexpensive laptop computer with a wireless network card, then they have a tool to bring them into the Information Age without going into debt to do it. A used laptop with a 1-gigahertz CPU and 512 megs of RAM memory might cost between two- to three-hundred dollars UBUNTU is free and packaged with an office suite, Internet tools, multimedia, DVD and CD burning tools, and games. A multifunction printer that prints, scans and copies can be purchased for fifty dollars, with cartridges that can be replaced for as little as three dollars each (Epson CX3810, on sale).

To find UBUNTU, just click to http://www.ubuntu.com. For other LINUX distributions (hundreds) go to http://www.distrowatch.com.

And do this, even if you are a happy Windows user. If you have an old working computer, or know someone that does, download UBUNTU for free and burn it onto a CD, then install it into the older system. Check out the features, play with it. If you decide you don’t want it, give it to some family that needs it, and help them get on line. You will have explored a new operating system and helped a family get into the Information Age, and thus to move deeper within the human sphere through learning and communication without it costing a lot of money.

Amen.

MH Pathfinder

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him

It’s a quote from ninth-century Zen Master, Lin Chi, a warning to rely only upon the self and not to trust external forces as “authority figures” who wish to dictate one’s life or even simply to imply a certain way that one must be, and Lin Chi would warn not even to rely upon his words I just cited, but to reflect upon one’s own self as one’s guide. Alexander Pope wrote, “Know then thyself. Presume not god to scan. The proper study of mankind is Man.” The only guru one can trust to control one’s life is the guru within, the self. Let no external force have absolute power over ME, even this author who is recommending such advice, or even me who is quoting him. This is in extreme contradiction to the religious paths that so many follow, surrendering their lives to the interpretations of holy books, rendered holy by scribes, priests and self-proclaimed religious leaders throughout history. Or, surrendering to supposed gods, figments of shared imaginations that catapult an ideal vision of human behavior up into the fanciful skies and netherlands of heavenly aspirations, unfounded and unproven by one’s own experience or tests of reason and logic.

This is not to imply anarchy or chaos as preferable means of governing human affairs. I suspect, and believe, that if we were to search within our selves, sans the sea of preconceived notions of multimedial messages that have been teeming into our minds since infancy, we would find a very humanistic self that would seek to create a social network of mutual reliance, because it would benefit the self, as well as other selves, toward a peaceful and mutual means of human cohabitation and prosperity. Not to appear as a naive fool here, I understand that a mutually human social consciousness has to be practiced and honed, learned and tested in a child’s life to have meaning. This seems quite paradoxical to the theme of this essay which seeks to diminish the influence of external authorities and gurus, teachers and sages, and to put forward the value of the self as the primary teacher and guide to one’s life directions. Yet, the choice to adopt an external force as a teacher, if even for a temporary time, can be a choice of one’s self, the result of a reflective process through which the mirror of one’s mind yields an image that one sees as needing an external influence.

And, what is a self? Does one’s self end at the perimeter of one’s skin? Or, is the human self even those ideas and things shared with others, outside of one’s body and mind? I have conversations with dead people, many of whom are my favorite authors whose books I have read long after they have expired, and whose words I allow to bounce among the other ideas in my mind, and I will argue points for and against, be awestruck by novel ideas and synergistic alliances between an author’s ideas and my own present experience. These people are dead, yet their human selves have been transmitted into written texts that communicate with us centuries, millennia after the physical person has expired and rotted away. This metaphysical process takes place through the written word, through film, through music, through architecture and visual arts, through dance, and long beyond the life of a person who created any one of them.

Who is the Buddha? Can he even be identified specifically outside the realm of the self, as we each walk down our paths of life, to killl him? If we kill the Buddha, do we kill part of our self? And…of course…what is a self? Is even a hermit, alone in a cave, a solitary self, if he or she is using the products of other minds on which to sleep, with which to prepare food, and with which to sustain other aspects of their “solitary” lives? At the other extreme, are the social constructs of authoritarianism that discourage individual thought and freedom to choose.

The constructs of American legal and governmental systems mimick the authoritarian constructs of institutional religion. Government chambers are oft designed to loft the executives into higher chairs than their organizational subordinates. Court rooms loft judges into higher chairs as if their authority was the supreme over all in the room. The pulpits and lecterns of many a Catholic and Protestant church are raised to lift the priests and ministers to higher positions than their congregations, as if they are supreme mediums between congregations and gods.

These physical constructs of religious and governmental authority combine to create an illusion of executive and priestly authority over the citizens of a nation-state, and thus relax an individual citizen’s sense of personal responsibility and power over his or her own life and directions. Citizens become pliable human clay to be manipulated and molded into uses that suit the executives of governments, religions and corporations without the central concern of a person’s being and well-being, or their ecological context of existence.

This is a supreme folly, but I am no authority either. I merely ask the reader to consider these thoughts, reflect upon them, and wonder how they fit with your own balance or imbalance of external and internal messaging and personal power. I would hope that a very deep reflection on these issues and ideas would be made on the days and hours before one casts a vote for a particular political candidate and/or votes to adopt or reject a specific bill, initiative or resolution.

So Be It.

Amen.

The Pathfinder

Notes on “I Am a Strange Loop,” by Douglas Hofstadter, and Loops Into Other Things

Douglas Hofstadter has been writing books on the strangeness and loopiness of self-referential thinking for about thirty years. His books include the following:

Godel, Escher and Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid

The Mind’s I

Metamagical Themas

I Am A Strange Loop

His latest book is an attempt to simplify the complexities of self-referential thinking. He would argue that each of his books have been attempts to do so, but he would also admit that they ended up being longer essays with more complex explanations and extrapolations of the complexities of self-referential thought than he intended. GEB (Godel, Escher and Bach) is one of my favorite reference books, and a book just to recapture my wonder and curiosity for the universe when reading the media news of of the New American Dark Age and George Bush’s continual march of determined ignorance gets too depressing. So, he offers “I Am A Strange Loop.” I enjoy all of his books. Hofstadter’s “I” is a playful child full of curiosity which never seems to age into complacency about the wonders of loopiness, and the seeming paradoxical nature of human consciousness, or the consciousnesses of other beings as well. When do the thought mechanisms of a machine or living thing reach a point of self-referential thought? Hofstadter lets us know that this is not a phenomenon that is easy to pin down, nor an issue that is concretely black and white, nor absolute.  If we paid attention, we might be amazed at the array of lifeforms in which this strange loopiness arises, and the degree of complexity in creatures that we might not usually consider closely related to us in “intelligence.”

Let me offer this paraphrased review, an appreciative rephrasing and personalization of some of the many fun, exciting and mesmerizing points of Hoftstadter’s book, mingled with an extrapolation or two (or three, or four…) of my own. Thanks Mr. Hofstadter for a metamagical thematic playtime in my mind, for my “I” to ponder and enjoy.

One can obviously understand the consciousness and self-referential thinking and feelings of beings, such as dogs, elephants, dolphins, chimpanzees and humans. What about a mosquito? How about a robot-activated self-driving car? Does the robot-activated self-driving car have a consciousness of “self”? If a human’s self-referential “I-ness” is a soul, does the mosquito have a soul, albeit with much less self-referential abilities, thus a “smaller” soul? Is my dog’s soul smaller because she doesn’t perceive the complexities of symbols and metaphors that I recognize? I certainly lack the olfactory linguistics of Truffle, my dog, so there are complexities of meanings and metaphors that my nose cannot decipher, therefore the nose of my soul is is not as gifted as the nose of the soul of my dog. Is a soul’s nose any less important to a mind’s “I”?

Well, you can see that the questions can be quite fun, puzzling and go into many different directions. What is more, beyond the self-referential loopiness of living, thinking beings, there is a loopiness to the universe itself. An atom is a seemingly stable element of matter, but it is in reality a temporal state of energy, a tension between two opposing forces–the strong and weak force of the atom. It may be that no matter exists at all, and that even stranger things occur within subatomic particles, such as a quark occupying two spaces at the same time or light behaving as both a wave and a particle. And, the mathematical explanations for the behaviors of some subatomic particles require at least eleven dimensions. We live in three dimensions, understand the curving nature of space/time through the fourth, but how much do we know about the other seven dimensions? Or, are there even more? These ideas are not clear and belong to the realm of quantum physics and theoretical designs which are often difficult to clearly demonstrate to satisfy our sensate thinking.

So, the “I” of me is not a tangible thing to be pinned down, and when one peers into the brain to see the electrochemical processes and neural firings of axions and synapses the “I” is not to be seen careening through them. A system often takes on a personality that is greater than the sum of its parts, or at least a result of the parts working as a whole. A human body is composed of various organs and entities, enzymes, bacteria and a host of other living things. Some people, befuddled by the directions and behaviors that come from their own thoughts, say things like, “I don’t know what my brain was thinking,” as if their brain was somehow detached and operating independently from the rest of the body and context in which that body exists. How large is the “I” of the mind? What is the mind? Is it only the cerebral cortex that tails down into bundles of nerves that branch out to the limbs and digits of toes and fingers? Does the mind stop at the spine, the nerve endings? Does the mind incorporate the lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, gall bladder, appendix and other organs, the derma and blood? Or is the “I” of the mind these things, as well, or none of them? Is the “I” a metaphysical soul? It may be something beyond what we can physically see or sense, but the mind’s “I” is nonetheless a result of the physiological processes of a human body that reaches that self-referential loopiness to stand outside of itself and look back and say, “Hey! That’s me!”

Well, after reading these few paragraphs, you may be able to understand how Douglas Hofstadter’s attempts to convey the nature of self-referential thinking could easily expand into hundreds of pages. Fortunately, Hofstader draws upon some very playful and creative analogies and self-referential sentence structuring that tweaks the curiosity and child within each of our “I”s. And I’m not talking about your left “I” or your right “I”, but the “I”behind your eyes. In THE MIND’S I he utilizes phrases from Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, full of paradoxical metaphores and strange loopiness.

Douglas Hofstadter also is a contributing writer to Scientific American.

Amen.

MH

The Pathfinder

An American Existentialist in the Modern Dark Age

Remember Gregor Samsa? If you’ve never read Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, the name would mean nothing. In Kafka’s story, Gregor awakens one morning feeling unable to get out of bed, to speak, to even roll over. His body feels odd. He is unable to make any normal human sounds. He discovers that he has become a giant cockroach. When he does manage a great effort to turn himself over and off of his bed, his entire sense of being and his former way of interacting with his environment have all changed. Nothing he does helps him to communicate his sense of being, nor even to be recognized by his family–his mother, father and sister. This was a great European existential fantasy of our early twentieth century, reflecting the alienation, hopelessness and numbness of many with their unresponsive governments and social structures to the human needs of their citizens, who were even becoming alienated from each other.

Enter the modern Gregor Samsa.  Me, Michael Hovey, present alienated and angst-ridden cockroach, living on the Left Coast of the American Empire in a comfortable southern California suburb, replete with thousands of gas-guzzling SUVs and sprawling suburban mallscapes of corporate entities, such as Walmarts, Target Stores, Starbucks, McDonalds, and the like, anchored by corner filling stations of global corporate energy companies. All the while, hundreds of thousands of people are being slaughtered as global corporations and government dictatorships jockey for control of the finite fossil fuels of the Middle East.  Somehow, the minions of gas-guzzling commuters and transporters don’t get it, that a finite fossil fuel that took TWO HUNDRED MILLION (!) years to evolve into its present form is being used up within a couple of centuries.  Two hundred million minus two hundred equals one-hundred-and-ninety-nine million, nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-thousand, eight hundred years to produce MORE oil.  I don’t think we have enough time!!! 

 Well, this long-range thinking that only needs to envision a couple of hundred years into the future is absent from the minds of “profit now/worry later” global corporate CEOs and technocrats.  The thinking is “earn every profit from every last drop of petroleum until it is all gone…then think about a replacement.”  Oh, you’ll see glitzy ads from the energy companies telling the public how conscientious they are and how concerned they are about the environment and humanity, but let’s face facts.  People are dying in wars for oil and other natural resources (even water!!!), while Exxon Mobil raked in the highest quarterly profits in the history of profit-making. 

Yes, I AM A COCKROACH, or something other than human, because the creatures around me are not behaving like humans.  As for myself, I don’t believe in paternalistic gods dictating who will live, who will die, who will prosper and who will suffer, with no sense, common or strange, about what the criteria is.  Maybe this god throws dice, in spite of Einstein’s assertion that god does not play dice.  Of course, this was before we undersood enough about quantum physics to learn that the rules of Einstein’s four-dimensional universe don’t work for the world of quarks and other things subatomically small.  I digress.  The point is that points are now vague.  Existential anxiety is up, because there is a real question as to whether humanity deserves to survive.  It may not be for us to decide, no matter how intelligent our self-righteous arrogance convinces us to be.  It may be that the earth will simply cure itself and get rid of us through its natural immune system which extinguishes species who are simply not adept nor adaptable enough to survive the earth’s ecosystem.  We are arrogant enough to believe that we can detrimentally affect the ecosystem of the earth to destroy all life, but I think this is an insult to a planetary ecology that has persisted without our help or harm for billions of years. 

We are late, self-reflective comers to the game of special survival.  And, we only think we are as capable as we are.  Are we?  How do we know that we know what we know when we we can’t know that we know what we know when we are knowing it?  I don’t know.

I was born just a few years beyond a half century ago,  raised in the southern California suburbs in a white, male-dominated, Protestant Christian family and culture.   Like most children brought up in the religious and social indoctrinations of church and school, I believed that our government was honorable.  I believed that a god existed as a paternal spirit, having created our first ancestors of one of six days in a place called Eden, destroyed most of us, then killed his son to die for our sins, whether we were aware of such sins or not.  I remember attending school with a very few people of color.  Even in our high school of four thousand students, only two of them were black, and a few of Asian or Hispanic heritage.  This was life in a post-World War II, suburban illusion, a bubble.  I was part of an average American white middle class world of school and church, boy scouts and YMCA, football and TV sitcoms.  We didn’t know about social evolution, the many dissenters who argued, risking life and limb, to gain rights in a nation that developed by a band of wealthy white European males who wanted to preserve their wealth and property, and be free from the taxation of a foreign monarchy.  There was nothing to free black slaves, to treat women as equals, nor to treat the Native Americans as anything more than unChristian savages.  Such was our original U.S. Constitution.  And, only landowners could vote in federal elections.  This was a new republic back then in 1776, but it was far from being a democracy.  Even to this day, there are many wealthy Republicans who fight against democracy.  Not Democrats, but democracy itself.  This is, but should not be, a shock to many Americans.

The US military has supplanted the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, under the false facade of fighting a “War on Terror” without end. Immediately, within just a few days of the first attacks on Afghanistan, major deals were signed among global corporate energy giants to build pipelines from Kyrgyzstan, across Afghanistan and down to the Caspian Sea, which has become the new central global port for transporting oil and natural gas. Kyrgyzstan is said to contain more oil in reserves than are contained in the Iraq reserves, plus to be a massive source of natural gas. In Iraq, the oil has been conveniently kept in the ground while oil prices have risen dramatically, creating the largest profits for Exxon Oil in the history of corporate profiteering. Vice President Dick Cheney met with CEOs of energy and other corporations to divide up Iraq’s resources and infrastructure among themselves, BEFORE Iraq was invaded. These “secret” sessions have led to a no-bid contract for Cheney’s pension provider, Haliburton, to control the contracts for Iraq’s reconstruction after the US military bombed it to pieces. Haliburton was also given a no-bid contract to oversee the whitening reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the Army Corps of Engineers, a poorly equipped and unready FEMA contributed to the wasting of neighborhoods there, and in communities along the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines. To date, Cheney has not been held legally nor ethically responsible to the American public nor the US Constitution to reveal the details of his “secret” meetings…..   I can’t go on.  I’ve said enough to have the president and vice president impeached, but they are gleefully wrecking every aspect of the US system and its economy, with no one doing anything to stop them.

I do not trust the Republicans nor the Democrats to be of any help to America.  They are raking in the global corporate profits into their campaign coffers and are beholding to corporate technocrats, not to the American people.

 It’s time to start a new party–the Cockroach party, comprised of all of us who feel alienated, hopeless and disgusted with the American imperial system that has the Bandini touch.  Everything this Bush government touches turns to shit.

I’m tired of eating it.  It is time for change.  Amen.