A college friend of mine pointed out once that love and hate are not opposites. She pointed out that they are the same and that apathy is their opposite.
My experience since then has found this to have been, and to still be, profoundly true.
Both love and hate can drive a person insane. Both can induce irrationality in a person otherwise completely rational. Both can alter the courses of lives. Both can be powerful motivators.
Love and hate are the opposite faces of the same coin. The coin of passion.
The coin of passion is much like The Force in Star Wars. It has a light side and a dark side.
The light side is used construct, build and help while the dark side is used to destroy and aggregate power and for revenge.
Obviously the difference is the direction of the passion and not the passion itself.
Love is much like the Jedi path while hate is the path of the Sith.
The Star Wars analogy, of course, is not a new one for any fans of the series (nor people who have even heard of it) and I am not claiming any originality in making it.
What interests me more than the Star Wars analogy to love/hate is the realization that religion is just an application of this emotional coin. Religious fervor is much like the irrational motivations people have when they are deeply in love or when they are deeply motivated by hatred.
Those affected by such devotion to a religion have the same level of responses to their faith and the doctrines of it that people have toward the object of their love/hate.
When people let this emotion warp and twist their lives they turn into hate machines that are willing to apply that hate toward everything and anything that opposes their faith. They will kill. They will torture. They will maim. They will steal. They will do all of the evil and bad things that people do when they hate something.
When people have a religious indoctrination based on the emotionally less-mature path that is easier to manage through destruction they are a detriment to ALL of mankind. They become examples of why humanity shouldn't be allowed to survive and become examples of why religion is bad. They make me glad that I lack any and all faith in anything because I never want to experience the level of darkness that their faith brings into their heart. There are far too many people like this in the news because they can do such a disproportionate amount of damage to others and that is scary to everyone else.
Conversely, though, are the people who find religion enhances their lives in positive ways.
I have many friends of faith. Many friends whose faith enriches their lives. Many friends whose faith brings them peace and comfort. Many friends whose faith is absolute and drives them to love their fellow man with the same heart-wrenching level of compassion as they have for the people they know in person. Many people who make me want to be a better person. Many people whose faith in their deity makes me angry that the gift of faith was never bestowed on me. These people are some of the best people I know and their love and tolerance makes the world a better place. There people, when they make the news, generate heart-warming stories that restore a small portion of my humanity. Unfortunately we do not have enough examples and stories of people helping others. We don;t have these stories because they are boring. Fear sells because it is actionable. Happiness does not sell because it is not.
Religious faith, therefore, must be the same emotion.
I find this revelation interesting that religion is just an extension of the love/hate emotion.
Which leads me to wonder if people who lack emotion or have trouble parsing love or hate or whose love/hate baseline is set at a different "neutral" position have vastly different (this is a relative term) brain structures or chemistries in a certain structure of their brains.
Just another idle ponderance that infected my mind and would not leave until I wrote it down. Feel free to comment, discuss, add links to relevant scientific articles, etc.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Global Climate Change
I think we're missing a lot of aspects of contributing factors because it is easy to fight over the two big arguments:
1 - whether it is man-MADE or not
2 - whether CO2 is the cause or not.
Sound is, essentially, the same as heat but at a MUCH lower frequency. Humanity makes a lot of noise. That HAS to have an effect.
Car engines, light bulbs, computers, etc all generate HEAT. It is an undeniable side-effect to what they do. That has to have an effect on things.
Furnaces generate heat. That is their core purpose. That has to affect things tremendously.
Our process of making CO2 generates a lot of HEAT and then traps that heat. It's not just the CO2 but all the things we do (per capita) multiplied by the number of people.
Also - the earth's natural equilibrium is for the northern sore of Canada to be a tropical rain forest. So says the paleontological evidence..... so on top of what we are doing the planet is still recovering from the last ice age to bring itself back to its normal.
In short - unless we figure out how to make the earth's equilibrium match OUR needs or figure out how to move underground / under the ocean - we're screwed on this planet.
200,000 years of human history is nothing next to the 80,000,000 that held the northern tropical rain forests and the 65,000,000 that held the tropical-temperatures around the globe before the impact prior to the Chicxulub impact... and all of the other epics prior to that one were also HUGELY larger than the time humanity has existed and all show the same thing - tropical temperature in the moderate and cold zones of this planet.
Is global climate change happening: yes, absolutely
Did we cause it? Nope.
Are we a contributing factor: certainly.
Are we a significant contributing factor: probably.
Do we ignore a lot of the ways we are contributing: this is as certain as the change itself.
Can we do anything about it: yes, but only if we, as a species, can accept the scientific truths about it and dedicate the resources to modeling ways to change the energy output of our industry and residences as well as figure out a way to properly sequester excess CO2 (secret: there are a lot of simple answers to the latter... some of them are even relatively easy to do).
For starters we need to accept that this is a very complex problem and stop outlining it as simple to the mass populace. We need to stop saying that we know, with certainty, that we CAUSED it. Many of the climate change naysayers are fighting back because they don;t believe humanity is so powerful that we could cause such a problem. Whether this view is ignorant of them or not we can stop their counter-arguments by eliminating the causation argument from the climate-change-is-happening camp.
From there we can focus our efforts on solar and wind technologies like several other "1st World" countries have done. Their usable lands for such energy sources are a fraction of the land available in the US for this and their capture rate is MUCH higher.
We could also engineer our buildings to support rooftop gardens and preserves to reduce the conversion rate of biological heat absorbers and carbon sinks into heat sinks that do not absorb carbon.
We could convert streets in cities into tunnels and cover the roofs of these tunnels with plant-supporting ground to do the same.
We could build buildings that allow for pockets of plants to grow on the sides of the buildings. This would provide additional insulation and further absorb carbon from the air.
These are just some things we could do to lessen our contributions to this problem.
1 - whether it is man-MADE or not
2 - whether CO2 is the cause or not.
Sound is, essentially, the same as heat but at a MUCH lower frequency. Humanity makes a lot of noise. That HAS to have an effect.
Car engines, light bulbs, computers, etc all generate HEAT. It is an undeniable side-effect to what they do. That has to have an effect on things.
Furnaces generate heat. That is their core purpose. That has to affect things tremendously.
Our process of making CO2 generates a lot of HEAT and then traps that heat. It's not just the CO2 but all the things we do (per capita) multiplied by the number of people.
Also - the earth's natural equilibrium is for the northern sore of Canada to be a tropical rain forest. So says the paleontological evidence..... so on top of what we are doing the planet is still recovering from the last ice age to bring itself back to its normal.
In short - unless we figure out how to make the earth's equilibrium match OUR needs or figure out how to move underground / under the ocean - we're screwed on this planet.
200,000 years of human history is nothing next to the 80,000,000 that held the northern tropical rain forests and the 65,000,000 that held the tropical-temperatures around the globe before the impact prior to the Chicxulub impact... and all of the other epics prior to that one were also HUGELY larger than the time humanity has existed and all show the same thing - tropical temperature in the moderate and cold zones of this planet.
Is global climate change happening: yes, absolutely
Did we cause it? Nope.
Are we a contributing factor: certainly.
Are we a significant contributing factor: probably.
Do we ignore a lot of the ways we are contributing: this is as certain as the change itself.
Can we do anything about it: yes, but only if we, as a species, can accept the scientific truths about it and dedicate the resources to modeling ways to change the energy output of our industry and residences as well as figure out a way to properly sequester excess CO2 (secret: there are a lot of simple answers to the latter... some of them are even relatively easy to do).
For starters we need to accept that this is a very complex problem and stop outlining it as simple to the mass populace. We need to stop saying that we know, with certainty, that we CAUSED it. Many of the climate change naysayers are fighting back because they don;t believe humanity is so powerful that we could cause such a problem. Whether this view is ignorant of them or not we can stop their counter-arguments by eliminating the causation argument from the climate-change-is-happening camp.
From there we can focus our efforts on solar and wind technologies like several other "1st World" countries have done. Their usable lands for such energy sources are a fraction of the land available in the US for this and their capture rate is MUCH higher.
We could also engineer our buildings to support rooftop gardens and preserves to reduce the conversion rate of biological heat absorbers and carbon sinks into heat sinks that do not absorb carbon.
We could convert streets in cities into tunnels and cover the roofs of these tunnels with plant-supporting ground to do the same.
We could build buildings that allow for pockets of plants to grow on the sides of the buildings. This would provide additional insulation and further absorb carbon from the air.
These are just some things we could do to lessen our contributions to this problem.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Life, Death and Lost Opportunities
Recently someone who was starting to become more involved in my social circles passed away suddenly.
This was not a case of the person having had a known disease that could have taken them at any time nor was it a case of the person being old and dying of old age.
This was a case of an unexpected stroke followed by a long period of time without any care and a hospital stay leading to slipping away.
Many who know me will attest that few things affect me emotionally. Most of the things tat do affect me in a manner that is unpleasant. Those things tend to increase my blood pressure and wind me up; those things make me angry.
Few things actually make me sad. Few things actually make me grieve.
This is not one of those things. My emotional disturbance over this was not due to my direct loss but due to the pain of the people whom I know who were left behind.
It has, however, generated a considerable amount of introspection on the part of my subconscious. That has, at this point, crept its way into the foreground of my thoughts.
I know Dave and I could have been great friends. I know this because of whom he was friends with and the common interests and knowledge bases we shared. I also know this because our personalities were similar enough that we would understand motivations and expectations of each other.
I know this because I am an introvert and my observations and experiences of Dave were that he, too, was an introvert.
Introverts, contrary to many non-introverts' belief, are not anti-social. They like people they just like their people. They take time to allow people into their circle and to generate friendships.
The problem is that this takes time.
The problem with that is that time is not always as plentiful as it seems like it would be.
The problem is that sometimes time is cut short. Cut short and cut unpredictably. Cut short without any ceremony or opportunity to rectify.
The reflection has generated some thoughts on what I want to change about myself and how I intend to change those things.
First - I realized that the missed opportunity to be better friends with Dave is mine (it is also his, but I cannot change another person). I could have reached out more. I could have generated more interaction. I could have invited him to things. I could have added him on Facebook sooner. Lots of things I could have done to generate a stronger friendship in the time that was there.
Would any of those things have saved him? Probably not. I cannot take any responsibility for the manner that he died nor for the events that led to it. Those events happened. If my friendship had altered that course it would have been only slightly and probably not enough to have made a difference to his survival.
What am I doing about this?
I have decided that when I see people whom I have good reason to believe I will get along with and whom I might be able to build a good friendship with I will do something about it.
Before I would wait and watch. I would engage in conversation when there was something relevant to talk about being discussed which I could weigh in on. I would evaluate the conversation and words used by the others and make a decision based on that. Then I would wait some more. I would repeat this until I felt as though the person might have an interest in allowing me into their lives AND that I had made the determination that I would like to have them in mine.
I am deciding from now on (I have actually already started doing this) that I will be a bit more cavalier with whom I allow into my life via social media. I will be more extroverted (it's easy to be MORE extroverted when one is as introverted as I am.... I will still be introverted) when it comes to adding people on facebook. People whom I have spoken to once or twice whom I may enjoy the company of I will add with less reservation. People who I know, but just barely, I will add. I will allow facebook to be a conduit to gaining a better understanding and knowledge of people whom I may be able to become friends with.
I will seize the opportunities presented to me rather than let them quietly slip away.
I understand that this will be hard work to maintain and it will have more failures than the path I ran before. I understand that those failures will feel difficult. I understand that I will have to generate interactions and that I might even make people uncomfortable in my feeble and awkward efforts to interact in a manner that I am not accustomed to. I also understand that my quiet looming may also make people uncomfortable in a non-threatening way.
I also understand, now, that missing an opportunity and losing it is just a failure in disguise.
If you don't try then you ALWAYS lose.
I don't like to lose. I, especially, don't like to lose when I didn't even realize I was playing the game.
Second - I realize that anyone can be taken at any time. I, like everyone else, knew this before but the harsh reality of someone closer to my own age and with a similar lifestyle in many ways to one I have led dying in the manner that Dave died drives this point home.
I intend to try and make sure people whom I know who matter to me know I am here and know they matter to me.
This will not take the form of always saying "hey, I like you; you're important" but, rather, it will take the form of seizing the opportunity for harmless frivolity and fun. It will take the form of joking with people who I care about to generate positive interactions with them. It will take the form of "liking" things they post to facebook when I like them. It will take the form of telling them jokes. It will take the form of spending time with them rather than being a lazy bastard on my couch. It will take the form of talking to them.
It will take the form of being there.
Sometimes life is mean to us.
Sometimes life is mean to others.
Sometimes life is unpredictable.
Sometimes life is lonely.
Sometimes life brings us pain.
Sometimes life seems dreadfully long.
But one thing we often forget when life does all of those things: our time is short.
We are insignificant to life. We are insignificant to time. We are insignificant to space. We are insignificant to the massive horde that is humanity and even more so to the gulf that is the history of civilization.
We are not, however, insignificant to each other.
Remember this for yourself.
Remember this for your friends.
Remember this for your loved ones.
Remember that, despite all the insignificance in the greater picture you are actually more significant than you know to those you know.
Do something about it.
Let them know.
Joke with them. Tell them stories. Listen to them. Let them know, by actions, that they matter to your world.
Don't let yourself, or those you care about, find themselves in a position where they are saying "if I only...." with respect to people they may care for....
On the flip side - accept people whom you care about interacting with you for what it is - an effort to show you they care or that they need you to care about them.
Our time is fleeting. Tomorrow is certain but our ability to experience it is not.
This was not a case of the person having had a known disease that could have taken them at any time nor was it a case of the person being old and dying of old age.
This was a case of an unexpected stroke followed by a long period of time without any care and a hospital stay leading to slipping away.
Many who know me will attest that few things affect me emotionally. Most of the things tat do affect me in a manner that is unpleasant. Those things tend to increase my blood pressure and wind me up; those things make me angry.
Few things actually make me sad. Few things actually make me grieve.
This is not one of those things. My emotional disturbance over this was not due to my direct loss but due to the pain of the people whom I know who were left behind.
It has, however, generated a considerable amount of introspection on the part of my subconscious. That has, at this point, crept its way into the foreground of my thoughts.
I know Dave and I could have been great friends. I know this because of whom he was friends with and the common interests and knowledge bases we shared. I also know this because our personalities were similar enough that we would understand motivations and expectations of each other.
I know this because I am an introvert and my observations and experiences of Dave were that he, too, was an introvert.
Introverts, contrary to many non-introverts' belief, are not anti-social. They like people they just like their people. They take time to allow people into their circle and to generate friendships.
The problem is that this takes time.
The problem with that is that time is not always as plentiful as it seems like it would be.
The problem is that sometimes time is cut short. Cut short and cut unpredictably. Cut short without any ceremony or opportunity to rectify.
The reflection has generated some thoughts on what I want to change about myself and how I intend to change those things.
First - I realized that the missed opportunity to be better friends with Dave is mine (it is also his, but I cannot change another person). I could have reached out more. I could have generated more interaction. I could have invited him to things. I could have added him on Facebook sooner. Lots of things I could have done to generate a stronger friendship in the time that was there.
Would any of those things have saved him? Probably not. I cannot take any responsibility for the manner that he died nor for the events that led to it. Those events happened. If my friendship had altered that course it would have been only slightly and probably not enough to have made a difference to his survival.
What am I doing about this?
I have decided that when I see people whom I have good reason to believe I will get along with and whom I might be able to build a good friendship with I will do something about it.
Before I would wait and watch. I would engage in conversation when there was something relevant to talk about being discussed which I could weigh in on. I would evaluate the conversation and words used by the others and make a decision based on that. Then I would wait some more. I would repeat this until I felt as though the person might have an interest in allowing me into their lives AND that I had made the determination that I would like to have them in mine.
I am deciding from now on (I have actually already started doing this) that I will be a bit more cavalier with whom I allow into my life via social media. I will be more extroverted (it's easy to be MORE extroverted when one is as introverted as I am.... I will still be introverted) when it comes to adding people on facebook. People whom I have spoken to once or twice whom I may enjoy the company of I will add with less reservation. People who I know, but just barely, I will add. I will allow facebook to be a conduit to gaining a better understanding and knowledge of people whom I may be able to become friends with.
I will seize the opportunities presented to me rather than let them quietly slip away.
I understand that this will be hard work to maintain and it will have more failures than the path I ran before. I understand that those failures will feel difficult. I understand that I will have to generate interactions and that I might even make people uncomfortable in my feeble and awkward efforts to interact in a manner that I am not accustomed to. I also understand that my quiet looming may also make people uncomfortable in a non-threatening way.
I also understand, now, that missing an opportunity and losing it is just a failure in disguise.
If you don't try then you ALWAYS lose.
I don't like to lose. I, especially, don't like to lose when I didn't even realize I was playing the game.
Second - I realize that anyone can be taken at any time. I, like everyone else, knew this before but the harsh reality of someone closer to my own age and with a similar lifestyle in many ways to one I have led dying in the manner that Dave died drives this point home.
I intend to try and make sure people whom I know who matter to me know I am here and know they matter to me.
This will not take the form of always saying "hey, I like you; you're important" but, rather, it will take the form of seizing the opportunity for harmless frivolity and fun. It will take the form of joking with people who I care about to generate positive interactions with them. It will take the form of "liking" things they post to facebook when I like them. It will take the form of telling them jokes. It will take the form of spending time with them rather than being a lazy bastard on my couch. It will take the form of talking to them.
It will take the form of being there.
Sometimes life is mean to us.
Sometimes life is mean to others.
Sometimes life is unpredictable.
Sometimes life is lonely.
Sometimes life brings us pain.
Sometimes life seems dreadfully long.
But one thing we often forget when life does all of those things: our time is short.
We are insignificant to life. We are insignificant to time. We are insignificant to space. We are insignificant to the massive horde that is humanity and even more so to the gulf that is the history of civilization.
We are not, however, insignificant to each other.
Remember this for yourself.
Remember this for your friends.
Remember this for your loved ones.
Remember that, despite all the insignificance in the greater picture you are actually more significant than you know to those you know.
Do something about it.
Let them know.
Joke with them. Tell them stories. Listen to them. Let them know, by actions, that they matter to your world.
Don't let yourself, or those you care about, find themselves in a position where they are saying "if I only...." with respect to people they may care for....
On the flip side - accept people whom you care about interacting with you for what it is - an effort to show you they care or that they need you to care about them.
Our time is fleeting. Tomorrow is certain but our ability to experience it is not.
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