ideas

here are two ideas.

first off, fate and destiny and the like are manifestations of a misunderstanding of time and causation.  people suffer from a survivors bias that they hardly acknowledge or understand, causing what i hesitantly call 'quantum angst'.  im writing an essay on this for that zine kyle talked about but its pretty tough writing it so its taking some time.

second off, a supplementary government.  a coalition of the willing, if you will, for progress.  in one of my biology classes this week we have been talking about the ecological problems facing the world in the best way possible, with science and not speculation.  the end of cheap oil, the water crisis, pretty much how to make the way we live sustainable, because how we are living now is not sustainable.  the average american household is $8,000 in debt.  the national debt is at $8.7 trillion and increases by $2.2 billion every 24 hours.  There is not a region of the ocean that is not being over fished, fossil aquifers reaching their bottoms, and on top of all this gas is nearing $4 a gallon.  if it stays like this, it is officially the end of cheap oil.  if every person on this earth lived like an american, we would need the 5 1/2 planet earths worth of resources to do it.  how we are living is unsustainable.  we are spending borrowed money, borrowed resources, and borrowed time.  someone is going to collect sometime, and what we have to decide right now is do we pay the piper or do we pay the boatman of the river styx.  This isn't the endtimes or armageddon, but the future is bleak and it is bearing down on us.  There is a very real and very urgent need to change our ways before they destroy us or or fellow human beings.

there are two ways to make things sustainable.  alternitive energy for one, and secondly using less energy or energy more efficiently.  Science has a lot of solutions for the prior, and common sense has a lot of solutions for the latter.  Personal responsibility does a whole lot and i'm not trying to cheapen it, but it's not enough.  the sum of some things is greater than its parts, torches together, united we stand: cooperation and working together is the best way to get things done.  but half this country wants to mind their own business and not give a damn about poor people here or brown people elsewhere or even their own unborn grandchildren.  i had a kid in this class i was talking about before do nothing but try to shoot down ideas and say stuff like 'you guys with your spend first ask questions later' o'riely-isms.  there isn't a problem with the environment, there is nothing we can do about poor people, their doctrine is one of negativity and close mindedness.  they offer no solutions, only denials and rejections, and I finished trying to change their minds with words.

enter the supplementary members only government.  what i say to these republican and traditionalist haterz is 'ok, i see real problems with this whole thing that can be fixed with a little effort and money, and you dont see any way to fix them.  you are entitled to that opinion, now get the fuck out of my way, because it'd be better and easier and cheaper if everyone was in on this, but we'll do it with or without you'.  fact of the matter is you cannot expect 300 million people to rise up for positive change without knowing it can work.  now a lot of people do believe it can work, and if you got enough of them pitching in and helping out, the benefits of spending a little more for progress will probably manifest themselves.  democratic, social programs that show putting in a little more money and effort yeilds a big boost in quality of life.  ideally a state or county or town could do this and show the rest of the nation or world that a little effort for progress goes a long way, but geographical isolation makes things exclusive in the wrong way.  people need to be able to see the benefits of people around them and feel left out of the benefits in order to see that things really are better the other way, but most people wont be willing to up and move to a new state.  this supplementary government would be like a sams membership, but instead of cheap groceries, its cheap housing, green energry, social programs, all the good stuff.  you pay a little more here or there but its cheaper for everyone and better for everything.  Exclusivity is important, but only so far as benefits go, not membership.  Anyone can join as long as the abide by the rules, no gas guzzlers, pay dues, no incandesent light bulbs or lawn fertilizers, dont eat too much meat, whatever the people feel progressive and beneficial laws are.  but only people who are members can recieve benefits.  say we spend some money and clean up a project and make it safe and affordable housing with a number of places to work around it, probably including a grocery store run by the sup.gov, to provide employment and groceries and everything.  now anyone who was in that project that benefited from this renovation has to be a member of this orginization and pay dues (dues will be scaled to income) which will go in to sustaining that area and helping out other areas.  imagine a huge horizontally spread company, like the old mining companies that own everything, except this company is for the people and by the people, not for some fat cat.  people will start to see its better on the other side, and more and more people join up. 

it is pretty fantastical, but frankly we cannot wait around for half this country to start caring.  the future is coming at us faster than we realize, and we cant afford to wait.  there is a very real and very urgent need for change.  so i say to the negative people, in the USAs case republicans, ok think that, but get the fuck outta my way.  i dont mean to put some of you on the spot, but when we were taking pictures for braille, i said i want to try to write braille in cursive with a sparkler on long exposure.  you guys were pissed off that i wanted to take another picture and said it couldnt be done and i had to argue with you guys for 2 minutes before i could get you guys to turn the camera towards a dark field and press the button while i jumped up and down with a sparkler alone without braille even in the frame.  after the second take braille was excited to see that it could be done and was glad to be in the frame and the end result isn't a masterpeice but it certainly wasnt a waste of time.

we all get negative some times and hold back progress.  but we gotta step it up and stick our necks out, dance around in a field alone before people realize that there is something to be gained.  there is a lot of hope.  As bill clinton said 'there is nothing wrong with america that cannot be cured by whats right with america'.  same goes for planet earth, and the human race, and each and every one of us.  but things wont fix themselves.  its takes effort, and we have to get on that stat.  a supplementary government might not be the easiest answer, but we need something to circumvent people just holding us back.  we don't need their money or support for progress.  it sure as hell would be nice, but its not necessary.  in conclusion, get the fuck outta my way.

monkeys slamming away on typewriters, explained.

there are a bunch of monkeys sitting in a room and a bunch of typewriters and a bunch of ink cartridges and a bunch of paper (the elements of life).  it takes about a billion years since this situation started (the formation of the earth) before one monkey ends up at a typewriter that works properly and types a damn letter on to a sheet of paper (the simplest form of life).  every so often it splits into two identical monkeys and the new monkey might type something on the typewriter at random (random mutation is the only cause of variation.  This happens a bunch until there are tons of monkeys all splitting and randomly typing letters (mutations and variation), but some literary critic/zookeeper is watching what the monkeys type, crumpling up all the papers that dont make sense, at this point things that aren't words (the forces of nature making organisms that don't cut it go extinct). there are rules that the typing must abide by in order to split and go on.  every one that does work gets to make some copies of itself and randomly type the next letter, and the better it works the more copies of itself it gets to make. eventually some monkey types two words that go well together and eventually one makes a phrase. in order to be a phrase though there are other rules that the randomly typed letters must follow, such as grammar and syntax, and phrases are eliminated with a new set of rules, not just spelling. this goes on for 3 billion years and eventually we have some phrases turning into sentances turning into paragraphs, paragraphs turning into chapters, chapters turning into books, with different selection pressures faced with each increasing complexity. they werent supposed to be books when they started out, but the rules of grammar and spelling and diction and puntuation and what works in a literary sense (the hard truths of nature that life must work around in order to survive) so pushed them to be books.  The point of a sentance isn't to be a part of a book, its to be a sentance.  the point of a paragraph is not to at one point be a book, it is to be a paragraph.  books end up being books because they faced complex problems and construction and survived the process long enough that they ended up as books, they were not trying to become books, they were trying to survive the harsh literary criticism which that ends up having a bunch of different books that use all of these well enough to be books (complex organisms). some are science textbooks (flowering plants) some are diane steel novels (the aardvark) and some are War and Peace (humans), but they are all books that have made it this far through the forces of natural selection. it doesn't mean that the forces were trying to make them books, but it means that a book was the only thing that could be this complex and survive the tough world of selection that these pages of paper went through. there are still lone words (bacteria) and sentances (single celled animals) and paragraphs (sponges) and other simple literary constructs that still survive because they do not break any of the rules that govern their level of existance. anyway, what im trying to get at is those people who don't believe a bunch of monkeys in a room could type macbeth dont understand how long those monkeys have been typing (did you know in 3.5 billion years you could sail around the equator twice... just by standing on california) and that though they are typing randomly they are not randomly allowed to continue typing.  i pretty much wanted to explain evolution, and i did so in a real real longwinded and allegorical fashion, which is so last season.

also, right before i fell asleep last night, i had an idea.  there is no purpose, there is only potential.  think about it.  maybe.  i cant tell you what to think.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,9865,1591084,00.html

someone beat me to it.

i dont know if anyone even still pays attention to bush, last i heard his approval ratings were in the high 30s.  but just incase no one was still pissed off here are some recent developments.

he is trying to nominate his personal lawyer who has no judicial experience/history and whose second defining characteristic is 'born again reformist protestant'  700 club style for supreme court.  that says enough.  im not going to delve into that one.

yesterday he gave a speach or announcement or something reaffirming our goals in iraq and saying something about islamofaschism this that and the next thing, and today there is a story about a credible threat coming out of iraq on the ny subway system, and that iraq is a breeding ground for terrorists.  fact of the matter is that it wasnt before, and it is now, but that is completely left out.  im not going to make any huge claims or anything, but i just read these stories over the last week or so and it just grinds my gears.  maybe i should just stop caring.

ive finally figured out a label for my theology:  freethinker. 

if anyone read 'hocus pokus' or slaughterhouse 5 im pretty sure vonnegut talks about them in both.  they were a group of people in the19th century who reasoned god out of the picture.  some people believe if they are good all year then santa will bring them presents, some people believe if you dont have garlic around a vampire may attack them in the night, and a third of the world believes if they do this that and the next thing in a book written by men 1800 years ago they will be favored by some all knowing all powerful being.  i dont believe in god because i dont believe in the tooth fairy.

some people actually are better people because of religion.  i dont think id be any better a person if i kept up with the bible.  i think im pretty decent.  sure i wouldn't curse or smoke or drink, but id also think better of myself than people who do do those things, which i think is worse.

but it doesnt matter, because though the doctine may help, the belief is what matters in this day and age.  and i do not believe.  i do not have faith in some thing that has no tangible base in the world as i know it.  if there was some evidence of a god, other than our lack of understanding, i might be a little more convinced.  but our lack of understanding is and always has been the basis for god.  originally it was the clouds the sun volcanos sickness fortune and anything that could not be proven was attributed to the gods.  its been pushed back and back from fickle and all powerful tricksters to a commanding and jealous ruler to clockmaker to divine spark that created everything.  im going to go from the gillette mach 3 to gillette mach 6 here, and assume that one day we will get a good idea about the big bang and the origin of life that have nothing to do with god and then push back god a little more.  and then the next big discovery (assuming we live that long as a species) that pushes god back even a little more.  if 'god' is just what we don't understand, i have no reason to believe that he's going to send me to hell for not respecting him as an all powerful being.

knowledge of good and evil was the original sin.  that's bullshit.  ignorance is the original sin.  babies are born ignorant as a rock.  you try to tell me a baby has original sin, and that original sin is the knowledge of good and evil.  try it.  i dare you.  if there is an original sin, or at least original seperation from god if there is one, its that we are ignorant.

some people ask 'why then do so many people believe in god or why do i have this feeling that there is a higher power'.  i have a theory on that, assuming that its not just a social thing, ie because someone told you there was a god at a critical age.  my theory is based on evolution, mainly that the belief in god was at some point a major advantage to our hunter gatherer ancestors.  think about it, the belief in a higher power would have given them incentive and even justification to go kill their godless neighbors and take what they want.  when you are the hand of god there is very little earthly to stop you from your little chevauche.  my guess is that these god driven ancestors took over or killed, making whatever construct in their minds that believed in god an adaptation that became species typical.  that is, you may have a desire to believe in a higher power because its a heritable trait, and your ancestors killed anyone that didn't have it, so no wonder.

thats just a theory.  i think if i found evidence for it archaelogically and genetically i could write a bestseller about it.

but anyway, unless someone can show me some evidence for a higher intellegence other than 'we dont understand this so how can you explain it other than god' im going to keep on being a free thinker.  ive come to a rational conclusion that there is no god with the evidence i have from my understanding of this existance.  i havent said there is no way to know so its a pointless search, i have searched and weighed the facts and have come to the conclusion that there is no god.  i wouldnt worry about it, im not always right.  and i dont wish it on anyone that they became an atheist.  but i do wish people thought for themselves a little more.  i think we'd all make some progress.