Death and belief - in memory of my Aunt.

My aunt died Tuesday morning.  Been thinking of her.  Dedicated a run to her.  I should say, though, that it has been awhile since I’ve talked to her.  Mostly sad for my mom and we went over for dinner that night.  Told my mom that Aunt Margaret will be looking down on her or something to that effect.  Funny how maybe a year ago I would never have thought such a thing.  Never would have thought it – a passing on was marked by what?  This life animation and after life perhaps the void.  One’s spirit was maybe the unifying consciousness, the mysterious thing referred to by philosophers of the mind that have a mysterian bent.  That appealed to me for quite a while.  Do rigid scientists think purely mechanically? Is no mystery unsolvable?  Is it my own in the bone feeling of uncertainty that shapes my views?

I think some people are of the rigidly no-mystery type.  The first person I think about is Richard Dawkins.  I’ve read The Blind Watchmaker.  Still think it is good.  A metaphor he uses, for how things became organized into life, are pebbles sorting out in streams, being sifted, being pulled by currents, rocks of a certain size/shape collected in the same place.  Over and over again this sifting down leads to complexity.

            But now I’m not so sure that this explains everything.  When I read the book I thought it had it all.  Consciousness sprang up, a side effect of a creature that developed and moved around in this world.  Consciousness was not something that was exactly quantifiable.  And then I read Colin McGinn’s autobio on The Making of a Philosopher.  He espouses the mysterian view when it comes to neuroscience and philosophy of the mind.  We will never pin point exactly wherein the brain consciousness arises.

            This becomes a redoubt for an idea of the soul.  Or psychic stuff.  McGinn is a big name philosopher (read: teaches at a prestigious university and is very smart) and I respect the way he expresses himself – ad hominem understandings/critiques are valid to me – thanks Friedrich.

            Why do I say redoubt?  A safe place to get away to, an escape.  Easy to defend.  Was this my spurned Catholic background rearing up? 

            Right now I would say that it is growing older.  Bottom line is more experience.  An example is the music of the Verve.  10-15 years ago tried to get into them but couldn’t.  Now I repetitively listen to their album Forth.  Over and over and I listen to the lyrics.  Who was it, someone said that Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is to be read when one reaches forty.  Was it Martin Amis?  I started that in my early twenties and maybe got 10 pages in.  But plan on picking it up again in, uh, a few years.  Definitely something to that. 

            But there is also brain development, the evolutionary explanation of which remains persuasive.  This falls in the Dawkinsian camp.  But still, and I think even researchers (smart scientists in prestigious schools) would agree: you can’t go back in time and examine each development, each step along the road which would have to be the case in order to truly comprehend how things went down.  Take Francis Crick, the DNA Nobel laureate.  He thinks crafts/asteroids were purposefully sent out from a planet somewhere a long way off and a long time ago.  These contained DNA and bacteria and were sent to solar systems with the likelihood of fostering life. There you go.  Smart guy.  He thinks this is the only way DNA could have come to be, the Dawkinsian metaphor of gradual sifting just not working, DNA showing up almost fully formed in early life forms.  I love it – a far out theory expressed by a legit scientist.

            The people/entities that sent out these what, life rafts? ( – this is second hand info, read it in Graham Hancock’s Supernatural, original idea expressed in Crick’s The Astonishing Hypothesis, on my list), live on in DNA, communion with them capable via altered states of consciousness – just to flesh out something perhaps commensurable with Crick’s idea.  So what have I done?  Refounded mysticism and consciousness in something built by a smart interstellar species?  Which, fortunately, begs the question.  Because even if we are on the tail end of this train of consciousness, if our consciousness was endowed by smart, extraterrestrial peoples, those peoples must still have had their minds honed in a certain way.  Mystery still remains.

            So there is the inconclusiveness of my thoughts.  I want to believe.  I think of my Aunt.  Where is she now?  Just like actually trying is the necessary precursor to accomplishing anything, when it comes to unquantifiable things the first step is admitting a possibility.  I guess I’m coming around to saying that belief must be present.  This type of evidence is detected through some faculty of belief.  I want to believe.

Letter to My Daughter

Other writer’s do it (end sentences in prepositions? – a pretentious rule that I disavow).  They record and catalogue the growth of their children.  Man, that makes it sound like some job in a library.  Anyway, now it’s my turn and I hope it is not too late.  A letter to my daughter, now a month away from being two years old.  And I’m writing only a fortnight after the New Year.

            I’m proud and all that, daughter, and hope (and do think) that you know it already by how your mom and I treat you.  You are terrific and smart and cute and are doing something new that is pleasing and astonishing every day.  And now as you get a firm grasp on language let me say something that you may soon truly understand: welcome to this world.

            I won’t say something like, “I wish I could be pleased to welcome you here but it is kind of not the best place to be given the wars and conflict, a polluted environment, and leadership dragging its flock through the capitalist mire”.  Well there, I guess I said it anyway.  But I don’t really believe that.  There, I said that too.  Bottom line is I accept this world.  I can tell you daughter that I want you to enjoy this world as I have and I believe you are in a good place (geographically and temporally) to do it in.

            Yeah there are forces at play in the world that seem inimical to humanity – some people only care about themselves.  You must always care about others.  This is an idea that was instilled in me during my early Catholic years.  Now, after leaving that faith behind I feel I am emerging from the tunnel of existentialism.  This subterranean passage did permit meaning to be found, but made it the sole responsibility of the isolated and fallen individual.  This made sense then and I still believe you have to strive on your own, be comfortable with who you are.  However, we are all connected on this earth.  If current cosmological theory holds then everything in the universe was once contained in something the size of pea.  Put that way then simply in a literal sense everything in the universe was once together.  But beyond this materialist thought: I hope to go beyond science and the quantitative to say we all connect on a deeper level.

            Spiritual level.  Okay, that word has been tough for me to recover.  What did I recover it from?  I mentioned previously my early Catholic association.  Well it was in the Catholic church that I learned of spirituality.  Soulfulness.  And it was in the church that spirituality lost its enchantment for me.  The ideas present could not be mapped over the world as it is.  Basically I thought most people around me were hypocrites.  What is the point of espousing universal love and believe that you do when really you are a self-serving individual who at most really cared only for your family?  Harsh I know.

            Being spiritual can be recovered by ignoring the institutions that have cornered the market on ideas of goodness and humanity.  Those people weren’t all bad back then, they only weren’t questioning the world.  Any good spirituality must allow for questions and for learning.  You must want more and not just have it handed to you.  The world doesn’t have to be how it is right now.  In fact, looking at history (a fair indicator I really think), change is inevitable.

            So I’m being vague about the idea of being spiritual.  Honestly it still has the smell of the church on it, or a slightly ugly glow that keeps me away and makes it uncomfortable to talk about.  Well, if it is good, it will shine purely and you will know it.  Mentioning glow and color and feeling: these are words of spirituality.  There is power in good thoughts.  If you find beauty in something, see its true essence and it is beautiful, then it probably is good. 

            Now to reveal my confusion.  I am not a typical member of society as far as being currently unemployed and being a student at the age of 35.  I have fit in in the recent past (being employed).  I am married with (an awesome) kid.  So I’m kind of normal, I guess.  I say my confusion, confusion being a feeling that brings discomfort.  Uncertainty.  Questioning.  Maybe you can see where I’m going with this: being somewhat not at ease can be a good thing.  I don’t feel like I 100% fit in and that lets me see things from a different angle. 

            It not easy to say this.  There is a fear in this society of talking about how we really feel.  Facades are erected and we do just want to fit in.  I’m afraid that I can’t talk because I have no basis to tell anyone anything – maybe if I had a job (how many mentions of work is that?) and a good one at that, maybe then it would be okay to share my authoritative thoughts with you.  That is my fear.  It is status anxiety (have to say I love Alain de Botton’s book by that title).  Some fear is good but when it becomes the social glue of a corrupt social order then anything that dissolves that fear is a good thing.

            It won’t be easy.  Growing up.  In my life so far I’ve taken the Pyrrhonist skeptics view.  Pyrrho the Greek philosopher had to be steered away from dangerous street traffic by his followers.  They had to make sure he didn’t walk out windows.  The connection of one action was cut off from the results of that action.  I’ll fall if I step out the window?  Why?  This subsurface incomprehension is still with me though I have made gains.  I choose to be part of the world and understand that you have to pay to play, or you have to earn your keep, or you have to accept a little suffering along the way, you must make sacrifices.  My early life I was uncertain as to what good a sacrifice would do me.  I was happy to just be.  Ignoring the possibility of happiness.  You have to go out in the world and get involved in order to figure out yourself.  Pyrrho’s inability was a disability.  Understand that you are connected to others and they to you.

            The comedian Lewis Black said nothing good ever comes out of the suburbs.  Well, you don’t live in a standard contemporary suburb but you do live in a suburb-modeled culture where all is supposed to be neat and orderly if not for any other reason than to mask the unwholesome stuff that forms its foundation.  Be willing to venture out of what is considered to be the right way of living by everyone else.  Do it just for the sake of being unique if you have to.

            Joe Strummer said you have to be real f**ked to do anything creative.  There is something to this.  There does need to be some tension to get you to think and respond.  Questions must be asked and answered.    Your mom and I want to provide you with a stable future.  Too many people are falling on rough times financial, people are getting divorced.  We don’t want this to be the source of your creative tension.  I’ve known a few people who seem to springboard off a trouble youth.  They are a given a devil-may-care attitude once their parents split.  The future is uncertain which makes it scary but we really love you and want a stable home – and to conclude this idea, a stable home must be truly stable and not another façade.  Your mom and I have had some rough spots, even now with me not having a job, but we are in love and dare I say meant to be together.

            These are a few thoughts – to be continued.  For now I will post them and print them out and put them in one of the baby books that we have for you.  Read on someday and of the stuff of mine you read let you hopefully be convinced that your pops at least somewhat reasons things out.

Hey America: I'm Mitt Romney and welcome to your new morning!

Listening to Mitt Romney’s supporters” after his New Hampshire primary win was kind of exciting.  “Mitt!  Mitt!  Mitt!” went the chant, coming often and causing Romney to pause in his speech.  Perhaps it was theatre, a moment staged by some of the consultants that are in Romney’s employ.  His speech too was rousing – I heard one commentator compare it to Reagan’s “Morning in America” theme.  Who wouldn’t respond to that optimism?  You’re American right?  I’m being serious, not that I’m going to vote.

            No, I think I’ll refrain from enter a polling place, school or fire station or wherever it may be.  Instead stay at home and watch it unfold.  Have you seen the movie The Dead Zone (or read the book but the movie is more evocative for my point – Cronenberg directed)?  The trajectory of Martin Sheen’s presidential contender character?  Yeah, I’m excited for Romney’s victory and the subsequent apocalypse.

            A couple points.  One, Romney wants to make the world fear our military (again?).  Fear so much that, indeed, none of our enemies will try and start anything.  This just seems too much.  Should we be able to fight three wars at once?  What, really, would make a Braveheart/insurgency fighter back down from their foe, whether it be Edward I or the United States?  Romney wants to control the thoughts of other countries.  I know that Romney was using a turn of speech, a hyperbolic statement.  What would it entail though?  It is obvious that this means more military spending/reversing spending cuts.

            And, second, in his speech Romney called Obama’s tenure a “failed presidency”.  My first thought was a goading, “Oh really, let’s see you do any better.”  That is what I thought.  Then, quickly, I thought it would be interesting to let him try and do better.  If he succeeds and proves his assessment of the Obama presidency right then good for him and better for the country.  It just seems like a big task.  Especially if some kind of apocalypse does occur right after he is elected.  Congratulations on your election but now you have even more to figure out then the last guy did.  I can hear Romney’s speeches now, his tone turned apologetic.  His wooden serious face replacing his wooden celebratory face.  Or, better for us all, he may prove me wrong and restore America’s greatness.  Maybe I would start voting again if that happened.

            Have to say it is an interesting system.  I doesn’t feel like it is occurring in a sane reality.  It feels like a bizarro world where money buys elections and corporations are the people making the purchases.  Words and phrases don’t mean what they appear to mean.  Obama the democrat may as well be Obama the republican.  Being complete means being rich – we are addicted to living in a car dominated environment.  We/I have a bad conscience about this way of life.  Polluting the environment.  Scrambling people’s minds with television.  We are now seeing the future we had coming.  President Romney will make sure we get to keep all our loud, obnoxious toys and, on top of that, not feel any remorse in doing so.

            If this is what America’s greatness entails then maybe it doesn’t need restoring.  From a dialectical view, maybe we need the emergency exacerbated, our situation pushed to final crisis.  Maybe Romney is the man do it.

Keep it local. Sports too.

            I guess it’s cool to eat local.  If I sound begrudging it is simply that, like most Americans I have lived away from the production of my food and mention of locally raised food makes me fear that I will somehow become involved in this production.  My dad escaped the farm for a reason.  No, I like local food and the tasty karma that comes from not crunching down on too well-traveled food.  I want to say I celebrate anything local as long as it is positive and wholesome and good.  And though sports have a varied reputation I’ll include them on my celebratory list.

It is interesting that in times past a team was made of locals.  A strong local athlete was a boon to a region, someone to pin the collective hat on.  Nowadays, not so much.  Take Boise for an example, where different high schools are known for a prowess in a certain sport and can attract students based on it.  But let’s go up a level: the Boise State University football program.  This team has excelled in recent years, the “program” being strong, athlete’s unpicked by bigger programs landing here and being molded into (more increasingly) NFL material.  Ah, but here is my question.  The football team is made up of players from across the nation with only a few homegrown players.  For the sake of argument, at least, wouldn’t it be neat if local pride could radically be restored?  Then people issuing the “That’s our boys!” comments would really mean what they say.

            Now, is it good to have this desire?  I’m cautious about this mainly because it seems to introduce a chauvinism about something that is purely chance, namely where one is born.  Right?  I don’t like that argument, that we could all have equally been born in some other country, in some different political climate with some other relationship to freedom (or other American ideals – wouldn’t it suck to be born somewhere without the relation we have to cars and cell phones?  Hmm . . . ).  I’ll just be superficial: whether intended or unintended we are the products of our parent’s actions and those actions were tempered by a particular society.  Also, to get far out, if our souls choose our lives before we are born – this is reincarnation stuff and here is a giant grain of salt – then we are meant to be who it is we are.  In a real and philosophical sense.

            But still, what of pride?  I’ll just say that today we don’t have to crush neighboring chiefdoms to claim cropland and bragging rights.  We can take pride in our locations while still respecting other places for their prized relationships to their lands and customs.  Iowa, for instance, which is Idaho’s homonymic sister state may celebrate corn and flatness, just as Idaho celebrates potatoes and topography.  I’m sure Iowans are into their things just as we are into ours.

            But our potatoes.  Locally they are really no big deal.  It was late local great J.R. Simplot that mass produced the Russet Burbank (potato) for McDonald’s that cemented our potato brand.  Money is now involved.  Potatoes are now a nationalized commodity.  Ah, nationalism.  (Ah, globalism.)  In this way good players become commodities.  Some big schools, like SEC schools, do pick from a big pool of talent and semi-local athletes play for their particular region.  But at BSU we (ironically) metaphorically import our potatoes, leaving California schools bereft of a host of missed opportunities.  To support a team means to celebrate the tradition.  In may also mean to celebrate the wiliness involved in convincing a player from another area to join that school.

In the past these players were looked on as non-locals but, the best players being sought after and brought in, these non-locals were also viewed as saviors.  If they won and become local legends, if they brought trophies to a region with a trophy-drought then their non-local provenance is overlooked. They came to represent the school and all the school stands for.  Then, as now, non-local players who joined a team joined the family that is that team and that community.  No doubt about that.  Today it goes unquestioned that players from elsewhere are accepted into their new communities with open arms.

I say this for the sake of argument, to flesh out a daydream.  If anything it shows how we live in a different world than the world of a hundred years ago.  I was thinking of concluding with the line: The next time you see an athlete play, ask yourself “Who are they?”  This doesn’t make sense.  They are people at sea like the rest of us subject to tides perhaps out of their control, perhaps like we are.  But maybe one day (soon?) we will find out what it is to live locally, living locally perhaps being the only option.

David Icke and the Limits of Metaphor

     Ah, David Icke, the prophet of our troubled times - perhaps I've gone too far already.  Better insert the standard David Icke disclaimer, which I think this whole post will actually be: how to start . . . okay, I love science fiction.  A favorite movie of mine is John Carpenter's They Live, a film that David Icke mentions favorably (sorry, no reference here, saw him say it somewhere on YouTube) since it is in large part his entire message.  If you don't know about David's story check it out (http://www.davidicke.com/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Icke or a very good little documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcQzOZmJykk).  It boils down to a reptilian alien race that has secretly (or not so secretly) been controlling us humans since prehistory - this is David's story and except for the ancient part it is the story of They Live.  Far out, I know.
     If you watch any of his YouTube lectures (like 6 hours for one!) he starts with what I think and what most progressive, left-leaning or even libertarian people would have to say are pretty reasonable claims.  He talks of corporate control of what we eat, what watch and what we think.  His view of the path to the recent Iraq War are not far fetched: a crisis occurs (he says created) like 9/11; a plan (finding and eliminating weapons of mass destruction purportedly in Iraq) is then put into action and elite, monied interests get what they want.  Weapons must be manufactured and sold to detect weapons of mass destruction.  The flow of oil from Iraq has been secured.
     Then the edge of the deep end is reached and David Icke jumps off.  What makes his lectures easy to watch is his self-effacing humor and candor - he admits his claims sound crazy.  So here you go: the Bush family is genetically different than most people.  The ancient reptilian race works through them to accomplish goals (in which global elites actually prove to be simply pawns).
     Being motivated by money so much that you accept death on the part of some that come under the sway of your practices is bad.  Even if this is under the pretences of a free market.  However, defining when this becomes evil is tricky.  Human nature (yes, I believe in a bit of it, quite a bit really) demands acting in one's self interest and the interest of one's family.  At a distance evil is easy to ignore or make  jokes about to the point it grows banal (i.e. sweatshops or third world starvation).  And with an ideal in one's head such as the free market one goes forward in life with durable conviction.  I would say these account for the state of the world now.
     David Icke doesn't think so, though.  For him the evil is too great and is part of a plan.  So evil are the Bush family and other elites of the reptilian ilk that they willfully commit pederasty in the rituals that they perform.  Yeah, I know.  Harsh claims.  I would say they they quite possibly are fanciful too. 
     For David Icke the sins of the elite become manifest.  Evil cannot be something arrived at through quirks of human indecency.  This tangible evil may then become examined and catalogued and, therefore, made comprehensible.  Perhaps, given the reptilian's nonexistence, this is what David is trying to do.  Just saying what they do is evil is not enough.  This is then the realm of metaphor or hyperbole, normal language not forceful or persuasive enough
     As a character I admire David Icke's audacity.  True or false and if false if knowing or unknowing, his act of presenting his ideas is an act of bravery.  Great fodder for one coming up for sci-fi story ideas at least.  A unique figure.  He uses critique of the realpolitik world we live in and then amps it up to (at least) a metaphorical metacritique.  He is singular in having one foot firmly planted in reality and the other so firmly planted in, well, something else.

On the Metaphysics of being a Geosciences Student

     This is to be the first post on a blog exploring my life and my life in the world.  In my thirties I have returned to school to get a degree in Geosciences (the diploma to accompany my Sociology degree, current whereabouts unknown).  My path seems undefined at the moment - I graduate in a year and I'm not sure of my prospects.  I would like to have an active role in deciding what it is I will be doing.  It is at this point that an idea of metaphyics or philosophy comes in, per the title of this post.  By what mind over matter trick may I achieve happiness and success when the road forward is so mist-enshrouded.  As I enter the mist are there ways to disperse it or may I make it coalesce into forms known and acceptable?

     There are two backdrops for this adventure.  One is my family.  I am married with a kid and the fate of my little family feels pinned to (is pinned to) how this future resolves.  Other backdrop is the greater world, that fo the contemporary United States.  In this blog I will not talk much of family matters besides saying that things discussed here will have been previewed by and will hopefully make happier said family.  Re: the world at large - this I would like to discuss.  This is the world that am part of and will soon enter in hopes of finding a job.  I'll say it now: I am very critical of our world.  Why are things the way that they are?  What is it to be an American?  Is it possible to reshape the world in a way all can agree upon, reshape it in a way that seems a bit less mad?

     Some influences: Cormac McCarthy, H.P. Lovecraft, Denis Johnson, J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick - the lives of writers are interesting to read about as well.  Fiction is passion: reading and writing.  At heart this blog will serve as an excuse to simply write more (unless of course this is not only the first post but the last as well - hope not).
     In philosophy I enjoy the thoughts of Kant and Schopenhauer.  Embodied in their work is the history of philosophy before them.  I try and follow some current philosophy and would loosely refer to Steven Pinker's work in this vein.  The Blank Slate is an excellent work.  Also V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain.  These two may represent a wider body of books currently being written that make up a new philosophy.
     Okay, now I have to get to the far out stuff that I'm also interested in - Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods, Supernatural) and Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe).  Fingerprints definitely has some parts antithetical to my Geoscience studies (earth crust displacement may only have actually occurred in the film 2012) and The Holographic Universe has definitely proven seductive as far as being a new way to look at reality.  Supernatural is one book that was pretty amazing.  Just pretending it was a postmodern work, a fiction in the guise of footnoted-non-fiction it would be a great read.  But taking a leap and saying it may be real is at least pretty trippy.  Psychedelic shamanism.
     Family life calls and I was getting a bit long winded in this intro.  I would like to share my thoughts in this manner and it it turns out I'm the only one that reads it, great.  Here's to the future.