Category Archives: human mind

Intrusive visualizations

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How is that not fascinating?

Do you sometimes see specific objects move in a specific way even when they are no longer there, even with your eyes open? For instance, a volleyball moving back and forth? And can you do nothing to make this appear or disappear, it just goes on for as long as it wills? That is what I mean by intrusive visualization. I suppose it is a sub-category of flashback, but I have never heard of anyone describing it the same way I have experienced it.

Some days ago I read about a just barely successful rescue operation where a young autistic man had gotten lost in the wilderness. The psychological expert of the rescue operation decided to search along the river (where they eventually found him) because autistic people are fascinated by running water. My reaction was pretty much: Neurotypicals are not fascinated by running water??

Some years ago, during a heavy rainfall, I stood for a good while and watched a small stream of rainwater erode sand and pebbles and move them downstream in that particular way running water will do. After I left, I began seeing intrusive visualizations of running water moving sand and pebbles. This lasted for a good while, I am not sure but an hour or two perhaps. The image of the water working with sand and pebbles appeared overlaid on my normal day vision, half transparent, neither blocking my view or the real world nor getting blocked by it. It was as if my brain was seeing through two different sets of eyes at the same time. I had no control of what I was seeing, although I could control how much I focused on it.

This was not my first time experiencing such intrusive visualizations. The previous time was after I had practiced hard at the computer game Black & White (which is, incidentally, not in black and white, but is an interactive course in being a small god in a fantasy world). Then I would watch characteristic movements from the game for more than a day. That is the only time I can remember it has lasted that long. Then again, I had practiced for quite a while too.

Before that, several years before I had an online journal, I had the same experience with volleyball. I could see the volleyball move back and forth in the trajectories typical of a certain style of hitting used for passing the ball between team mates. This was after I had been practicing volleyball for some length during the same day with friends.

Before that, I know I had the same experience when I practiced touch typing. I think this was in high school. If it happened during my childhood, I have forgotten it, but I have forgotten most of my childhood, except for things that had to do with sex. There was not a lot of that, luckily, but that means I have forgotten most of my childhood. So I don’t know whether I had intrusive visualizations then.

By “flashback”, I tend to imagine a very short experience where you feel you are actually in your past, having again an experience you had back then. Then the flashback ends and you are back in the present. This is not that. It lasts for typically more than half an hour, at least – I am not sure I have had any less than one hour, and one came off and on for more than one day. I am fully conscious of not being in the past. Only one and a half of my senses are involved – vision and kinesthetic. I am wide awake and have my usual personality, but I am also aware that I am watching a transparent visual hallucination that I have no control over, and that basically plays back (perhaps in a slightly idealized form) something from my recent past.

The experience is not traumatic or scary, although it certainly weirds me out. I have assumed that my subconscious replays these movements in order to help consolidate a new skill. That was certainly the case the first times. But does this mean that my subconscious wants me to learn the skill of being a river and eroding sand? What does this say about me? Somehow, even if you believe in reincarnation, I really doubt I am the rebirth of a river!

 

Randomness and democracy

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Should not the superior man rule the masses, rather than the other way around? But it rarely is that simple, and I hope I shall show why.

In principle, in the ideal world, actions have predictable consequences. Eat right and exercise regularly, and you will live a long and healthy life. Study hard, work conscientiously, live frugally, and you will become rich eventually. Things like that.

But the world we live in down here on Earth, what most people call the real world, is not quite like that. There is an element of randomness, at least as seen from the human perspective. So many principles are active at the same time, many of which are outside of our control, that the simple cause and effect we look for is broken up. We cannot predict the future, much less create it. All we can do is increase the chances of a certain outcome. We cannot ensure it, cannot guarantee it.

Well, jumping from bridges works much as expected, but if you are walking along the road, loose cargo from a truck may hit you and kill you anyway, as happened to a guy not far from here. All our plans, all our hopes, not to say our dreams, are subject to uncertainty. The more complex the chain of cause and effect, and the longer it takes, the more randomness overtakes it.

***

We are all aware of this on the outside, that is to say, what the world does to us. We know there is a random element in what happens to us. But there is another randomness that we generally disregard. This is the randomness inside, the randomness of what we think, feel, say and do. This internal randomness is more or less unofficial, and with good reason.

While randomness from the outside occurs pretty much equally to all of us, randomness from inside varies from person to person. This is problematic.

Some people are just principled. If they decide to not eat snacks, they don’t change their mind when they pass between long shelves of snacks in the supermarket. If they decide to not drink, they don’t change their mind if everyone around them drinks. If they have decided on monogamy, they don’t change their mind when approached by someone extremely attractive. If there is randomness within them, it seems to be weeded out before it even reaches the surface.

On the other extreme, we have the extremely spontaneous people. They want to graduate with honors too, but when they drop by the store for some bread, they somehow end up with beer instead. They want to do well in the job interview tomorrow, but end up playing World of Warcraft till 5 in the morning and oversleeping the whole thing. They may be fun to be around, but not so much when the bills come due.

Even if we follow a course of action firmly, randomness from outside means we can only raise the odds in our favor. But if randomness already intrudes between our aspirations and our actions, we can hardly even raise the odds at all. If what we do is random, what happens to us will be even more random.

***

Based on all this, one may be tempted to reconsider the whole general emancipation thing. You know, the whole thing about letting pretty much everyone vote.

Some states actually don’t let convicted felons vote, and this is a pretty good test of impulsiveness – if you are less impulsive, you probably either don’t commit the crime, or you wait until you can do so without getting caught. But not all people have the same impulses. Why let fat people vote? People with STDs? You can invent endless such tests until you and your friends are the only people left who can vote. Wouldn’t this be a good idea? For the good of all, I mean…

Probably not. To understand this, we should take a look at how people become principled in the first place.

Some people may be born to be principled and strong-willed. Perhaps it is genetic, unless you believe that it lies in the human spirit and each person is given a certain amount of this trait before being sent down to Earth.

Some people may have been raised to become principled. I can’t think of anyone, but this could be because we lack a control group. We don’t know how the kids would have grown up if they had been allowed to run free.

But there is a path for the adult who wants to become less random. It consists on having a living interest in the higher principles, as found in higher religions and philosophies. Those who think of the Eternal Laws  frequently, who meditate on them when alone, who ask about them and seek the companies of those who follow them, these people tend to gradually become drawn toward these Principles, and in time become more principled themselves. It may take its sweet time, depending on their starting position, but that is the trend. That is the direction in which they move, out of chaos and onto a steadier path.

You may think that having an over-representation of these people among the voters would be a great idea. I don’t entirely disagree, but there is something you need to know about these people. Beyond a certain point, there is a tendency that their kingdom is no longer of this world. In short, they may not feel very strongly about politics. If we have greatly reduced the number of other people who can vote, we may end up with mostly political fanatics, who are principled because of their monomaniacal devotion to some (probably unrealistic) cause or dream. These people tend to not understand ordinary people as easily as do those who have been one. They also tend to not consider other people’s lives very important compared to The Cause.

Having general emancipation introduces a great deal of randomness, and thereby inertia, into the political process. This is bad when it impedes rapid progress toward the better, but it is great when it impedes rapid descent into pure madness, which is historically rather likely. After Caesar and Augustus there is sure to come a Nero and a Caligula and a long parade of self-serving or outright insane people. This is why, as Winston Churchill pointed out, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.

I will leave you with another image. Imagine a large and densely packed flock of sheep. You and some other human are at different places in this sea of woolly randomness. If that other person is a friend, you should be able to move toward each other, albeit slowly, and eventually meet. The sheep were an impediment, but not fatally so. But if it is someone you want to avoid, the sheep is as much a hindrance to him as to you, and Light willing he will never catch up with you.

In this way, randomness will eventually yield to persistence, it just takes time and cooperation among those who share a goal. But it gives those who don’t share a goal, time to oppose each other. The strength of democracy is its inertia, which it derives from the randomness of the majority. It makes a liability into a benefit.

The unexamined life

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Yes, the years just fly by when you’re watching anime, playing games, or doing other things that are mutually exclusive with self-reflection. (Well, actually Lucky*Star is an anime that may give some pause for thought, although not on a Socratic level, I dare say.)

“The unexamined life is not worth living” said Socrates, but not until today have I reflected on the context of those words: Socrates was threatened by the government to give up his public teaching of philosophy or else be sentenced to death. But he chose rather to die than to go against his “daimon” (or daimonion), the spiritual voice he had obeyed since his childhood and which he considered a gift from Heaven.

Most of us hold the opposite view: The examined life is not worth living. It seems to us so unbearable that we will go to great length, even a high risk of untimely death, to avoid it.

***

What is this examination of which Socrates speaks? We call Socrates a philosopher, which he certainly was. But speculating on whether the Earth originated in water or fire, or any such remote topic, hardly changes the “examination level” of our life. You cannot say that after having discussed how many angels can dance on the tip of a needle, you have examined your life.

In contrast, self-reflection is all about examining our life. When a child in Japan misbehaves, its parent may tell it to sit alone and reflect on what it did. (Well, it happens in non-religious anime, so it is probably widespread.) This awareness of one’s own behavior, as if seen by an outside observer, is also one element in the Jewish and Christian concept of repentance, although this one focuses more on the act of turning away from mistakes rather than on the pure observation.

Boris Mouravieff, claiming to write from an esoteric Orthodox Christian tradition, puts the pure observation of oneself as the primary spiritual practice, the tool of transformation. The act of paying attention to oneself (in particular to the fragmented nature of the personality, which changes like a kaleidoscope with time and opportunity) is in itself the driving force of transcending the fragmented false self, causing a “heat” to develop in the bucket of iron filings with which he likens the natural personality. If this is raised to a high degree, the fire melts the pieces together. Be that as it may, the relentless observation of the personality is in itself the recommended spiritual practice.

There are hints that this may be original Christian teachings. Jesus Christ exhorts his disciples to “watch at all times”. The statement appears repeatedly in the formula “watch and pray”, always in that order, blended with other words but with these being the direct instructions. For some reasons the “pray” has completely overtaken the “watch” in modern Christianity, so that it has fused with the “pray without ceasing” mentioned by St Paul the apostle. However, in the repeated sayings of Jesus – and this is in fact one statement he clearly and intentionally repeats, as if it was a key point of his teaching – there is always a “watch” first.

It is possible that Paul also thinks in this direction when he tells a younger preacher to “pay attention to yourself and the teaching”, which may refer to comparing himself to the measuring rod of the Christian teachings, or it could mean paying attention to the teachings he preached. Perhaps both. But clearly it was necessary to pay attention to himself – that is to say, examine his life. Reflect on himself. Watch.

In some languages (including my native Norwegian) the “watch” of the gospel is translates as “stay awake”. One relative of mine ran into mental disturbances trying to stay awake all night every night to pray. Intriguingly, a few people in this world have the ability to remain conscious even in their sleep, in a purely observing, non-acting mode. This usually appears after a couple decades of daily meditation of the more advanced sorts. It occurs to me today that Jesus may have lived like that, conscious and watching his own mental plane or “innerscape” even in his sleep.

If we translate ye olde phrase of Jesus into the language of the 21st century, we might say “be conscious at all times and stay connected to the Divine”. This sounds a lot less offensive to people with Jesus willies, although I am not sure whether this is a good thing. It also happens to pretty accurately portray good old Socrates, who not only examined his life even in the face of death, but also publicly spoke about the divine presence which had accompanied him since childhood and never let him down. Such faith did he have in his daimonion that when it did not warn him as he was sentenced to drink a deadly poison, he concluded that it was probably no bad thing.

***

Far from consciously observing ourselves even in our sleep, however, most of us do the exact opposite: We look away even when awake. Hold on a minute, my sims need to harvest their watermelons. OK, back. As I was saying, we tend to distract ourselves from the “life examination” by disappearing into engrossing hobbies like computer games or puzzles, or (for the more simpleminded perhaps) basic instincts like FOOD! and SEX! – not sure if socializing with other people also count as basic instinct with humans, quite possibly it does. It certainly is effective at distracting us from observing our own thoughts, words and deeds. So our lives remain unexamined, and that’s the way we like it, uh huh.

Some people cannot stop the relentless intrusion of reality simply by sex and petty crime. They have to drink booze or take hard drugs to try to forget. This is the last step before suicide itself – for in their eyes, the examined life is not worth living. Or at least living through the process of examination is not worth it. But as I pointed out just above, I feel that there is only a difference of degree between them and us.

That is not to say that God hates games as such, or even sex. OK, at least not all sex. But the use of anything as an escape route to avoid self-reflection, to shirk the burden of self-consciousness (much less God-consciousness), to flee from the examined life and stay in the dark – like someone who turns on the light, sees a big spider on the pillow and decides to turn off the light – that is probably not the best idea.

Whatever happens when you examine your life, it made Socrates so happy that he could not stop talking about it, even if it should cost him his life. The same happened to Jesus’ disciples some centuries later. It doesn’t seem to have made the Dalai Lama particularly depressed either. It seems that all true religion, in the sense of spiritual religion rather than just social or ritual religion, must contain this element. But getting there… that is the hard part.

I have watched enough to watch myself flee from my own watchful eye. Because I find the unexamined life quite worth living. And the terrible truth is that the unexamined and the examined life cannot both exist at the same time. For the new, examined life to live, the old unexamined life must die. It may well do so whether we want it to or not, if we keep observing it. This may be one of the cases where looks really can kill. At least they can be quite painful.

But first, my sims need help with their potatoes.

 

Problems of our time

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She's grown up to be really considerate of other people

If we could grow up to become really considerate of other people, we could overcome the challenges of our time. It is this we lack, more than money or technology.

Modern technology and economics have certainly made life easier for billions of people. But the challenges we face now in the 21st century are mainly challenges of the mind. I don’t mean necessarily insanity and such, although of course mental health problems are widespread and very troubling. Rather I mean what we might call “spiritual problems”, although they should be obvious even to those who don’t believe in spirit. Perhaps we could call them “problems of attitude”?

The error of our times is to try to fix attitude problems with technology, economics or legislation. I will not say that these are entirely ineffective. But they can be compared to fixing a leaky roof by placing umbrellas. Not only does it look absurd to those who see it from outside, but it is a short-sighted “solution”, suitable only for those who have no responsibility for the building and are planning to leave soon with their whole family. Hopefully we won’t all be in that situation with regards to this world.

For example, there is now plenty enough food in the world for everyone to eat their fill, and then some. But that is not exactly what happens. True, obesity is now actually afflicting a greater number of humans than is starvation, but there is still starvation. It usually only happens – at least widely – in countries at war or civil war. So it is certainly a problem of attitude, although not necessarily the attitude of the starving. (Although that can certainly happen too, that they are one of the sides in a war, and have some responsibility for it. That is not always the case, though. And in most wars, it is the stronger who attack the weaker.)

Speaking of obesity and health challenges: I know, I know. There are various hormone and metabolism problems that cause people to gain weight at an unnatural pace. It seems unlikely, however, that a fifth or so of the population have mysteriously mutated over the course of a generation or two. In any case, there are good news from science: Even if you are heavier than recommended, this will do little or no harm if you are physically active, exercising at least at moderate intensity for half an hour a day or so. (Or an hour every other day.) So unless you have a mutated metabolism and also a broken spine, you should be doing fine. If you have the right attitude, that is. The attitude that makes you force your body to do things it does not particularly like sometimes.

Unfortunately, many people really exercise their mind making up excuses instead. If people would eat when they were hungry and stop before they were full, and be physically active at least some minutes each day, that alone would stop the huge growth in health expenses in the rich world. I am not kidding. Sure, there are many expenses that come because we can treat illnesses that were fatal in the past. Treatment for these is typically very expensive. But living a life of moderate self-restraint will dramatically reduce the risk of falling gravely ill. Mind you, we are talking of risks here, possibilities and percentages. It is not like the law of gravity which is very simple and predictable. So you can eat right, exercise regularly and die horribly anyway. But on a large scale, like that of a whole nation, a more responsible lifestyle would have a dramatic impact.

Then there is the whole thing about fearing death. Now, this is an attitude that I sympathize with personally to a very high degree. There are few things I want less than death! But even so, here is something to think of: A very large part of the medical expenses in an average human life happens in its last year. This is independent of the age. If you live to 90, most of the expenses will be in the year from 89 to 90. If you live only to 50, most of the expenses will be from 49 to 50. Of course, this is not without exception, but it is the rule. In other words, a great deal of our hospitals, our doctors and our medicines are employed to prolong life by months or weeks. Of course, in some cases we just can’t know. There is a chance, even if it is small, of survival. And there is nothing we want more, usually.

Still, if we are actually old and we have an illness that is anyway going to end our life within months, I feel that there should be an option to submit to the course of nature. I am told that in America this is what happens if you are poor. But for those who have nothing to fear from death, I feel that it should be an option even if you could afford to stay around for a few months longer. In days of yore, it was not uncommon for old people to feel that they had accomplished what they came to Earth for. “Now let thy servant depart in peace.” I can’t say I feel like that now, but I hope to be able to say that some day. We may long for eternal life, but it is folly to think that science can do that for us, even with tax-financed health care.

Another attitude problem is that we consider our personal luxury more important than the planet. There has been some progress in this, in some parts of the world. But not enough. We are still destroying the biosphere at a terrifying speed. Species go extinct all the time. Fertile soil is washed away or blown away by the wind because of thoughtless agriculture that leaves the soil open to the elements at times when flooding or drought occurs. Forests are cut down that protected the soil, wetlands are drained that absorbed floods. And of course arable land is covered with roads and buildings. So far we have managed to keep food production high enough, higher than ever actually. But we cannot afford to lose more arable land as population is still set to grow. And we should not unravel ecosystems except in the most dire emergency.

***

In short, the great challenges of our times and probably the next generation as well, is our attitude. As long as we think in terms of money and not time, of luxury and not happiness, of receiving and not giving, of being done to and not doing – as long as we think in this way, it will be difficult to solve our problems, and new ones will appear. The roof will leak in more and more places until it collapses on our heads. For now, we have only this one planet, and we must share it with each other better than we do today.

 

Me, a kaleidoscope?

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 “God, please just overlook what I do tonight!” That’s a perfect case of what I mean. But even if God overlooks it, we must not. This is the paradox. 

I have not read in Gnosis I – the Exoteric Cycle since the day I discovered his teachings of the three time dimensions. I probably will again, given time, but I haven’t. Yet the scent of it lingers. Looking at my own entries from before I read it, I recognize bits and pieces that people usually don’t say, but that I and Boris Mouravieff do say, and somewhat similarly. It is rather weird. Boris Mouravieff is rather weird, if I may say so. He seems a bit outside consensus reality, even for an esoteric religious person. That does not necessarily mean he is crazy – it could be that the rest of us are crazy. Or it could simply be a different angle, as I like to think it is with me.

Take for instance the fact that our personalities are kaleidoscopes.

I was just a fairly small boy when I got my first toy kaleidoscope. It was a simple thing: A tube of cardboard or plastic or some such, with a simple lens at the eye end, and at the other end a part made of small mirrors and pieces of plastic. I held it up toward a light source, and the image of the small colorful pieces was reflected in the mirrors, causing a symmetric picture. Being human, I liked symmetric pictures. And being a child, I liked them being in bright colors. Also, being a child, I broke it eventually. I am not sure if I ever saw another. But the memory remains, even if vague.

Whenever I wanted a new picture, I would only shake the tube slightly, and the pieces rearranged themselves, causing the whole mirrored image to change beyond recognition.

The human mind really is like that, isn’t it? Just as Mouravieff says. Although I won’t vouch for his mathematics showing that there is just under 900 combinations in each and every human personality. If you are curious about the math, I’ll look it up, but that is not the point. The point is, I have written about this too, although not in those words.

What I have written about is the science of “hot” and “cold” mental states. This is not my invention, definitely, although I have observed them for many years now in my own life. Cold states are those in which we think rationally, and we usually have a fairly stable personality during all our cold states, although they can certainly differ too: Work is usually one such cold state of mind, perhaps the coldest of them all for most people. Most also spend the greater part of their home life in such stable states of mind, I like to think, although they may feel and act different from their job persona. (I tend to forget job-related things when I go home, unless I send a mail to myself. But I can very confidently predict how I will react, and I will keep an appointment if I can remember it.)

Hot states are usually set off by basic instincts: Lust, fear, anger or disgust. They are different from the cold states in that it is hard to predict what you will do in them, and it is hard to keep promises from one state when you are in another. This also holds true between different hot states: A promise made in fear may be extremely hard to keep while in lust, or the other way around. But also between hot and cold: People may honestly believe they would put a raw earthworm in their mouth for a week’s pay, but faced with the actual earthworm, they find that it is just too disgusting, their body decides to forget their resolution. There are about 5% who do take the earthworm though. These are the people you need in your military, send the others home. But that’s beside today’s point.

Today’s point is, we are kaleidoscopes. When we are shaken, our configuration changes, and we show a different picture for the duration. Our psyche consists of several pieces or parts, usually working together in a particular configuration that we tend to think of as “me”. But when shaken, either by an earthworm or a sexy person, one or more pieces of our psyche are “swapped out” for other pieces that fill the same spot, and the appearance of the whole becomes strikingly different.

Intriguingly, people here in the Nordic countries are less completely transformed by lust, by and large, than our immigrant population. I think this is because sexuality is more openly accepted as an integral part of life here, and so there are more connections between that part and the everyday parts of the psyche. We are able to think about sex in our cold states, as seen by people talking about it without breathing heavily or anything. So it takes more to cause a swap-out which puts lust in the driver’s seat. For many of our male immigrants, seeing a woman in scant or tight-fitting clothes is enough to make them behave like insane monkeys, while for us natives it is more of a gradual bending of the compass needle of the mind.

Be that as it may, it is clear from direct observation of myself and others that we as a natural personality are not a pearl of great price, but the broken shards of a kaleidoscope. When shaken, we change into something different, sometimes even into something that is hard to recognize.

Insofar as there is in us such a pearl, an indivisible and unchangeable part, perhaps it is better sought in exactly the part of us that watches the kaleidoscope and observes the shifting of its pictures.

A great mistake, so it seems to me, is to want “closure” when we observe in ourselves such shifts which we do not approve of. This is particularly the case with larger shifts, of which you can hear people say: “I don’t know what possessed me”, “I was not myself”, “this is not me”. That is nice, that we have higher aspirations than what we at all times can maintain. But it is important to accept the difference between “this is not the whole of me” versus “this is not me at all”. In the latter case, we seek closure. I am not sure that is a good idea.

For a Christian, for instance, to have been forgiven is often taken to mean closure. If God and men (or even, hard as that may be, women) have forgiven us, then It Didn’t Happen, right? Well, I don’t think so. To quote (for the Christian, specifically) 2. Peter 1:9, “But whoever does not have them [i.e. the virtues] is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.” To turn a blind eye on the parts of one’s kaleidoscope that don’t match our prettier aspiration, or at least to only perceive them fuzzily, is associated with not developing the qualities expected of the believer.

When some religious people are called “observant”, it is understood that they observe the precepts, the teachings of their religion. But it is also requested that one observe oneself, as the early Christians were told: “Pay attention to yourself and the teaching, keep at it; for when you do so, you shall save yourself and those who hear you.” (1.Timothy 4:16.) As it happens, this is a core tenet of Buddhism as well – the teaching of self-reflection as a saving way.

So, to the extent that we can do so without triggering neurological disorders, I believe it is to the best that we keep watching the kaleidoscope of the mind, until we have become thoroughly disillusioned about using its shifting sands as a foundation. It is not easy, but I keep trying.

Flynn periods?

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It is a hamster, and it is highly unlikely to have built the Great Pyramid.

Hopefully you know of the Flynn Effect. It is one of the more amazing facts in modern history, but not everyone is aware of it yet. And I can see how it may be hard to believe. But it is documented beyond reasonable doubt, or even unreasonable doubt. Unless there is a worldwide conspiracy that somehow overtakes even those who set out to disprove it, humans are getting rapidly more intelligent. Not just educated: The effect is greatest in forms of intelligence that are not specifically trained in school, and starts before school age. The speed of the increase varies from one part of the world to another, but they are all rising, and fast. The global average is about 3 IQ points per decade or 10 points per generation. That means that each generation is genius compared to their grandparents, basically. (Your grandparents may vary.)

The Flynn Effect has been going on for as long as there have been IQ tests, about a century in the first places that started. Now you may think the obvious answer is that people have become more adept at taking IQ tests, but it works equally well on children the first time they take such a test. And while there is an improvement in each individual with repeated tests, this is a fairly small improvement that is long since overrun and left in the dust by the collective progress of the Flynn Effect.

Yet if we try to prolong this effect into the deep past, madness ensues. We would then have to assume that the great cathedrals of Europe were built by people who could not tie their own shoelaces if their lives depended on it, and that Plato spoke to people with the mental capacity of chimpanzees at best. The Pyramids were presumably built by the intellectual equivalents of hamsters, and the Stonehenge perhaps by guppies. Something is definitely wrong with this picture.

Perhaps the progress began early in the 19th century? The period from 1850 to 1910 saw the invention of the pedal bicycle, the motorcar, the airplane, the telephone, the electric light and radio. While far more inventions have been made since then, most of the 20th century can be said to have been shaped by the inventions of the previous two generations, which were gradually deployed around the world and made more and more affordable. But if we go back to 1850, we find a world that is just plain alien, little more than the Middle Ages with added steam engine and telegraph. Not that these are small things, but still. Some kind of mental quickening seems to have happened around 1850 and accelerated to this day.

But the IQ scores of people in that age remain speculation. Perhaps the geniuses came first, and their example somehow triggered the great masses to begin ambling toward the heights. We shall probably never know for sure. Although it would help if we knew the cause of the Flynn Effect. We don’t. There are hypotheses, but none is an obvious winner.

***

But what if this is not the first time? Well, it probably is the first time we have a global Flynn Effect that is sustained for a century. Actually, this is the first era that we know of that has a global anything – globalization did not exist in the era of the longboat, not for lack of trying. But there is no reason why a sufficiently large local population could not experience its own Flynn Effect in the past, if some of the hypotheses are correct such as better food supply, or hybrid vigor from people breeding outside their local community, or a Zeitgeist – spirit of the times – that rewarded intellectual prowess. Several such possible triggers may have come together numerous times in human history.

Most people today tend to think that the ancients were stupid. Certainly people in the distant past did not have telescopes and computers, and the ordinary worker was not even literate. But there were pockets of intellect in many cultures at various times. China had several such, with an intellectual class poring over great libraries. Even ancient Sumer, one of the earliest civilizations, had large libraries ranging from myths to tax records. But harder to quantify are the oral traditions. Masterpieces such as the Iliad were composed and handed down entirely by mouth and ear before eventually being written down. The same holds for the great epics of India, or for that matter my Norse ancestors. Most of this tradition was probably never written down but faded away due to harsh times or competition from literature.

So what I mean is that there may have been pockets in time where people grew more and more intelligent for each generation for a hundred years, as has now happened here. Or for two hundred or even three hundred years. But if their Zeitgeist did not run toward technology, architecture or sculpture, we would be hard pressed to find any sign of it.  Some ancient religious texts are amazing in their clarity and depth, but were they the product of a single author or editor, or were they simply the crowning glory of a temporary religious or spiritual civilization that may have been far ahead of our times?

Some remnants from these times have made their way to our own. The benefits of proper meditation to the health of the individual and society, for instance, is something we have only recently begun to rediscover. And while the theory of acupuncture seems to be off in the far left field, the practice is surprisingly effective. Who knows how many other great inventions have existed, only to be swallowed in the mists of time?

We should not assume that our modern global civilization is possible because we are biologically more advanced, that our brains have evolved over the last centuries or millennia. There may be some traces of such evolution, according to some scientists, but by and large every tribe of humanity has enough brains for the modern world, no matter whether they have a long and distinguished history of civilization or just came out of the rain forest buck naked. So there is no reason to think that we have superior brains to those who lived 2000, 3000, or even 4000 years ago. All we have is the benefit of learning from their example. But there may be many things that once were known that have become unknown again in the meantime, as Dark Ages swallowed each civilization in turn.

I wonder, if our own civilization must fall, whether we can convey its splendor to those who may follow. Or will they simply see us as madmen, destroying our world, ruining nature’s beauty, building vast prisons of iron and concrete, and leaving behind twisted sculptures of metal and silicon of no conceivable use?

Mouravieff, me & 3 time dimensions

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“What’s happening to my life?” When people ask this, they usually wonder why they got a horrible illness or their dog died the day their girlfriend / boyfriend broke up with them, stuff like that. Not that some weird guy beloved by a UFO cult plagiarized their revelations years before they were even born. Is this the power of God or a devil?

Back to the friendly but suspicious person called Boris Mouravieff. While reading his book, I come to a point where I seriously wonder if he may have gone off the deep end, when he starts calculating the lifespans of the astral and mental bodies. And then right after that, I see this:

For the moment, it will be sufficient to say that Time possesses not one but three dimensions, and that these dimensions are strictly analogous to those of Space.

This statement may, to the casual reader, seem even crazier than the 2.4 million year lifespan of the astral body. However, what gave me the creeps was that I wrote roughly the same thing on June 6, 2010: 3 time dimensions of the mind. I went out of my way to explain that these were indeed mental rather than physical, although I seem to remember some further discussion with Llama on that topic. I don’t blame him for being skeptical. What bothers me is not that people don’t know this. What bothers me is that I do.

Mouravieff has been mentioned a few times on the One Cosmos blog, cautiously, but only a couple of his most famous statements. This is not one of them. The only online source that quotes him with any regularity, as far as I can see, is some kind of UFO cult. It is impossible that I could have come upon him long enough ago to have completely forgotten it, I think. I have a healthy respect for cryptomnesia, but in this case I vaguely remember how I made that post, and it was inspired by certain experiences (mine and others’) in meditation and such, rather than anything I had read from the outside. I probably thought in all honesty that I was the first person to come up with that particular way of expressing it.

It does not stop there. Further down the same page, Mouravieff explicitly refers to the name of the fifth dimension as “Eternity”. I know I have written a couple entries – although I am fairly sure I refrained from uploading them (this happens more often than I tell you) – entries in which I explicitly refer to the fifth dimension as “eternity” or “timelessness”. One reason not to upload it was the confusion of using these words which are saturated with a different meaning (especially the first) for common people.

You see, when we use a word like “eternity” in public (and Christianity has gone from being a mystery religion to being very public indeed), then 4-dimensional people, whose understanding of life is completely contained within the four dimensions of time and space, still think they are supposed to understand the word. Usually this happens during childhood, at which point only a very few specially chosen souls could possibly have any idea of the world beyond the fourth dimension. So they don’t think to themselves “this is a strange word and I should not have an opinion on it until I have at least some months of spiritual practice, preferably years”. They think to themselves “I know this from context”. Or, more commonly, they are children and don’t understand this from context, but instead they ask someone who is as ignorant as themselves but much older, and get told that “eternity means a time that never ends” or words to that effect.

I suppose “time that never ends” is one meaning of it, in a certain context. But it is actually more like the sky that is always above us. The four-dimensional world in which we live our mortal lives is like the horizontal world, the ground on which we travel. But at right angles to it is another dimension, and if we for the first time in our life lift our head and look upward, we see the sky. And there is something strange about the sky: It is always above us. Whether we travel to the east or the west, the sky is still there. Whether we walk across plains, climb across mountains or sail across seas, the sky is still there. It is above us the day we start our voyage, and it is still there, the same sky, when we end it, even if we are now on the opposite side of the world. Fog and clouds may obscure it, extensions of the horizontal world, but we know that the sky is still there above the clouds.

Well, that is how I see it, but who knows. What I mean is that there is something beyond time, and this eternity can touch time and infuse it so that it becomes sacred time. This is something I actually picked up from One Cosmos, which again quotes a seeming very sane Rabbi. The part about sacred time, I mean. The purpose of the Sabbath and all that. But this is not really something I should preach, I don’t keep the Sabbath. I have meditated some, though, and that is where I have what I think is direct experience of the pinhole in the roof of time, that lets us peek out in a completely new dimension in the mind.

I am not really sure I should write about such things. It bothers me to see Mouravieff write about something I thought was just my own approximation to something that cannot really be explained unless you have been there. Who am I to talk about such things? Am I immune – or at least resistant – enough to deceit, that I can talk about things that may influence people’s choices of Eternity?

When the Web was new, I wrote one of the early plain and simple introductions to meditation. And one thing I stressed toward the end was that if your meditation practice leads you to realize that you are a Very Important Person in the cosmic hierarchy, you better take a break. I fear that discovering the esoteric science of Mouravieff independently from him may be very close to such an experience. Knowledge inflates, as the Bible says, but that deserves its own entry. Which, incidentally, runs the risk of inflating me even more. As if the pasta is not giving me enough gas.

The secret of skill mastery

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In The Sims 3, you may live long enough to master numerous skills. In real life, most of us would be happy with one. But how do we do it?

I mentioned a while ago that you can become a grandmaster of chess – or the equivalent in any other venue – by dedicating approximately 10 000 hours to pushing yourself. (More when you are older, probably, but somewhere around this.) This may be all you need to know, but the actual working of the mind in these cases is also known. I have written about it some years ago, but let me write it again in new words, without looking back. If you are like me, it should interest you.

Usually when we do mental work, we use a combination of short term and long term memory. Short term memory is very limited, but essential in all works of the mind. How limited? Most humans can only remember 7 things at a time. 7 random digits, random letters, random words or random icons. Note that the information content is not an issue. The number of elements remains the same. But if the element itself is complex and unfamiliar, so you must remember it as a sequence of parts, these parts will go from the quota of 7.

You can exceed the limit for a very short time, usually enough to dial a phone number, but even this has its limit, and not much higher. By brain training games you can over time raise your limit to 8, and some people have a slightly higher limit naturally. It does not sound like much, but it is actually a pretty dramatic benefit. Even when operating automatically, the mind depends on short term memory to connect and compare different elements.

But this is not how mastery works. Masters do not need to have a 8 or 9 element short term memory, although it obviously would not hurt. But they use a completely different approach: In the words of Scientific American, the masters seem to use long term memory like short term memory. How do they do that?

Let me take an example: the numbers 3 2 7 1 2 1 9 5 8 2 6. Millions of people would not be able to recall this even when they had finished reading it. Of those who could, most would have forgotten it before they had finished singing one verse of their national anthem (which I assume is nearly automatic in most people). I, on the other hand, remember this easily after 7 hours of various reading, writing, playing and exercising. And rightly so: For I am born on the 27th of December (month 12) 1958. This leaves me with a whopping 3 elements to remember: The number 3, and my birth date, and the number 26. (Yes, I think of numbers in this range as a unit, rather than as two digits. After all, I’ve been 26 once!)

Now you may say this is cheating, and you are absolutely right. But the thing is, a grandmaster of chess knows every realistic combinations of pieces on a chess board like his birth date, more or less. That is where those 10 000 hours went, after all. They did not disappear in the fog. He has memories of them, conscious or otherwise. That particular pattern of pieces on the board gave him a victory once, a loss another time. They are all familiar to him, real and obvious. So for him, a particular combination of pieces on the board – or even a sequence of these – is remembered as one unit. Thus, his long term memory seems to be projected into the short term memory, because he can hold several extremely complex data structures in his mind at the same time, which is just plain impossible to you or me.

This seems a bit similar to how we automate “muscle memory” to perform body skills without needing to think about the details, like biking or driving a car. Generally, humans are really good at automating. This is not necessarily a good thing: Once we are past our youth, we tend to automate so much of our life that the days just pass in a blur, without us needing to be actually present in them. But what the skillful masters do is automate steadily more of the lower-order functions of the mind, whereas they continue to expand their skill at a higher level. If you reach a stage where you have automated everything you do, and you don’t push forward, your progress stops.

So, pretty obvious once you see it, I guess. But doing it is another matter. Even if we know how, few of us are going to master even a single skill in our lifetime, much less surpass numerous destinies while we are alive.

10,000 hours

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A rule of thumb says that a grandmaster of chess – or the equivalent in any other venue – has put in at least ten thousand hours of practice.
And by “practice” we mean “relentless pounding on the invisible wall of your comfort zone.”

Psychologist Anders Ericsson did the research that gave us the 10000 hours rule, although others have popularized it in books. Much of the “evidence” is anecdotal, admittedly. But you know why? Because most people don’t put 10,000 hours into anything except their work, if that, and in that case rarely with enthusiasm and relentless dedication. Most jobs probably don’t even allow you to challenge yourself that way for 40 hours a week, five years, as it would take at that speed. And even if they did, most workers would rather quit, if they could get away with it, than exert themselves like that for a company they didn’t own.

At my own workplace, we get reorganized more often than every 5 years, although there is some continuity, so that is not my excuse. I just suck at organizing my own research when it comes to something as unpredictable as humans and the way they use hardware and software. The hardware and software is the easy part, of course. “Everything in the world fits together, except humans.”

One of the more famous examples was the guy who decided to put his three daughters through this level of relentless chess training while they grew up, to see whether they really would become expert chess players. All of them did. In all fairness, so was their father. But there is not a 100% chance of the next generation inheriting the chess mastery, or even a 33% chance. And whatever chance there is, usually only applies to the sons. Chess is still a male-dominated mind sport, and certainly was when the girls were small. Of course, if they had had no talent whatsoever, they might have run away from home or worse. I am not sure how ethical it is to be the destiny of your children in such a way, I find it creepy. That said, girls could do worse than play chess.

Not limited to chess and playing instruments (the most common examples), the 10,000 hour rule also applies to sports. Although in this case the life phase probably matters a lot, regardless of whether talent does. Skill sports you can get started on early, but strength and endurance sports are not for small kids, so your window of opportunity is narrower. Old age is not a great time to take up sports either, although it actually seems OK for running. There are several examples of men taking up running at the age of gray hairs and doing pretty well, running marathon long after retirement even if not winning.

Whatever thoughts I had about doing this, it definitely won’t happen today. Today my health is well below average (whining in my personal journal) and even my appetite is shot. But I have other interests as well. After all, one of my slogans is “surpassing numerous destinies while one is alive”. My higher aspiration may be to become a grandmaster of esoteric wisdom. But a more cynical observer may think I am closer to becoming a master of playing The Sims 3. ^_^

Fallback strategy: Simplicity

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Screenshot Sims 3

Many of my sims enjoy painting and decorating their homes with their own paintings. Me, I enjoy playing The Sims and decorating my journal with my screenshots. ^_^

I am not really a pessimist on behalf of civilization. I think it is entirely possible that by 2050, there will be 9 billion humans who are richer than I am today, eating whatever they want, traveling wherever they want, having more entertainment than we can even imagine today. Why not? The arrow is certainly pointing in that direction, and has done so for generations, and change is happening faster and faster.

But there is also the possibility that some critical resource will run out and there won’t be any obvious replacements. Actually, we know that many of our resources will run down over the next generation: Oil, gas, probably coal, and some metals. Freshwater in some areas, various types of terrain probably. As of today, alternatives are more expensive or less effective, which is why they haven’t already replaced the original. This may continue, and we would then end up with a world which is simply more expensive to run, so to speak.

Unless there is some kind of breakthrough (or breakdown),  this is where we are headed, a world where most of the world’s population competes on roughly the same playing field as we for resources that are limited either in quantity or quality. This is not a disaster exactly, but it means there is a good chance we will have to scale back our expectations of becoming richer and richer year by year. Is that really such a horror? Until a few generations ago, the whole world was what we now call “third world”. Your ancestors and mine included. Even if we never get to take a trip to the moon, as my 10 year old self expected to do, we have much to be grateful for.

The value of material peak experiences is highly overrated.

People look forward for years to retirement, when they will do everything they did not have time for while working. A few months after they retire, most have scaled down their ambitions, and quite a few wish they were still at work. (And their family members wish it even more!)

People save up for years to go on a particularly rare vacation, and look forward to it with ever mounting expectation. The actual experience is usually pretty good, but nothing like the excitement in advance. It is like that with pretty much anything. A new car, a new house, marriage, divorce – while you usually don’t quite regret them, the awesomeness you waited for is nowhere to be found. Wherever you go, you still bring yourself with you, and this is the main part of every experience. Your self colors all you experience. It is the most important part of your life, so be sure to make it the best self you can.

Once you see through the fallacy of the wonderful peak experience, and are willing to settle for 95% happiness every day instead of 100% happiness “someday”, a lot of options open up. Everyday things can get you that far: A hobby that allows self-expression, spending time with friends, perhaps pets, or books. These need not cost a fortune, and you need not travel far for them.

Do you really think you should be number one? In the prehistoric time of scarcity, it may have been important. If you were not at the top, there might not be enough food for you, or you might not get to choose a suitable mate. Today? There is already more food in the world than needed for the world’s population; if you read this on the Internet, your problem is more likely to be too much food than too little. As for mating … I hope that depends on other things than being number one, now.

Once you let go of the need to be number one, life becomes so much easier. We don’t need the newest and best, we can enjoy whatever works, and can find happiness in simple things that don’t impress anyone but are enjoyable to ourselves.

Free yourself from the need to impress others, and you have a lot more time to do the things you really want to do. Which are those? They are the ones you wish you had chosen when you reach the end of your life. That is when you no longer feel the need to impress anyone, no longer wear a mask, when you are finally yourself. Why not start earlier?

We don’t need to be rich or famous to be ourselves. We just have to be honest. It is not easy, but it is affordable. Less pursuit and more happiness.