Category Archives: science

How much exercise?

Posted on by
Reply

If you ask: “How much exercise is enough?”, the answer is “Enough for what?” – If you simply want to not die horribly from lack of exercise, you should be fine doing light exercise like walking from a quarter to half an hour each day, or at least most days. If you want to participate in the Olympics, on the other hand, you should probably quit your job to concentrate on your exercise, as it would take more than a full workday.

Okay then, what if my goal is to live as long as possible? In that case, you should exercise as much as possible but not as hard as possible. From approximately half an hour a day and upwards to at least 3 to 5 hours a day, each hour spent on exercise is an hour of lifetime gained. So if you hate exercise, you have to ask yourself “how much do I really fear death”? Because you are basically trading an hour for an hour. That’s for moderate exercise. If you exercise hard for hours each day, you are actually shortening your lifespan. It is better to exercise hard for short time every other day if you just want to stay alive and stay in shape, and spent the rest of your exercise time doing light to moderate exercise.

Let us be honest here. If you don’t have sports as a career, you are not going to spend hours each day exercising. Simply doesn’t happen. And there are probably no other jobs left in the English-speaking world which count as “exercise” either. But if you manage to exercise hard enough that you can just barely keep a conversation or recite a poem, for half an hour (or a quarter twice a day), you will have drastically reduced your risk of heart disease, hypertension, diabetes II, several cancers and even depression. Ignore this, and health issues are likely to hunt you down. Go above and beyond it, and you should make sure to do something you like or that is genuinely useful, as you are likely trading an hour for an hour. (On average. Of course, you may collide with a truck tomorrow, but on the other hand, you may narrowly avoid a cancer that would have lopped 30 years off your life, and you won’t even know it. Averages are for crowds, but you are part of that crowd, like it or not.)

If you are obese, half an hour of moderate exercise will still halve your risk. It is just that your risk was twice as high to begin with. -_- In these case it is recommended that you exercise more, but if you could exercise more, you would probably have done so already. Obese people are not universally praised and given special benefits in our society, to put it that way. Still, it is better to move about and live than to lie down and die. Probably. I can’t remember having ever been dead, so theoretically it could be awesome and I would never know. But what I do know is that life is short and death seems to be very long.

If you are only moderately overweight, with a BMI from 25 to 30, your life expectancy is actually no different from most of those with normal weight. Most people in this category are able to exercise and have the motivation to do so, within reason. The 30 minutes of exercise seems to be particularly useful in this category, reducing the health risks all the way down to the same level as those who are not overweight at all. Those who already have normal weight are less motivated to stay active, and this may be why they generally don’t live longer than the moderately overweight. Or their self-reported non-smoking may be somewhat exaggerated.

Death is not the only danger on the couch. There is also the danger that you may be sick a lot, grow old before the time, think less clearly, experience frequent or even chronic pain (especially of the back), suffer from depression, be shunned socially and be cut off from various aspects of romance. If you don’t have time for exercise, you may have to take time out for health problems. So before you skip your 30 minutes, think twice.

(From the “practice what you preach” department: For what it is worth, I usually do a combination of walking and jogging, staying within the “fat burning range” for about an hour a day, which is literally what the doctor ordered since I have pre-diabetes. In addition I spend about half an hour a day on foot as part of my commute. Even single and childless, I would balk at spending 3 hours of my free time each day exercising.  Perhaps I am going to regret that on my deathbed. Then again, there are a lot of things I will likely regret on my deathbed, if any. Including not spending more time writing this journal.) Now, get out there and dance if you still can!

Solitary confinement is Hell?

Posted on by
1

Save me! I beg you! Save me!

A damned soul in Hell? Or someone in solitary confinement? The difference may be less than we believe. (Not recommended bedtime reading, I guess.)

I read something weird from Mouravieff again, and it made me think of a number of other things, as I tend to do. He wrote that people who are not born again die their second death 40 days after the first, at which point their astral bodies die as well. Even though that seems at odds with the religion he claims to represent (the Orthodox Church), I can totally see what he means. And yes, this bears directly on the torture of solitary confinement.

What struck me was the similarity to the 40 days and nights Moses spent on the mountain and Jesus spent in the wilderness, alone with God. What if I were alone with God – would I survive 40 days? Even without the fasting those two did, I am not entirely certain. I like to think so for my part, but I am not sure. I have never been anywhere near that situation. And I am extremely solitary for a human.

***

Dolphins, being even more social than humans, will simply stop breathing after a few hours without company by their own species or, failing that, humans. (Dolphins have evidently always been aware that we are sentient creatures, whereas we have found out only recently that they are not big fish.)

Humans are somewhat more resistant to death by loneliness, but solitary confinement is still considered “cruel and unusual” by all civilized countries. When I was young, I read as a fact that primitive tribes would condemn people to death by ignoring them. I am not sure whether that is actually possible without the tacit accept of the condemned. People are really good at making themselves noticeable. But the very fact that this idea has taken root shows how important it is for a human to be in contact with other humans.

Solitary confinement is an old, proven method to make people confess to crimes regardless of whether they have actually committed them. After a few weeks, the person has no idea what crimes he may have committed or really even who he is, apart from his name and some such basics. Memories dissolve, sleep and other biological functions become erratic, self-damaging behavior may occur.

Normal solitary confinement in contemporary prisons is not absolute: The prisoner is in some contact with guards and may have access to various forms of media. When solitary confinement is used as torture, the isolation is absolute and the victim not even allowed to read or write. Please bear in mind that human contact – in a similar way to money, actually – has value on a logarithmic scale: A small amount will keep you alive, while it takes much more to make you feel comfortable. So there is a big difference between hearing people talk to you and only hearing footsteps, for instance; or seeing other people versus just knowing that they can see you, but may or may not actually be doing so right now.

Total isolation tends to cause breakdown and outright madness, and it usually happens in a matter of weeks. Normal people will start showing abnormal behavior in as little as one week.

***

So if we first assume that an “astral body” or “ghost body” survives the physical death, as described by many survivors of heart stop, then it stands to reason that they would suffer tremendously if unable to return to the spirit world and commune with God, angels or saints. Drifting around ignored by everyone, they would be in the ultimate solitary confinement, forever unable to communicate with anyone. It stands to reason that their psyche would unravel over the course of 40 days, and if the astral body is some kind of construct of the mind, it would basically dissolve like a snail trying to cross the road on a sunny day. A hellish fate!

I don’t see any mention of such a fate in the holy scripture of the world’s great religions. I would not be surprised if most damned souls would prefer demons with pitchforks rather than roaming a deserted world until dissolving in utter madness, alone in the void. (Incidentally, no demons with pitchforks in the scriptures either. People have an amazing imagination.)

***

As you may expect, the thought has visited me: Could I spend 40 days alone with God even while alive? Never mind the fasting. I happen to have seven weeks or so of vacation on book… If I stocked up on dry food, paid my bills, turned off all telephones and computers and refrained from touching any paper, I could presumably do this experiment this fall. If I started on November 1 when I usually start NaNoWriMo, I would finish two days before my doctor appointment on December 12.

There is a tiny part of me that is fascinated by the thought. But it is quite tiny. Chances are I am going to spend my “solitary” month the same way as earlier years, alone but writing furiously and hanging out with my Sims. I don’t know about you, but I can definitely live a month without touching or smelling humans, as long as I can communicate with your minds. I think this already sets me apart from neurotypical humans, yes. But I don’t seriously consider me in the same league as Moses or Jesus. Although who knows what I would think after 40 days in solitary confinement. Perhaps I would discover that I was actually a god from outer space…

Or perhaps I would stop breathing, like the dolphins.

Intrusive visualizations

Posted on by
2

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.

In praise of sleep

Posted on by
Reply

Sleeping girl (safe for work)

Sleep is necessary for most humans and animals, and can also be great fun. ^_^

Sleep has a bit of a bad reputation. In popular usage, it often equals laziness. “Great men are not born great – they become great while others sleep.” So says an ancient proverb, and it may have been true in the ages when the night lasted for eleven hours. Today, sleeping is such a scarce resource that an extra hour or two can actually make you greater: The average young adult American will do measurably better on IQ tests after sleeping an hour longer than usual.

The pressure against sleep may have started hundreds of years ago when coffee was invented, but it was only with the invention of electric light that the tide of the battle turned. Thomas Edison famously promised to make electricity so cheap, only the rich would buy candles. This also came to pass. No longer was darkness enough of an excuse for sleep; and with cheap coffee from the colonies, lack of sleep was no longer enough excuse for being tired. Over the span of one human lifetime, the night became the new border for mankind to settle, and lack of sleep became the normal human condition.

Today, sleep disturbances are among the most common health problems in the rich world, although they are rarely fatal in themselves. Instead, lack of sleep quietly increase the number of deaths from other causes. One obvious example is traffic accidents (driving while tired is comparable to driving drunk, but almost impossible for police to detect).  But lack of sleep also contributes more indirectly to mortality, by reducing our willpower and increasing appetite, contributing to the already large problem of obesity. And eating is only half the problem: Being half sleepy, we are more likely to sit down and zone out in front of the TV rather than do something active with our body. This is even worse for our health than the extra pounds we pack on. Ironically, it also contributes to the insomnia of the next night.

For despite our “sleep debt”, we experience insomnia more than ever. In part this is a self-fuelling process: When we have no more time left for sleep than we need, we become impatient, which makes it hard to sleep. The more we concentrate on sleeping, the less sleepy we become. Ironically, people who struggle to stay awake find it harder and harder, so instead of sleeping at night, we fall asleep at work or, if worst comes to worst, at the wheel.

Sleep has a number of health benefits in itself, but this mostly applies to the deep sleep (“delta sleep”, named for the large, slow, regular delta brainwaves.) In this sleep phase, the brain activity is at its lowest, but the body’s hormone and immune system are adjusted. Human growth hormone is secreted in this phase, and it takes up more time in children, less in adults, and almost disappear among the elderly. This form of sleep mostly take place early in the night, during the first and second sleep cycle.  (Each sleep cycle consists of four phases and lasts approximately 90 minutes – there may be some variation, but that is the rule-of-thumb number.)

Another important part of sleep is REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement), which is where the intense, lifelike (or larger than life) dreams appear. Strong feelings are common in this phase. While the muscles we normally control are switched off, the heart and lungs are working as hard as when we are awake or more so. Many heart attacks occur in the morning when we have most of this sleep. Another important effect of REM sleep is that it activates the sexual organs. This is very obvious in men, but does not necessarily imply that the dreams are sexual in nature. Pretty much any REM dream that is not a nightmare is likely to cause some sexual activation, at least in the young.

The first REM dreams tend to be short and unpleasant, but over the course of the night they become longer, more convoluted but usually also happier. This is a major reason why most people feel more upbeat in the morning (well, after they get over the rude awakening of the alarm clock). A certain type of clinical depression however has this reversed, so that the later dreams get worse and worse. Patients naturally tend to try to sleep less, but this has other negative effects on their health. Alcohol also reduces REM sleep, and it is not uncommon for patients with this condition to take up drinking.

Between the deep sleep and the vivid dream sleep there are two intermediate levels which are really neither. They tend to consist of disjointed images, trivial dreams or shallow thought. As we grow older, the experience in these sleep phases tend to become more and more thought-like, and it is not uncommon for people to wake up thinking they have not slept at all, despite having spent several hours in alpha and (mostly) theta sleep. As we age, this part of the sleep also takes up more and more of the time as the two others slowly dwindle.

***

It varies greatly how much sleep a person needs. Babies need more than children, children more than adults, adults a bit more than elders, and teenagers a lot more than they believe. The highly intelligent often need less sleep than others. But there are also great variations among families, and even individuals. So anything between four and ten hours is probably OK if you feel awake and refreshed when you wake up (or shortly after).

What is not OK, however, is a sudden change in sleep patterns. I don’t mean from night to night, but changes over the course of weeks or months. Changes in sleep patterns are among the first signs of psychosis, before disturbances in behavior. But there is also the risk that your hormones may be affected by some kind of disease, including tumors. So if you need a lot more or less sleep than you did half a year ago, on a regular basis, you should absolutely talk to a health professional or two. Since sleep problems are ubiquitous, your doctor may not listen if you are vague on this point. Make it clear that this is not a matter of sleeping in a new bed or having stress at work. (Unless, of course, that is the truth.)

***

There are several ways of dealing with insomnia or simply trying to get by on less sleep. The most obvious is the nap. If you have periods during the day when you are so tired that you almost black out, consider if it is possible to find a shielded place and nap for a few minutes. Napping for five or ten minutes is likely to restore your energy to a surprisingly high degree. In fact, this is generally more likely to leave you wide awake than longer naps of half an hour or more.

A related technique is to sit and close your eyes while holding an object in one of your hands. Empty your mind completely – this should be easy when you are super sleepy –  and give yourself over to sleep. When the object falls down, you will wake from the sound, or from the feeling of losing it. (Probably not wise to use an expensive vase for this – I use a plastic soda bottle with a little water in and the cap on. A bell would obviously be perfect. You can also tie some smaller object to your finger with a thread, which will wake you without making a loud sound.) You may not actually need to fall asleep, the point is having a way that ensures you will wake up if you do. A couple minutes of passing through the borderlands of sleep may be enough.

It would seem that the transition into and out of sleep is itself a particularly potent phase, as demonstrated by this “power nap” technique. We don’t know exactly why this is. Esoteric tradition says that information is passed between the conscious self and the greater soul (subconscious) at the moment of falling asleep and of waking up, but brainwave scans fail to show any such moment: The brain produces alpha waves that gradually get more and more mixed with theta waves, and you may address the test subject at any time in this sliding scale and they will return seamlessly to waking. In the case of intense bouts of sleepiness, however, there is subjectively a moment of falling asleep (or not) which is clearly perceived.

Another practice is sleeping twice rather than once. For instance you may return from work, sleep for three hours, stay up into the small hours, and sleep three hours again, yet perform as well as you otherwise would with seven or eight hours of sleep. Some people find this quite effective, while others find it horribly uncomfortable and quickly give up. It depends mainly on how much your body follows the circadian rhythm. Some people have great changes in body temperature over the course of the day, while others have rather small changes. The first group seem doomed to having at least one fairly long sleep, while the second group can split theirs into two or even more, and get away with less sleep overall.

Finally, there is meditation and brainwave entrainment, which I have some experience with. Neither of these can replace sleep, but both can reduce the need for sleep to some degree. If you get up an hour earlier in the morning and meditate for half an hour, you will usually be more rested, awake and alert than when you slept an hour longer. However, you cannot meditate for two hours and skip four hours of sleep; well, most people cannot, at least. Gurus who spend much of their day in deep meditation may need as little as a couple hours of sleep each night.

Brainwave entrainment offers the possibility to enter brainwave states that are usually only available during sleep, such as delta with its slow, large brainwaves that span most of the sleeping brain. Such entrainment may require some experience to make the full use of, and is best combined with meditation. Even without meditation, however, a great degree of entrainment will occur after about 8 minutes, as long as you don’t harbor primal emotions (fear, anger, lust or disgust). The entrainment starts in an area near the top of the brain stem, and the reptile brain with its primal emotions lies between this area and the larger brain which we want to entrain. It is in other words a practical rather than moral problem, if that helps.

Audio-based entrainment can be used in bed (especially if you are alone there) – binaural beats require headphones while monaural and isochronic can be delivered either over speakers, headphones or ear plugs. The benefit of this approach is that it is easier to fall asleep when you know you don’t need to. Since the delta entrainment will anyway ensure some of the benefits of deep sleep (just not all), you will not panic if you stay awake.

For the duration of your staying awake, your brain will be influenced by the sound pulse. During sleep, however, the 90-minute sleep cycle will to a great degree overrule any external impulses, so you will still experience vivid dreams etc. This is based on my personal experience. I have seen claims that deep sleep is deeper when there is delta entrainment going on, but I don’t have any reliable research at hand that proves this, and cannot attest it from personal experience. It seems to me that brainwave entrainment is most effective in the period leading up to sleep, and in the morning. It may be a good idea to have a sound track that times out but is easy to restart.

This concludes today’s lecture. ^_^

For further and even weirder reading, an external link: The Mystery of Sleep and the lucky few who don’t need it.

 

The unexamined life

Posted on by
Reply

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.

 

Happy time-twisting

Posted on by
Reply

The universe is full of life!

“The infinite space is full of various forms of life.” So there is nothing strange about me writing about a reincarnated Pleiadean. It is a work of fiction, after all. At least I hope so!

The independent thought streams in my head, even the guest writers, can be pretty impressive. Take the muse I wrote about two entries ago, which was telling his story as a TSI (fictive name for Happy Science) member who discovered that he actually came from the Pleiades.

So I just bought a new book that has quietly become available from Happy Science, Secrets of the Everlasting Truths. The book goes in some detail about how Ryuho Okawa has found a way to explore outer space through interviewing humans who are reincarnated aliens. Most of them, he notes, are from the Pleiades and Vega.

Given that I just bought this book, it is not particularly surprising that I write a fanfic in which the main character is a reincarnated Pleiadean. Well, except for the small detail that I wrote that first and discovered the book afterwards.

***

In all fairness, this is not the first time Okawa mentions Pleiadeans and soul migration between planets. I (or my muse) did not simply make this up, there have been mentions in passing in two of his earlier books, although I can’t remember if he actually combined them back then. Now he declares that there is a number of these around already, as it also is in my story, and he spends a whole lecture on this phenomenon. He also mentions that time is not a straight line, but we already knew that.

It is one of those coincidences again. I have those from time to time, and they are usually not religious in nature (if one can call soul interviews of reincarnated aliens “religion” – it is kind of … not what most religions do.) Like one day I was taking a walk and thinking about how the world would have been if the tricycle had take off instead of the bicycle (still not sure why it didn’t, trikes are a lot more stable). While I was still elaborating on this scenario in my mind, the first adult tricycle I had seen in the area came into view. I had lived there for years and never seen an adult tricycle, nor had I thought about them for all those years. But as soon as I think about it… !

Several times I have dreamed about things that would make perfect sense to dream about, if they had only happened the day before instead of the day after the dream. I am not sure this is even supernatural: If we accept that time really is a dimension, then the sequence of past, present and future are necessarily continuous. Each part is “glued” to the parts before and after it. I have used the image of magnetism in the past: A magnet will easily attract a needle, but a needle also attracts the magnet. Usually the magnet does not move toward the needle, because the magnet is heavy and the needle is light. But if the magnet is placed precariously and the needle is stuck to something, once in a blue moon the magnet might move toward the needle instead of the other way around.

Let me take another example, which happened at the workplace where I was making my famous debt collection software suite. It is so long ago that we used cassettes for music. (They were self-enclosed audio tapes, popular before the age of the CD and some way into it, although they quickly disappeared when MP3 players arrived.) I had a combined cassette player and radio, and was playing one of my favorite songs back then, “Why Worry” by Dire Straits. After I finished playing that, I switched to radio. The radio was playing “Why Worry” – the same song I had been playing. I have heard that song only two or three times on radio, to the best of my knowledge. (I think I would have noticed, for it was special to me for many years. I actually bought my first CD player because I wore out the tapes by playing that one song repeatedly, then spooling back to play it again. This is much easier on a CD. ^_^)

So the time-switch between reading the book and writing the fanfiction is not in any way proof that Ryuho Okawa really is what he claims to be, the god of this world, chief of the powers of the invisible realm that surrounds our planet. But it kind of underscores his point that science still has a ways to go, I think.

I may be back with a full review of the book later, perhaps.

Problems of our time

Posted on by
11

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?

Posted on by
Reply

 “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?

Posted on by
2

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?