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Neko

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Do we have too many choices? 


Throughout most of human history, we had few choices, if any, and that was often grim, but now we have endless choices for just about everything, with more being added every day; is that making us any happier? A FEW choices are undeniably a good thing, but...

When you want to watch something at 8PM, and it takes you until 8:10PM just to read through all the available shows, 99% of which you've never heard of and would never want to watch, are you GLAD to have 200 channels available?

When you're grocery shopping, and you go to the snacks aisle looking for potato chips, does it make you happy to have to look through 50 sorts of chips before you find what you want?

Do you like going to the drug store for a bottle of shampoo and being confronted with a WALL of choices, not just the different brands and maybe a few choices of fragrances, which was what we had just a few years ago, but multiple "formulas" for each brand?

Beyond a certain point, more choices stops meaning that you have a better chance of getting what you want, and starts meaning that you have to invest steadily more time and thought into picking an option without getting anything that is better significantly, or at ALL, than was available when there were just a handful of choices.

Scarily, having more choices in food has actually been shown to lead to obesity; the more kinds of food we have available, the more we eat. Given the popularity of gigantic buffet restaurants, the ever-growing list of menu options in what used to be "hamburger joints" (and at all other eateries as well), the existence in malls of as many places to eat as to shop, there being more types of food in the grocery store than you could eat in a decade, and the ever-increasing size of the average American, I don't think we even NEEDED studies on this issue to prove it.

An interesting article in Parade of all places (no, I do NOT normally read it, lol) points out that the wild increase in the # of choices for everything has led to a decrease in the "happiness" quotient, an INcrease in depression, an increase in our expectations that causes a DEcrease in satisfaction, and the creeping sense that, whatever we choose, we're missing out because there might have been a "better" choice.

An odd aspect of the choices issue is that the rush by every company to give more choices often eliminates the products and services that were what we liked in the first place. In MY experience, for example: The long-distance carriers each have an insane list of elaborate calling plans, but you can no longer get a plan with no monthly fee from most of them, so I'm left with an ancient plan that they keep raising the rates on because it's STILL cheaper than any of the currently available plans (based on my calling pattern). If I'm stuck trying to find food from limited choices, like in an airport waiting area or from vending machines, I'll be unable to find anything familiar because there are so many new choices that are given priority for the available space. I couldn't count the # of products, from lotion to foundation to hair color, where the variety I loved got eliminated because they just HAD to make one product into a LINE of products, or make the old line BIGGER, and for some reason NEVER keep any of the old varieties in the new line. There are a zillion colors of nail polish available, but if I want just the right shade of pink I'm out of luck, because the addition of the blues and greens and such means that there are far fewer traditional colors on display, so my actual # of "real choices" has been REDUCED.


Americans LOVE novelty, so new choices are generally money-makers; that's why we have so many. We can expect the # of choices to continue to escalate, and some of that will undeniably be good (in health care, for example), but much of the rest of it will just be a pain in the butt.


Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Synchronicity 


The first time I ever heard that word was in the Police song of the same name; I first heard what it meant when one of the MTV VJ's defined it. It seemed silly to my teenaged mind; why should things be connected somehow just because they happened at the same time?

Jung is the creator of this concept, and an example he gives of it in action is a patient telling him about a dream that had a scarab beetle in it, and at that same instant a beetle just like it flying into the window of his office. Coincidence? As an adult, I find that I have very limited belief in coincidences, whether claimed by people trying to avoid blame for wrongdoing or seen in events like thinking of someone you haven't spoken to in ages and having the phone ring and it's them.

I don't subscribe to the full Jungian concept of ALL "similar" things that happen at the same time being connected (in circumstances where there are a limited # of choices, you'll have events "match up" periodically as a matter of course), but part of how the universe works, I think, is sort of like a coin-sorter; in the same way that coins roll along and fall into the slots that are designed for them, possible events tend to end up in the "slots" that fit THEM... and by your actions, words and thoughts you can "create slots" into which events might "fall." You can also "fall" into the slots created by OTHER people, of course, as happens when you are the one making the call to the person who just thought about you for the first time in 2 years.

It seems most likely to me that the slots are created by psychic energy (by which I mean "the projected energy of thoughts," not ESP per se, although it COULD certainly be related to telepathy), although they could also be a result of something like your thoughts being able to alter the underlying structures of the universe (in a way analogous to the way that gravity warps the fabric of space)... or maybe it's a little of both. It's entirely possible that our thoughts do more than create the slots (which after all are just passive receptacles for things to happen in); we may be able to set events in motion this way as well. Quantum physics shows us that we can alter events just by witnessing them, so it's not too big of a stretch to visualize our being able to alter events by just thinking about them withOUT seeing them (it's got to be our brains that make things happen, not our eyeballs), and if we can alter events, how big of a leap is it think that perhaps we can also alter reality to CREATE events that wouldn't otherwise have happened?

In my personal philosophy, this ties in with the workings of karma; that's gonna take quite a bit of explaining, though, and won't be dealt with until I have more time to post.


Monday, January 05, 2004

Past history in our present lives 


It's more than just evil that repeats itself, of course-all sorts of things in our lives follow repeating patterns. People tend to not notice the patterns, much less USE them to make intelligent analyses, but they ARE there.

A man forgets his anniversary with his woman, her birthday, Christmas, and Valentine's Day (or at least forgets to do anything about them until 12 hours before the "deadline") with total consistency; she is shocked and upset every single time. A woman is always late leaving the house; her man is stressed and belligerent every time. Sound familiar? People will go through these sorts of dramas literally hundreds or THOUSANDS of times, treating each time as a fresh offense, and, worse, an offense that they can do nothing about.

Firstly, you need to accept that the personality of every adult in your life is pretty much set in stone, so whatever they're doing now they can be expected to do on every similar occasion FOREVER. There's no need to be surprised or stressed each time; you KNOW it's going to happen, because no matter what you say, or what they promise, they're still the same person and will act according to the same patterns (yes, I know that people CAN change their behavior, but they're very rarely motivated to even TRY, much less succeed and resist relapsing).

Secondly, there ARE things you can do: you can prompt a person who doesn't remember about gifts (and cards and making plans in advance) every day for weeks if necessary, so that it's not POSSIBLE for them to be empty-handed when the magic moment arrives, and you can give the always-late person a faked departure time and/or stand over them and insist that they get ready well before the time they think they need to (and yes, these things ARE doable and work pretty well-I have to do them all the time). If it's not worth this sort of effort to avoid the unpleasant consequences, admit it to yourself, accept that these things really aren't so bad, resign yourself to the certain knowledge that you will be enduring them forever, and that they won't kill you, and DON'T freak out every time or act as if you're being personally insulted each time a human being acts according to their normal pattern.

What about the patterns in your OWN life? How many times do you have to be wrongly convinced that someone being late coming home means that they're dead in the gutter before you accept that all it means is that they just run late alot (because they're careless, thoughtless, easily distracted, etc)? How many times do you have to meet a new person and declare them to be "the ONE" within a week and have them head for the hills within a month before you realize that you can NOT tell about something so important so soon, AND that maybe your unrealistic analyses are DRIVING them away?

How many times have you thought you knew someone, then found out something totally unexpected, and thought "Now, I REALLY know them," and then you find out something else, and think "Now I really, REALLY know them," etc? You need to accept that, much as you like the idea of knowing all about someone, it takes a LONG time to achieve that, and that final bit of knowledge may only come when they have dissed you and are dumping you... it's best to see getting to know a person as a permanent learning process, and QUIT closing your eyes to the red flags that show up after you convince yourself you know all about them. No matter how wonderful you think someone is, if you see red flags, get ready to RUN; they're virtually ALWAYS a sign that you've been fooled.


This finally brings me to the observation that inspired these last 2 posts; the tendency of people in the fields of science and medicine to believe that whatever facts they have now, and whatever theories they have to explain them, are IT, the full truth... despite the fact that they can look back 50 years, 20 years, 10, even FIVE, and remember that they and their comrades believed just as vehemently in the PREVIOUS theories (which have now been disproven). Why is it so impossible for these ultra-intelligent people to grasp that what they believe now is no more the ultimate truth than what they believed in years past was? It's like Rita Rudner says; when you're really intelligent, sometimes it goes around in a little circle and you're stupid again.

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that these folks know more facts, and have a greater % of "the truth," than laypeople can even dream of... they just need to internalize that the sum total of knowledge is increasing in leaps and bounds, FAR faster than theories can keep up with, and that current theories are often based on incomplete or obsolete data. I'll be a really happy camper the day they stop saying "the explanation is" and start saying "our best current analysis is."

I'm not packing my tent up quite yet, though... ;-)


Sunday, January 04, 2004

History repeats itself, and those who will not learn from history... 


My favorite example of this is how Hitler failed to grasp the significance of what happened when Napoleon tried to invade Russia in the winter; it's lucky for the world that evil is at its base stupid, or at least plagued with blind spots in crucial areas due to the arrogance and/or psychosis of the evildoers, or Hitler would have been able to commit far more atrocities than he actually did.

Much of the suffering in the world is caused by evil (or amoral) people doing the same, or escalating, evil things over and over, almost always enabled by authorities who see no need to try to UNmotivate the wrongdoer from misbehaving again, by observers who don't want to get involved, and by victims who willfully ignore reality and so stay in the line of fire (and, no, this does NOT mean that victims are to blame, just that through their own foolishness they often make it easier for baddies to victimize them).

Most criminals have a long history of unacceptable behavior, much of which was dismissed in their youth as "boys will be boys" (and that's just when things got REPORTED, which so often doesn't happen because of young people not wanting to be "tattletales"), and most of which is unaddressed when they're adults because of witnesses not wanting to invest the time to do what's right or risk incurring the wrath of the wrongdoers, and victims being too ashamed to report what has been done to them, or telling themselves that it's not worth the effort to try to get the wrongdoers in trouble... and, sadly, the "don't be a tattletale" nonsense still exists in adulthood, keeping the mouths of victims sealed when the offender is someone they know.

Authorities tend to ignore, or only give a slap on the wrist for, the earlier misdeeds of criminal types, which then allows them to do worse and worse things until they HAVE to be prosecuted... for crimes that could have been prevented if those in charge paid attention to the pattern and kicked some butt BEFORE a major crime occurred. (The passing of anti-stalking laws is a rare exception to all this, implemented because the evidence that a stalker, if not stopped, will often commit a violent crime against the stalkee, got so huge, and public outrage over the stalkees not getting help BEFORE they were attacked or even killed got so intense, that elected officials were FORCED to act.)

The sorts of bad behaviors that get kids suspended from school, and employees fired, are usually the culmination of a LONG list of misdeeds, with all sorts of trouble caused and people abused that could easily have been prevented with a logical procedure in place... but, authorities are nearly always hesitant to USE their authority, and prefer to let disruptive, harmful acts go on and on rather than face the perpetrator for 30 seconds and say "Knock it off or you're OUT." When finally FORCED to take action, the authority is likely to STILL not do what's necessary; instead, they'll implement new rules that apply to everyone, or lecture everyone, or impose restrictions on everyone, rather than just dealing with the ONE person who is a problem. If they DO talk to the troublemaker, either they get so touchy-feely and New Age-y that it's more like a lovefest than a butt-kicking, or they'll allow themselves to be sidetracked by the wild excuses and fingerpointing that the troublemaker responds with, leading to no disciplinary action being taken, or, worse, all sorts of innocent people being called on the carpet while the troublemaker laughs up his sleeve... and gets away with it again, and goes on to do it again, and then some.

Even online, where the authority never needs to look anyone in the eye, you see in nearly every forum, message board, club, etc, rules about not flaming and attacking others... and people, often in a group, doing exactly THAT, and the admin(s) taking no action unless is gets REALLY bad and drags on and on, at which point they'll take EVERYONE to task, including the VICTIM(S), such that the troublemakers still come out way ahead, having gotten away with endless PUBLIC ugly behavior AND gotten the victim(s) in trouble-and they'll remember that the next time a prospective victim shows up.

In all these cases, the wrongdoer does as they please, gets away with it, and goes on to do it again, or something even worse... and then people wonder "How was something this awful allowed to happen?" and "How was this dreadful person allowed to run around free doing things like this?"

This sort of stuff occurs within relationships as well; people tell themselves "So (s)he lied to, cheated on, stole from, beat up past romantic partners-that doesn't mean (s)he'll do it to ME," and "So, (s)he did dirt to a friend-that's no reason for them not to still be MY friend," and "So, (s)he has done some terrible things-there's no need to kick them out of MY life for that, they've been nice to ME." This eventually turns into, "OK, so (s)he lied to, cheated on, betrayed, mistreated, beat up on ME once (twice, 3 times, 10 times, 100 times)... that doesn't mean (s)he'll do it again, much less do anything worse, or that I should end the relationship."

OH YES IT ***DOES***!!

One of the things I most wish I could drill into the heads of every person on the planet is: Past behavior DOES indicate what future behavior will be; people who show that they are capable of bad behavior have PROVEN that they'll behave badly in the future, not just in that way but usually in other, worse ways as well. If you see that someone has done ANYTHING ugly, deliberately and for which they do not show SINCERE remorse AND get busy making up for, this is a WARNING-you need to get this person out of your life before that ugliness gets turned on YOU... because it ALWAYS will be in the end.

If you fail to kick that person out of your life, as MOST people sadly fail in this area, you have given that person tacit permission to target YOU, and are thus not worthy of much sympathy when it's YOUR turn to get abused... and no, excuses like "He's my friend," "We've known each other for years," "She did so much for me" and, the battered woman's classic, "I LOVE him," do NOT excuse you from using common sense in choosing who gets to be in your life. The wrongdoer is of course ALWAYS fully responsible for their own behavior, but if you knowingly allow them to be in your life AFTER you know what they're capable of, it's YOUR fault that YOU were the chosen victim.

If you're someone who's in authority somewhere, whether it's at a school, a workplace, or just an online forum, save yourself, and everyone you're responsible for, ALOT of grief; the FIRST time you see someone act up, take the wrongdoer and ONLY the wrongdoer aside (do NOT penalize the victim(s)), and tell them "This is NOT acceptable behavior, and if I see you step out of line again in ANY way, you're OUT"... and then ENFORCE that if necessary. Ethically, morally, and in many instances LEGALLY, you are seen as responsible for what goes on under your control, so take action BEFORE it gets out of hand.

If you're a parent, and discover that your child has done something that could get them in trouble, do NOT brush it off as "high spirits" or "harmless pranks" or "boys will be boys"; kick some butt!! At no age, and under no circumstances, is bad behavior acceptable, and if your kid gets kicked out of school, fired from their job, or faces legal action as a result or someone reporting them for behavior YOU knew about, or as a result of you letting them see that some sorts of bad behavior are ok, YOU are at fault; you're supposed to be the adult, so ACT like it and set and enforce proper rules. Kids WANT you to set limits, and their misbehavior will continue, and escalate, until SOMEONE makes them stop... better YOU than a judge, right?

A final note, a PLEA, to women; if a man raises his hand to you, even ONCE, that has GOT to be the END. Even if he makes the $, even if there are kids (ESPECIALLY if there are kids-most men (about 85%) who abuse a woman will eventually abuse the kids too), you have to get away from him, because he WILL do it again, and worse, if you stay. It doesn't matter what sort of melodramatic tears, promises and gifts he comes up with-LEAVE. It doesn't matter if he's the rare one who will go into therapy, because even professionals have found it impossible to "fix" a man that hits; get out while you still can, PLEASE!! It doesn't matter how much you "love" him, history WILL repeat, and you have to love YOURSELF enough to learn that before it's too late.


Saturday, January 03, 2004

Phlogiston anyone? 


According to the December 2003 Discover magazine, the universe is made up of only about 4% matter as we know it; 23% is supposedly invisible stuff called "dark matter," and the other 73% is the equally-invisible "dark energy." Say WHAT?!! Does anyone else find this to be a somewhat extreme explanation for some of the data the astronomers have been churning out? How about the idea that some of their theories are just WRONG, and that's why so much of what they are seeing doesn't match what their theories predict?

They've already discovered that the laws of physics don't apply at the quantum level, that Newton's 3rd law does NOT actually describe how gravity works (it just gives an answer correct to several decimal places under some circumstances), AND that objects, such as our own probes, that exit our solar system stop following the laws of physics as currently accepted... do you think at some point they'll admit that they're WRONG about some of this stuff and start from scratch to find the TRUTH?

Do you know what their "evidence" of the existence of dark matter is? I'll quote from Discover: "Observations of the way galaxies move and rotate show that they seem to be surrounded by a vast amount of unseen matter." Oh, it couldn't be that the mathematical model they're using is WRONG, could it? These bozos are no better than their predecessors in the world of science who thought that anything that was flammable contained a substance called "phlogiston" that was released when it burned.

Their "evidence" for dark energy boils down to "we don't know why the universe is expanding, but something in Einstein's theory says it could be caused by this unknown form of energy," backed up by their interpretations of "microwaves left over from the early universe."

Being a reasonable person with GREAT respect for science, I'll admit they MIGHT be right, but, to quote Discover again, "The universe is not just strange but truly weird-weirder than even the boldest theorists would have guessed less than a decade ago"... in other words, much that they were CERTAIN about less than TEN years ago has been turned on its ear!! As scientists so often are, they are sure that what they believe rightthismoment is the REAL truth, but the statistical likelihood is that less than a decade from NOW, I'll be reading in Discover how wildly different they say the universe is than they're claiming it is TODAY. Wanna lay a bet on that?


When it comes to the very small (quantum physics) and the very large (astrophysics), we have alot of data but few (if any) solid, logical theories to cover and explain it; this is scary in a way, but also VERY exciting, because it means that we're getting sophisticated enough to start seeing some of the "magic" in the universe, and that is the first step to REALLY seeing the truth.


Friday, January 02, 2004

What are little ghosts made of? 


To prevent confusion in this and my future posts on this topic, let me make clear: when I say "spirit," "ghost" or "soul," I mean "a part of a living being other than the physical body, that survives when the body is dead." There are religious details about souls in many people's minds, some believe in the existence of things called spirits that are demons rather than any part of a human, and some only see visible apparitions as ghosts, rather than looking at all departed souls that way, but *I* will ignore those shadings of meaning, as they have no meaning in MY frame of reference, and so will use these words interchangeably.

I sometimes wonder how I would analyze the issue of the existence of spirits if I hadn't had experiences with them myself; I suppose I'd sum it up as something like "people want to believe that their loved ones aren't really gone when they're dead, and don't want to just fade to black when THEY die, so they see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe... and include the idea of an afterlife and/or reincarnation in their religious doctrines for good measure."

However, having seen and heard spirits, and observed them acting upon physical objects (with other witnesses in several cases, just FYI), there can be no doubt for me that they DO exist... but what are they "made of"? They'd need to be some sort of energy, but what sort of energy can be seen, make sounds, and act upon objects? Heck, there isn't even a scientifically-detected form of energy that can move objects around, much less one that can also be seen and heard, so we're talking about at LEAST one unknown form of energy, and still need to explain how sound waves appear without a physical generator, how light collects itself to form visible figures (in the absence of holodeck technology), and how light is somehow canceled out when spirits appear as shadow-type forms.

No currently-known form of energy can do so many different things, so we're either looking at several unknown forms of energy at work, or one unknown form of energy that is VERY different from the energies we're familiar with, and thus able to create sights and sounds AND act on physical objects.

How is all this energy controlled? There is no physical brain for a spirit, no place for the electro-chemical magic that stores memories, thinks, feels, and controls the functions of the body for living people to take place, and yet somehow they DO have memory, understanding, knowledge, and a host of abilities, so... some part of "ghostly anatomy" must be dedicated to being something like a brain.

It's tempting to try to invent possible ways that this could all work, but I resist because I want my mind to remain open to any eventual evidence that might appear about the "physics of ghosts," including the possible connections between ghosts and other areas of "the unknown."


Thursday, January 01, 2004

IS there an omniverse? 


Technically, since "omniverse" means "all the universes," even if there's only one universe there IS an omniverse, made up of that one universe. (Whew, try saying THAT 10 times fast!!)

Technicalities aside, is there an omniverse in the way it's meant to mean, multiple universes? Well...

There's some mathematical gobbledygook dealing with dimensions beyond 3 that supposedly means that multiple universes are possible, or likely, or even certain, depending on who's talking about it.

There are some quantum physics oddities that seem, at least to my non-physicist mind, to make more sense if there are other universes; for example, the unexplained ability of certain sorts of particles to pop in and out of existence would seem less crazy if the particles were going into another universe and back, rather than just going to NOWHERE and coming back.

I've seen spirits, and have to wonder where they exist when not visible to humans; are they floating invisibly all around us in this universe, or are they primarily in "some other plane of existence"? One or more universes for them to exist in seems entirely possible; they've gotta be SOMEWHERE, and if they're all around us but undetectable by our senses or science, that opens just as big of a can of worms as the idea of other dimensions.

I don't consider this question provable at this time, but every day science shows us that our reality is more complex and weird than previously dreamed of, so, if I had to cast a vote on this issue, I'd say, yes, there ARE other dimensions/universes/planes of existence.


Hello, and welcome to my personal corner of the omniverse!! :-) 


In case you were wondering, "omniverse" is a term used by some scifi/fantasy geeks to mean "all of the universes" (I first saw it in a Heinlein book, I think). I've adopted it as the URL for my blog to signify the wide range of my intended topics, and as a "warning" that some of what you'll see here will look like something out of speculative fiction (it will certainly be speculative, but it will NOT be fiction-it'll be my attempt to explain aspects of reality).

If you are offended by reading anything that differs from what your religious/spiritual viewpoint tells you is true, or about alternative lifestyles, differing political philosophies, or blunt criticism of other things you hold dear, this is NOT the blog for you; please just move along, rather than reading further and getting offended. If your mind is open, and you'd like to see what another open, and somewhat hyperactive, mind is churning out, read on; I hope you'll enjoy your time here.





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