Saturday, October 29, 2005
Odds and ends
I saw a program on the A&E channel tonight called "The Secret Life of Vampires"; as I'd hoped, it had lots of bits with Don Henrie, the hot vampire from last year's wildest reality series, "Mad, Mad House." There was one other intriguing thing on the show; one of the so-called psychic vampires had described how she causes interference on cell phones, and drains batteries just by being near them... and the next time they tried to film her, they ALLEGEDLY got weird interference in their camera, and ALLEGEDLY their freshly-recharged batteries died. I can't prove if it really happened or was just a stunt in the otherwise serious-seeming documentary, but let's imagine for a moment that it DID happen; what about that woman could have caused it? I've read about this sort of thing on vampire sites, and according to them the reason why it happens is that it's natural for them to be able to absorb energy, electrical as well as psychic; could there be some shred of truth to that? Not necessarily that they're somehow "consuming" the energy, but that they're drawing it to them, or even just doing something to make it dissipate? It should be easy to test, but no scientist will touch a thing like that with a 10-foot pole, so we may never know.
Kudos go out to the folks at Tic Tac for their clever new ads, which I also saw tonight; they've got girls taking several Tic Tacs and using their tongues to balance them in a stack or juggle them, to show how fun and exciting the little mints supposedly are... if there was every anything a girl could do to make sure every man in sight wants her, it's that sort of demonstration of oral dexterity, but alas guys, it's obviously just a special effect.
And speaking of kudos; it was with great pleasure that I heard today that George Takei, who played Sulu in the original "Star Trek," the man who gave me one of the biggest thrills of my early life with that bare-chested scene he did with the sword, came out as gay:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/28/people.georgetakei.ap/index.html
I'm so happy for him that he felt able to do this at long last, and I'm also pleased to think that there must be alot of gay scifi fans who're holding their heads up a little higher now (and that goes double for gay Asian kids, who are sadly lacking in role models). As both a lifetime Trek fanatic and supporter of the gay community, I'm thrilled that it turns out that one of the regulars in the greatest scifi series of all times was gay, even if we didn't find out until a few decades later.
And one more bit of fab news; there's going to be a Criss Angel Halloween special!! It's a good thing I was watching A&E tonight, or I'd never have seen the ads for it; I wouldn't want to miss this, especially since they're going to put him in a ... well, I'll leave it as a surprise. Granted that he's sort of in costume year-round, but I still wonder if he's going to dress up, preferably as something that'd truly suit him... maybe as a Chippendale's dancer? I'm going to go and give that idea further consideration... ahhhhhhhhhhh.......
Kudos go out to the folks at Tic Tac for their clever new ads, which I also saw tonight; they've got girls taking several Tic Tacs and using their tongues to balance them in a stack or juggle them, to show how fun and exciting the little mints supposedly are... if there was every anything a girl could do to make sure every man in sight wants her, it's that sort of demonstration of oral dexterity, but alas guys, it's obviously just a special effect.
And speaking of kudos; it was with great pleasure that I heard today that George Takei, who played Sulu in the original "Star Trek," the man who gave me one of the biggest thrills of my early life with that bare-chested scene he did with the sword, came out as gay:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/28/people.georgetakei.ap/index.html
I'm so happy for him that he felt able to do this at long last, and I'm also pleased to think that there must be alot of gay scifi fans who're holding their heads up a little higher now (and that goes double for gay Asian kids, who are sadly lacking in role models). As both a lifetime Trek fanatic and supporter of the gay community, I'm thrilled that it turns out that one of the regulars in the greatest scifi series of all times was gay, even if we didn't find out until a few decades later.
And one more bit of fab news; there's going to be a Criss Angel Halloween special!! It's a good thing I was watching A&E tonight, or I'd never have seen the ads for it; I wouldn't want to miss this, especially since they're going to put him in a ... well, I'll leave it as a surprise. Granted that he's sort of in costume year-round, but I still wonder if he's going to dress up, preferably as something that'd truly suit him... maybe as a Chippendale's dancer? I'm going to go and give that idea further consideration... ahhhhhhhhhhh.......
Friday, October 28, 2005
Evil strikes one of my blog friends
When I went to the site of one of my long-time blog buddies, let's call him Jack, eager as always to see his latest articulate, interesting post, I found instead an announcement that he was abandoning his blog, along with links to vulgar, ugly posts about him on another blog that included links to his site. Stunned, I read back through Jack's posts to see if there was any mention of an issue with that person, or anything they could possibly be reacting to to bring on such vitriol, but none of them contain anything about the other blogger, or anything that could be seen as offensive or belligerent. I forced myself to re-read the semi-literate ravings on the other site, to see if there was some mention of, say, a forum that they both post at, or anything that might indicate that there'd been a fight somewhere else online, or even in real life (they apparently live in the same city), but couldn't find anything. What, then, could be the reason for the nasty posts?
That's a silly question, of course, because evil people do things just for the sheer joy of BEING evil; it was no surprise to me, therefore, to see that nearly every post on that blog was some sort of badmouthing about someone or something, all replete with foul language and 2nd-grade vocabulary. The really damning thing, though, was that they'd gone on at great length portraying Jack as gay, including twisted sexual references, all with the tone that this was a gargantuan insult; although there are probably a tiny % of people who see being gay as wrong who are good folks who've just been misguided, a good person wouldn't make a post like this... and that told me all I needed to know about the character of the blogger.
Let me make clear that I have no idea what Jack's sexual orientation actually is; it's none of my business, and it doesn't make one bit of difference to me either way... really, since I've always had a thing for gay men (as so many women do, for all the obvious reasons), it'd be a point in his favor to me if he WAS gay. What I DO know is that his posts show him to be an intelligent, educated, well-read man, one who's got lots of things to say that are worth reading and thinking about... and there's the answer to the question of why those hateful posts were made-there's nothing a dumb and spiteful person hates more than an intelligent, eloquent one. As is usually the case, there's a group of like-minded people hanging around to laugh uproariously at the blogger's, and each other's, spewings; people like that will egg each other on endlessly when they've targeted someone superior to them, making themselves feel better by dragging that person down.
My heart goes out to Jack, both because he's been abused and because he's had to give up his blog to escape the abuser(s); there's a little bit of comfort in that he's got another blog, a secret one, where he'll continue to post... but only a limited # of people have been told where it is, so that the turds won't find him and start up again. As part of the secrecy, he's asked me to not link to him, and, while of course I've honored his wishes, it's sad that I can't make it possible for others to see what he has to offer. I've also made the decision to not link to his old blog any more even though there are still a few comments being made there, partly because he won't be posting there anymore, but mostly because I don't want to possibly send anyone else into that situation, to build the overblown ego of the one responsible by more people using the links in the final post to go to their blog and see what they wrote.
I don't have the words to express my disgust and dismay at seeing this sort of thing happen online for the 10 billionth time, especially to a blog buddy; I wish Jack all the best with his new blog, and as for the evildoer... KARMA.
That's a silly question, of course, because evil people do things just for the sheer joy of BEING evil; it was no surprise to me, therefore, to see that nearly every post on that blog was some sort of badmouthing about someone or something, all replete with foul language and 2nd-grade vocabulary. The really damning thing, though, was that they'd gone on at great length portraying Jack as gay, including twisted sexual references, all with the tone that this was a gargantuan insult; although there are probably a tiny % of people who see being gay as wrong who are good folks who've just been misguided, a good person wouldn't make a post like this... and that told me all I needed to know about the character of the blogger.
Let me make clear that I have no idea what Jack's sexual orientation actually is; it's none of my business, and it doesn't make one bit of difference to me either way... really, since I've always had a thing for gay men (as so many women do, for all the obvious reasons), it'd be a point in his favor to me if he WAS gay. What I DO know is that his posts show him to be an intelligent, educated, well-read man, one who's got lots of things to say that are worth reading and thinking about... and there's the answer to the question of why those hateful posts were made-there's nothing a dumb and spiteful person hates more than an intelligent, eloquent one. As is usually the case, there's a group of like-minded people hanging around to laugh uproariously at the blogger's, and each other's, spewings; people like that will egg each other on endlessly when they've targeted someone superior to them, making themselves feel better by dragging that person down.
My heart goes out to Jack, both because he's been abused and because he's had to give up his blog to escape the abuser(s); there's a little bit of comfort in that he's got another blog, a secret one, where he'll continue to post... but only a limited # of people have been told where it is, so that the turds won't find him and start up again. As part of the secrecy, he's asked me to not link to him, and, while of course I've honored his wishes, it's sad that I can't make it possible for others to see what he has to offer. I've also made the decision to not link to his old blog any more even though there are still a few comments being made there, partly because he won't be posting there anymore, but mostly because I don't want to possibly send anyone else into that situation, to build the overblown ego of the one responsible by more people using the links in the final post to go to their blog and see what they wrote.
I don't have the words to express my disgust and dismay at seeing this sort of thing happen online for the 10 billionth time, especially to a blog buddy; I wish Jack all the best with his new blog, and as for the evildoer... KARMA.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Why do people believe rumors?
The October 2005 issue of Cosmo has an article called "The Way Nasty Rumors Start"... but 1st, a quick quiz:
Someone at your office tells you that fellow employee X slept with boss Y. Your reaction is:
A) Wow, X slept with Y!!
B) How do you know-did you SEE them?
If you answered A, you're with pretty much everybody else... if you said B, think back to all the rumors you've been told your entire life, and how you actually responded, and re-think your answer.
The sad truth is that we tend to believe anything we're told, especially if we know the teller reasonably well, even if they offer no shred of proof... not that we think to ASK for proof as a rule. We stupidly trust that anyone we know personally would only tell us things they've personally verified to be true, even though we ourselves don't make that sort of effort for the things WE pass along, and we've seen ample evidence that other people don't either... and, we find gossip exciting, and we enjoy things that are mean-spirited at the expense of anyone who's not our dearest loved ones. Yeah, that's harsh, but the way just about everyone behaves proves that it's true.
WHY are we so quick to believe? One reason is that we're taught that where there's smoke, there's fire; evil people in particular depend on that to cast aspersions on others, because they know that even the most crude and transparent lies will ALWAYS cast doubt in the minds of most as to the virtue of the victim. It's not only the evil who start rumors, of course, and this concept works for whoever uses it; someone might see boss Y place her hand on the shoulder of employee X and truly be foolish enough to believe that that means they're having an affair, and when they pass that foolishness along, no matter how pure and honorable X and Y are, people will NEVER be 100% sure that that affair didn't take place.
Another reason we believe is that our culture trains us to be competitive with everyone about everything, from our income down to which brand of athletic shoes we wear, and if we accept that someone we know is guilty of wrongdoing that gives us a feeling of power and superiority over them; human nature is just that petty.
We also believe because of the pack mentality; we see, or assume, that everyone else has been told and bought the story, and we prefer to do what everyone else is doing, and shrink away from being the one to stand up and declare "This isn't right"... because then WE become the subject of disapproval, and are forever after seen as "not really one of us" by our peer group-a terrifying thought to us on an instinctive level.
In the Cosmo article, Ralph Rosnow, PhD, professor emeritus of psychology at Temple University, said, "The driving force behind a rumor is a deep need to figure out the truth. When you feel anxious and uncertain about a lack of info, your mind goes into over-drive filling in all the missing details." I think this is very likely true in many cases when authority figures are up to something that their underlings (kids, students, employees) want to know about but can't ask, and so have to do the best they can with formulating an explanation, but rumors about personal issues don't arise from anxiety or uncertainty, but from the desire to share a juicy story, and if it hurts people that's jut too bad (or may even be the point).
The article also describes the various ways you can judge the accuracy of the source, which are all obvious things like, "Is this a person who's likely to be in the know about this?"; I think that any marginally intelligent adult can do a decent analysis of which people are likely to have crucial info and be honest about how they pass it along... the problem is that no one DOES that analysis, or thinks any aspect of the rumor through. Someone can say, "John and Jane have a bondage dungeon in their basement," and people go "WOW, who thought they were such perverts?" rather than "Wait a minute, what proof is there that this person was ever in John and Jane's house? Why should we believe any supposedly secret info they tell us about John and Jane?".
A more important point the article makes is another of the basic truths that every evil person knows; if you present a tiny crumb of truth with a lie, people are pathetically willing to believe the most horrific stories based on virtually anything. The example given is, "When you see a photo of two celebrities kissing... reporters assign it meaning-such as 'Did they elope?-which you in turn believe because you have the photographic proof. The thought process is 'I saw it with my own eyes, therefore it must be true.'" I've read many articles about how witnesses to crimes are often wildly wrong about what they saw, and in general our recollections are far less accurate than we think, so seeing some little thing shouldn't lead to us feeling secure in shooting our mouths off to begin with... with the wider issue being that there tend to be many possible interpretations of a little bit of info, and there's just no excuse to latch onto one and pass it along as factual.
A grim truth about rumors is "Regardless of whether or not a rumor is true, the more it's repeated, the more credibility it earns, and the power it holds over its intended target increases." Evil people are all over this concept; they'll tell every person within the peer group, knowing that those people will in turn all talk to each other about it, and every time it's mentioned, the listeners wrongly chalk up one more point in favor of the story, and against the victim... why this is so even when everyone KNOWS that they all got the story from the same person is beyond me, but I've seen it both in real life and on forums-again, everyone seems to think, based on nothing, that the others have all independently verified the story. The explanation given is "Our brains are structured to learn by rote, that is, to remember via repetition"; that's probably true, but I maintain that it's not an excuse.
If it's YOU that the office whispers are about, what should you do? "Surprisingly, while instinct might tell you to refute a false accusation emphatically and repeatedly, desperation to clear your rep may actually reinforce the rumor. 'No amount of denial will put a rumor to rest,' says Levin. 'In fact, the more you "doth protest," the more guilty you will appear.' By cornering everyone... to ensure them that you're innocent... you 'unwittingly perpetuate the rumor by keeping it on everyone's mind'... the more frequently a rumor is repeated, the more credible it becomes." Evil people are of course counting on this one, too, because it's natural for the outraged victims to squawk in protest; the refusal of onlookers to believe the victims, although they were quick to believe the accusers, is a sad comment on human nature, and one of those things that I'll never understand, as I personally will always believe the victim unless VERY convincing evidence says otherwise. The recommended strategy for the victim is "Simply refuse to comment on trivial trash talk by saying once and only once, 'That's ridiculous-and you know it.'" When the people discussing the rumor don't know you well enough to judge what you would or wouldn't really do, I'm guessing that, "Have you been shown any proof? If not, why would you believe a story like that?" would be the best bet.
Where the stakes are really high, like if it could cost you your job, they suggest "Appeal to the most socially-connected person you know and tell them your side of the story. You need credibility on your side to set the record straight, and people will be quick to accept the word of a leader as the truth." Yeah, that's IF they aren't buddies with the rumor-mongers, IF they believe you, IF they consider you worth sticking their neck out for, and IF they truly have that level of power over everyone else... still, in some situations it's probably worth a shot.
What's MY advice? First, make a vow to yourself that you'll never, EVER, give knee-jerk belief to a rumor again, that you'll demand proof (and show some common sense as to what constitutes proof, especially online), AND make it clear to the other people involved that proof is necessary. Second, pass along to everyone you know the importance of them doing these things, and passing it along to everyone THEY know. And finally, when the day comes that YOU are the potential victim, keep your cool, and say, "Here's a perfect example of how nonsense gets passed around without any proof-it's a good thing that we all know better than to believe this sort of stuff." (Needless to say, you have to have done the 1st 2 things for the 3rd to work.)
"Rumor psychology" is one of a sadly long list of examples of how we let ourselves be fooled by, and eagerly assist in the wrongdoings of, the troublemakers of the world; luckily, this is an easy one to combat... what will YOU do about it?
Someone at your office tells you that fellow employee X slept with boss Y. Your reaction is:
A) Wow, X slept with Y!!
B) How do you know-did you SEE them?
If you answered A, you're with pretty much everybody else... if you said B, think back to all the rumors you've been told your entire life, and how you actually responded, and re-think your answer.
The sad truth is that we tend to believe anything we're told, especially if we know the teller reasonably well, even if they offer no shred of proof... not that we think to ASK for proof as a rule. We stupidly trust that anyone we know personally would only tell us things they've personally verified to be true, even though we ourselves don't make that sort of effort for the things WE pass along, and we've seen ample evidence that other people don't either... and, we find gossip exciting, and we enjoy things that are mean-spirited at the expense of anyone who's not our dearest loved ones. Yeah, that's harsh, but the way just about everyone behaves proves that it's true.
WHY are we so quick to believe? One reason is that we're taught that where there's smoke, there's fire; evil people in particular depend on that to cast aspersions on others, because they know that even the most crude and transparent lies will ALWAYS cast doubt in the minds of most as to the virtue of the victim. It's not only the evil who start rumors, of course, and this concept works for whoever uses it; someone might see boss Y place her hand on the shoulder of employee X and truly be foolish enough to believe that that means they're having an affair, and when they pass that foolishness along, no matter how pure and honorable X and Y are, people will NEVER be 100% sure that that affair didn't take place.
Another reason we believe is that our culture trains us to be competitive with everyone about everything, from our income down to which brand of athletic shoes we wear, and if we accept that someone we know is guilty of wrongdoing that gives us a feeling of power and superiority over them; human nature is just that petty.
We also believe because of the pack mentality; we see, or assume, that everyone else has been told and bought the story, and we prefer to do what everyone else is doing, and shrink away from being the one to stand up and declare "This isn't right"... because then WE become the subject of disapproval, and are forever after seen as "not really one of us" by our peer group-a terrifying thought to us on an instinctive level.
In the Cosmo article, Ralph Rosnow, PhD, professor emeritus of psychology at Temple University, said, "The driving force behind a rumor is a deep need to figure out the truth. When you feel anxious and uncertain about a lack of info, your mind goes into over-drive filling in all the missing details." I think this is very likely true in many cases when authority figures are up to something that their underlings (kids, students, employees) want to know about but can't ask, and so have to do the best they can with formulating an explanation, but rumors about personal issues don't arise from anxiety or uncertainty, but from the desire to share a juicy story, and if it hurts people that's jut too bad (or may even be the point).
The article also describes the various ways you can judge the accuracy of the source, which are all obvious things like, "Is this a person who's likely to be in the know about this?"; I think that any marginally intelligent adult can do a decent analysis of which people are likely to have crucial info and be honest about how they pass it along... the problem is that no one DOES that analysis, or thinks any aspect of the rumor through. Someone can say, "John and Jane have a bondage dungeon in their basement," and people go "WOW, who thought they were such perverts?" rather than "Wait a minute, what proof is there that this person was ever in John and Jane's house? Why should we believe any supposedly secret info they tell us about John and Jane?".
A more important point the article makes is another of the basic truths that every evil person knows; if you present a tiny crumb of truth with a lie, people are pathetically willing to believe the most horrific stories based on virtually anything. The example given is, "When you see a photo of two celebrities kissing... reporters assign it meaning-such as 'Did they elope?-which you in turn believe because you have the photographic proof. The thought process is 'I saw it with my own eyes, therefore it must be true.'" I've read many articles about how witnesses to crimes are often wildly wrong about what they saw, and in general our recollections are far less accurate than we think, so seeing some little thing shouldn't lead to us feeling secure in shooting our mouths off to begin with... with the wider issue being that there tend to be many possible interpretations of a little bit of info, and there's just no excuse to latch onto one and pass it along as factual.
A grim truth about rumors is "Regardless of whether or not a rumor is true, the more it's repeated, the more credibility it earns, and the power it holds over its intended target increases." Evil people are all over this concept; they'll tell every person within the peer group, knowing that those people will in turn all talk to each other about it, and every time it's mentioned, the listeners wrongly chalk up one more point in favor of the story, and against the victim... why this is so even when everyone KNOWS that they all got the story from the same person is beyond me, but I've seen it both in real life and on forums-again, everyone seems to think, based on nothing, that the others have all independently verified the story. The explanation given is "Our brains are structured to learn by rote, that is, to remember via repetition"; that's probably true, but I maintain that it's not an excuse.
If it's YOU that the office whispers are about, what should you do? "Surprisingly, while instinct might tell you to refute a false accusation emphatically and repeatedly, desperation to clear your rep may actually reinforce the rumor. 'No amount of denial will put a rumor to rest,' says Levin. 'In fact, the more you "doth protest," the more guilty you will appear.' By cornering everyone... to ensure them that you're innocent... you 'unwittingly perpetuate the rumor by keeping it on everyone's mind'... the more frequently a rumor is repeated, the more credible it becomes." Evil people are of course counting on this one, too, because it's natural for the outraged victims to squawk in protest; the refusal of onlookers to believe the victims, although they were quick to believe the accusers, is a sad comment on human nature, and one of those things that I'll never understand, as I personally will always believe the victim unless VERY convincing evidence says otherwise. The recommended strategy for the victim is "Simply refuse to comment on trivial trash talk by saying once and only once, 'That's ridiculous-and you know it.'" When the people discussing the rumor don't know you well enough to judge what you would or wouldn't really do, I'm guessing that, "Have you been shown any proof? If not, why would you believe a story like that?" would be the best bet.
Where the stakes are really high, like if it could cost you your job, they suggest "Appeal to the most socially-connected person you know and tell them your side of the story. You need credibility on your side to set the record straight, and people will be quick to accept the word of a leader as the truth." Yeah, that's IF they aren't buddies with the rumor-mongers, IF they believe you, IF they consider you worth sticking their neck out for, and IF they truly have that level of power over everyone else... still, in some situations it's probably worth a shot.
What's MY advice? First, make a vow to yourself that you'll never, EVER, give knee-jerk belief to a rumor again, that you'll demand proof (and show some common sense as to what constitutes proof, especially online), AND make it clear to the other people involved that proof is necessary. Second, pass along to everyone you know the importance of them doing these things, and passing it along to everyone THEY know. And finally, when the day comes that YOU are the potential victim, keep your cool, and say, "Here's a perfect example of how nonsense gets passed around without any proof-it's a good thing that we all know better than to believe this sort of stuff." (Needless to say, you have to have done the 1st 2 things for the 3rd to work.)
"Rumor psychology" is one of a sadly long list of examples of how we let ourselves be fooled by, and eagerly assist in the wrongdoings of, the troublemakers of the world; luckily, this is an easy one to combat... what will YOU do about it?
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
The karma and souls of animals
I've always believed that at least some animals have souls, probably many, possibly most, and theoretically all, but the only thought I gave to it was about what you'd look for in a creature, such as the ability to feel love and loyalty, that would suggest the presence of a soul, not about where the energy for those souls might come from... and now, at long last, I'm thinking about it.
Some animals are obviously capable of emotion, and many are capable of thought to various degrees, so the same creation of soul from thought and feeling that applies to humans would apply to them, while leaving lower creatures with no more soul than a rock of the same size would have due to the principles of animism... which is to say, almost none. However, my post of a couple of days ago, in which I discussed how the energy from the electrical impulses that travel along our nerves, since it can't be destroyed, must become part of karma, and possibly of the soul as well, led to me thinking about how animals, down to a very primitive level, have electrical impulses in their bodies too... so whatever effect those impulses have on us, karmically speaking, they should have on them as well.
If it's true that those impulses build the soul, which I haven't been able to build a conclusive argument for or against yet, would that mean that a big creature, such as an elephant or whale, would have a much bigger soul than a cat or a dog... or a human? Size doesn't imply spiritual depth, of course, but it seems like it'd have to mean something given the enormous spectrum of body mass of soul-bearing creatures; I'll be giving alot of thought to WHAT.
Whether or not they join the soul, the impulses have to be joining karma... but does that affect the animals in any way, in other words do animals HAVE karma? If an animal is bad-tempered, aggressive, hurtful (I don't mean in the "it's cruel but it's nature's way" sense, I mean because it has an unpleasant personality), does that bring it bad karma the way that analogous behavior would in a human... and if so, what form does bad karma, or for that matter good karma, take for an animal, if it does exist? Would it receive a heightened awareness of the location of food, water, predators, and shelter, and attract better mates, if it's a sweet-tempered member of its species, and the opposite if it's a badly behaving animal?
There's no way for me to examine the lives of creatures in the wild to try to determine the answers to any of these questions the way I can for humans, so they're going to have to just be food for thought for now as well; it's frustrating, but in the realm of spiritual truths, coming up with the questions is valuable even if you don't have the answers, so I'm pleased to have increased my scope of inquiry if not my level of understanding.
Some animals are obviously capable of emotion, and many are capable of thought to various degrees, so the same creation of soul from thought and feeling that applies to humans would apply to them, while leaving lower creatures with no more soul than a rock of the same size would have due to the principles of animism... which is to say, almost none. However, my post of a couple of days ago, in which I discussed how the energy from the electrical impulses that travel along our nerves, since it can't be destroyed, must become part of karma, and possibly of the soul as well, led to me thinking about how animals, down to a very primitive level, have electrical impulses in their bodies too... so whatever effect those impulses have on us, karmically speaking, they should have on them as well.
If it's true that those impulses build the soul, which I haven't been able to build a conclusive argument for or against yet, would that mean that a big creature, such as an elephant or whale, would have a much bigger soul than a cat or a dog... or a human? Size doesn't imply spiritual depth, of course, but it seems like it'd have to mean something given the enormous spectrum of body mass of soul-bearing creatures; I'll be giving alot of thought to WHAT.
Whether or not they join the soul, the impulses have to be joining karma... but does that affect the animals in any way, in other words do animals HAVE karma? If an animal is bad-tempered, aggressive, hurtful (I don't mean in the "it's cruel but it's nature's way" sense, I mean because it has an unpleasant personality), does that bring it bad karma the way that analogous behavior would in a human... and if so, what form does bad karma, or for that matter good karma, take for an animal, if it does exist? Would it receive a heightened awareness of the location of food, water, predators, and shelter, and attract better mates, if it's a sweet-tempered member of its species, and the opposite if it's a badly behaving animal?
There's no way for me to examine the lives of creatures in the wild to try to determine the answers to any of these questions the way I can for humans, so they're going to have to just be food for thought for now as well; it's frustrating, but in the realm of spiritual truths, coming up with the questions is valuable even if you don't have the answers, so I'm pleased to have increased my scope of inquiry if not my level of understanding.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Mirror mirror
Can you remember at what point in your childhood you started hanging around watching your parents do housework and maintenance tasks, eager to be allowed to help, which eventually led to your having some of those tasks assigned to you? In MY family, it was a different story; my mother plowed through life assuming that no one could do anything right but her, and in particular that *I* couldn't do anything (other than schoolwork) right, and I had no desire to hang around either her or my father, so I didn't get involved out of eagerness to help, and thus the official passing on of the chores never happened. I guess, looking back, that neither of them ever thought to go and drag me out of my room to stand there watching them do anything, and when the standard time for kids to be taught and assigned chores came and went they were so used to handling all the menial tasks of the household and property themselves that it never occurred to them that they'd skipped a step... or rather, an additional step, since they'd also missed the "form a bond with your child" step, but that's a whole other essay. My mother did make a few efforts throughout the years to have me do tasks, though:
She made one attempt in my early childhood that I can recall; she was putting fresh sheets on my bed, and said, "Let's see if you can tuck this blanket in." After a protracted struggle, due to it being bigger than I could comfortably manipulate, and my mother giving endless and confusing instructions, the blanket was on; she said, "Very good... that'll be your job from now on." I was only about 6 at the time, but I learned the lesson well; any new thing I demonstrated that I could do around the house would lead to my being permanently stuck with an unpleasant task... and any chance of my ever voluntarily doing anything died forever at that moment, while my mother was gloating over having tricked a little kid. Her triumph ended up being short-lived, as I never got any better at putting on the blanket, and she quickly tired of having to spend 15 minutes standing over me giving instructions and watching me struggle when she could do it in 15 seconds, so she went back to doing it herself... and I wasn't given the responsibility of putting the sheets and blankets on my bed until I was an adult.
When I was a little older, she decided I should dust a room; when I was done, she declared that the room looked dustier than before I'd done it (I kid you not), and that was the end of that... and she had to re-dust the room herself in the bargain. The few other times she thought to have me do it, a reminder of her previous analysis, and that she'd have to dust anyways, would get her to drop it.
When I reached my teens, she tried having me do the vacuuming; again, she stood there giving instructions, and it quickly became clear that there were only 2 ways I could be doing it in her eyes-not getting close enough to the furniture, and hitting the furniture. Although I never actually hit anything with the vacuum cleaner, she'd lunge repeatedly at whatever I was near and insist that every dent or scratch she could find, all of which were old ones from our various moves, was due to me... and of course pointing out that they WERE old damage, and that she was repeatedly claiming that the same old marks were new, cut no ice. As she was unwilling to either let me near the furniture unsupervised, or to let me just vacuum the center of the room and do the edges herself, that task went back to her as well; once a year or so she'd decide I should do it, but when I sweetly inquired whether she wanted the center of the room done or to get hysterical over the old dings in the furniture, she'd stalk off and do it herself.
And finally, her finest moment; the mirror. Out of the blue one day, she decided that I should clean the bathroom mirror; I was given a full bottle of Windex and a paper towel, and she marched off to do whatever she was up to in her room. I'd never seen a mirror being cleaned in person, but I'd seen it on TV, so, although the mirror looked spotless to me (and probably was, as my mother's firm belief was that something didn't have to have one speck of visible dirt on it to require cleaning), I did what I'd seen in the ads; sprayed the Windex on and wiped it off. When I told my mother I was done, she came charging into the bathroom, announced that it was NOT clean, demanded, "Do it again" and took off. I sprayed, wiped, and called her back in; she gave the same order. So I tried again. And again. And again. Finally, even I could see some white smears on the glass, which was puzzling as I was sure they hadn't been there before, but I couldn't seem to get rid of them; every few minutes, my mother came back to bark with manic glee, "Do it again!! Do it again!!" The glass got cloudier and cloudier, and I sprayed more and more Windex to try to battle this growing mess, but to no avail... until finally, my mother took more than a cursory glance at the mirror, saw that it was SOLID WHITE, and shrieked, "Look what you've done to this mirror!!"
I, with my arms, shoulders and back screaming from all the unaccustomed stretching and exertion, and feeling very much like Sisyphus (even though I don't think I knew who he was at that age), shrieked back; "What do you mean what I'VE done? I've done exactly what you've told me to do, over and over and over!! If there's something wrong, it's because of YOU!!" Her reply was, "This mirror is totally coated-I'm going to have to bring in hot water and a scouring pad and SCRUB it to get all of this off!!" to which my rejoinder was, "You should have thought about that 10 cleanings ago, BEFORE it got this bad." She couldn't deny that, so, as usual, she switched to cursing me and loudly proclaiming my utter worthlessness to distract attention from her culpability, and told me to get out as she stormed past to fetch what she needed from the kitchen, pausing only to berate me for having used ("wasted") nearly an entire bottle of Windex... my response, that it was all used by HER orders, got her switched back to general abusive mode with no further attention to the details. She ranted on and on, not just while scraping the mirror clean but for hours afterwards; she'd finally dried up a little while before my father got home, but as always she got a 2nd wind when he appeared, and rushed to tell him all about it so that we'd have another round of frenzy on the subject... but she forgot that, although evil, he was bright enough to grasp the facts, and those facts pointed to HER being at fault. Their discussion of this topic, which I heard clearly from upstairs, was:
Her: I had to spend an hour scouring the mirror in her bathroom with hot water because she got it all coated.
Him: What did she coat it WITH?
Her: Windex.
Him: What sort of an idiot are you, that you "scoured" a mirror to get some streaks off of it?
Her: It wasn't streaks, it was solid white.
Him: Get outta here, that's impossible!!
Her: No it's not; she wasted an entire bottle of Windex on that mirror.
Him: How could she possibly use an entire bottle of Windex on one mirror?
Her: Because she had to clean it so many times.
Him: WHY did she have to clean it so many times?
Her: Because she wasn't getting it clean.
Him: And you told her to clean the mirror so many times that she used up an entire bottle of Windex?
Her: Yes, she's stupid, and wasn't cleaning it right.
Him: Did you show her how to do it right?
Her: No, I didn't show her anything.
Him: Did you TELL her how to do it right?
Her: No, I just told her to clean it.
Him: And when you SAW that she hadn't done it right, what did you do?
Her: I told her to do it again.
Him: You didn't correct what she was doing?
Her. No.
Him: Why not?
Her: Because I was trying to get her to do it right.
Him: How was she going to do it right when you didn't TELL her how to do it right?
Her: All she had to do was spray and wipe; how was I supposed to know she was never going to figure out how to do it properly?
Him: Because you're supposed to be the goddamned ADULT, and when a child is doing something the wrong way you're supposed to tell them the RIGHT way.
Her: It's perfectly simple, all she had to do was...
Him: I heard you the first time, and if it was so simple how did the mirror end up white?
Her: Well, I don't know, but...
Him: What do you mean you don't KNOW, you don't know that Windex has that little bit of wax in it to make the glass shiny, and that that's what was building up on the mirror?
Her: Of course I do, but she was doing it wrong...
Him: And you stood there and watched her use up a whole bottle of Windex and cover the mirror with wax?
Her: No, I was in our room watching the...
Him: You mean you didn't even watch her one time to see what she was doing wrong?
Her: No, I just kept telling her to do it again.
Him: And you never noticed that the entire bottle of Windex was getting used up?
Her: No, but...
Him: And it never occurred to you that once the wax buildup was visible on the mirror she couldn't GET it clean by spraying on MORE wax?
Her: {silence}
Him: So you just kept telling her to spray more and more Windex on the mirror until it was white?
Her: {silence}
Him: WELL?
Her: Yes, but...
Him: But nothing!! YOU'RE the one who's stupid here!! Some goddamned adult you are, having a frigging kid spend all afternoon and a whole bottle of Windex and not even get the mirror clean!!
Her: I wanted her to learn how to do it!!
Him: All she learned was how to waste Windex, and that her mother's a moron.
Her: She was being stupid...
Him: I told you that YOU were being stupid!! You were too stupid to figure out that the mirror was getting covered in wax, so how did you expect HER to figure it out?
Her: Well who would have thought that she couldn't clean a mirror properly without being told how?
Him: Everyone has some streaks to wipe off after using Windex; all you had to do was tell her to do that, rather than telling her to spray on MORE wax like a frigging idiot.
Her: I wanted her to figure it out herself.
Him: She's not SUPPOSED to "figure out" how to do the tasks she's given, you're supposed to give her instructions and she carries them out; you don't just give her a task and then go watch TV. From now on, if you want her to do a task, you tell her EXACTLY how to do it, and then you stay there and monitor her and correct her errors BEFORE she makes some sort of mess, got it?
Her: I don't have time to tell her every little thing and then stand around watching her do it.
Him: Then you just do it yourself, rather than having her waste all afternoon on something that you could have done in 20 seconds and then wasting YOUR time fixing whatever she screwed up; I don't EVER want to hear that you pulled a stupid stunt like this again!!
Her: {unintelligible mutterings followed by her footsteps on the stairs that told me that she'd flounced away from him}
It wasn't often that he didn't blame everything on me as a matter of course, but in that instance her choosing to get her jollies by telling me "Do it again" over and over and OVER instead of handling the situation in any of the several ways that a mature adult might deal with a child that doesn't know how to properly do a task, and continuing with it to the point that the results already described were allowed to happen, was so excruciatingly stupid that he had no choice but to blame HER.
That was all the mirror-cleaning I did until I got married and moved out many years later; as with the vacuuming, every so often she'd decide I should do it, and I'd ask her if she was in the mood to scrub glass that day... and she'd do it herself. She never did tell me the correct way to clean glass, by the way, I just grasped from what I'd overheard my father saying that I should've gotten a dry paper towel and wiped down the mirror with it once the first hint of white appeared... did I mention that I went through that bottle of Windex with ONE soggy paper towel because that's all she'd given me, lol?
Why didn't my mother ever take 2 minutes to demonstrate glass-cleaning, or any other task, to me so that when she wanted to have me do it I could have in fact done it? I think the main reason was that she truly believed that I wasn't CAPABLE of doing it, because she told me many times that when I had a home of my own I'd be unable to clean it, and making these sorts of dire predictions about my life gave her more joy than passing along some of the housework to me ever would have.
Yes, she's a psycho, and my father was worse, but the upshot of this particular aspect of my childhood is actually positive; unlike virtually every other kid, *I* didn't have to do chores... and considering how unpleasant I've since discovered housework to be, that's a BIG positive. Is that why the mirror story came back to me today, because karma wanted to lead me into seeing that? Maybe, or maybe it was just some random synapse firing that did it; in any case, it can only be good to have a + realization about my childhood, right?
She made one attempt in my early childhood that I can recall; she was putting fresh sheets on my bed, and said, "Let's see if you can tuck this blanket in." After a protracted struggle, due to it being bigger than I could comfortably manipulate, and my mother giving endless and confusing instructions, the blanket was on; she said, "Very good... that'll be your job from now on." I was only about 6 at the time, but I learned the lesson well; any new thing I demonstrated that I could do around the house would lead to my being permanently stuck with an unpleasant task... and any chance of my ever voluntarily doing anything died forever at that moment, while my mother was gloating over having tricked a little kid. Her triumph ended up being short-lived, as I never got any better at putting on the blanket, and she quickly tired of having to spend 15 minutes standing over me giving instructions and watching me struggle when she could do it in 15 seconds, so she went back to doing it herself... and I wasn't given the responsibility of putting the sheets and blankets on my bed until I was an adult.
When I was a little older, she decided I should dust a room; when I was done, she declared that the room looked dustier than before I'd done it (I kid you not), and that was the end of that... and she had to re-dust the room herself in the bargain. The few other times she thought to have me do it, a reminder of her previous analysis, and that she'd have to dust anyways, would get her to drop it.
When I reached my teens, she tried having me do the vacuuming; again, she stood there giving instructions, and it quickly became clear that there were only 2 ways I could be doing it in her eyes-not getting close enough to the furniture, and hitting the furniture. Although I never actually hit anything with the vacuum cleaner, she'd lunge repeatedly at whatever I was near and insist that every dent or scratch she could find, all of which were old ones from our various moves, was due to me... and of course pointing out that they WERE old damage, and that she was repeatedly claiming that the same old marks were new, cut no ice. As she was unwilling to either let me near the furniture unsupervised, or to let me just vacuum the center of the room and do the edges herself, that task went back to her as well; once a year or so she'd decide I should do it, but when I sweetly inquired whether she wanted the center of the room done or to get hysterical over the old dings in the furniture, she'd stalk off and do it herself.
And finally, her finest moment; the mirror. Out of the blue one day, she decided that I should clean the bathroom mirror; I was given a full bottle of Windex and a paper towel, and she marched off to do whatever she was up to in her room. I'd never seen a mirror being cleaned in person, but I'd seen it on TV, so, although the mirror looked spotless to me (and probably was, as my mother's firm belief was that something didn't have to have one speck of visible dirt on it to require cleaning), I did what I'd seen in the ads; sprayed the Windex on and wiped it off. When I told my mother I was done, she came charging into the bathroom, announced that it was NOT clean, demanded, "Do it again" and took off. I sprayed, wiped, and called her back in; she gave the same order. So I tried again. And again. And again. Finally, even I could see some white smears on the glass, which was puzzling as I was sure they hadn't been there before, but I couldn't seem to get rid of them; every few minutes, my mother came back to bark with manic glee, "Do it again!! Do it again!!" The glass got cloudier and cloudier, and I sprayed more and more Windex to try to battle this growing mess, but to no avail... until finally, my mother took more than a cursory glance at the mirror, saw that it was SOLID WHITE, and shrieked, "Look what you've done to this mirror!!"
I, with my arms, shoulders and back screaming from all the unaccustomed stretching and exertion, and feeling very much like Sisyphus (even though I don't think I knew who he was at that age), shrieked back; "What do you mean what I'VE done? I've done exactly what you've told me to do, over and over and over!! If there's something wrong, it's because of YOU!!" Her reply was, "This mirror is totally coated-I'm going to have to bring in hot water and a scouring pad and SCRUB it to get all of this off!!" to which my rejoinder was, "You should have thought about that 10 cleanings ago, BEFORE it got this bad." She couldn't deny that, so, as usual, she switched to cursing me and loudly proclaiming my utter worthlessness to distract attention from her culpability, and told me to get out as she stormed past to fetch what she needed from the kitchen, pausing only to berate me for having used ("wasted") nearly an entire bottle of Windex... my response, that it was all used by HER orders, got her switched back to general abusive mode with no further attention to the details. She ranted on and on, not just while scraping the mirror clean but for hours afterwards; she'd finally dried up a little while before my father got home, but as always she got a 2nd wind when he appeared, and rushed to tell him all about it so that we'd have another round of frenzy on the subject... but she forgot that, although evil, he was bright enough to grasp the facts, and those facts pointed to HER being at fault. Their discussion of this topic, which I heard clearly from upstairs, was:
Her: I had to spend an hour scouring the mirror in her bathroom with hot water because she got it all coated.
Him: What did she coat it WITH?
Her: Windex.
Him: What sort of an idiot are you, that you "scoured" a mirror to get some streaks off of it?
Her: It wasn't streaks, it was solid white.
Him: Get outta here, that's impossible!!
Her: No it's not; she wasted an entire bottle of Windex on that mirror.
Him: How could she possibly use an entire bottle of Windex on one mirror?
Her: Because she had to clean it so many times.
Him: WHY did she have to clean it so many times?
Her: Because she wasn't getting it clean.
Him: And you told her to clean the mirror so many times that she used up an entire bottle of Windex?
Her: Yes, she's stupid, and wasn't cleaning it right.
Him: Did you show her how to do it right?
Her: No, I didn't show her anything.
Him: Did you TELL her how to do it right?
Her: No, I just told her to clean it.
Him: And when you SAW that she hadn't done it right, what did you do?
Her: I told her to do it again.
Him: You didn't correct what she was doing?
Her. No.
Him: Why not?
Her: Because I was trying to get her to do it right.
Him: How was she going to do it right when you didn't TELL her how to do it right?
Her: All she had to do was spray and wipe; how was I supposed to know she was never going to figure out how to do it properly?
Him: Because you're supposed to be the goddamned ADULT, and when a child is doing something the wrong way you're supposed to tell them the RIGHT way.
Her: It's perfectly simple, all she had to do was...
Him: I heard you the first time, and if it was so simple how did the mirror end up white?
Her: Well, I don't know, but...
Him: What do you mean you don't KNOW, you don't know that Windex has that little bit of wax in it to make the glass shiny, and that that's what was building up on the mirror?
Her: Of course I do, but she was doing it wrong...
Him: And you stood there and watched her use up a whole bottle of Windex and cover the mirror with wax?
Her: No, I was in our room watching the...
Him: You mean you didn't even watch her one time to see what she was doing wrong?
Her: No, I just kept telling her to do it again.
Him: And you never noticed that the entire bottle of Windex was getting used up?
Her: No, but...
Him: And it never occurred to you that once the wax buildup was visible on the mirror she couldn't GET it clean by spraying on MORE wax?
Her: {silence}
Him: So you just kept telling her to spray more and more Windex on the mirror until it was white?
Her: {silence}
Him: WELL?
Her: Yes, but...
Him: But nothing!! YOU'RE the one who's stupid here!! Some goddamned adult you are, having a frigging kid spend all afternoon and a whole bottle of Windex and not even get the mirror clean!!
Her: I wanted her to learn how to do it!!
Him: All she learned was how to waste Windex, and that her mother's a moron.
Her: She was being stupid...
Him: I told you that YOU were being stupid!! You were too stupid to figure out that the mirror was getting covered in wax, so how did you expect HER to figure it out?
Her: Well who would have thought that she couldn't clean a mirror properly without being told how?
Him: Everyone has some streaks to wipe off after using Windex; all you had to do was tell her to do that, rather than telling her to spray on MORE wax like a frigging idiot.
Her: I wanted her to figure it out herself.
Him: She's not SUPPOSED to "figure out" how to do the tasks she's given, you're supposed to give her instructions and she carries them out; you don't just give her a task and then go watch TV. From now on, if you want her to do a task, you tell her EXACTLY how to do it, and then you stay there and monitor her and correct her errors BEFORE she makes some sort of mess, got it?
Her: I don't have time to tell her every little thing and then stand around watching her do it.
Him: Then you just do it yourself, rather than having her waste all afternoon on something that you could have done in 20 seconds and then wasting YOUR time fixing whatever she screwed up; I don't EVER want to hear that you pulled a stupid stunt like this again!!
Her: {unintelligible mutterings followed by her footsteps on the stairs that told me that she'd flounced away from him}
It wasn't often that he didn't blame everything on me as a matter of course, but in that instance her choosing to get her jollies by telling me "Do it again" over and over and OVER instead of handling the situation in any of the several ways that a mature adult might deal with a child that doesn't know how to properly do a task, and continuing with it to the point that the results already described were allowed to happen, was so excruciatingly stupid that he had no choice but to blame HER.
That was all the mirror-cleaning I did until I got married and moved out many years later; as with the vacuuming, every so often she'd decide I should do it, and I'd ask her if she was in the mood to scrub glass that day... and she'd do it herself. She never did tell me the correct way to clean glass, by the way, I just grasped from what I'd overheard my father saying that I should've gotten a dry paper towel and wiped down the mirror with it once the first hint of white appeared... did I mention that I went through that bottle of Windex with ONE soggy paper towel because that's all she'd given me, lol?
Why didn't my mother ever take 2 minutes to demonstrate glass-cleaning, or any other task, to me so that when she wanted to have me do it I could have in fact done it? I think the main reason was that she truly believed that I wasn't CAPABLE of doing it, because she told me many times that when I had a home of my own I'd be unable to clean it, and making these sorts of dire predictions about my life gave her more joy than passing along some of the housework to me ever would have.
Yes, she's a psycho, and my father was worse, but the upshot of this particular aspect of my childhood is actually positive; unlike virtually every other kid, *I* didn't have to do chores... and considering how unpleasant I've since discovered housework to be, that's a BIG positive. Is that why the mirror story came back to me today, because karma wanted to lead me into seeing that? Maybe, or maybe it was just some random synapse firing that did it; in any case, it can only be good to have a + realization about my childhood, right?
Monday, October 24, 2005
Do the exertions of the body affect karma?
This idea came to me today as I was pushing myself through 1500 crunches (and that's not a typo, I'm proud to say); does your body produce any of your karma, and/or does it affect how much or what sort of karma your brain's producing based on how your body feels (tired, energetic, hungry, full, etc)? When you move around, energy is used up, and more energy is radiated in the form of heat... but what about the electrical impulses that are constantly racing back and forth between your muscles and your brain? Energy can't be destroyed, so does that mean that those impulses become karma... wouldn't it HAVE to? And does that karma radiate away like heat, or does it become part of your soul like your thoughts and emotions do? Does it fuel the engine of karma, and thus potentially influence events in some way, however trivial, or is it as meaningless karmically as the drifting of dust motes?
Does muscular exertion produce positive, negative or neutral karma? Natural bodily activity seems at 1st like it'd have to be either neutral, because there are no "bad" emotions or thoughts to taint it, or + because life might be inherently positive, but think about it; if your muscles are hurting as you exercise, or are sore afterwards, wouldn't that mean you're releasing NEGATIVE energy, since the messages carried by your nerves are ones of pain? BUT, what if you're one of those hard-core exercisers who exults in reaching the point where your muscles start to hurt; would that make it positive karma, or a mixture of + and -... and which is stronger, or at least more plentiful, karma from your brain or karma from your body?
Exercise is good for your health, which sounds like good karma, and is supposed to improve the levels of various brain chemicals, which also sounds good, but most of us hate it, which sounds bad... or are only our emotions bad, and the karma from muscular exertion still good, and is the final tally + or -? If you exercise until you're exhausted, is that karmically bad, and does it reduce the flow of karma from your weary body and brain? If you get an exercise high, does that produce good karma, and is it strong enough to counteract the pain of your muscles which is still radiating negative karma even if your brain's feeling no pain?
It wouldn't have to be just exercising that creates karma, either, because logically even the slightest movement requires, and generates, nerve impulses and thus karma; even if you're holding still, your internal organs are doing brisk business, necessitating nerve impulses and thus creating karma.... so, if you're sick, injured, in pain, drunk, hungry, or anything else that causes your body to react in different ways, does that affect your karma? Could the "bad luck" that plagues people with illnesses and injuries be caused, not just by the negative thoughts and emotions engendered by their conditions, but by negative karma coming directly from the affected area(s) of their bodies?
This is the sort of thing that freezes a spiritual seeker to the spot; you look around, and you realize that every single thing, EVERY single thing, that you do, every action of your body, whether undertaken by conscious choice OR an automatic function, whether or not you're even aware of it, could be having a tiny but non-zero influence on your soul, your karma, and how your future shapes up... so what are you supposed to do? I tend to tap my pen; is that nervous habit bad karma? If I meditate and relax my muscles, is that good karma? If I'm doubled over with hunger pangs, is that bad? If I eat raw veggies, and flood my body with nutrients, is that good?
I'm going to pry my mental fingers off of this idea for now, or I'll be second-guessing myself all day and end up paralyzed; eventually, though, I'm going to have to give heavy thought to this "karma from the body" concept... gulp...
Does muscular exertion produce positive, negative or neutral karma? Natural bodily activity seems at 1st like it'd have to be either neutral, because there are no "bad" emotions or thoughts to taint it, or + because life might be inherently positive, but think about it; if your muscles are hurting as you exercise, or are sore afterwards, wouldn't that mean you're releasing NEGATIVE energy, since the messages carried by your nerves are ones of pain? BUT, what if you're one of those hard-core exercisers who exults in reaching the point where your muscles start to hurt; would that make it positive karma, or a mixture of + and -... and which is stronger, or at least more plentiful, karma from your brain or karma from your body?
Exercise is good for your health, which sounds like good karma, and is supposed to improve the levels of various brain chemicals, which also sounds good, but most of us hate it, which sounds bad... or are only our emotions bad, and the karma from muscular exertion still good, and is the final tally + or -? If you exercise until you're exhausted, is that karmically bad, and does it reduce the flow of karma from your weary body and brain? If you get an exercise high, does that produce good karma, and is it strong enough to counteract the pain of your muscles which is still radiating negative karma even if your brain's feeling no pain?
It wouldn't have to be just exercising that creates karma, either, because logically even the slightest movement requires, and generates, nerve impulses and thus karma; even if you're holding still, your internal organs are doing brisk business, necessitating nerve impulses and thus creating karma.... so, if you're sick, injured, in pain, drunk, hungry, or anything else that causes your body to react in different ways, does that affect your karma? Could the "bad luck" that plagues people with illnesses and injuries be caused, not just by the negative thoughts and emotions engendered by their conditions, but by negative karma coming directly from the affected area(s) of their bodies?
This is the sort of thing that freezes a spiritual seeker to the spot; you look around, and you realize that every single thing, EVERY single thing, that you do, every action of your body, whether undertaken by conscious choice OR an automatic function, whether or not you're even aware of it, could be having a tiny but non-zero influence on your soul, your karma, and how your future shapes up... so what are you supposed to do? I tend to tap my pen; is that nervous habit bad karma? If I meditate and relax my muscles, is that good karma? If I'm doubled over with hunger pangs, is that bad? If I eat raw veggies, and flood my body with nutrients, is that good?
I'm going to pry my mental fingers off of this idea for now, or I'll be second-guessing myself all day and end up paralyzed; eventually, though, I'm going to have to give heavy thought to this "karma from the body" concept... gulp...
Sunday, October 23, 2005
2 brilliant commercials
The overwhelming majority of ads on TV are dumb, insipid, or at best vaguely entertaining, but today I saw 2 impressive exceptions:
In the 1st one, there was a big Mitsubishi truck that was facing off with some other kind of truck, and when it lurched at the "challenger" the latter presumably sprung a leak underneath, which made it look like it was urinating in fear. I don't usually find excretory function humor amusing, but I think having a truck simulate it was a stroke of genius... and VERY funny.
The 2nd one had an odd bit of synchronicity to it; I saw a movie earlier in the evening in which a man writes on the bathroom mirror with his finger, so that when his girlfriend turns on the shower the steam shows the message, and in the ad this concept was used too... but far more cleverly. We're in a bathroom looking at a glass shower stall with the form of a man semi-visible through it, and steam is starting to cling to the glass; we see what's obviously a human form taking shape, and you can't tell what the deal is at first, but then it becomes clear... the outline of buttocks and long hair, paired with the handprints on either side of the head, make it clear what took place up against the glass recently. The ad is for Axe Shower Gel, and the tagline is "How dirty boys get clean"; it's not news to anyone that sex sells, but this is the cleverest take on it that I've seen in a while.
You know what the truly astonishing thing is? These commercials were better done and more memorable than any of the actual TV shows I saw tonight; how scary is THAT?
In the 1st one, there was a big Mitsubishi truck that was facing off with some other kind of truck, and when it lurched at the "challenger" the latter presumably sprung a leak underneath, which made it look like it was urinating in fear. I don't usually find excretory function humor amusing, but I think having a truck simulate it was a stroke of genius... and VERY funny.
The 2nd one had an odd bit of synchronicity to it; I saw a movie earlier in the evening in which a man writes on the bathroom mirror with his finger, so that when his girlfriend turns on the shower the steam shows the message, and in the ad this concept was used too... but far more cleverly. We're in a bathroom looking at a glass shower stall with the form of a man semi-visible through it, and steam is starting to cling to the glass; we see what's obviously a human form taking shape, and you can't tell what the deal is at first, but then it becomes clear... the outline of buttocks and long hair, paired with the handprints on either side of the head, make it clear what took place up against the glass recently. The ad is for Axe Shower Gel, and the tagline is "How dirty boys get clean"; it's not news to anyone that sex sells, but this is the cleverest take on it that I've seen in a while.
You know what the truly astonishing thing is? These commercials were better done and more memorable than any of the actual TV shows I saw tonight; how scary is THAT?
