I was pondering the integral relationship of speed and time described in "the Fabric of Time" as pioneered by Einstein. The relationship reveals that speed and time are entwined in a negative relationship of... erm... epic proportion: the faster one travels, the slower time passes. Ultimately, scientific tests seem to foretell, if one could travel at the speed of light (that is, really fast), time would stop altogether.
Then I started to think of Eternity, or as in an earlier post, the Eternal Now. So, if when I die, I am converted to pure light, wouldn't I be in a permanent state of the eternal now? This led me to the eternal oneness and then my brain glazed.
Anyway, it is curious that "light" seems to be the common denominator of all scientific, philosophic, and theological theories and laws. Why? I don't know.
But today, I have committed to becoming pure light when I croak off. Time will cease and I will barrel through the infinite and eternal now without a scratch, where I will mingle with "other light beings" from eons past who have not sensed, nor even considered, that they have missed a damn thing in terms of human history.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Gayness and Redundancy
My brother once challenged me to think about why, from a genetic standpoint, gayness might be appealing for the preservation of the race, and therefore survive as a orientation in the greater gene pool.
I have been convinced from a very young age that, much like the color of one's eyes, or a person's height, or a person's general disposition, gayness is genetically-based. That is to say, that it appears to me that homosexuality is a predisposition of a given percentage of humans. Without commenting on homosexuality as a lifestyle, I would like to expound on some thoughts that have occurred to me as why this might be so.
The first and most obvious reason why gayness might be not only tolerated from a evolutionary standpoint, but rather a purposeful outcome of X% of births, is that of redundancy. What does that mean?
In any stable system, one expects to see redundancy. For instance, a copier goes down at work, and there is another copier available (albeit accross the building). In this scenario, there is an interruption to the natural flow of the workplace, but the workplace and the flow of production are not interrupted. Or, let's say, a household has two cars. One breaks down and is taken to the shop. Now, for a couple days or so, the family has to share one car. It's a pain in the arse, but having two cars (or two copiers) means that while the normal flow of life is impeded, it is not interrupted. The system benefits from the essential insurance policy of redundancy.
Now, imagine a system in which all available men are paired up with all available women. In nature, the percentage of female births is roughly 51%-52% female to 48%-49% male. Given that X% of women perish in childbirth, this makes sense from a sustainability standpoint. In any event, as systems always tend toward equilibrium, we can say, all things being equal, in a given tribal community, isolated from the greater world, let's assume all available men are paired with all available women. There are no gay men or women. Let's say one of the women or one of the men vanish, prsumed to have drowned. The system (that is the community) is in a world of hurt: they have lost either a hunter or a gatherer, and yet the offspring still need to be fed, the preparation of food must still be met, the participation in communal life and responsibilities of the man and woman need to be satisfied for everybodies' sake. Without redundancy, how will this occur?
On the other hand, let's imagine a world, as I figure it must have been, where there happens to be a shaman. He was so appointed, in that coupling with a woman doesn't quite do it for him. So, he turns himself to something a bit more attractive in his mind's eye: that of being the spiritual leader of the community. In this manner, he may or may not sublimate his sexual orientation... but he does take his "strange disposition" (relative to the other men, anyway) which drives him from what all other men seem to want (a female partner) and turns it into a decided strength.
In this village, a similar mishap occurs, and the community is left without one of its members. Enter the stability provided by the shaman.
I am purposefully avoiding making any moral judgment on homosexuality. I am simply stating that there is at least one very plausable and purposeful reason for why gayness seems to be built into the system.
I could go on to speak of the sense among many that, in particular, many gay men, for example, seem to be a 3rd gender altogether. Neither entirely "male", nor entirely "female" in behavior. And, from a fundamental, strictly evolutionary sense, this makes complete sense to me.
I have been convinced from a very young age that, much like the color of one's eyes, or a person's height, or a person's general disposition, gayness is genetically-based. That is to say, that it appears to me that homosexuality is a predisposition of a given percentage of humans. Without commenting on homosexuality as a lifestyle, I would like to expound on some thoughts that have occurred to me as why this might be so.
The first and most obvious reason why gayness might be not only tolerated from a evolutionary standpoint, but rather a purposeful outcome of X% of births, is that of redundancy. What does that mean?
In any stable system, one expects to see redundancy. For instance, a copier goes down at work, and there is another copier available (albeit accross the building). In this scenario, there is an interruption to the natural flow of the workplace, but the workplace and the flow of production are not interrupted. Or, let's say, a household has two cars. One breaks down and is taken to the shop. Now, for a couple days or so, the family has to share one car. It's a pain in the arse, but having two cars (or two copiers) means that while the normal flow of life is impeded, it is not interrupted. The system benefits from the essential insurance policy of redundancy.
Now, imagine a system in which all available men are paired up with all available women. In nature, the percentage of female births is roughly 51%-52% female to 48%-49% male. Given that X% of women perish in childbirth, this makes sense from a sustainability standpoint. In any event, as systems always tend toward equilibrium, we can say, all things being equal, in a given tribal community, isolated from the greater world, let's assume all available men are paired with all available women. There are no gay men or women. Let's say one of the women or one of the men vanish, prsumed to have drowned. The system (that is the community) is in a world of hurt: they have lost either a hunter or a gatherer, and yet the offspring still need to be fed, the preparation of food must still be met, the participation in communal life and responsibilities of the man and woman need to be satisfied for everybodies' sake. Without redundancy, how will this occur?
On the other hand, let's imagine a world, as I figure it must have been, where there happens to be a shaman. He was so appointed, in that coupling with a woman doesn't quite do it for him. So, he turns himself to something a bit more attractive in his mind's eye: that of being the spiritual leader of the community. In this manner, he may or may not sublimate his sexual orientation... but he does take his "strange disposition" (relative to the other men, anyway) which drives him from what all other men seem to want (a female partner) and turns it into a decided strength.
In this village, a similar mishap occurs, and the community is left without one of its members. Enter the stability provided by the shaman.
I am purposefully avoiding making any moral judgment on homosexuality. I am simply stating that there is at least one very plausable and purposeful reason for why gayness seems to be built into the system.
I could go on to speak of the sense among many that, in particular, many gay men, for example, seem to be a 3rd gender altogether. Neither entirely "male", nor entirely "female" in behavior. And, from a fundamental, strictly evolutionary sense, this makes complete sense to me.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
The Eternal Now
We observe the "Arrow of Time" moving from past to present to future. In the egg that breaks, but does not unbreak. In the man who grows old, but does not "ungrow" young. In the degredation of the observable, we witness a one-way street. It is a reality of the unit we observe. And this, it seems, is what we base our "linear" conception of time. From Past to Present to Future.
St. Augustine remarks that the future only exists in the now, when it is experienced (observed), and for that fleeting micro-moment it is the now, and the "second" it is witnessed it is the past. But the future, to Augustine, does not exist. There is no "unfurling" of time. And the past only exists in the mind in which it was observed. One cannot retrieve but a sliver of "it" as stored in the observer's memory. Nonetheless, it cannot be actually retrieved. What he propounded is an eternity of now... or the Eternal Now.
My brother Dan sent me an interesting book for my birthday. "The Fabric of the Cosmos." And in its early pages, our author speaks to the "arrow of time". I do not know what lay within the coming pages, but the early pages speak to the traditional concept of time. The linear Past, Present, and Future. It occurs to me that the egg that breaks, the man who grows old, the degredation of the observable unit, when removed from its context seems to speak to this one-way street modality. But one wonders the following: if we were able to observe all that is in its collective whole, would we find that the degredation to the exact degree of on unit or in fact portion of the unit is not balanced, as a leger must be, by the equal generation of some other unit to the same degree? That is to say: if we observe a lawn from our porch, we see a static, green layout. In fact, we know that it is in a perpetual state of degradation and generation concurrently. The blade grows, exists, then ceases to exist. but we do not observe the blade. We rather observe the entire lawn.
If it is observation which creates past, present, and future... that is from a unique and singular and necessarily singular perspective of the observer, this is hardly a foundation on which to estimate the existence of time in three dimensions.
I don't know what will come in the remaining pages of the book. But I sense that what I see "degrade" in the observed units (myself included), is countered in generation somewhere else in the Cosmos. This speaks not to a one-way street at all. It speaks to two curves: degredation and generation. They create an X in the aggregated macro of degredation an generation. And if one draws a horizontal line through the intersection of these two curves, I suspect we might call it rightly "The Eternal Now".
St. Augustine remarks that the future only exists in the now, when it is experienced (observed), and for that fleeting micro-moment it is the now, and the "second" it is witnessed it is the past. But the future, to Augustine, does not exist. There is no "unfurling" of time. And the past only exists in the mind in which it was observed. One cannot retrieve but a sliver of "it" as stored in the observer's memory. Nonetheless, it cannot be actually retrieved. What he propounded is an eternity of now... or the Eternal Now.
My brother Dan sent me an interesting book for my birthday. "The Fabric of the Cosmos." And in its early pages, our author speaks to the "arrow of time". I do not know what lay within the coming pages, but the early pages speak to the traditional concept of time. The linear Past, Present, and Future. It occurs to me that the egg that breaks, the man who grows old, the degredation of the observable unit, when removed from its context seems to speak to this one-way street modality. But one wonders the following: if we were able to observe all that is in its collective whole, would we find that the degredation to the exact degree of on unit or in fact portion of the unit is not balanced, as a leger must be, by the equal generation of some other unit to the same degree? That is to say: if we observe a lawn from our porch, we see a static, green layout. In fact, we know that it is in a perpetual state of degradation and generation concurrently. The blade grows, exists, then ceases to exist. but we do not observe the blade. We rather observe the entire lawn.
If it is observation which creates past, present, and future... that is from a unique and singular and necessarily singular perspective of the observer, this is hardly a foundation on which to estimate the existence of time in three dimensions.
I don't know what will come in the remaining pages of the book. But I sense that what I see "degrade" in the observed units (myself included), is countered in generation somewhere else in the Cosmos. This speaks not to a one-way street at all. It speaks to two curves: degredation and generation. They create an X in the aggregated macro of degredation an generation. And if one draws a horizontal line through the intersection of these two curves, I suspect we might call it rightly "The Eternal Now".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)