The Art of Conversation

Alright, I'm going to tell you something, but you must understand the context in which it is said.  This is an element of conversation that is extremely important to the exchange of ideas, but is something that we are not always consciously aware of.  That is, people sometimes forget that the way someone phrases a sentence is just as important as the actual words themselves, in terms of communicating an idea. The actual words in a sentence provide the framework or the "nuts & bolts" to the sentence, but there is a huge portion of a conversation that relies on the accentuations provided by the speaker that aid the message.  The body language of a speaker, and the voice inflections they use, all help the receiver better understand the speakers message.  This makes it easier for the listener in a conversation; they do not have to think about the sentence as much, in terms of trying to understand what the speaker meant by an ambiguous statement.  They are also consequently more certain, or sure of what the speakers message really was.  People generally prefer this type of communication.  *An example of this principle can be seen in the general behavior of people with chronic depression.  The "flat affect" that depressed individuals generally display is a major reason for the cyclical nature of their depression: as a defense mechanism to avoid being ridiculed and ostracized for a belief or opinion, depressed individuals generally attempt to minimize the expression of their own view-points and opinions.  They tend to use more general, ambiguous words when speaking, and will not show much, if any, facial expressions or voice inflections during a conversation.  This provides less information for others to use against them, but it also makes the listener have to think more carefully (spend more energy) about what was said in order to formulate some sort of interpretation of the message.  Therefore, most people do not enjoy conversing with depressed people as much as those who use facial expressions and inflections, and might even avoid interacting with certain individuals.  This will have the negative effect of reinforcing the depressed individual depressive beliefs, and the cyclical nature of depression continues. *Another example can be seen in how some people do not like to use the now common MSN Messenger, feeling it is too "mechanical" or impersonal.  It can be seen as analogous to conversing with a depressed individual, with flat affect.  All you get is the words; no voice inflections, or facial expressions.  Although the smiley faces/winks attempt to correct for this drawback, I'm not sure that it is entirely sufficient.  

 

Choice

I, at this point in my life, am under the belief that there really is no such thing as choice. It is an illusion. You may think that you are "choosing" which brand of bottled water you pick up at the corner store, or which college or university you apply to, or which religion to believe in, or which morals and values to follow, but you really are not. What is happening is the neural network inside your brain starts firing and weighing each choice, and once it is satisfied with the amount of information it used to weigh each choice, then the heaviest weighted choice will come out on top. So the choice in the end is a product of the actual configuration of the neural net in your brain. That neural net is formed, and is always being re-shaped, by the experience you have had in your life, big or even seemingly insignificant experiences. Also genetics are responsible for how your brain forms at the time that you are too new to have any experiences, and, Im assuming, it also plays a role throughout your life as the brain develops. It is all Cause and Effect. There is no choice. Did you choose which human being, or other form of life, that you where to be? Did you choose which society to be born into and brought up in as your young brain developed? The only place that I think it could be possible that actual choices are being made would be in your soul. If there really is, which I like to believe there is, a spiritual aspect of our existance that goes beyond our physical bodies then I am willing to believe that there is A POSSIBILITY that the soul can make choices, but even the soul, I am so far assuming, is governed by cause and effect and the same principle applies to it causing it to also not have the ability to choose. It would be a product of the souls experience gathered over passed lives. Once you realize that this is the truth, that there is no choice, it can be an epiphanal experience. You can release all of your hatred, every last drop, towards all different forms of life. And you can look back at someone you hate, and take a look at their life from their perspective, and understand why they are a person that you used to hate. And you realize that part of the whole purpose of life is to have an infinite realm of all different life forms and personalities. Even things you used to hate, that are grotesque, or immoral, or outright terrible, can become beautiful. It is the nature of the universe and life. It is beautiful.

Now just because I have come across this belief, that I have no choice in the whole matter, does not mean that I am all of a sudden going to give up on life and go into some kind of vegetative state and not care about anything. No. I still want to make a positive change in the world for the human race, I still want to overcome my challenges in life, and I still understand that my actions determine my future and control my destiny. Because that is who I am, even though I didnt choose it.

 

Tabula Smaragdina

I was raised a Christian, but very early on in my life dismissed the entire religion because it was so obviously B.S. a child can see right through it.  But, the more I became interested in the true nature of the universe as I became older, I started to notice little parts here in there in most religions that I strongly felt truth in, which do not even disagree with materialistic science.  This led me to believe that possibly some of this religious knowledge actually used to be extremely accurate, just that it has been misinterepted and even purposely distorted over thousands of years.  Once I came to this realization, I started looking at religion in a different way, and the more I look into religion, the more I believe this theory to be correct.  Now, to me, it seems like our most advanced understandings of the universe, including quantum physics, are really just rediscovering what some so called "religion's" expressed thousands of years ago.  A lot of people have heard of books like "Quantum and the Lotus", comparing quantum physics and buddhism, but it goes much deeper than this even.  It goes as far back as religion and almost all religions that I know of hint that this theory is true.  Today I looked up a topic of interest for the first time, the "Tabula Smaragdina", otherwise known as the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.  I came across a great paper called "The Tabula Smaragdina Revisited" by Karen-Claire Voss.  It was another great example of the theory.  I will not get into great detail here about specific passages but if you have basic understandings of the universe, galaxies, stars, atoms, physics, quantum physics, big bang(theoretical), etc, and you look at the oldest and most original religious passages, you will find many inexplicable consistencies.

 

Energy Crisis?

Reading through Space.com looking for good pictures I found this article.  It puts our energy usage into a new perspective.  If only we could use energy so efficiently.

"A recent study found that a supermassive black hole’s process of generating energy from the matter falling towards its gravity well is much more efficient than nuclear or fossil fuels. A car with such fuel efficiency could drive for one billion miles on a single tank of gas, they say."

 

Star Dust

What an awe inspiring thing, this universe we live in with all the life it harbors and nurtures and even destroys only to produce new great cycles.  From galaxies to black holes, to stars, to planets, to star dust building blocks collected together in cells, collected together in bodies of life forms, all part of one beautiful connected collective.  The word beautiful is an understatement, I dont know how to articulate its true beauty.  Connections going infinitely deep, because of the "cause and effect" nature of the universe.  Producing all these beautiful life forms for me to observe, producing my life to live out. 

Experience is a beautiful thing.  I believe it is the purpose of our individual existences(Not to be mistaken for the purpose of life existing, as a collective).  Experience.  That is all we can do.  As individuals, our 75 year, blink of an eye, existence and experience is played out in front of our eyes, the only thing your being can do is watch it play out.  Whatever events "cause and effect" dictate for our individual lives to experience. It really is just a teasing blink of an eye relative to the billions of years of unlimited experience throughout the universe.  But at the same time even that 75 years is so much compared to no experience.  I cant complain.  I will definately enjoy the experience along the way, as I am forced to play out the role laid before me by the Holy and Great One, the collective universe.  So just Be, you cannot escape that, and sit back and experience your Be-ing.  The good, the evil, the happiness, the sadness, the consequences, the gluttony, the greed, the rightousness, the love, the hatred, the altruism, the mistakes, the embarassment, the sacrifice, the accomplishment, the victory, the defeat, the adventure, the beauty of LIFE.  That is all you can do.  You are nothing more than an array of 5 sensors attached to a CPU processing that information and forming it into the experience for "the observer" to watch.  Who is this watcher, this observer which is the deepest level of my being?  Is it my soul?  Does that element exist beyond my physical body and physical life?  One thing is for sure, the observer is the common bond that all life in the universe shares.  Release your hatred toward any being, we are all brothers and sisters, we all relate.

 

Visočica, Yonaguni

Allegedly a new pyramid has been discovered in Europe, the first ever found there.  It is located in Visoko, Bosnia.  A pyramid shaped hill called Visočica has been declared an ancient pyramid by an "amateur archeologist".  It is allegedly taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza.  Excavating just started this month.  Apparently so far they have confirmed that under the Earth of the hill is man-made structure made out of stone.  Also, they have found an underground tunnel system, which could be connecting this pyramid with other hills in the area suspected of being pyramids themselves.  But, these stones and tunnels could possibly be explained without the existance of this alleged pyramid.  An astonishing discovery, if it is true, a terrible scandal if it is not.  There is much criticism, and the credibillity of the so called archeologist is questionable.  It is most probably some kind of hoax I think.

This is also very interesting. While I was looking up info on the pyramid in Bosnia, I ran into another interesting piece of info.  A structure was discovered underwater at the Japanese island of Yonaguni.  It appears to be a large stone ziggurat. Some believe the structure is natural, some believe it is man-made.  If it is man-made it was made arround the end of the last ice age, 8 to 10 thousand years ago, the last time that area and the structure was above the water level.  The pictures are spectacular, and it looks very man-made, but who knows.  Good site, with pictures.

 

The Future part 2

Part one I only talked about global warming.  Lets go deeper.  First though, the last couple days I've seen a couple new articles that where downplaying global warming.  They say that "global warming alarmists" are over-exagerating the situation with the motive of getting more funding for climate research(http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220).  So, the same old story arises, one group of people says one thing, the other says the oposite, who do you believe?  I don't know.  All you can do is look at the facts and decide for yourself.  I havent looked in depth yet, so I am un-decided.  So that being said, Im gonna add on to my previous post.  Of course, there are factors other than climate change that will determine the future of the human race.

Burning of fossil fuel is not the only polution problem we have.  Waste, some toxic, is still constantly being pumped out of manufacturing processes with nowhere to go but into the global biosphere.  And we are still damaging the ecosystem in other ways.  Species are still going extinct from our actions.  With the accelerated rate at which our civilization is growing and expanding how long will it be before the ecosystem becomes dangerously deteriorated?

The population on the Earth is approximately six and a half billion people right now (http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop).  In thirty years it could be over 10 billion!  How 'bout 60 years from now?  14 billion?  More?  I think there is something like a 250,000 person increase every day.  Imagine that.  This is a problem obviously.  We are already causing so many problems with 6 billion.  Will living conditions be better in 30 years?  We must learn to stop increasing the population.  The more people we bring into this world, the more poverty there will be, and the conditions will continue to deteriorate.

How much longer can we keep expanding and growing the economy?  As the economy increases, we manufacture more and extract more resources, thus more damage is done to the environment.  What happens in the next 50 years for economy when there is no more oil to burn or when(if) someone comes out with a great alternative energy technology that releases the energy industries grip on people?

War.  Our race has been at war with itself since as far back as we know no doubt.  Always at war.  Just 60 years ago millions of people died in world war two.  So many people had to fight.  How many wars are still to be fought?  Is peace on Earth possible?

Businesses now are bombarding us with subliminal messages, and using psychological effects on the general population to create wants and needs in people to consume their products.  To them, it is like a game of manipulating people into buying their products.  They are even using psychologists to get into your childrens minds.  Business is becoming more powerful even than government.

How do we get our race, as a collective, to take responsibility for the harm we are doing, and avoid a seemingly inevitable self destruction, or a George Orwell 1984 scenario?  Or does it even matter?  Maybe it is just a natural, never ending struggle.  I know this is a very pessimistic view.  I do see positive outcomes. I believe the future could be very positive, if we can learn the responsibility required for the power we have recently acquired. And what a beautiful future that could be.

 

Spiritual vs Material

Is our being, our soul, our consciousness/sub-conscious explainable solely using material, accepted scientific theory, or is there some spiritual aspect of our existence?  I often ponder this question.  Its a tough one..  I can't help feeling like there is some kind of, intent, for the universe and life to co-exist.  The two go hand in hand.  Maybe life is not just a random inevitability, but a force, a life force penetrating the universe.  Perhaps, out of this, arises a sub-conscious spiritual aspect of our individual beings, which has an existence beyond the life and death of our bodies and conciousness.  A life force incarnating itself into physical forms.  Perhaps…  Although I can't prove, or even argue the point, I am a very spiritual person. My intuition tells me there is a spiritual aspect of our existence.

In any case, I think it is naive to assume that there is no possibility of a spiritual reality just because there is no real scientific evidence.  You would be over-estimating our understanding of reality, physics and the universe.

 

UFOs!

This subject receives much ridicule, yet at the same time, it is one of the hottest topics of all time…  Strange.  In fact "Chariots Of The Gods" by Erick Von Daniken is the all time most selling non-fiction book Ive heard, UFO specials on TV get great ratings, and the subject could be one of the most searched topics on the net(just a guess).  The reason it is so hot, no doubt, is because of the implications it has on our lives.  If the UFO phenomenon is actually extra-terrestrial spacecraft, the implications are so amazing and profound.  I have always been interested in the subject, and looked into it a little bit here and there over the last few years.  I have become 99% convinced that "UFOs" are real, spacecraft, the only reason Im not totally convinced is because its so amazing I just have to see it for myself.  Actually, it was easy for me to accept that alien spacecraft could be flying around our planet because of my beliefs.  I already believe that life flourishes all over our galaxy and the universe.  So I would expect that some forms of life became intelligent before us and started flying around, checkin out other civilizations.  I expected it.  Nevertheless I still look for proof.  Lets get into it.  The topic really has three different components.  1, allegedly real images and video of UFOs including NASA video.  2, eye witness testimony including astro and cosmo naut testimony.  3, government inquiries and radar data.  Im not gonna include the alleged removed alien implants and things like that, its a little too crazy for this post, and I dont know how credible that stuff is.  I know there is a lot of hoaxes out there because of the strong market for the subject, but thats not enough for me to dismiss everything and ignore possibly genuine evidence.

OK, number 1, there are probly thousands of images and video, allegedly real, that is out there.  Some convincing, some not so convincing.  They lack any thorough analysis as far as I know.  Why?  I dont know.  There has been at least one instance where thousands of people saw a UFO flying around and at least 10 of these seperate individuals have pictures of the same metallic disk object that all the people saw.  One interesting set of video is video taken by astronauts on NASA space shuttle missions.  Some interesting things appear in many of the videos they took.  One of the most awe inspiring ones I thought was the STS-80 "formation over Africa".  The convincing thing about the NASA video is that it is 100% real, undeniable video, there is no question of its authenticity, the only question is: What the heck are these things flying around out there?  Well, the official explanation is that it is "floating space debris", or "dust particles in the shuttle floating very close to the camera lens".  These explanations are unacceptable and can easily be ruled out on most of the footage.

Number 2.  There is much witness testimony out there.  The most comprehensive collection of witness testimony, that I know of, is a group called "The Disclosure Project".  They are a group of over 400 witnesses most of which are retired U.S. army and air force and air traffic controllers.  Some if it is kinda out there…  but most of it is quite compelling and hard to dismiss.  They did a 2 hour long press conference for the National Press Club in 2001, in which some of their witnesses talked about their experiences.  You can find the video on the Disclosure Project website(www.disclosureproject.org).  They also have hours and hours of footage of interviews with the witnesses, Im not sure how much of it is availlable but Ive seen another 2 hours of that.  They also have documentation to back up what they say, specifically recorded radar data of objects flying much faster than anything we had at the time.

3.  Everybody knows about the U.S.'s "Project BlueBook".  There was also "Project Sign" and "Project Grudge" which preceded BlueBook.  I dont know much about these inquiries so Im not gonna talk about it.  I am gonna talk about Canada's inquiry called "Project Magnet".  From what I know, Canada did 2 inquiries into the subject back in the 50s.  One was Project Magnet.  I just found out about this not long ago and read the recently declassified report generated by the project(http://www.collectionscanada.ca/ufo/002029-1400.01-e.html).  Its not proof positive or anything but it is rather interesting.  Here are the parts I found notable: 

"… an impressive number of reports on sightings of u. f. o.s popularly known as "Flying Saucers".  These files contain reports by creditable people on things they have seen in the sky, tracked by radar, or photographed."

"They are a hundred feet or more in diameter; they can travel at speeds of several thousand miles per hour; they can reach altitudes well above those which should support conventional air craft or balloons; and ample power and force seem to be available for all required maneuvers"

"Taking these factors into account, it is difficult to reconcile this performance with the capabilities of our technology, and unless the technology of some terrestrial nation is much more advanced than is generally known, we are forced to the conclusion that the vehicles are probably extra-terrestrial, in spite of our prejudices to the contrary."

The other Canadian inquiry was called "Project Second Story" I dont know much about this one but the minutes of the first and second meeting is up on the same Canadian government webpage as Magnet if you wanna read 'em.

Well, I think thats enough, you get the point.  The strange thing that I cant understand is why the mainstream community cant admit that there is evidence out there worth looking at.  One day awhile back I was sitting around the house and saw this old encyclopedia set I had as a kid called "The Junior Encyclopedia Of Canada".  I opened it up and checked out "UFO" just to see what it said.  Heres basically all it says:  "In the early 1950s, two government(Canadian) departments examined reports of sightings.  They concluded that the subject was not worthy of scientific study" !!!!!!!!!!!  In fact, at the end of "Project Magnet" if you read it, they specifically recommend further study of the phenomenon!!!

This post is so long already I left out an interesting 4th aspect of the subject, which is, depictions and descriptions of extra-terrestrial spacecraft that come from ancient civilizations on Earth.

There should be an official, serious, inquiry into this subject!!!

September 2005:  Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Minister of National Defense, claims he believes UFOs are extra-terrestrial spacecraft and urges parliament to have an inquiry into the subject:  http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.johnson907/PaulHellyerAtTorontoConference-25-09-05.wmv

 

The Future

What does the future hold for us Earth humans?  I remember just 10 years ago the future was so certain and predictable.  People were telling us of all the new technologies and devices that were gonna be here by the year 2000.  Now thinking of the next 10 years and beyond, there is much uncertainty.  Things will be very different here in 50 years I think.  Im not talking about new technology, Im talking about major changes.  The reason I think major changes are on the way is because the way we've been living our lives is not sustainable.  Therefor it must change.  The main factor that will determine what happens is going to be climate change.  We all know now that climate change IS happening, this is no longer debated.  The debate now is whether humans have caused it or if it is a natural climate change.  Well, Im not really here to debate that but consider this.  The other day I was watching the U.S. President (Bush) giving a speech (late March '06, the one that had "Freedom House" in the background), at the end someone asked him a question about energy and climate change.  I could see the discomfort on Bush's face when the question was asked, as if a feeling of guilt and fear came over him.  During his answer he mentioned that the scientists say that the climate change is natural.  Well, according to a top climatologist working for NASA(I think) the climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels primarilly and that the scientists are being censored, this was on 60 minutes I believe.  Here is the article I saw a couple days ago:  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml.  Now, the question that arises is how is this climate change gonna affect humans?  Well, this is where the uncertainty comes from.  Ive heard a few things like how the increased temperature of the ocean is killing the plankton which provide the planet with more oxygen than plants (I havent double checked that fact so I cant really confirm that plankton generate the most oxygen but thats what I remember from the articles).  Also the fresh water being dumped into the ocean from melting ice caps could disrupt the great conveyer in the ocean possibly causing an ice age.  I know this is what they said in "Day After Tomorow" or whatever that movie was called, but I had read that theory in a couple articles even before the movie came out.  So, either we change the way we live, or mother Earth will change it for us.  We need to gain a renewed appreciation and respect for life in general and for mother Earth, we need to end the ignorance and censorship.  Greed is also a major problem.  The pursuit of so called "wealth" has overcome ethics, morality, and respect for all life on this planet.  But what is true wealth?

We need to learn to live in harmony with mother Earth and all the life she bore into this world.

"Ultimately we have to, as individuals, accept responsibility for our collective action and the larger harm it causes in our world." – Michael Moore (The Corporation (great film))

More on the topic of the future is comming.