Collapsing

"We live amidst the ruins of our own creations"

This was a poignant comment made by an author about our current human civilization, in comparison to our ancestors. He said the phenomena of still being in existence while living among extensive ruins that we ourselves have created in our lifetimes is unprecedented.

For the Maya and the Anasazi, perhaps it was a 50-200 year drought that led to their abandoning their cities and eventual collapse. For the Mesopotamians, perhaps the mineral salt build-up in their crops destroyed their agricultural system. War, lack of necessary minerals and nutrients, a shifting atmosphere and climate - there are so many different reasons why civilizations have fallen.

I always find it fascinating to take a step back and really look at the scope of our current human civilization. We haven't been around for a very long time at all, and I sense a repetition of history in our arrogance that we think we will simply always be in existence.

Not that I don't want our civilization to survive. But all of those reasons for a civilization declining that I listed above are very real threats to us now. Our population is becoming so large that we already can't feed and give water to all humans on the planet. To enhance the problem, those who have more access to food and water are hoarding supplies away, 'just in case'. This makes the number of people we can supply through cycling our resources even less.

Interesting survival skills - we utilize the same techniques with greed and money as we do on basic survival. Or perhaps the bigger issue is that people consider them one and the same.

Anyway, we are clearly tapping all of our minerals and resources, and changing the climate in a big way as a result. Will we run out of oil before we come up with a truly successful and efficient way to produce cleaner energy, or will we choke ourselves to death on the pollution we're causing?

Or, will we just blow each other up in a final nuclear war?

Eek! That got pretty heavy and morbid just then. Not trying to bring you down, but I'm sure this is something that you've thought about. Anyway we're pretty casual about it - we've taken some ancient civilization's predictions, made a blockbuster movie where the world is destroyed by AWESOME special effects and HEART STOPPING dramatic close-calls - I think you've proven you can handle the discussion.

Anyway, as far as the whole Mayan Calendar thing, what I think is that it won't be one event that happens on December 21st. I think that the year 2012 will put us face to face with the choices that determine our survival more than ever before. We will either make the choices that alter the way we look at our human society, or we will choose the path of greed and destruction. Some things aren't yet written in stone and I think this is a big moment for free will.

Or maybe the aliens are finally coming to try to colonize and we'll have to band together and become planet Earth, rather than this country, this continent, etc...

:-)

There's a difference between wishing for world peace in the world as it is now, and wishing for deeper human collaboration in order to create a completely new way of living. We need a way of life that looks at trade/commerce differently, we need a way of life that focuses on the basic necessities of survival first and foremost, and then picks up their Wii afterwards. It's about living a life such that you are your priority, but you are also aware of the effect of the way you live, and are active in making it as compatible with the rest of the world as possible.

Ah well, one can dream, right? 

When is it Too Late?

I've watched two documentaries on North Korea recently and I am still amazed at how isolated from the outside world it is, how a dictator can be so feared and loved as a God, how they can create something like the Mass Games to show their perfect unity as a country:

This is incredibly beautiful, but when I think about how those dancers in the games practice more hours a day than they get education, and how their only dream in life is to perform for the General, I get the chills. Also, the images changing behind the dancers in the background? Those are people holding cards, thousands of people, turning them around at the exact same time - I kid you not. Watch the documentary State of Mind. 

I understand their hatred of our country - I understand not wanting to disrupt what they see to be perfection. But I also understand that their choice to stay isolated and pure as a country is only one man's choice, and that is highly disturbing. Would people choose to stay if they were exposed to the rest of the world? If they were allowed to have outside news sources? Internet? Cell phones?

There are a lot of people who want to go and 'open their eyes' - to show them what the outside world is like and get North Koreans to defect. I would love to have all of the people understand their options and have a free choice for themselves how they want to live their lives. But I'm also saddened by the hard truth that most of those North Koreans would be so alien to the rest of the world, the Western world specifically, that they would actually choose the life they had. They have generations of isolation, fear, and hatred - that doesn't just disappear with a laptop and some BBC.

I had a conversation with someone recently and we discussed whether or not it would actually be more detrimental to expose these people to the rest of the world, since they are so deeply brainwashed. If it would be more harmful, when or in what capacity could they begin to be exposed to the outside? I certainly don't think the solution is to let them remain isolated, but how could you ease someone into experiencing an alien world - and freedom?

When is it too late? When is it too late to turn someone around? When is it too late to turn your life and perspective around? I'm going to stay positive and say never, but an example like this makes me wonder.

As a side note, I think it's pretty clear that the country has some issues when the leader of the country holds the title Supreme Leader, Chairman of the National Defense Commission of North Korea, Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission of Worker's Party of North Korea.

I can't even do two part time jobs without feeling overwhelmed. 

Quotes

I was enjoying a morning of reading some quotes from some of my most enjoyed philosophical minds, and some random ones - I thought I'd share!

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. ~ Ayn Rand


We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.  ~Francois De La Rochefoucauld


A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.  ~Lee Segall


Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.  ~Baba Ram Dass


The obscure we see eventually.  The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.  ~Edward R. Murrow


Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.  ~Ludwig Börne


Childhood is the sleep of reason. ~Jean Jacques Rousseau



Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.  ~Edward Albee


Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.  ~Henry David Thoreau


You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough.  ~William Blake


Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.  ~Henri Louis Bergson


One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky 


You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.  ~Navajo Proverb


Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau


Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take the exact amount.  The exact amount is no use to me.  ~Antonio Porchia


The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.  ~Bertrand Russell 


Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. ~Ayn Rand

Among creatures born into chaos, a majority will imagine an order, a minority will question the order, and the rest will be pronounced insane.  ~Robert Brault


What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?  ~George Gordon, Lord Byron


t takes all the running you can do just to keep in the same place.  ~Lewis Carroll


You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.  ~Author Unknown


"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there." ~ Robert M. Pirsig


A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

"Is it hard?'
Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard."  ~ Robert M. Pirsig

"In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty..." ~ Robert M. Pirsig


Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values. ~Ayn Rand

Guilt

Guilt is a nasty word, and unfortunately one of the more poignant words in my life. The reasons I, and I suspect many others, experience guilt, aren't the most flattering things to look at in oneself.

What do people feel guilt about? The main situations that come to mind are: upsetting someone, disappointing someone, or disappointing yourself. To feel as though we've failed a loved one, or failed ourselves, brings on a downward spiral. Feeling like a failure leads to feelings of worthlessness, and it only goes down and down once we stumble into that mindset.

I've had failures in my life, but that hasn't hit a breaking point. A cause to push myself too hard sometimes, maybe, but I haven't often felt the feeling of utter worthlessness - I'm thankful for that.  One thing I've noticed about my guilt, however, is how I experience it in my relations with others. I evoke guilt in my life as a result of actual situations, and assumed situations.

I have a hard time accepting that I've upset someone, demoralized them, embarrassed them, or brought to light a difficult insecurity. Therefore, I try to figure out the best way to speak to them, in a positive and encouraging way, which keeps them from the dangers of falling into self-pity. Not only do I choose this way of speaking when I know doing so avoids triggering them, but I also do it when I assume it might trigger them.

Clearly, this is not the path to take if I am actually attempting to help a person. Useless affirmations don't help anyone grow. Also, it says something about my arrogance that I assume I know what the person is feeling and can or cannot handle. Maybe I do know their insecurities and perhaps they will get triggered, but that is not my responsibility to guard. It also shatters a level of trust, if a person you love can't rely on you to tell the truth for some convoluted, 'noble cause' to spare your feelings.

Ah the ironies of life - protecting other peoples' insecurities to defend our own.

Why do we defend our insecurities so intensely? It's infuriating to understand the behavior you are exhibiting, disagree with it, and yet, despite that, still act in the same way. I suppose this all leads to the ego. Ego is a bastard, that's for sure. A dominating, arrogant, judgmental, inhibiting son-of-a-bitch.

That felt good. You should try it. Take a moment to give your ego a piece of your mind. For every time it's decided to overrun your actions, dismember your intentions, and speak with your voice. I don't want to disassociate myself from it because it's as much a necessary part of me as the rest, but I think there's no harm in telling it what's what every once in awhile. Reminding it that even though it may desire ultimate control, his dictator days are limited.

This entry doesn't feel as conclusive as some of my other ones, but I think that's about all I had to say about that tonight.

On another note, check out this crazy-awesome art that I found online: 

Competition

I used to thrive when it came to competition. If there was a challenge where I was competing to be the best at something, I'd jump at the opportunity. It made me excited, and I'd be driven to do the best I possibly could.

But 'the best' became convoluted in my young mind. I was too eager sometimes, acting bossy and pushy.  By doing so, I alienated myself from a lot of friends and made some enemies. At the sensitive age of pre-teen and teen, feeling alienated and having people dislike you can have a more severe effect than if a person was more emotionally developed. These days, I think about being competitive and I cringe. I'm pretty sure it has to do with overshooting the mark in the past with my obsessive compulsive 'need to win'.

At some breaking point, my OCD-competitive nature turtled (yes I made that a verb) and I became overly passive, avoiding competition. My ego made sure I stayed that way too, by inducing physical effects. To this day, the majority of times I get into a competitive situation my anxiety skyrockets. My body assures that I can't physically handle the pressure so I won't partake in competition.

First, I need to stop looking at competition as heart-attack inducing. Healthy competition, that's a phrase, right? Currently it feels about as healthy as eating three Big Macs per day. I know everyone feels a degree of anxiety and stress with competition - I acknowledge that part of the reason for competition is that exact triggering effect to drive a person. But in my case it feels excessive.

The next step would be to engage in competition occasionally, in conjunction with developing personal challenges.  Both are sources from which I can draw inspiration and propel myself towards creative, problem-solving endeavors.

Time to brainstorm low-stress, competitive ideas (oxy-moron?) to whet my lurking appetite for a healthy challenge.

Logically Creative

I'm not a visual artist or a master in Photoshop, but I've made a simple image to express my logical mind in a more creatively-minded way. Thanks to a suggestion to read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I was inspired to play between the two halves of my brain. So, enjoy my playtime:

Have you played today?

Soul-Searching

As a sort of continuation of my previous post on Science and Spirituality, I've been thinking more about the way the brain functions. Fascination with the idea that people can re-wire their brain just by habitually thinking in a different way led me to look online and see what sort of research is happening in neuroplasticity. And I found something interesting:

At Stanford University, a study was done whereby they intentionally placed two genes of distantly related organisms into the brain of a mouse. They placed them on the neurons which controlled the motor functions of the mouse. These specific genes were triggered by light - yellow turned one off, and blue turned another on. The study was meant to see if the brain could be controlled if the proper 'on-and-off' switches were placed in the brain.

And what do you know?

A wired.com article

So you could theoretically put these genes on any part of the brain and control its functioning. In humans, you could theoretically put these genes on the mood center of the human brain and make someone feel happy when they previously weren't happy before. An interesting consideration...

The consideration of humanity. If you can control the way a person feels, what at that point truly makes them THEM? Maybe it's not a question of whether or not they are still considered human, but are they the same individual if they aren't thinking the way the 'previous' individual thought? 

If the way they think, and therefore their behavior, is not in their complete control, is that the true definition of a person at all? Or is that an automaton, a hybrid-human that is controlled by external manipulation? Good question for Nazi Germany, hey? 

And as for the spiritual component - scientists such as the ones performing this experiment are likely under the impression that the mind exists only in the synapses of the brain, in the electrical impulses of the brain. More spiritual people, with a more dualistic mind-body sentiment, wouldn't agree with these assumptions, but what would be their explanation of this sort of experiment?

I'm conflicted, still. I can't imagine that the body and 'soul' are only a physical entity. Energy is visible in some ways, but also feels intangible in others. So it doesn't seem likely that we are only a physical body and we exist in no fashion other than being a physical corpse when we die. However, it also doesn't seem feasible that we are a completely separate soul and body, and our soul just evacuates our body when the physical self dies, and goes off to another type of existence. 

It definitely seems as though the character traits of the person would remain and be lost with the physical body, since the tangible neurons have created that personality, no matter the wiring or re-wiring. But that isn't to say something doesn't escape the body, in an energetic form. Maybe that's compatible with some people's view of the soul, though there may be a discrepancy on the level of consciousness believed to remain with that energy. 

Science is developing amazing technology more rapidly, specifically in regards to neurological manipulation. I can't wait to see, as technology increases and spirituality becomes less isolated and more integrated, what exactly this world is on the brink of. I wonder, as it becomes more imperative that we define the individual and the human, if this energetic entity called the soul will be 'found' with such clarity that it becomes a major, valid player in defining our Humanity - valid to the spiritual as well as scientific minds. 

A challenge of experience

My challenge to you this week: Re-learn an experience in your life that has become routine.

Tonight I went running along the winding, hilly path that I ride down every day in my car. Normally I don't like to run on pavement and prefer the woods, but it was late and raining and I didn't want to have a nasty, muddy incident.

It's amazing the experience you can have when you are seeing the usual and comfortable from a new point of view. I experienced the shape of the road differently, I learned cracks and bumps in the pavement that I had never walked on before, I saw the architectural diversity in the houses along the road more acutely than I had before.

When routine becomes a habit and you are on auto-pilot, it's beneficial to jump-start the ordinary and experience what already exists in your life in a new way. So this week, I challenge you all to just that. Re-learn the life you are living, and find new things to be inspired by.

Choice

"There is no way my action or omission can avoid affecting other people. My sheer physical presence in the universe affects other people."


I found this quote on the all-knowing Internet and enjoyed it. It definitely expresses what I've been slowly coming to realize. Inaction based in fear seems to be an easy escape - but in reality there is no hiding away or escaping. No matter how hidden we feel, we are always laid bare in the middle of the Universe. 


I then began musing about choice. I started poking around on the Internet about the subject and found a large percentage of choice related articles referring to morality and responsibility. What of the limits of morality? When are we responsible, and when are we not to blame? 


Like a proper new-age thinker, my relieving response is that there is no right or wrong, so you can never be blamed. Limits and 'shoulds' are arbitrary, and vary from culture to culture. Sure, there are morals laid down in every culture, but their ultimate viability is nothing more than leaders maintaining an intentional structure that they've created. It trickles down and sometimes isn't easily seen as a constructed framework of 'shoulds', but it's always there. 


What does this do for us, to consider that there is no right or wrong and we can't be blamed for acting incorrectly? Does it make us feel energized, able to do anything because we have been relived of stresses and guilt related to an incompatibility with what others say we should do, and what actually feels natural? A lot of times, no. A lot of times, it causes more fear. What's more scary than knowing that anything is possible, and you can't be wrong? 


This: regardless of the fact that you can't be wrong, other people will still decide you are wrong and judge you. You will still have regular opportunities to feel as though you are failing, because devoid of outside morality, you create an internal morality from which to judge yourself by. And the subjective becomes more blinding than the objective. So an infinitely free person begins to box themselves in and create a bounded encasement from which they cannot be successful in escaping from. 


And for me, this is why people band together and create 'rules'. Those people who don't want to take on the 'burden' of dictating their own actions want to be told what they should do, and other people like to tell others what they should do - sometimes because they really can help others, and sometimes because their ego decides that telling other people what to do will somehow justify their choices, which they are insecure about. So it can be successful if those people in power are really able to lead others to find their own strength, rather than taking advantage of their fears. 


For those who read my blog regularly, I apologize for any repetitive thoughts I may share. This is all constantly in my mind and sometimes it flows through a few times.


On another note, if you'd like to see an inspiring talk about creativity that I got to see in person, check this out: 

Archetype

Which archetypes are present in you?

There are a lot of different studies/books that refer to archetypes and the different elements of our being that can be defined by those specific, universal characters that everyone has within them to varying degrees. It's a wonderful way to help categorize the self, and to personify those elements of your being which are so dynamic and have so much control over you that they certainly may as well be their own entities. 

I've done a lot of work in the study of archetypes, and I find the notion to be a very important and valid one. But the different explorations of the archetype have resulted in a library of different archetype 'sets' from which we can choose how to parcel out our being in the most clarifying way. Doing so makes the idea of the archetype just as varied as other branches in philosophy. 

When is to be made of this? Are we the Fool, the Poet, the Hero? Are we more elemental, as Anger, Fear, Sorrow, Happiness, Disgust, Surprise? Are we the Trickster, the Maiden, the Child? Mother Nature, the Shaman, Night, Day? In essence we are all of these things and the myriad of other archetypes that have been determined to be the 'fundamental' archetypes. But what use does admitting we have these archetypes within us have, since if we continue to expand and agree that we can relate to every archetype handed to us, up through Spirit, we will come to the recognition that we are a little bit of everything? 

People want to recognize their archetypes within themselves so they can call out recognition when one emerges. Then, analysis of the balance of their archetypes can lead to transformation and a healthier existence that transitions smoothly from archetype to archetype. 

As a student of archetypal studies, I'm simply feeling a little overwhelmed by the excess of possibilities. But it's just like my previous post about sickness - with literature and the internet, we have infinite possibilities of what could be the 'true' answer. And I simply find myself overwhelmed, frequently, by the abundance of possibilities for how we can come to self-understanding and transformation. As someone who already has trouble making decisions, infinite possibilities makes it just a little more challenging. 

But hey, that's the fun of it too. 

www.adhk.org