Meanwhile...

On Vivid Memories of Morning

10/28/2007 7:24 AM - 7:49 AM

There is something in the morning, a smoothness in the passing of time, that isn’t found at other parts of the day. It is one thing to waste the daylight, another thing entirely to waste it as it first appears. I find it odd that now I, who was for years a dedicated insomniac, find the morning hours my own. It isn’t unusual, I suppose.

I remember that as a child of four or five, I was usually the first to awake. In my mind, I awoke hours before the rest of the house and waited impatiently for someone else to rise so that I wouldn’t be alone anymore. Reasoning the memories, I conclude that it probably wasn’t more than a half hour, forty-five minutes at the most. The memories that we create when we’re that young are tricked by the fact that, since we had so few, the ones we did have are more vivid than the ones we make now.

I'm guessing that it’s because, when comparing the density of those memories so bright and clear, so packed with information, with the standard of memories more recently made, the mind estimates time and concludes that it must have taken longer because so much data is contained within those tiny moments. It’s like having two digital videos, and without being able to actually watch them, trying to compare them based only on their file sizes. We conclude that since they are both about the same size, they both must run for about the same amount of time. Opening them, we discover that one is merely standard while the other is hi-def. The standard runs the standard amount of time while the hi-def runs much shorter but oh so much more vivid and clear. The memories of childhood seem so much more important that the ones from three weeks ago, but the data they contain is not much more significant for decision making. Just so much more alive and real. And there. I have written the sun up. You’re very welcome. There are clouds along the edges but the sky overhead is clear. This is good. It is a Sunday after all. God can peak down and see us and maybe grant us moments of being as vivid and clear as our memories of mornings long ago when someone awoke and seeing us, proved that we were real.

Meanwhile...

On the Great Gray Funk

10/16/2007 7:39 AM – 9:26 AM (this started out as an instant but did not finish as such)

There’s this thing I was reading. My latest research project is on the “survivor type.” Which was the title of a pretty good Stephen King story. Not one of his best but, like most King stories, memorable. But his type of survivor differs from the one I’ve been reading about. I’m looking at the more normal survivor, not the one inclined to do a lot of coke and eat his feet.

But that’s still stewing and I don’t really have thoughts that cohere at the moment. One thing that’s come out of the reading though is a theory that, in order to feel as if we exist, we need observe being observed on occasion. Somehow, we require seeing someone seeing us in order to confirm our existence. Which is silly. It’s much more reasonable to see and know ourselves and work from there. Like Descartes. But he blew it logically once he got to verification of the world apart from the mind. But, if you start from thought and work your way out, you’re going to run into problems anyway. ‘Course if you start with the out and work your way in, you’ll run into verification problems as well.

But enough of the holistic rational approach, it’s riddled with verification problems. The particular empirical approach however, while unsatisfactorily devoid of cohesion or theories, works. The tendency of the human creature is to require an observation of being observed in order to confirm its existence. Silly, as I said. The reason this was mentioned in a book on survivors was that the author was discussing the motivation of people that got lost or stranded somewhere alone and survived the ordeal. One thing that kept popping up in his research was this drive to be looked at by someone else. And it’s odd, that. Something as practical as surviving being driven by something as abstract as having your existence observed.

When I was younger, I loved cloudy days best (which is a good survival tendency for someone growing up in Western New York). That’s shifted in the past few years, but I still love a good bit of clouds on occasion. When I was younger and my whole life revolved around church and God (mostly in that order), I felt a certain relief in cloudy days. Despite the fact that my church’s theology was slightly more sophisticated than placing God up and the Devil down, that feeling of God as looking down from the sky persisted. On cloudy days, therefore, the feeling that I was momentarily free from his gaze obtained. It was the feeling, not the thought. I still believed that God was watching, but the feeling that I needed to be a good boy (which, as an aside, is a compulsion that most survivor types don’t feel) loosened. On cloudy days I felt as if I were allowed to be more myself than the thing that my church wanted me to be because of the silly feeling that the clouds obscured God’s view of me. I would wander on cloudy days, down the railroad tracks, up the hills, across the fields, through the woods, along the stream, carrying my BB gun or jack-knife, feeling slightly dangerous, slightly more alive than on days of blue skies. But now I am older and the feeling that I am going to die someday has arrived to fortify the knowledge of the fact.

There is an atmospheric condition in lake-effect areas known as the “Great Gray Funk.” Basically, the lake that, during the summer, tends to keep the sky more clear than would be expected in non-lake-effect areas, during the winter tends to do the exact opposite. From late fall to late spring, the land leeward the lake is usually cast in a swaddling of thick gray clouds. The temperatures are milder than that of the surrounding unaffected areas, but the clouds pile on top of clouds. My younger self would love it. My present self is content to survive it.

When the insistence on God is briefly removed, there is a sigh of relief. When the absence endures, one starts to hear the echo that indicates a deeper hollow. There never was a God like the one they told me about while I was growing up. I still believe that there is a God, but his substance is more subtle and mysterious than I was taught. In this life, he does not always punish the wicked nor reward the righteous. The blessed are blessed not with good fortune but the ability to enjoy whatever fortune they endure.

Yesterday, the clouds came in for the first time this year. There had been clouds previously, but the clouds of the Great Gray Funk are a type of their own. There is a thick, soggy chill to them that we do not see in the summer. Today, the clouds have thinned and there is a rosy rippling to their skin. “But I’ll be coming soon,” says the Great Gray Funk, bringing with him that feeling of a further separation.

We require, at times, seeing someone seeing us in order to confirm our existence. If You cannot bless us with your gaze, bless us at least with the ability to enjoy enduring in its absence.

On Contradiction. Again. But with Einstein Quotes

10/11/2007 7:43 AM – 8:10 AM

I’ve been thinking about that Einstein quote, “I want to know God’s thoughts, the rest are mere details.” I’ve always liked it, but the idea it seems to convey has been bothering me of late. Then I went to see if Einstein had actually said it (he did. I think) and I found another quote by him: “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”

The first seems to advocate a sort of rationalism and the second, well, empiricism. A contradiction in either primary or near primary principals, it would seem. But then I’m trying to recognize the necessity of the occasional contradiction. It’s slightly bothersome. It would be much more helpful if our thoughts about reality melded seamlessly with reality itself. Does nature abhor or admit contradiction? But perhaps both quotes taken together do not constitute a contradiction at all.

“God is in the details,” maybe, but that seems more of a gloss than an answer. Unless one is advocating a sort of neo-pantheism. Like a Gaia hypothesis. Which I still find rather laughable. But considering that I believe that a carpenter who gave up carpentry to be a wandering preacher about two-thousand years ago was actually God who died and then came back to life, somehow forgiving everyone every asshole thing that they’d done in the process, I really shouldn’t be the sort of person to point out the ridiculousness of a given belief system. Or I should be. The thoughts of God are details, the rest is conjecture. But what fine conjecture. We piece together a thousand disparate strings and weave a comic-book tapestry. Then someone points out that this string can’t hold any weight and so we replace it. Or we don’t and die nobly following our lemming system over the cliff. Without our conjecture, we have only a pile of strings, but weaving them together we counterfeit reality. One wishes that one could merely insist and leave it at that without a troubling of conscience. I’m going to go read a Donald Duck comic and pretend that I live in the woods with a hot chick.

On the Bodily Functions Politic

10/08/2007 8:34 AM – 8:54 AM

What then are the rights of the governors? The same as that of the governed, but the office has no rights at all. And maybe you can skip this one, because it’s just politics which is a tiresome sport, fit only for the lazy or belligerent. Life, liberty, and property – the original self-evident rights. The last struck from the list because of the controversial definition of “property” – i.e. does that include another man?

Disagreeing with “self-evident” by reason of an attempt at logical voracity, we still must regard them as necessary, though not, perhaps sufficient. Thou shalt not deprive another of life, save to prevent the taking of life. Thou shalt not deprive another of liberty by enslavement nor imprisonment save to prevent enslavery or imprisonment or the taking of life. Thou shalt not, by force nor fraud, take the property of another, save to reimburse the taking of property by force or fraud. Nor shall you by false witness, in act of omission or commission, allow these rights to be infringed.

It is not self-evident because it is not evident to all. It is not God-given because it is not given to all. It is merely the necessary starting point for a working society. What holiday is it? I don’t even know. Something granted to us by a government that takes itself very seriously because its governed takes it very seriously. Pssht. Politics: the messy bowel movements of human interaction. The duty of a contentious citizen is to work subtly to undermine it the power of its government. The power of a True Believer is to have no conscience. Do your best to fly under the radar of the government and its True Believers. Do your best to pursue life, liberty and property with unpatriotic aforethought. Serve God, love me, and oh, the happier we will be.

On the Law of Unintended Consequences

10/06/2007 10:04 AM - 10:44 AM

The Law of Unintended Consequences states that every action taken is the cause of unforeseen effects, which is tautology but possibly informative through our tendency towards reiterative learning.

The status of Unintended Consequences is ambivalent. It may be that the effects are positive, as in the case of Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” wherein actions undertaken for the profit of the individual have a beneficial effect on the group as a whole. It may be detrimental, as in the famous case of the butterfly that, alighting from a flower in Japan, caused a hurricane over Texas. Or it may be indeterminate, as in the case of Pandora’s Box, the last escapee of which is reported to be Hope.

The problem with assigning a status to the Law of Unintended Consequences is really the problem of assigning a status to Stories in general. We call it a Tragedy because we stopped the story where the noble hero died as a result of his fatal flaw. We call it a comedy because we stopped the story when the common protagonist got the girl. If we had declined to accept the arbitrary end point and let the film keep playing, the tone of the tale would change as well. The death of the hero brought about sweeping reform and the group benefited by the effect. The marriage of the protagonist was a lousy one and the kids that issued forth were evil little shits. But these too are arbitrary endings. The sweeping reforms had the unforeseen effect of fomenting a revolution that sat a Hitler on the throne. The evil little shits grew up and grew kind and made movies that brought about sweeping reforms. The rule of the Hitler brought about the journal of an Anne Frank that brought about the perspective of a fifth-grader three thousand miles and seventy years away that brought about a book that brought about a paradigm that brought about a business that brought about a school that brought about a painting that brought about a theology that brought about a reform that brought about a drink that brought about a flower that brought about a butterfly that brought about a rainstorm that brought about a situation with a common protagonist and a girl that brought about a couple of evil shits that brought about a movie that brought about a reform that brought about a revolution that bought about a Hitler that brought about a comic book that brought about a laugh. On and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Ad hoc, of course, merely pointing out how little we can claim to know, and waiting to see what the effect of that will be. Funny, in some weird way, would be my guess.