Author: Philo

human

30,000 Feet

There’s an apparent contradiction in our universe between quantum and classical physics.  When reading about physics on a micro-level, and noticing the world around, the contradiction does not seem important.  However, it poses problems to what we would like to believe and what we must accept.

There’s also an analogy to this in our daily lives; one which many have, perhaps, experienced first hand.  Leaders (politicians, CEO’s, administrators etc…) tend to tell those that work for them that they, the leaders, have a 30,000 foot perspective and that they, the workers, do not see the “whole picture”.

This seems paramount to saying: “I don’t care what quantum physics tells us, I don’t believe its true because I don’t live in that world.”  The problem is that we all live in one world, we are just not acutely aware of it.  This lack of awareness often leads to the acceptance of contradictions as truth.

Contradiction is deadly in math and logic, but there is also potent paradoxical poisons in other arenas: the dismissal of truth for the sake of belief; the narrowing of perspectives for the sake of power; apathy for the sake of comfort, and personal certainty for the sake of ignorance.  All of these are poisonous to real progress, and more times than not it doesn’t matter at what altitude we fly at.

Silence

Sometimes silence is good, and sometimes it is not.  This blog is a simple testimony to philosophy and a single perspective on that endeavor.  However, for some time, there has been nothing but silence.

While this simple, probably overrated, most likely unimportant, device for writing (the blog) is really nothing more than personal meanderings to a very few people, it is also in that it is something that was created with a certain intention: to be consistent.

In this aspect it has now been a failure; for the silence that has overtaken it has outweighed the personal responsibility of this writer to be consistent.  There are explanations and excuses, but only important to the writer himself and of no consequence to the blog.

I offer no apology to myself nor do I offer any explanation; it is simply how it has been in the months since the silence.  All of this is to say that once an endeavor has been taken on, it is important to accept the responsibility for that endeavor.  I have been irresponsible.

Sure it is, that there are very, very few people that this blog reaches, but that is not its point.  The point is to keep alive an endeavor that is as old as civilization and just as important; silence is the killer of that endeavor.

Happy

If anyone hasn’t noticed: it’s difficult to be happy.  There seems to be no good reason for this, unless you really think about it.  Being happy is hard work and takes a conscious effort.

First, the most difficult perhaps, put your ideals aside and be happy first.  There is no point in being miserable in order to uphold values and ideals.  Be happy first and then set ideals.  This seems so simple, but it is truly not; it takes work.  But happiness is worth it.

Secondly, meditate.  Busyness is a sickness, an excuse; it is a downfall and is a symptom of something larger, and largely wrong.  Being busy is fine.  However, take time to silence the noise, even for ten minutes or so.  This will put a smile on anyone’s face and puts things in perspective.  This is coming from a great source: Sam Harris, and personal experience as well (I’m a newbie).

Third, take time.  Just take time.  Take time to look up at the night sky, hug those you love and care for; go for walks, enjoy the day.  Time is all we have and is priceless.  Take time to give it the attention that you need.

Finally, be honest…brutally honest.  This does not entail being brutal or mean, but just honest.  Don’t lie…ever.

Think about it; what do we have to lose.

Alive and Well in Neverland

If you have ever slowed down and thought about your days it might have occurred to you that most of them are lived either in the past or the future.

“What do I have to do…”

“What did I do wrong…”

Fill in the blanks and your life is not much different than anyone else’s.

***

Human history is a continuous story of wars; wars against others, but most often wars against ideologies.  Wars are fought over women but seldom over men.  Wars are fought over land, but rarely over the environment.  Wars are fought over money, out of greed, but much less over social needs and/or progress.

It is though we humans cannot stand a moment’s peace; it is as if we cannot stand to progress.  This is, in part, not true.  However, the reasons for the wars that we have fought have never changed; we fight the same war over and over again.

***

Welcome to never-never land; the place to be, to forget, to dream.  Neverland is yours to keep, but you must keep it a secret for it is for all who can find it.  The imaginary reality of sleep; the induced coma of life.  Buy yourself a ticket and come on in.  There is a price, but it is but a pittance.  It is, of course, your soul, but you won’t miss it much.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

For most of human history human life was one of fear, misery, and basic survival dotted ever so slightly by short periods of happiness and even contentedness if one was lucky.  Nowadays, for a percentage of people in the right areas of this planet, those times seem long past.  Now we have social media, Starbucks (and I like Starbucks!), and cynicism.  We have so much and more is yet to come.

Liberty is such an esoteric term, almost antiquated in its cute  and lovable self-importance; so different from the all-important happiness, so daring in its veracity.  The flag-waving crowd throws the term around along with “freedom”, but what is the difference?  First, it would seem that we do not have to “pursue” liberty.  Secondly, it would seem to have something to do with freedom.

Ah yes, freedom!  We are, after all, Americans.  And so, perhaps, when pursuing happiness, we have the liberty to choose non-fat or skim milk; we have the freedom to pay with paypal or with a credit card.  We can choose Whole Foods are another franchised food mart.  We can choose to shop today or tomorrow.  These are our rights…

But rights, those are a different story.

A Paradise of One

Self-sufficiency is often defined by a determined belief that freedom is defined by individualism.  This is simply not true.  To be self-sufficient, others are necessary.  It does not matter that we view our societies as slowly evolving towards, even progressing towards, our dependency upon others in the modern world; this has always been the case.

Centuries ago people depended upon their neighbors.  The community was a support group for the self-sufficient.  Your neighbor could fix the plumbing and you were a good gardener; working together kept both you and the community progressing towards both happiness and efficiency.

And although our communities are being redefined and molded to include more and more, larger areas, and diverse cultures, this one simple principle still applies: we need each other.  This is one of the simple truths that we must come to realize or we perish.

There is no such thing as going it alone; there is no paradise of one.

Change

Change is the only consistent- a moniker that is true, yes, but only on a level that is truly meaningless to us as people, as a society.  History proves this somehow obvious truth, false.  All it takes is a short trip through history.

We, as a society are having the same conversations, almost the exact conversations, about the same concepts (such as rights, religions, politics and justice) and have been for some time.  For example, do a short research stint on slavery, or women’s rights and read the arguments for keeping the former and fighting the latter.  Bigotry is consistent but in a changing way.

The world that we have created is getting better, that much is fortunately true, but the battles that the good are fighting are the same battles that the good have fought since the dawn of man, which is much less fortunate.

Consider if real change was actually possible, these “debates” and political debacles would be non-existent.  Women wouldn’t make less than men, and racism would be accepted as a human weakness based in ignorance and considered as such by everyone.  We would not be “discussing” the evidence behind climate change, and still making decisions on antiquate belief systems that weren’t that good in the first place.

Real change is possible, but not through policy.  Real change is only possible with the change, or even giving up of ideals and ideologies; real change is only possible when fear is controlled and violence quelled at almost every level; real change is only possible when we as a society change our motivation from greed to good.

But again, change is the only consistent-a moniker that is true, yes, but only on a level that is truly meaningless.

Ideals

Hopefully we all have ideals: those beliefs, those ideas that are just out of reach; those things that motivate us to act.  Ideals are often defined by what we do when no one is looking; what we think when no one is around.  Some ideals are lofty and unattainable, and sometimes the bar is simply set too low.

There is a correlation between ideals and happiness, and yet often our ideals can make us miserable.  We do not live up to the ideals that we have set for ourselves.  Failing to live up to our own ideals is worse than failing to live up to others’ expectations.  In philosophy those with less experience  often pose the question: “What is the meaning of life?”  There are problems with this question, but one of the main issues is that it does not answer the question that we all really want to know.

Our ideals often lead us down a path, a rabbit hole.  We presume to know the consequences of our idealistic actions, but we are often wrong.  We find, with time, that our ideals do not lead us to the one thing that we all crave: happiness.  Our ideals, ironically enough, can easily lead us to the sense of failure and doom.  Not only can no one else live up to our ideals, but neither can we live up to our own.

A conversation had of late reminded me of that.  If our ideals are making us miserable it is perhaps because we are not asking the right question.  As Daniel Dennett pondered, cranes must be built from the ground up.  In the same way our ideals must be built upon what makes us happy.  If we start from a belief that we can be happy, then our ideals will follow.

So, what is the meaning of life?  There probably isn’t one.  However, How can we be happy?  That is  an ideal that is up to us.

Til’ Death Do Us Part

To look for meaning in life is a natural thing to do.  Most, it might be said, look to find meaning in their work or their family; perhaps, both.  It doesn’t really seem to matter, only that there is meaning in life.  We fight against a shallow existence, but often we find ourselves being the consumer of things rather than thought.

And this is where life takes us,especially when we are young.  But we get old, if we are fortunate, and it is in age that we find that the world cannot be fixed or saved; that we cannot fight the march of what we as a generation choose to call progress.  The wars continue to be fought, children born, people die.

There is injustice in the world now, as there always has been.

It is not that we get wiser as we get older (wisdom is a rarity).  It is just, maybe, that we get tired; that we realize that the world will not be fixed or saved; that our continuous fight is doing nothing but making us miserable; and in the end we die anyway.

This is not as gloomy as it may first seem.

There are choices that confront us, and if we take the time, we will be faced with choices that actually matter.  If fighting for justice, for wisdom, for progress makes us miserable, perhaps it is us that needs to be saved or fixed for the fight will always and forever be there; until death do us part.

Someone’s Got to Do It

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These days baseboards such as those pictured above can be bought pre-planed, prefinished and pre-cut.  Those above are not any of the preceding.  However, goods and services are often presented to us in their finished form and often enough most of us don’t think about what it takes to get them to that stage; and so a story about the above baseboards.

About a 1 1/2 ago I cut down several pine trees to give room to new five year old saplings.  The trees were healthy but a bit too crowded, and so I walked the woods for a few days picking trees to cut down.  After picking the five or so trees that I would take, I spent the day with a chainsaw, some chain and my tractor.

The work is hard and it is most definitely dangerous.  However, after letting the logs sit over winter I had an acquaintance with a portable mill come and mill some rough cuts out of the logs.  They were ranged from 6″-13″ wide and were 1″ thick.  These sat for an additional year drying.

After that period I planed the milled lumber, about 700 linear feet of it, chipped the rest and used the smaller top-cuts for firewood, which I cut and split, stacked and have been using in my woodburning stove.  I now had about 700 linear feet of wonderful smelling pine.

At this point, I needed base boards and they needed to be planed further to 3/4 in. wide to match the existing baseboards.  I cut the pieces to 8′ and 10′ lengths, sanded them with first 80 grit and then 120 grit.  I then cut the small angle on top of the baseboard and then I took the finished wood inside to paint (since it was 14 degrees outside).

Here they sit, almost two years after the wood was actually cut.  Of course, I could have bought baseboards pre-finished, pre-painted and even pre-cut, but the important thing to remember, for all of us, is that someone, somewhere had to do the work.

I know where this wood came from; I chose it with care and did all the work myself including installing the baseboards themselves; some have asked me why.  The answer is still, and will always be the same: someone’s got to do it, why can’t it be me.