My brain is a sponge living in a body with self-destructive/murderous tendencies.
I will elaborate.
I can learn just about anything pretty quickly, and love to do so. Hence, sponge. I also have an autoimmune condition which attacks and damages my brain. Hence, self-destructive/murderous tendencies.
Just a random, slightly fucked up, oddly funny thought that crossed my mind as I was getting ready to sleep, so I figured I’d share.
Have a great night!
You can read part 4 here.
Part 4 was a discussion of the scarier points of a random universe, but ended with a question about free will, which I’d like to get into now. To start, we will consult Merriam-Webster.
There are two ways to write this word — freewill and free will, the former being an adjective, the latter a noun. We are interested in the noun, so here we go:
Free will is making a choice on your own, but can that rule out randomness? Habits come to mind, which makes me think that yes, free will can rule out the idea that all choices are random.
But what about those choices not related to habit? And, to expand on that, how many of our choices are not related to habitual behavior? For example, if you are a frugal person, and see a dollar on the sidewalk, you’re likely to pick it up. If not, you may just walk on by. That choice to pick up the dollar or not, is related to a quality that you have – being frugal. And it creates certain habits, even if you did not consciously work to establish said habit. That leads to the conclusion that the type of person we are – frugal, a career person, an animal person, etc. – determines the types of habits we have and the choices we make. That, in turn, makes me think that all of our choices are related to habit, and if that is the case, not random.
Additionally, are there any random habits? The more I think about this, I think that any choice that we make is based on habit. But we can choose to forego habitual behavior. For example, I attended a baby shower today. I purchased non-practical gifts for said event. This was out of character for me, since I tend to err on the side of practicality when it comes to gifts for big events like birth or marriage.
Let’s take a moment to consult the dictionary again:
Habits are usual, regular, or recurring events or modes of behavior. Random is random – it could be any of the choices, with equal probability of each; the flip of a coin. Human beings are creatures of habit. If you have a particular value, such as honesty, or frugality, then your behaviors tend to reinforce that value. In other words, your choices reflect your values. Habits are value based. Can values be random? I lean towards no on this, because values have a purpose, and can have or cause a pattern.
A random thought, how do instincts fall into this? Instincts are predictable behaviors, but not one that a choice is made about.
This needs some additional thought before I continue. Prepare for part 6!
Have a great night!
I have been writing lately about the possibility that life is just a random series of events, that there is no meaning to any of it. Again, to emphasize…. The possibility. I do not nor do I claim to know the answer to that question.
Another thing that I have been thinking about is the number phi and the Fibonacci sequence. Key word here is thinking. Internal. Known to myself only.
What to I see on FB today? A scene from the movie Pi, one of my favorite movies, where Max is talking to someone about the numerical significance of Hebrew, and then he ends up explaining the Fibonacci sequence to this other dude. What?!?
Seriously, wtf? Can the internet read my mind now? Is this the grandest of all consequences? Or is this something bigger than all of that? How do i figure out which?
I need to design an experiment. Maybe, not thinking, I looked up something related to Fibonacci, or some algorithm saw my draft post. Either way, I need to eliminate variables and get some useful data.
More to come on this….
Rant time.
I hate rude people. They hereby, if it was not made clear previously, officially qualify for Asshole status. If you’re in a meeting and make a phone call without warning and without excusing yourself, that is rude. If you tolerate intense background noise on a call that makes you difficult to hear, and then expect the other person to just deal with it, you are rude. If you cut someone in a long line for something without good reason and without asking, you are rude. If, in general, you do not consider other people in your day-to-day interactions around other people, and ask, or excuse yourself before doing something that will interrupt, inconvenience, or in some way negatively impact them, then you are rude, and by extension, an asshole.
Have some fucking manners – don’t be an asshole.
Beliefs are interesting things, because there is no fact behind them; there is no objective evidence. And yet, violence – wars, even – happen because of beliefs.
I saw an interesting clip on FB a while back, and there were two dudes talking, and the one said, “Don’t you know that belief is a doubt?” and the other dude says, “How is belief a doubt?” and the original dude says, “Because you cannot believe something and know it.” and he goes on to explain that “you can only believe in what you don’t know.” (here’s a link to the clip on Youtube) It was really intriguing, and certainly pertains to this discussion. If I know something – I know I woke up this morning, or that I had steak and shrimp for dinner last night, I don’t have to believe those things. They happened; I witnessed them. Or, as the dude in the video points out, I know my parents, I don’t believe in them. But, I’ve never met Santa Clause, so as a child, I had to believe in him. It’s a perspective I never considered.
On to more thinking, and brooding that it’s too cloudy to see the meteor shower.
Have a great night!
What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
Simple. Start over, and focus on what’s actually important, which does not include the material bullshit.
Wow. Came across a video…. here.
I have issues with Neil deGrasse Tyson because he demoted Pluto, but the man is amazing intellectually, without a doubt.
This is… insane. Light has no clock, no age. I just…. I can’t even process this right now, being almost midnight, but I have to get into this more. Einstein was right, and in a way that corresponds to the absolute core of how the universe operates. How does this impact things that I’ve been thinking about? What might this mean for life in general? What are the implications? The faster that you move, the less time exists for you. What!? The existence and impact of time is based on a condition.
My mind is reeling, I can’t write right now, I need to process.
Have a great night!
Random memory time!
When I was in college, I had to write a research paper, the subject matter had to be something from the 60s. It was the final paper for the class and would account for a ridiculous portion of the final grade. The professor was extremely conservative, and didn’t appreciate an outspoken, pierced, tattooed chick with a purple mohawk in her very distinguished honors English 101 class. Let’s just say we would butt heads often. So, being the sarcastic, somewhat vindictive rebel that I was, I decided to fuck with her and write a kick ass paper on how the use of LSD became popular in that timeframe and imagined the mental pain it would cause her to have to give me an A on the paper and in the class all because of a paper about illicit drug use.
I started researching. The main topic was going to be Timothy Leary, his impressive education and career, and the fact that he would encourage people to do acid. However, my research took a turn in a whole different direction when I came across something about classified CIA experiments with LSD. (They were declassified in the early 2000s) I dug into it, and oh my, the things I found!
During the project code named MK-Ultra, the goal was to find an effective method of mind control or a type of truth serum. Initial efforts focused on LSD, and included sometimes unwitting subjects from both the US and Canada. The “research” also employed other hallucinogens, as well as shock therapy, and various forms of torture. They expanded to include some crazy shit with barbiturates and amphetamines administered back to back in an effort to produce an uninhibited state where the subject would just answer questions truthfully. They also would tape therapy sessions, give the subject LSD, then put them in a sensory deprivation tank or solitary confinement and play back the most horrible moments from the taped therapy on a loop, just to see how that would impact the person. Seriously sick shit – several people died as a result of this fucking insane quest for mind control.
I wound up writing a killer, scathing research paper about this project. And yes, I got an A, albeit with some disparaging comments from the professor about the opinions insinuated in the paper.
You can read part 3 here.
Part 3 brought me to an interesting thought about the possibility that the only thing we are to be held accountable to is ourselves and our values. The idea that there is no grand orchestrator, be it life, the universe, a deity – it’s all just random. That there is literally nothing as far as meaning or motive is concerned. The freedom represented in this idea, is, as I said, exhilarating. But what else would that mean if it were true? Those answers could be terrifying.
One belief that I always held on to was the idea that people would get what they deserve in life. And by that, I mean that bad people would receive bad things from life. And good people who have been impacted by bad people or events would have even better things come to them. Karma would do her thing, and while it would be awesome if I could witness it, I was ok with “knowing” that was going to happen. I believed in balance in the universe, in life. It wasn’t necessarily an instant thing, which had to be the case in order for the whole thing to make sense to me, but that was ok. (For the record, instant Karma can be fucking hilarious!) But, if everything is the result of random chance, then Karma doesn’t have a place. Karma isn’t a thing in that version of reality. That’s a bit scary, because that means that horrible people can get away with horrible things, and there is no Karmic justice that will pay them back for that, or give the good people in the world some relief from the bullshit. And, I have to say, I’ve questioned that whole thing as I’ve gotten older anyway, because I see more and more that people get away with some truly fucked up shit. And, even if they do get hit with Karma, sometimes the level of “justice” is lacking to say the least.
The next thing is that if we are the result of coincidence, and are accountable to no one but ourselves, that puts a ton of responsibility on our shoulders. We are responsible for whether or not we are successful, and for the kind of person that we choose to be. We have to answer to ourselves for all the good and bad that we do or cause, and we have to own every single piece of that. There is no transfer of guilt for the things that happen – it’s just random, after all. And that’s the second component of this. Lots of responsibility, but also the fact that every single thing in our lives is an uncertainty with no reason behind the outcome. If something horrible happens, there is no reason for it, no guarantee of something better after the fact or some improved understanding of life or yourself or whatever. If you believe that things happen for a reason, it’s sometimes easier to deal with the painful things, because you believe that there is something good or pleasant on the other side of all that pain. But in this realm of randomness, there is no good or bad on the other side of anything. Just more rolls of the dice.
One thing to consider though, is free will. That’s something that we all believe we have. I can get out of bed, or not. I can punch someone in the face, or not. I can sit on my patio all day enjoying the birds and ignoring work, or not. But what if those choices are random as well? I don’t actually believe that to be the case, because if it were, habits would never exist. Habits are predictable events and are the exact opposite of random. And, as the adage says, humans are creatures of habit. That said, how does free will factor into this whole schema of a random existence? Is free will the evolutionary mechanism to fight against the randomness in an attempt to bring some kind of order to the chaos?
I have been through several periods of debilitating sleep deprivation. 2-3 hours per night and still had expectations to be fully functional during the day type thing. These were short lived periods for the most part – a week or so at a time. Because of something I wrote yesterday, I started wondering what would happen if sleep was optional?
At the end of any of these sleep deprived periods, I was shot, flat out. Cranky, irritable, couldn’t think straight, sometimes could barely speak without tripping over my own tongue. But what would happen – how would life be different – if our bodies didn’t require a certain amount of rest to function properly long term? What if I could take a 20 minute power nap twice a day and be optimally functional the rest of the time? No grogginess, no snippyness. Just normal you on minimal sleep?
I would imagine there would have to be some trade off if this were a reality. Shorter life span, most likely. After all, the human body is just a big electrochemical machine. Sleep as we know it is our scheduled maintenance.
Would you take that trade? I would be tempted. Depends on how much net time could be gained in the trade….something to think about.
Happy Saturday!
A Peculiar Cerebral Tangle 