We decide…

We decide what the echoes in our thoughts sound like.

We decide how to arrange our days so that our exposure to the physical manifestation of others’ thoughts intersect with ours.

How many of us live in the realm of reacting to others rather than proactively leading ourselves (and others) because we choose not to ignore the distractions and interference of other’s echoing thoughts?

My days on this planet are limited.

I sympathise with the plights of others, even empathise sometimes, but your lives are not mine, your decisions are not mine, your reactions are not mine.

I do not depend on the rulings of the court of public opinion.

I do not depend on the mass marketing of unnecessary products.

I live because my thoughts are worth nurturing.

I decided long ago that the independent thoughts I had when I was five were worth perpetuating, my creativity — no matter how in-tune or out-of-tune — was worth feeding.

The only facts I have are the ones before — the Sun warms my hands while typing on this keyboard which is coated with black symbols that match the pattern of symbols I think and then type in sequence, correspondingly showing up on the flat screen in front of my eyes.

I assume so much in the thoughts that represent the previous paragraph, a whole set of subcultures exist[ed] just to support my assumptions.

I had been both unpopular and popular in primary/secondary school while mostly following the rules laid out for my peers and me.  What was important then is not important to me now — I don’t have to complete vocabulary tests and math/science assignments anymore.

I exist here in this moment you read these words and I exist 1000 years from now looking back at these words with nostalgic pining for the good ol’ days of flesh-and-blood fingers pressing down on pieces of plastic to communicate inefficiently yet effectively for the time.

How quickly our fortunes change.

Does a gust of wind prevent your sailboat from reaching the shore when you are finished having fun and sun on the water for the day?

Were any of your favourite classical music artists distracted by the news of the day while composing such “hits” as Orchestral Suite No. 3 In D Major, Bwv 1068, by Bach, Johann Sebastian?

When studying the history of our species, have you noticed the ones who stayed on a true course despite wars, political upheaval, famine and other distractions going on around them?

Events follow one after the other and always will.  We, in hindsight, tell ourselves what those events meant to us at the time and how they affect us now, setting in motion the events that follow one after the other and always will.

How disciplined am I, then, to keep telling you how the future looks back at current events when I am both in the current events and the future, my thoughts split like any good humorous writer’s?

You exist only because I believe you exist; that is, as any good thinker will tell you, how you see yourself is not the same as how I see/imagine the physical manifestation of your self which is partially a reaction to how you see/imagine the physical manifestation of me.

As a computing machine, sitting here converting last night’s spaghetti, sausage, tomato sauce and beer into a blog entry, I follow a course of action as true as any other in placing a paving stone for you to follow behind, you who can only be a projection, my image of you, the imaginary reader led by the computational writer while the piano music of Claude Debussy tickles my eardrums.

Put aside your distractions and step into the future once again…

Under your drawers

While the plumbers were excavating the septic tank in the front yard, they heard a commotion and got my attention.

They lifted the lid and there before us, a whole family of sock puppets were living inside, explaining years and years of single socks disappearing from the clothes washing machine.

An argyle sock.

Several athletic socks — knee-length, ankle-length and arch support.

Twenty-six years of my dress socks forming the extended family members.

A few of my wife’s decorative leggings were used by the sock puppets as a bed.

Two pairs of tights covered the bed to keep condensation from dripping down on the comfy puppets.

Another mystery solved!

Never Predict the Future

Next on the list of callouts — unregistered gun clubs go deeper underground, join forces, create chaos while raiding ammunition plants, gun shops, and military depots, teaching others home-grown methods of making ammo.

Corollary — DIY ammo becomes the latest cottage industry that, along with 3D printed weapons, creates a whole new class of destructive force, opening up markets for kids/adults hooked on cosplay and ready to go to the next level of near-reality; key: listen when they repeat the code word “holodeck” to indicate their desire to carry this out, “raise the ante,” at geek conventions, retro LAN parties and hackerthons.

Can Shifting Winds Turn Big Boats in Midstream?

More stories for afternoon contemplation on a cloudy Monday in which strains of “In the Bleak Midwinter” plays…

BONUS: Teaching kindergartners to pay attention pays off

 

 

Societies are like orchestras

In this orchestral symphony I call life, it’s time to cue a few instruments in mainstream culture — the current state of development of near-Earth commercial/personal space travel.

  • How long before we can ride aboard SpaceShipTwo?
  • When will Bigelow Aerospace have a space hotel room ready for me?
  • Can I, my wife and friends ride a balloon to the edge of space to renew our wedding vows as astronauts?
  • Where is the offworld colony that gives me citizenship to protect my monetary assets from greedy governments?

The latest meeting of the Megabillionaires Club discussed the questions above as agenda items.

As usual, the answers depended on which billionaires were keen on reconquering old geographical territories and dominating marketplace positions here on Earth.

The visionaries amongst us admitted Earth was a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there forever.

We’ll update you on our progress.

If you have a few hundreds of thousands of dollars, we can accommodate your desire to get as far away from the surface of the planet as your money will take you.

If you have a few billion dollars, we’re combining resources to build a bridge out of the inner solar system altogether.

Tugged in two directions

Two storylines wait to be written (note to self: lots of twos in blog entries lately, need to change number to something larger but not too large).

The first storyline is about the person who grow up in a suburban Christian home, singing in the children’s choir, visiting nursing homes on the weekends, serving the community as a Boy Scout throughout the week, who, as an adult, had strayed on to other lifestyles but, due to a recent horrible news event of which he had no direct connection, other than subculturally, he redirects his living back toward the stricter interpretation of the Bible, contradictions fully understood and prioritised, praising those who followed the stricter lifestyle while reaching out to others who have not seen the light, avoiding the condemnation and criticism of alternate lifestyles that others in the Christian faith were wont to do.

The second storyline shows yet another version of how subtle manipulation of the rise and fall of importance of subcultures in mass media/pop culture allows the use of subliminal forms of coercion to herd the masses rather than the overt methods of intimidation and public executions.

If you want to eliminate real, live, high-powered semi-automatic guns and rifles from the population, build up a heavy desire for them by advertising the ubiquitous sale of virtual shooting in games and simulations (“9.5 out of 10!” exclaims Computer Killing and Gratuitous Violence magazine), push passive-aggressiveness to a tipping point, give lone wolves the feeling they have no way out but to kill others rather than seek socially unacceptable counseling, watch the pot boil over and Voila! another gunman kills a bunch of people just in time to call for legislation/executive orders to limit the sale/ownership of real, live, high-powered semi-automatic guns and rifles by the population.

The four previous paragraphs demonstrate how you base future actions on living in the past.

But I live in the future.

I, as we know, is an artificial construct.

Space and time do not exist.

We can bypass the normal scientific theories and create our own as shortcuts between moving points.

“I” see that the coffee mug on the table is not sitting still, traveling through space at thousands of miles per hour while gravitationally held in place by the local sphere of molten metal and various spinoffs of sets of states of energy in motion (trees and gnats, for instance).

But all that “I” see is an illusion — to see the real deal “I” have to disintegrate, disappear, tear apart the comfortable surroundings that are here to support the fragile structure called “me.”

How few of the billions of “us” have been given the opportunity to step out of our beautiful cocoons and see any truth except what we believe to be the Truth?

We have created our origin stories, modified as our civilisations expand and die, supposedly growing more informed, more sophisticated, less ignorant, more inclined to be hypnotised by shiny new baubles we call the promise of new technological advances that will reveal a deeper, richer aspect of the Truth than we had never seen before (“buy our 3D glasses to see an imaginary world displayed on a flat surface when you already live in the real, free, three-dimensional world that’s much less fascinating!” [implication: you get what you pay for]).

You know what I mean, we were created by God(s) for their pleasure, the world is a stage and we are merely players, the universe is a computer simulation, et cetera and so forth, on and on until you wonder if your species will ever create anything really new.

Hucksters in the form of scientists, researchers, advertisers, marketers, parents, religious leaders and politicians, every last one of them in on the joke but unwilling to admit the punchline is us.

The first rule is there are no rules.

If you want a story that tells it like it is, then we have to remove “you” from the story as reader and imaginary participant.

There is no “you,” “me,” “us,” or “I.”

Easier said than [un]believed.

When you can let go of everything around you that is an accident of evolution — the ego for ego’s sake — you are ready to stop being you and become part of the story behind the story.

Otherwise, it’s the same ol’ thing over and over.

Are you willing to sacrifice your ego for the sake of a good story because that’s the only way you get to the future of space and time that does not exist?

You can be a solipsist or you can be nothing — there is no such thing as being tugged in two directions at once.

When countries can no longer afford to export their labour

Do your country’s economic leaders tell you that immigration is the solution to your stalled retail sales?

What if the sources of immigration, other countries, have created viable economic models of their own and can no longer afford to export their labour?

When the world’s labour pool is shrinking, due to decreased birthrates and increased senior citizen ranks, what should our national, let alone our global, economic expansion plans look like?

When people are living longer and suffering debilitating but not terminal diseases, on whose healthy backs shall they ride when the labour pool keeps getting smaller?

Are these anthropological signs of a species in transition?

What about the growing automation trends?

Can small groups — families and subcultures — survive with one or two children per generation but with large numbers of networked bots growing their food, reading their thoughts and designing objects to meet their wants/needs, manufacturing their goods, providing their services and caring for them when they’re sick?

Nuclear families were the epitome of health until we started paying attention to the tunnel vision and dysfunctional family traits that become unhealthy quickly.

Can we monitor and control the mass media exposure that influences families and destroys them because of the mismatch between the family’s set of changing (as opposed to [allegedly] unchanging) values and the set of values in flux that are implied by the unmanaged onslaught of advertising, each advert designed for a set of potential customers that may have nothing to do with the next advert’s set of potential customers?

If a person can get PTSD from watching too much coverage of a bad news event, then can we also experience similar trauma from too much exposure to disjointed sets of adverts, news events and disparate subcultures?

How do we know when it’s safe to let ourselves and our children see the universe in its neutral state, neither desiring us harm nor offering us good?

How do we know that immigration or emigration is really good for us if economic prosperity cannot protect from our worst fears?