Yes or No?

Something very random I stumbled on today. I am writing a computer program which I am trying to teach parts of speech. Then I tried to make the program use voice commands. I tried to have the program ask if you wanted to quit. That didn’t work and the program asked me how to classify the word “no.” Is it a noun? No. Is it a pronoun? No. Is it a verb? No. Is at an adverb? No. Is it an adjective? No. Sometimes it can be an exclamation, as in, “No!,” he interjected.

Of Miracles

I have friends who are atheists. That’s not my way of thinking but it causes barely any friction. This is not because I am tolerant especially, but cynical. As Tolstoy’s character observed in War and Peace, concerning his fellow Masons, “most of them did not believe in God. As far as he could tell, most of them did not believe in anything.”

I have a friend who will often comment about how pointless his marriage seems. Yet if you identify things that he and his wife have done well together, such as raising two children, he will still maintain it should be better. This same unhappy spouse will dismiss the followers of religion as people that just believe something they read or are told without critical thinking. My question, which I have yet to pose to him, “How did you come by this belief in a happy and fulfilling union between man and woman?” Can he name any instances of relationships that fit the ideal? I submit actual examples of fulfilled happy couples (that can stay that way for any length of time) are like pointing to the occasional miracle. The same subjectivity in two people saying they are happy together would be present in two people saying they observed a miracle.

Given the lack of objective proof it becomes obvious that most people’s thinking follows the same lines. They come by their beliefs either by actual experience, or an emotional trust in something they have not objectively experienced. I wonder whether those who choose a more durable delusion come out better. The others as they age might end up one of Tolstoy’s people who believe in nothing.

The Gypsy of Home Depot

I’m not sure if I have a definite idea of what a real gypsy looks like. Everyone knows something about them – gypsies, like pirates, there is a lot of myth and legend around them. They are a definite presence in Europe but there they don’t usually call them gypsies. They call them “the Roma” which avoids the romantic associations of calling them gypsies, which is important because they are viewed prejudicially in general.

There I was in the Home Depot. I had in my hand six loose 5/16” washers. That’s all I needed to complete my project, so I was eager to procure them, also I needed cash back. Like clockwork there were two slow people ahead of me. One man was having problems with the self-checkout station on one side. Ahead of me was an Asian woman who had a large bucket of something in a shopping cart. She looked tentative, like she wasn’t sure if should could get it through the self-checkout. She was keeping her options open and not moving up when the available self-checkout station opened up. I severed that Gordian knot by cutting around her. She didn’t look insulted. But this was the first interaction I had with the gypsy, who waved her hand a little towards the Asian woman. But she was backing up her cart, apparently she had determined her course and was headed towards the manned cash register. Which opened at the same time as the self; but I prefer to get my cash back from a machine.

I settled in at my station for the inevitable “Wait for Assistance” because the loose washers had no bar code. The human on the opposite side was still having trouble self-checking out. The gypsy (long flowing dress – check; big earrings – check; dark hair – check; swarthy complexion – check) had delayed going over to the confused human due to her perceived duty as traffic cop for the self-service checkouts. Once she saw the Asian woman change her mind she gave that situation her full attention.

This is when I started studying her and noticed her earrings, which led me to notice her dress (under a day-glo vest of course), which led me to notice her complexion. The earrings I had to mull over for although they were large, they were not hoop earrings. Does that qualify? I wondered. They were large broad turquoise triangles of enameled metal. But there was an unusual pattern in the turquoise, so I awarded them gypsy standing.

A lot of these deductions are mere supposition but what do I care I needed something to do while I was waiting there. The gypsy didn’t look like a new employee but neither did she look like she knew exactly what to do. Finally she came over to me to help me pay for the washers. “They’re 5/16” washers,” I said. Her eyes made no change whatsoever, she just held out her hand to receive the little pieces of round metal. She took them over to her station. Then she began the counting process. Now let me say I don’t feel the following had any reflection on her intelligence. I think she had been aware I was studying her and this made her nervous. For she did a little routine where she picked up each washer and stacked it up on the other side of the same hand they were lying on. Nobody from any culture would naturally count a small group of items this way. You would look down and see two groups of three, or one group of two and one group of four, etc. Six is too small a number to need to stack.

When I got the receipt back it said – six cents. Furthermore the item code was for something-inch hex bolts. Whatever these were, they would have cost even more than simple cut washers (which were 22 cents apiece – highway robbery). At first I felt guilty and debated whether to go back to her to correct the error. I debated this while I was choosing my cash back amount. Then I realized the price was not determined by the item code – it could not possibly be one cent per. She had hastily set the item code, and then assigned a price that made sense to her. Flat little pieces of metal with a hole – about one penny seems reasonable. I was starting to like her more and more now, so there was no way I would get into a tussle about the correct item code for 5/16” galvanized cut washers, with a gypsy.

Garden of Delights

The body is a garden of delights,
from the walking foot to the thinking head:
beware the tree in the middle, lest you be dead.

Love comes from there for a man, growing well
and quickly through the stomach fruit, and though
it develops a strong heart wood, it has that root.

Therefore a woman’s love begins higher,
with its root in the heart. It can send shoots
both downward and upward, but has the higher roots.

~ Marcho

America the Noisy

It’s a thunder-full day in the neighborhood.

On a popular forum for a certain Italian-designed automobile, more than a few people have commented about the automatic lock feature. They would prefer an audible confirmation that pressing the lock button on their key fob had the desired effect. This is in addition to an audible click of the locks and the headlights flashing. One time I was tying my shoe, bending down in front of our car, when my wife locked it. The short horn blast that served as the audible confirmation had my ears ringing for about three hours. This would be a humorous anecdote in the USA. Not only is noise pollution not generally perceived as a threat, it is almost taboo to complain about noise. It would be considered effeminate in male company and subversive in female company.

So there is a suburban scenario of a leaf blower droning amidst barking dogs, a large horsepower riding lawn mower spewing, while another neighbor guns his motorcycle. This could be any day in the neighborhood, but very often Saturday is victimized. Upon entry to work in the morning, there could be a little world war III going on in the gardens around your office building. Ironically lawn care professionals are the only ones that actually require this equipment. Their simulation of a world war only lasts for a brief time, because time is money. They used to be the only people with gas powered leaf blowers, but the commotion around office buildings was noticed by consumers. Imagine the luxury of being able to move mountains (or even shreds) of lawn debris with barely the swipe of a hand!

God of Love?

Kierkegaard pointed out an interesting thing about Eros, the Greek God of Love. His godhead supported the erotic love of everyone on earth, plus all the other Gods, yet Eros himself was not in love. There was an exception but it is not important. In fact I will not redraw all the reasoning but refer you to Mr. K’s book, “Either/Or,” for the original treatment of the idea. The point is that all the love everywhere was traced back to Eros for its existence, instead of emanating from him, because he didn’t possess it himself.

Think now about the more modern conception of God, as a sole entity. We can ask if the one God needs to experience love because love exists. That is the question here. Since God is infinite and encompasses an infinite number of ideas, it would be possible for God to experience love. But is it really necessary? If it is not necessary, is it really the case? We humans experience love, and for believers, tradition says love emanates from god the creator. But in fact God may have constructed love the same way as for Eros in myth. He may be necessary for all love throughout the universe, without experiencing love himself. I read once (and believed) that everyone who writes about Jesus incorporates his own personality in some way. Even if one insists that the bible is the inspiration of God, it still undergoes a certain translation in being rendered by the human brain into human language. There is no way we can faithfully tell what it is like to be god. How we can see the universe as God does? We assume Jesus felt joy and sorrow, because He wept at the news of his friend’s death. Yet in the traditional conception of Jesus, he was born a God and was always a God while at the same time being a man. Therefore as infinite God he knew of his friend’s death, and had an infinite knowledge of what it means to die, and indeed had the power, which he demonstrated, to undo his friend’s death. Why therefore did he weep, is it because we do? We would weep at the news of the death of a friend. But if we could wave our hand and bring our friend back to life, we would not weep.

The same accumulated tradition of God both preserves the story and forces the logical difficulties of believing it. That is why the tradition of Buddha seems in some ways more powerful and science more believable. Science has confirmed many times that everything conserves. Our planet is like a demonstration of an air conditioner inside a store that is sitting on a table. You can feel cool air coming out from it but it does not materially change the temperature of the room since it is unvented. If we waste all our resources and destroy our lovely planet the universe does not materially change. Furthermore even the information about how our planet existed before it exploded cannot be destroyed. If these facts are clear to our mortal scientists, it seems obvious that God would take a neutral view on everything. One appreciates something one has created, but loving it is unnecessary. Loving something one creates is a type of self-idolatry. One can imagine taking pride in, taking an interest in, admiring, a creation; but loving it is unseemly.

If the above argument is accepted, it means love comes from us – people. It elevates us as People of Love. We can be happy in the knowledge that we are producing the love. We need to constantly increase our production, because we see from the world around us it is in short supply.

Callaloo in parts one and two

First part, here is a picture of the seed packet. I ordered it from etsy.com. A few days later a hand-addressed envelope arrived. The return address was “Jamaican Ladys Garden,
Cypress, TX . It’s not a good picture but you can see the little black seeds. They’re even smaller than they look in this close-up. The bag is about 2×4 inches. I have to get them out of the plastic bag and try to disperse them.

 

Here’s the picture with the calla loo in the foreground. In the background are my newly installed pansies in residence, in four colors. In the middle ground is my automated watering system which I just re-installed for Spring. The picture might be a little crooked, I had to shoot it while holding an umbrella with one hand. Two neighbors caught me doing this.

We also have a rabbit that lives somewhere around the driveway. I think he made it through the winter, I saw his tracks in the last snow. He will thin the callaloo for us, and hopefully leave a little extra for us to eat.

MELANCHOLIA IS SELF-INDULGENCE

Soren Kierkegaard

Today I Discovered a New Genius

A pretty good thinker named Albert Einstein said that “… all people are geniuses.” Mr. Einstein then gave the metaphor that if you tested a fish’s intelligence by seeing if he could figure out how to climb a tree, you would remain convinced the fish was stupid. The reaction of the world was as if to say “how touching – the smartest man in the world is throwing a bone to all of us less gifted– saying that we too are geniuses.”  What’s amazing to me is that people in general decided not to believe Albert Einstein. They will take his word for it about the speed of light or that our solar system works like a rubber sheet where the heavy objects make dimples that we call gravity. But they don’t believe what he said about everyone being a genius.

Think about a smart and noble dog owned by a bad man. Mr. Bad Man does not always, but occasionally, and persistently, mistreat his noble dog. Mr Bad Man is dissolute. He comes home drunk and kicks the dog for no reason whatsoever. The dog, who is intelligent, brave, and loyal, knows on some level that he is a better dog than his master is a man. But the dog does not have the ability to finalize the whole concept that he is actually superior to the man. There is a glimmer inside the dog that knows the truth. However the limitation of the dog’s intellect cannot do what is required. How many of us read someone so obviously smart, and have to re-read sentences many times to truly understand what he is trying to say, then suspect that we actually have a better understanding than Mr. Genius? How many great ideas have fallen in mind-forests without making a sound to anyone else in the world? Could it be, the resistance of others to believe or even attempt to believe our ideas can bury them for hundreds or thousands of years, until someone produces the same idea in a believable fashion or in an environment ready to believe? We are all geniuses, we all know how to live in peace – but we do not believe even ourselves.

Yoga for Warmth

You often hear about “Yoga for Health and Well-Being.” You might only be looking for health, but you will get well-being in the bargain. What is well-being? I found out one night in my bed. Each night, unless I am really exhausted, I practice meditation. After many years of trying to meditate sitting up, I found out I can do much better in a supine position. In Yoga they refer to this as the “corpse” pose. You don’t even have to be living to do this position, that’s how easy it is.

After assuming the position, I begin deep breathing to relax each part of my body. I visualize incoming breath passing through different parts of my body. If you know what chakras are, you work downward starting from the highest. If you don’t know what chakras are, start from the top of your head and work towards the souls of your feet.

I noticed after a while that if I had my bed warmer switched on I got too warm while meditating following the relaxation. I would have to bend over and switch off the device, re-relax the parts of my body that had been disturbed, and then get back into the meditation where I had been before the interruption.

Okay, here’s how we get to well-being. The winter deepened and we are saving money by not using a lot of heat. Therefore the rooms on the edges, where my bed is, are getting quite cold. I gave my bed warmer to my wife and she got addicted to it. Then I realized I already had a way of getting warm. I ran through my usual meditation routine, and by the end of it, instead of too warm, I am just right. I feel well in my being.

This is a demonstration to me of the power of Yoga. Yoga means mind-body union. In the above example, when lying in a bed that is cold, what the whole you needs is more warmth. Somehow during the breathing and clearing of mind the job gets done. Is it done by the body by getting the mind out of the way? Or is it done by the mind when the body is brought into rhythm? It is done by the one yoga.