Saturday, July 25, 2009

White Noise Conspiracies

Sometimes I think about the myriad of conspiracy theories out there, that many conspiracies are real, but there are so many of them, working in opposite directions, that they basically nullify each other on the macro scale. Entertaining in detail, but merely fluctuations of white noise in the big scheme of things.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Stain, the Mirror and the Log

After years – if not decades – of complaining about mirrors and people who waste their life in front of them, I today, suddenly, empirically, understood what mirrors are for. They are not only there to serve vanity and pamper some women’s bloated and narcistic egos. No. They have a rather practical purpose: to help avoiding embarrassment...

When tooth-brushing with little Sophie (5), I noticed a stain on her blouse. A brown stain. Choc-milk stain. I suggested to change the blouse. What impression does it make when she goes to Kindergarten with a stained blouse? My child, the dirty, unwashed one, the one in stained clothes... no! It is not so bad, she said, and marked a size by putting the tips of  her thumb and index finger together. “This is the size that is bad. Or bigger.”. A size a bit larger than a quarter or a 50 Eurocent coin. Okay, I thought. She is a girl. She knows better.

I brought her to Kindergarten, long good bye ceremony. I said hello to other parents, who looked at me in a somewhat indefinable way. Well. I went to my office. I passed by that silvery light reflecting pane on the wall and... I saw it. IT. THE STAIN! Not a little stain. Not a bit of choc on a little girl’s blouse. It was a huge stain, stretching almost from shoulder to shoulder. White stuff covering much of the chest area of my expensive dark shirt. Now I recalled what I forgot on that stressful morning after a long, sleepless, humid, tropical night. I had forgotten that baby Stella had emptied the content of her stomach onto me last night. I had forgotten that my favourite shirt was covered with half digested milk all over. All that would not have happened, if I simply had dressed up in front of the mirror in our sleeping room – the huge mirror ranging from floor to ceiling. The mirror I always hated, because it always reminds me of – me. It always shows me mercilessly who I am – at least on the outside. So they do serve a purpose, those mirrors! And the whole thing reminds me of the biblical proverb about the log in the eye. While being concerned about Sophie’s little stain, I was one huge walking stain myself...

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Nurtering the "Human Capital"

Although I do not like the term "human capital" or "human resources"  (it sounds derogative to me) human capabilities are the number one resource of our civilization. It also is a known fact that complex minds tend to be more sensitive. From my experience I believe that wrong educational approaches combined with peer pressure can destroy the most gifted among us. It also is possible to literally bore clever child into oblivion - and certainly what we do not want is an army of highly intelligent people with unstable personalities. But that is something we do have around the world! Children - including the gifted ones - also need some form of moral and ethical guidance, but it must be open and honest. Rigid scholastic systems do not work - they only serve to let the child perceive his or her parents and teachers as hypocrites since they never manage to consequently live up to their own moral and intellectual standards. There also is a sad saying I once heard after just such a case had happened: "The most gifted among us commit suicide before they reach puberty". We must take care that we do not destroy what keeps us alive. There is no progress - in fact there is no hope - if we do not manage to employ the best minds of the world to solve the problems of the future. And they also need to be encouraged instead of being regarded and treated as outcasts and nerds and barely accepted weirdoes. Schools, Universities and other establishments of research and higher learning must provide sheltered, positive environments. Clever companies will do the same. We must get away from seeing intelligence a disease when the real disease of mankind is stupidity. As I have often mentioned I for myself re-named our species to "Homo Sapiens Potentialis". We should nurture those few who actually realize their potential - at least partially. We must feed the fishes that swim against the stream, for only they will spawn the ideas that make the future a place we want it to be for our children!

Human - and other Animal - Emotions

It may be unscientific to speculate, but it is duly scientific to express a hypothesis based upon observation, anecdotal evidence and logical deduction. The hypothesis could start from an elevated point of view - alien, so to say. Looking at animals and humans it is obvious that they have more in common than parts them. The same basic substances, the same fundamental functions, nearly the same genome in some cases, much of the same environments and challenges throughout natural history and evolution. It then is not so far fetched to speculate or - indeed - hypothesize, that similar life forms have similar inner responses. There is no way to know for sure. But let's face it: a human psychopath is well able to mimic emotional responses and display emotions he does not have. In reality we cannot know for sure if the animal we observe feels what we feel, but in that same reality we also cannot know if any given human feels the same as we do - in fact in many cases they don't. I also do not see, what emotional responses have to do with reasoning. The two inner phenomena or processes seem quite separate, and every dog owner knows the grieving dog that doesn't eat when his or her best human friend is absent. Maybe what scientists call anthropomorphism occasionally is an intuitive understanding of what really is going on in our fellow animal inhabitants of earth? Emotions also are fundamental guiding tools in situations where reason only sends us into endless loops of unsolvable thought webs. There is much evidence suggesting that we ourselves - good old self proclaimed Homo Sapiens (or Homo Sapiens Potentials, as I like to call our species) bases many of his most important decisions on momentary emotions. Buying a house, choosing a partner for life - occasionally even starting a war: all that is mainly based upon animal emotions upwelling from the dark, (or illuminated - who knows?) uncharted depths of our souls.

Proclaiming human emotion to fundamentally differ from the emotions of other animals is laughable in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. That merely is an aspect of the outdated attempt to establish our species as the crown of creation, as something outside - or above - the rest of nature, rather than an integral part of it. Only the twisted human mind can speak of the environment as something surrounding him, something separate from himself, while in that very moment his heart pumps water that used to be part of the ocean, while at that very moment his lungs inhale gases produced by the metabolisms of myriads of photosynthesizing organisms. We are animals and as such an integrative part of the nature we live in and from. Our difficulties acknowledging that result from the very animal emotions we deny to have. We are jealous, we want to be special. We want to be something better than that perfect Tiger, Shark of Orca out there, because we feel small, weak and ugly in comparison to those magnificent and indeed near perfect creatures with who we share a planet - and a common ancestry. And if we look more closely at the word animal that we gave them, I must say yes, I am an animal, and I want to be one! For the word "animal" comes from the Latin word animale, neuter of animalis, and is derived from anima, meaning vital breath or soul. Considering this, if we say we are not animals, doesn’t that mean we have no soul? Is that a possible deeper truth about what become of humans?

Friday, July 10, 2009

fifty/fifty

Currently I work on an article about the international year of astronomy. While at it, I stumbled over a quote by Prof. Sir Martin Reese, the British Astronomer Royal:

“I think the odds are no better than 50/50 that our present civilisation will survive to the end of the present century.”

I have to let that sink in. A statement along the lines of the “Scientists Warning to the World” of the early 90s. A statement not coming from a nobody, but one of the most eminent scholars of our time. And he is not the only one. Something to think about.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

The illusion of free will

Free will ultimately does not exist. In any case our decisions are limited by natural laws. To define free by "being able to make two different decisions in two identical situations" does not satisfy logical criteria for a number of reasons. One is: what determines my decisions? Can I really decide freely, or am I a prisoner of my own internal programming leading to thoughts and decisions that are at best a guided random walk? Among external influences I cannot control are natural laws. Can I decide to fly? Can I decide to read someone else’s thoughts? Can I decide to spontaneously understand the math behind string theory? I can't. Of course we are also bound by society, economy - money. Even committing suicide might not be what in German is called "Freitod" (voluntary death), but in fact may be a result of what Kurt Vonnegut referred to as a "chemical imbalance of the brain." We are controlled by so many deterministic factors that talking about "free will" is complete nonsense. And when we have to define free will as only applying within certain limits, situations, frameworks, we already have defined free will into oblivion. Therefore: free will does not exist.

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Life is a book - das Leben ist ein Buch

The Internet is Pointless!"

Why are people blogging day after day, after day, writing down tidbits of their empty lives or mostly shallow analysis of problems they are far from understanding from within their isolated little spheres? Loneliness. Marketing. An attempt to transcend the own perceived meaninglessness - the overwhelming pointlessness amidst the endless ocean of life. Unfortunately when millions upon millions are blogging, one is just another anonymous part of a huge anonymous mass of faceless individuals -  with a few (totally random) outstanding stars. Things like Twitter are even worse than blogging. Institutionalized shallowness. Often it seems to me that everyone is connected, which results in a witches brew of opinion and information leading to a dilution of quality and facts so deep and profound that ultimately the entire web becomes questionable. What is it for? Does it enhance our life or does it merely keep us from living? And does it have a value to realize that for anything you do, no matter how clever and talented you are, there is someone who already did it - and better so? I am seriously asking: would I perhaps be better off without the Internet? Maybe not professionally, but privately... There practically is nothing anymore I want to do privately on the Internet. Over the years it has become boring. And too hectic and commercial and it becomes increasingly difficult to filter valuable content from junk. Like Earth itself, the Web is drowning in garbage and gibberish, and we destroy real world resources causing real world emissions to keep this cycle of commercialized mental shit up and running at ever higher speed. The Web goes the same path as cable TV in the 80s. As Pink Floy then sang: “13 channels of shit to choose from...” but there is nobody home. Connected to billions, and yet totally alone. Nobody is out there. Brave new world. And someone out there already saw this coming 20 years ago, and wrote about it, much better than I could ever do...