anthonyjaycee

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2006/09/26/could-you-repeat-that/

Socratic Irony:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony#Socratic_irony

From the link:

**
Socratic irony involves a profession of ignorance that disguises a skeptical, non-committed attitude towards some dogma or universal opinion that lacks a basis in reason or in logic. Socrates’ “innocent” inquiries expose step by step the vanity or illogicality of the proposition by unsettling the assumptions of his dialogue partner by questioning or simply not sharing his basic assumptions. The irony entertains those onlookers who know that Socrates is wiser than he permits himself to appear and who may perceive slightly in advance the direction the “naïve” questioning will take. Fowler describes it:

The two parties in his audience were, first, the dogmatist, moved by pity and contempt to enlighten this ignorance, and, secondly, those who knew their Socrates and set themselves to watch the familiar game in which learning should be turned inside out by simplicity.

**

One thing that I've heard about Indigos from time to time is that we're "system busters."  That particular terminology may or may not be self-explanatory, but I feel that it helps to add some additional explanation for clarity.  In this case, the above definition of socratic irony explains what we're getting at with all the system busting.  Society contains a great many constructs-- I like to call them "groupthinks" myself-- that are based in bad underlying assumptions.

Most people in society build their beliefs and choose their intentions and actions largely as functions of the constructs they've learned.  Thus, it's primarily a mental process-- data from "trusted" sources is incorporated and assimilated, thus forming a perspective.  However, data from other sources, even if it is inherently more logical, is rejected on emotional bases-- loyalty to the specific trusted sources, fear of ostracization from social groups, rejection, and so forth.

People who fit into Indigo and Crystal categories tend to largely, if not completely, build their viewpoints from an internal, far more innate basis.  Thus, the underlying assumptions made by most of society, which are rooted in denial and lack of willingness to see "the big picture," are bypassed.

The general intention of Indigos (and to some extent Crystals) is to help these people caught up in denial to see the weaknesses in their assumptions, and to understand various facets of reality at more universal levels rather than as filtered through unanalyzed dogma.  The importance is that this "ends" is accomplished, though obviously the "means" is also of relevance.  Indigos will essentially do whatever they can to accomplish this, and thus, to move society forward and make things better for everyone.  Regarding "means," there are good ways and bad ways to attempt this goal.

The bad ways tend to stem from all out argument-- trying to engage the followers of dogma at an intellectual level irrespective of emotion: "I'm right, you're wrong."  This weakens the Indigo stances greatly, because it leads the dogma followers to assume that the Indigos are merely following a different dogma themselves.  No one ever really "wins" an argument like this, because it only divides things up further-- the dogma follower may even add additional rationalizations to his existing mental constructs.  For example, words may end up taking on new negative connotations to him, i.e. "every time I hear the word 'God,' that means 'Christian God,' which is a particular religious mythology that I don't agree with, and that people are attempting to impose on me."

Now, the good ways to accomplish the Indigo goals stem from approaches like Socratic irony, as seen above, and satire.  You can interview someone with Socratic irony by feigning ignorance about their dogmatic constructs.  Sure, you may already "know" that Mother Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit and gave birth as a virgin... but, for example, you can play dumb by pretending to keep confusing it with other religious mythologies that used exactly the same theme.  With satire, you can take the idiosyncracies of society's dogmas and exaggerate them slightly, perhaps showing what happens if someone goes all out following a societal mindset (i.e., going shopping and buying lots of gifts will lead to happiness) to the point where it collapses on itself (i.e., I bought everything in the store I could afford, and I'm still not happy yet!  I need more money!).

Anyway, my personal plan of action involves the satirical approach.  My novel Final Warrior is a satirical fantasy, set in a medieval environment that increasingly parallels modern day society and a wide variety of its absurdities.  Thus, part of my own personal Indigo styled approach of system busting is, in fact, to popularize the story of Final Warrior.  This way, I can help address a wide scope of areas of society in need of change, and do so by using one of the good ways.

Okay, as a quick aside, I did a little research into lease-options.  Though I do have some hesitancies towards the idea of dangling my condo out for a leaser to potentially buy, given that most people who lease from an owner end up moving on before actually reaching the point of buying, I feel more intrigued by it.

Given that, my perspective now is that that problem is conceptually "solved."  There's kind of a "well, I can always do this if need be" attitude there.  So, that allows me to more readily abstract the problem out.  Now, my issue isn't specifically about "how can I keep my condo," but rather, I'm dealing with how I can make any reasonable amount of income at all-- even if it's somewhat less-- while still in a context where I'm doing "God's work" all the time, rather than "selling out" or whatever.  I mean, I'm going to do "God's work" pretty much 100% of the time anyway... so ideally it would be nice to find a source of income where I don't have to pretend to myself or to them that this isn't the case.  (Even up through the last job, I was able to kid myself about that, thinking I could "work for a company" that's not aligned with "God's work" to a great enough degree for it to work... but, well, no... that doesn't work.)

Fortunately, given the whole lease-option deal, even if I was making significantly less money, I could still survive.  So, that theoretically opens up a lot more options for me.  But I still feel very far off from knowing how to put any of them into practice, and I'd like to minimize the "stop-gap solution" aspect of whatever job I work at next.


Today's theme, for me, seems to be one of knowledge overcoming ignorance, with ignorance being the root cause of intolerance and judgemental attitudes.  As an Indigo, I don't live in a world of dissociation, where people do "what the authority figures tell them to do" just because they're in charge and supposedly "know better."  I'm very in tune with knowing when I feel fulfilled and when I don't, task by task and action by action.

I've certainly found that society has tremendous problems with "groupthinks."  Basically, a groupthink forms whenever any given philosophical unit is supported by enough people-- direct philosophical supporters or ignorant supporters-- to make it economically viable.  As the group gets more money, it translates that into more power, and thus it starts thinking that it's philosophies are "right."  Though there is often a positive side to this, it has one tremendous flaw to it-- namely, the people who support the groupthink are then able to justify condemning anyone who is "different" from them.  After all, there are no apparent repercussions for doing this, at least not in the short term-- as long as funding keeping coming in, and as long as people keep getting "yes men" supporting their mindset, it continues to function.

In cults, one of the basic rules is to get the new followers to live in your compound.  The more you cut them off from the outside world, the better.  If you can successfully convince them that your particular self-interested mindset is "right," then you can get their financial and logistical support, to keep your power structure going, with you as the leader of it.

Groupthinks are less intense versions of cults.  They prey on human beings' basic needs for belonging.  If the human being is very much a product of his or her surroundings, then he or she will absorb the dynamics of the environment, and begin to conform himself or herself to it.  Individuality is discouraged, because the existing power structure is able to sustain itself as it is, so there is no need for anything to be changed.

If you want to hold onto power on Earth, your best bet is to enter a groupthink, disregard your personal individuality completely, and submit to it.  Then, as you rise in the ranks, you will eventually be able to lead it yourself.  Thus, you will attain Earthly power, and all sorts of fancy benefits that follow from it.

Indigos draw a greater percentage of their need for belonging from their internal connection with God.  Thus, an internal confidence builds up-- a house that is built on an impenetrable foundation, rather than being built on something shaky.  Jesus talked about drinking living water, about a kingdom that was not on Earth, but in Heaven... and about how hard it is for a rich person (who has devoted himself or herself to the accumulation of material things) to get there.  Likewise, Jesus noted that you cannot serve two masters, God and money.  Far better to earn money through doing your life's work, what your internal Godself wants you to do, than through succumbing to subserviance to something that squelches the spirit.


In my life, the disconnect between my Indigo internal self-confidence and groupthink based brainwashing primarily shows up in two areas: one within conversations with my Mom, and the other is within workplace environments.  I'll address the workplace environments first.  As I noted above, I'm coming to grips with the fact that I'm honestly not willing to do any more than pretend that I'm not doing God's work, even if I get a substantial paycheck out of it.  In workplace environments, I before had been able to deceive myself.  I suppose I assumed that I could serve God and still receive money from these workplaces for doing so.  While there is some degree to which that can occur, there does come a point where I "unmanifest" my jobs, at least at some subconscious level, because the pressure of the disconnect just builds up too much for too long.  Many would argue that "the other," namely the employer, is the one making the decision.  But we are all one with God, and we are all one... there is no "other" which goes against that which we manifest for ourselves.  If anything, it greatly pains employers, the human beings there, to have to "cut me off."

I've put a number of different employers through that test, and I admit that it is a harsh one.  It is one of serving money or serving God-- how much do they accept my contribution, albeit in revolutionary new ways of thinking... and how much do they simply get angry with me, and make judgments against me?  Likewise, in the perspective of oneness, how much do I create a happy and healthy environment, where their work is God's work, and how much do I create an environment of conflict?  One can look at it either way.  In one form, there is the groupthink, and there is me, the Indigo, as a separate person, tearing it down.  In the other form, it's all internal to me, and as the Indigo, I am challenged to "fix myself" by creating a world that has no conflicts... where I don't manifest anything that "isn't in order" or that causes disconnect and pain.

In regard to conflicts with my Mom, I've come to the conclusion I mentioned earlier-- she has mindsets that are of the "old energy," at least relative to me, and hasn't been able to see past them.  Hence, this has been an instance of ignorance due to lack of knowledge on her part.  Her anger and judgments against me for "not being able to keep a job," or "not having any work ethic," or for being "lazy," or whatever, all stem from a lack of understanding on her part regarding who and what I am.  I've taken criticism to heart to great degree in my life... I've probably spent more time and effort critiquing and analyzing anything and everything about myself and my ways of thinking that could possibly be "wrong" over, especially, the last four years, than most do in a whole lifetime.  One can only take on the burden of "wrongness" internally to so great a degree-- eventually, one has to deal with the problem externally, and from inner confidence, instead.  So, this past weekend, I got her a book.  It's called The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children.  The title is a bit deceptive.  Basically, I've found that it's less about, say, what types of food to buy, and more about just explaining Indigos in detail, in various ways and from various perspectives.  My Mom actually still has two kids under 18, and pretty much all the minors who are around nowadays are Indigo, Crystal, or Rainbow anyway, so there are still practical benefits for her to learn about this, even from a parenting perspective.  But the bottom line is that there's been a great deal of hostility between her and me on anything and everything related to "how one is supposed to operate at the workplace," and this flares up every time I lose another job.  I'm always open to the possibility that I could learn more and/or improve myself.  As I noted yesterday, I've improved in quite a few ways over the years, especially in terms of relating to people better socially.  But I haven't "improved" in any ways that would make me "non-Indigo" or even just less Indigo in general.  This is because, in my case, being Indigo is far better than not being Indigo... it is more me being my true self.  Alternatively, I could say that it is philosophically far more consistent.  It's kind of like when a person is introduced to some variants of Christianity, and comes to know Jesus, and Jesus's teachings.  One doesn't go back to, "oh, wait a minute-- maybe I _should_ hate my enemies and be as selfish as I possibly can be!"  No... it's a forward progression, because Jesus's teachings just flat out make more sense than 99-100% of anything and everything else out there in the world.  (Well, the best interpretations of Jesus's teachings are at that level, I mean... the "religious right" is still fundamentally flawed in a great many ways.  But I already discussed groupthinks here.)

So, my goal here is to help get my Mom past the roadblocks that prevent her from understanding me and other Indigos.  One phrase she often prefers to use-- which came up when I psychologically probed her again this past weekend, before giving her the book-- is "I'm just calling a spade a spade."  She uses this rationale to judge and condemn.  Basically, she's willing to accept evil and wrongness in others because she, quite simply, decides that that's "how it is."  This is an aspect of the "old energy," or in other words, it's an attempt to apply left-brained thinking to situations that are more subjective than that.  What tips me off to the improper use of "this is how it is" thinking is the negative emotion that it naturally engenders.  There's nothing in God, Jesus, or anything else "of the light" that gives me any impression that I should be casting something into negativity.  It's okay to acknowledge when something has cast _itself_ into negativity, like with the fig tree that doesn't bear fruit, which Jesus condemns.  But one should never condemn any efforts on anyone's part to improve oneself, or to rise up above one's weaknesses.  So, when my Mom "calls a spade a spade," she's expressing opinion (and, in fact, negative opinion) as if it were fact.  This is the type of flawed thinking that we see in many religious faiths, with the Muslim religions generally succumbing most to it-- there's this idea that certain things simply "are" a certain way, and that no other interpretation is possibly valid.  In that extreme, this is probably the greatest weakness that humanity suffers from.  I saw part of an interview with Bill Maher on The O'Reilly Factor.  O'Reilly was taking the side of religion and faith, and Maher was arguing against it.  At one point, O'Reilly talked about all the good religions do, helping the poor and such.  The Maher made a key point, basically that people could just as easily do all the good works that these organizations do without the insanity that accompanies it in religion.  Maher is right on point here-- he recognizes the good that the organizations do, but condemns, as Pope Benedict would say, "faith without reason."

I should also note that, in parsing out "opinion" from "fact," there's another aspect to acknowledge here.  Even when you speak purely in actual facts, there's _still_ a subjective component involved.  You can have one poll with Bush's approval rating at 32%, and another one with it at 39%.  The Democrats will use the first fact, the Republicans will use the second fact.  In all subjective issues, there are a wide variety of facts floating around, and there is a wide variety of collected data that hopes to effectively represent the situation.  Facts should be used to interpret reality as accurately as possible, so that things can then be revised and improved upon.  Facts should _not_ be used as validation of one opinion being above and beyond all other opinions, and hence being the only "correct" opinion.

Okay, I think all those concepts cover what all I wanted to say about all this pretty well here...

This is an excellent example of "perception is reality," showing how the frame of reference of how one views oneself actually and dramatically affects one's actions and capabilities in the world.  In this case, it's an experiment involving females taking Math tests:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15337257/

These two lines from the article, I feel, are especially of note... the first summarizing the deeper truth, the second noting something about how our society thinks:

**

Expectations, it turns out, really do make a difference.

"The findings suggest that people tend to accept genetic explanations as if they're more powerful or irrevocable, which can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies," said Heine.

**

It's very important for you, as an individual, to be aware of _precisely_ what you feel is "powerful or irrevocable" in your life.  This is the basis of intimidating.  I have a person story to relate.  The loss of my job earlier this month led me into far more focus on studying of Asperger Syndrome.  Self-identifying with this particular designation has proven to have some self-fulfilling prophecies about it, both positive and negative.  On the positive side, it's reminded me of, for example, this "triple fire sign" description of me, in zodiac designations, which has led me to realize that I'm "really very NT" and hence allowing me to see that I'm much better at, say, NT types of things than most... which has parlayed well into getting the Forex day-trading going again.  On the negative side, it's manifested a belief that I'm very anti-social, and reminded me of various negatives from my past experiences in more socially-based areas of life.  Oddly enough, the actual effect hasn't been one of thinking "I'm not good at being social," since I've "conquered" that tendency of Asperger Syndrome anyway... I conquered that quite well, like, four years ago.  Rather, the actual effect has been a much deeper and more pervasive one.  It's like I realize that, though I "could" be social... the idea is that I "don't want to."  So, I'm coming to grips with-- or, rather, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of-- a reality about myself where I find myself really not all that interested in having a "typical job" or "usual relationship" or whatever.

In reality (and I mean in reality in a more comprehensive sense), I do actually have a tendency to go back and forth in various ways with regard to my identity.  This fits in with the "jack of all trades, master of none" type of dynamic about me, for example.  I think this ties in with spiritual perspectives of self and of the world that I've come to grips with in recent years.  You see, there's much more of a sense of "I can be anything" in myself than what I seem to see in most people.  I'm not really sure how to explain this to people who are more set in their identities than I am.  Well, I guess I can say that, in my case, a lot of things that are "powerful or irrevocable" in most people's realities are, say... much more "negotiable" in mine.

I related that story of my over the phone "altercation" with the receptionist at Bethesda Softworks.  This was a clear example of me interacting with someone who lives in a _very_ rigid reality.  She was drawing power in opposition to me, standing behind her organization as a bastion of strength-- we don't give tours, we have keycards to access the building, if you want to be considered the only approach is to send in a resume and we _might_ get back to you...  Okay, yes-- anyone who works there would agree on the physical world facts, I figure.  But there's a deeper aspect to this, in the realm of "emotional reality," that is very interesting to consider.  A lot of times, people look at facts and think "this fact is true, therefore this is how it is."  But I think they fail to realize that there is a _subjective_ component to facts.  This subjective component comes into play via _which_ facts are presented, and _in what situations_ they're presented, and also, _with what attitude_ they're presented.  So, yes-- even in a reality of objective facts, we are actually dealing with something of a more emotional and/or energy based nature.

So, I think a lot of what we see in society are instances of people thinking "this is how it is" and not realizing that definition is personalized definition, that "reality" is actually reality _as created by the person seeing it that way_.

Change the way you look at things, and your reality will change.

Day-trading is an _excellent_ example of the mapping between inner reality and "the real world."  This is an area where you take (like in the article above) a "math test" every time you engage in it.  The level to which you approach the situation with objectivity _directly_ impacts the results you will attain from it.  While we see these types of things in interpersonal interactions all the time-- seeing how so many different types of conversations go "well" or "badly" in various ways-- I feel that this _really_ hits home more tangibly in day-trading given the financial component of it.  You are literally rewarded or punished financially for your approach.  There's really no narrow way to look at it, at least not with good logic-- you can't blame any given "other person" for how your trades go.  The best model I can use to explain it is that there is "you" and there is "God," where "God" is controlling the market according to various mathematical patterns, and "you" are working with "God" and/or fighting against yourself.
( continuing on more extensively from here )
Clarity is very interesting to me...

I sent an email to Bethesda Softworks, applying for a couple positions there.  I attached a current version of my resume, as well as a cleaned up design document for the Java game I designed and programmed back in 1999, Gamefighter.

I was originally thinking about sending my design document (more or less) for a project from 1998 (and before then) that I had worked on with my brother Tom, called Super G.I.Joe 6.  But I figured this one would be shorter and easier to manage, plus it has the additional plus, for the purposes of applying to a company, in that it's an actual program, rather than being a design that we played out with G.I.Joe figures instead.

These are exactly the types of things I was working on up through 2001, in various guises.  Designing videogames is "in my blood."  The problem is, I still haven't figured out quite exactly why I more or less left it all behind in late 2001, and ended up delving into all these other areas instead.  I mean, I definitely built up more of the novel writing side of things since then, but I don't quite feel like I'm more completely a "novel writer" than a "game designer."  Part of that stems from the fact that I tend to write novels that could more or less be videogame RPG storylines.

But, yeah... since 2001, I've hardly played videogames, at least relative to how much I played them up to that point.  Maybe I felt that the industry was going to far into the whole "graphics" side of thing, and losing the heart and soul of actual creative design.  But, on the other hand, you'd think that _some_ facets of the industry would still be exciting enough for me to remain excited about... for example, I bought Metal Gear Solid 3 back in November 2004.  I still haven't beaten the game yet.  I just don't see why I feel so disinclined to playing it, when I cared so much about Metal Gear Solid 2, when it came out.

Okay, one could argue that I've "grown up," and therefore surpassed the need or desire for "games."  There's some truth to that, sure.  But yet, part of the idea of "growing up" is that you leave behind what you used to do, because something more "grown up" is more compelling to you instead.  But, in reality, "growing up" didn't move me into a pattern of wanting to work at jobs where I support companies, and it didn't move me into a pattern of relationships and kid-raising.  It just moved me out of my old pattern.  Whatever my new pattern is, it generally seems "disconnected" from the world overall... and I don't really see what, of potentially "connected" activities, I could delve into that would really feel like they "fit" me.

I need a totally new paradigm of what it means to be "grown up" than anything and everything I had supposed it meant from when I was younger.

Well, on the bright side, I _do_ continue to create, namely in that I still seem to write novels, at least with some external assistance.  But, yeah... I feel that I should more so be doing something as "part of the whole," rather than trying to do everything myself.  I've already acknowledged that I see myself going to an office, and making use of the types of support structures you see there... but every time I get into an "office job," it somehow always ends up being about "doing what someone else has decided it is important to get done" rather than being about "creating something that the world will greatly appreciate."  It's a philosophical disconnect.  I don't see myself as a "replaceable cog in the machine," but rather, as a part of the whole that is _not_ replaceable.  No one else put together Gamefighter, Final Warrior, and all these other creative projects of mine.  (Well, my brothers have worked on some of them with me, yes... but I mean no one else contributes the particular facets of the whole, of the creativity, that I contribute.)

I think the world gets too caught up in this idea of "filling a role" or "presuming a need."  My value should be self-evident.  It's like when you make a product and market it-- the person doesn't know he or she necessarily wants to buy it already, but then he or she sees the ad, and realizes that life could indeed be happier or more enjoyable for taking advantage of the possibilities that that product has to offer.  That stands for a new type of shampoo or a new razor design as much as it stands for a new book or a new videogame.

I definitely should be working in an industry that creates things itself, for the public overall, rather than for an industry that caters to the specific whims of a given individual or group of individuals who happen to hold power and control money in government, say.  Though I live in a democracy, a lot of the money is still controlled by authoritarian constructs.  I guess I presumed that the whole "democracy" thing was more pervasive than it actually is.  It's interesting to hear how people at many other jobs find themselves in despotism style environments, even lawyers at law firms, for example.  The job I just had was nowhere near that bad, since it wasn't about hostility and catering to egos.  But, still... I do need to be in an environment that's another level beyond that.  I'm terrible at following directions at least in part because my reality doesn't work that way... there's an inherent sense of freedom to it for me.  I'm able to create and I'm able to do things my own way.  I don't look for external sources to tell me what to do-- my sources are internal, spiritual sources.  I find it hard to comprehend dynamics where a person continues to go to the external for motivation... in my mind, if I'm doing that, it means I'm "lost."  It means I "don't have a clue what I'm doing," since I honestly expect that I should be able to understand and figure it out myself.  I generally can... the only times I can't are when people have created counter-intuitive constructs for how things work, and I'm constrained to operating within their externally-imposed limitations rather than having the freedom to surpass as many limitations (of the personally-imposed variety) as I can.

I still have some degree of concern with this computer game company though, I'll admit.  Even with what I've seen so far, there was that pattern of "here are the jobs we want to fill" and "please submit a resume and such-and-such along with it."  The directions didn't even seem very precise-- if you want something precise, then you have to spell it out for me.  But I'm hoping that they actually _didn't_ want something precise, so much as seeing me present whatever I was already interested in creating and contributing on my own.  Perhaps part of the problem with the whole "following directions" thing is that people actually _don't_ want you to follow the directions-- they want you to take initiative and blend your own energy and excitement into the task at hand.  This seems backwards, given that apparently creativity isn't appreciated... but, on the other hand, my tendency to take literal interpretations of directions has been problematic itself.


I feel like the workplace wants people to take initiative... but, at the same time, it _doesn't_ want people to take initiative.  It wants your energy to be there, but, when your energy is _truly_ there, with your creativity included... then it _doesn't_ want it.  When you accomplish tasks, that's good... but when you follow instructions _to the letter_, that's bad.

These are the paradoxes that create problems for me at the workplace.  Part of me wants to assume that the divide isn't as great as I've made it out to be... but another part of me wants to make sure I'm not kidding myself, and just pretending a divide doesn't exist when it really does.

This reminds me of my general tendency for problem-solving... I solve problems by abstracting my way out of them, and realizing that no difficulty actually exists.  Then, the physical actions required are trivial.  But, if I don't acknowledge the problem is actually "real," then basically I'm not empathizing with bosses and supervisors.  Hence, in my mind it's trivial, and in their minds it's "a big deal."

This same issue applies with relationships and with other people's emotions.  Emotions are, in fact, an art form.  They aren't a logical reality.  To synch up with someone emotionally, you have to make what's important to them important to you.  But... if you do that with pretty much "everybody," then specific people get resentful, because "they're paying you" or because "you're supposed to be dedicated specifically to a relationship with _them_."  It's like you "don't care enough" if you care too broadly, because all the people assessing you expect you to care more specifically about them, and their emotions and efforts.

These are the paradoxes that create problems for me not just at the workplace, but in life and in interactions and relationships with others as well.

It's kind of like... if I understand _too_ well, then I might as well not understand at all, if that makes sense.

One nice thing about Oneness is that, whether you realize it or not, you're always creating your own reality.  All the philosophies, games, and mental constructs play a secondary role to that.  The good news about this is that, even when you forget about Oneness and jump into ego and "this is how it is" types of perspectives, the unified reality creation process still works just as well as ever.

I'm currently trying to solve the problem I was describing yesterday-- negative emotions showing up in me, in various situations connected with, say, deriving pleasure from someone else physically, "hot girls" and such.  Guilt due to apparent selfishness?  "What's in it for them?"  Well... still wrestling with defining or explaining the paradigm that I'm dealing with.

So, part of the reality I just created was this progression where Ankh is categorizing me into what he calls some sort of "New Age" type of construct.  Basically, the whole categorization, from his perspective, follows this simple pattern:  "There exists this type of mindset people can have which is bad/incomplete.  There exist people out there who champion this mindset.  When I find them, I can laugh about how stupid they are given the obvious weaknesses in their philosophies."  It's the same mindset as saying "the Muslim religion teaches people to kill other people, so anyone who is Muslim is 'bad.'"  Basically, the pattern involves first deciding that certain things are negative (given that they oppose the general forward thrust of the greater good), and then trivializing an abstraction down to one particular concrete definition of it.

Along with arguments for and against me being New Age, I could also say that I'm Catholic _and_ anti-Catholic.  That's the conclusion I came to for my profile page on here, after all.  Whatever the heck "Catholic" means changes from day to day, person to person, context to context.  It's like that argument with my same age cousin about the definitions of Liberal and Conservative.  The tendency of the human ego, in all such cases, is to create an objective definition for something subjective.  Hence, thinking "you fall into this category" necessarily implies that you're imposing a number of limitations on the person in question.

The ironic thing is that, when we assess a person at this type of level, our information is _always_ incomplete.  There are more true, more overall correct ways to assess people, but that all ties back into Oneness, and that transcends the usual limiting definitions of "information."  It's like looking at a painting-- the question is how well you yourself can appreciate the beauty of the painting.  The mental modeling approach offers nothing about the actual reality of "how beautiful the painting is."  At best, it just tries to classify it.  But classification can only work when you're making the assumption that "that which you are classifying" operates within certain limitations... and/or that certain classifiable objects are "good" or "bad," or more specifically "better" or "worse."

The problems we have in humanity, addressing various conflicts and such, all stem from our human tendencies to limit our perceptions of other people.  The opposite of this is like with Jesus and the blind and lame people he encountered.  Why write the people off as "blind and lame?"  Jesus's approach was more along the lines of, "hey, you-- forget this nonsense of perceiving yourself as blind or lame.  You don't have any limitations.  Here, see yourself as I see you."  Then, the person would be cured.  How?  "Your faith has saved you."  Basically, the person attempts to escape the limitations and presumptions that he or she has imposed on himself or herself.  The success and permanency of the curing stems from how completely those limitations are transcended.

So, this is what I need to do in the general situations that I've been isolating and describing.  "What you resist, persists.  When you really look at something, it disappears."  Of course, even those words are subject to being interpreted at all sorts of levels, I suppose.  Not everyone seems interested in perceiving Neale Donald Walsch's books at the level I do, paralleling Jesus's perceptions of blind and lame people.  If you want to find God in something, it's there.  If you want to reduce that something to anything limited or trivial, that's exactly what you'll find instead.  That's what happens when you don't _really_ look at something, and just settle for the partial perspective instead.

So, I've been thinking some more about Catholicism, rule-following, and going to Mass... and where various issues and inconsistencies fall together with that for me.

There was an occasion back in Lent where my brother Tom and I were talking about a particular event.  Basically, St. Patrick's Day was on a Friday this year, and typically during Lent the idea is that Catholics are not allowed to eat meat on Fridays.  Well, some bishop of some diocese or other around here allowed for a special exemption, because Irish-Americans traditionally eat corned beef and cabbage for the holiday.  Tom and I had the same reaction to that-- basically one of disgust and revulsion.  We knew what the rules were, and we decided that we didn't like that "special exception" way of doing things-- Friday in Lent, no meat.  Period.  That's just how it was, and we were happy with that.

On reflecting on that again today, I realized something.  We're not following the rules "because someone said so."  If we were, then we would have jumped at the opportunity to find the loophole and exploit it.  No-- the rules have been internalized.  There's something inside the self that says, "this is the way in which I choose to do things."  Granted, these were formed in childhood, mandated at first... but eventually we got used to them, and decided that we were perfectly happy living with them... and really didn't like divergences from them for, I could say, namby-pamby types of reasons.

I'm noticing that I continually tend to badger and argue with my best friend about various other aspects of Catholicism.  But I think I approach that from the perspective that he's following the rules out of some sort of fear or misguided belief.  I guess I've just felt that he's been "duped" into swearing by various lifestyle rules and such that Catholicism promotes.  Well... not exactly.  It's more like he's gone out into the world and seen things, and has decided that this is the best approach for him.  It's part due to him knowing it better-- like my brother and I with the Lent thing-- but it's also part due to it just generally matching up well with what he wants out of life.  He can be happy with it.

But one thing I questioned again some today was, "Why do I still go to Mass?"  I thought about this relative to the Lent example.  If the people in charge of the Church suddenly decided, "okay, you are now obligated to go every day, rather than once a week," then I'd still go once a week.  It's interesting to see that-- it shows the divergence, because I'm only following the rules at the level of restriction that I'm used to.  Now, if they said, "okay, you only have to go once every two weeks now," then I'm not quite sure what I would do.  I'd be somewhat torn-- I mean, it would definitely feel weird to have a week where I wasn't going.  Perhaps I'd continue on with once a week anyway.  Or, maybe I'd generally go once a week, but skip it on rare occasions here and there, with a "well, I don't 'have to'" type of justification.

One thought that came to mind for me in this whole progression is that, in my particular case, going to Mass may actually be a sin.  I would define a sin as any instance where a person has and intention (and generally then takes an action) separate from God.  Specifically, it would mean that someone was doing something due to fear, worry, concern, sense of neediness, or "have to," rather than because of a desire to take that action with the best of intentions.  Am I going because I "have to?"  Or am I going because I "want to?"  I see an obsessive pattern to it-- usually I don't have any conflicts between going to Mass and doing "whatever else I'd want to do," but I could certainly see being forced to choose.  If there was some sort of family emergency situation right before it was time for me to leave for Mass in a little while, I'd be pretty torn.  If I still went, I'd feel bad the whole time... but I would acknowledge that praying and having faith is often the best thing one can do to truly help a given situation anyway.

What about Masses that have, say, some whole big extra thing included, like some special ceremony, or whatever?  I tend to feel rather depressed when I find myself roped into one of those... especially the long ones.  I'd pretty much prefer 45 minutes in and out, maybe even without music.  It's much more efficient, which is certainly my style... but those types of Masses tend to be the ones in the 6 am hour, and I don't get up anywhere near that early on the weekends.  But I wonder how far that that can be logically reduced.  I'm not exactly sure what my "minimum requirements" for feeling that I've gone to Mass for the weekend are.

This suddenly reminds me of when I was beating a lot of videogames.  I actually wrote up a document, on at least one occasion, whereby I defined precisely what the requirements were for "beating" a game.  I think part of the underlying basis was in that I needed to do two things: play through the hardest part of the game required to beat it (on the easiest difficulty level, at least), and finish off the last part of it (which usually meant defeating the final boss).  Basically, it was a logically precise approach to defining something more emotional.  I couldn't just say, "I feel like I've beaten this game, so therefore I have."  I had to be able to lay out the logic in very precise terms.

I suppose this is a good part of the reason why I'm a natural programmer and technical writer, and most people aren't.  I do tend to like to spell things out very precisely.  I realize that a lot of people are amused by that, and I do like it when they react that way.  I should note, however, that, when it comes to prayer, taking a logically precise approach is _exactly_ the method you want.  Angels (or whatever you want to call them-- we're being precise here) listen to your thoughts directly, and without prejudice.  If you think you want something enough (and don't create any roadblocks through disbelief in your ability to be given it), then they'll send it to you.  Sure, you may find yourself rather unhappy after you receive it, but the angels don't operate with a prejudice that supposes how you'll emotionally react-- they just work out however best they can send it to you.


Okay, so let me get to the baseline of why I'm bringing this general topic up in the first place.  I'm acknowledging that I have that desire to have certain "rules" in my life, which appear as "have to's" in various forms.  But I have a problem with that, because of another belief of mine, regarding limitations.  I don't believe that human beings have any inherent limitations.  I just see us imposing limitations on ourselves, because either we want to, or we don't know any better.  So, when I find instances of myself imposing limitations on myself, it honestly confuses me.  My default reaction is to attempt to disable the limitation.  One big example of this has been with materializing objects.  I honestly don't see any reason why I "can't" materialize objects, and at best I'm seeing that I "generally don't want to."  But I still have this materialized $50 bill next to my laptop, so that provides me at least a little solace on the matter.  But the area where limitations _really_ seem to get to me is when I notice that some of the people around me _don't_ have certain limitations that I have.  Well, okay-- I'm not saying that I have to be able to be the fastest runner or best basketball player or anything like that.  I'm just saying that there are certain types of limitations that I have which just seem rather illogical to me, and it honestly pains me to see myself not being able to transcend these certain types of limitations as other people often can.

A lot of what's gotten to me about my same age cousin, as I've mentioned on a couple occasions or so on here, has built off of this same type of issue.  I do think that various people are kind of in our lives in various roles to "prod us on," so that we realize that there's a "next step" to take.  But the problem I seem to run into is that often what I see from the other person seems so far and away beyond where I myself actually stand that I feel inherently discourged by it.  There just doesn't seem to be a way to develop a "quick fix" for those particular types of scenarios.

Then again, the only thing that limits me in how quickly I can get from "where I am" to "where the person ahead of me is" is my own framework of emotionally based beliefs in limitation.  We create our own levels of resistence.  It's like how one person broke the four minute mile barrier, then a bunch of other people broke it relatively quickly after that.  It's easier to do something once someone else has done it, and you can even do things that others _haven't_ done, if you have faith that such things are possible.  This $50 bill did somewhat inexplicably show up out of nowhere, after all.

I think, in general, for me there's a lot of tension in, as Switchfoot would sing, "between who you are and who you could be... between how it is and how it should be."  (I was just listening to a good part of that song a little while ago-- it's certainly apt.)  I feel like I'm continually bombarded by examples of happiness and lack of limitation in other people outside of myself, and so I continually feel a great desire to rise to the occasion.  Part of me seems to continually be wondering why I haven't done (whatever the next thing is) yet.  Why did it take me... a few hours, maybe a day or two, to get going on OKCupid, after Ankh mentioned it and my alcovemate at work spoke highly of it and showed it to me?  Having gotten together my list of what I wanted in a girl, why did I wait... hours, maybe a day or two, to send a "woo" to a girl who seems to fit everything I'm currently looking for?  Why am I hesitating to set up my $250 Forex mini account?  Why do I find myself not "just getting it all done" in various situations where other people want me to get things done, sometimes?

I have a great perception of, and respect for, "who I could be," and for, "how it should be."  But the various opposing factors that slow things down and stand in the way of that... they really boggle my mind.  I feel like a lot of people have a much better handle on what they can do and how much they can get done, per any given period of time.  I don't even know how I _could_ get a handle on that-- I'm always finding better and more efficient ways to do the types of things I do, so there's little consistency in many types of tasks.  The world changes very quickly-- one day a new website or a new form of technology may suddenly exist and be available that wasn't out there the day before.  What about the example of, say, finding a totally new sex partner?  Various insights that have let to refinements in technology and more improved search algorithms, along with better personal attunement to my own somewhat emotionally-based values, all come together to make that type of search more and more efficient and effective.  No more screwing around chatting back and forth for a month or so before even meeting up a couple times to see where things really stand in that regard, just because of "what I think girls would want and don't want," or because of "what limitations and hesitancies I'd naturally expect girls to be operating under or not be operating under."  Anything slow today will be at least a little faster tomorrow.  Each of us continues to work through his or her own hesitancies and limitations, and the world continues to be there to meet us and keep up with us-- with a better, faster, cheaper, more effective way-- at every turn.

I'm making some good, deep progess today.  I've been discussing Catholicism with my best friend and another friend of his online.

Basically, the best friend's friend notes that Catholicism considers itself "the one true faith" because it fundamentally defers to the personal conscience.

For me, this is, potentially, _huge_.  I've been looking for a way to perceive Catholicism in a better light than it simply being just a power structure that imposes rules and collects money.

So, with this common ground established, the true hashing out begins-- basically, I asked them how Catholicism can take political stances, and try to force people into believing that Conservative stances are more correct than Liberal stances, if the religion defers to the personal conscience.

If he (the best friend's friend) tries to make the argument that I'm misinterpreting my personal conscience in supporting more Liberal to Moderate views, then he invalidates the first argument, the common ground we've established-- because then Catholicism then once again becomes an authority figure that's trying to wrestle power away from people, rather than letting them think for themselves.

Pretty much the only thing he can say that'll work is that the Catholic Church's policies and political stances are _suggestions_, not divine mandates.  I'm curious to see how the whole "ex cathedra" thing in Catholicism will then factor in.  Granted, I hear that the Pope rarely uses this in practice... but I still feel that the spirit behind this particular Catholic belief stands in contrast to the understanding that the religion defers to personal conscience.

I'll just have to see if the debate carries all the way through to a purely logical conclusion, or if I hit some sort of "well, of course this is the way it is, the Catholic teachings are right and everything else is wrong" irrational emotion-based mentality that'll fall back into the old conflict again.

Most people seem to replace logic with misguided emotion sooner than I do in debates about religion.  But I do have a vested interest in resolving my best friend's sentiments with my own, so hopefully his "potentially even more Catholic than he is" friend will keep the rational debate and explanation going to a further and deeper point than my best friend has tended to in the past.

I guess I'll see...

So, I was just over at my secondary bookstore, reading The World is Flat.  I read and skimmed over parts of the first 200 pages or so, about a third of the whole book.  It's very interesting, in that it addresses the progression of the world... basically, how things are becoming more "flat" in how we're becoming more and more interconnected, and it's becoming easier to gain access to all sorts of information.  The author writes about Google, Wikipedia, podcasting (which pretty much just shows up in my life as YouTube at this point), blogging, outsourcing, and all sorts of other things.

What he refers to as "Globalization 3.0" includes all these types of things, and he notes that they're pretty much all taken off since 2000 or so... "while he was sleeping," since he'd apparently been more focused on national issues of various countries in the world since 9/11... certainly understandable as a realm of focus for those of us who very much like to focus on the big picture of things.

Anyway, I addressed this same basic realm of topic on my own (so, I was noting it anyway) in a previous post, a few months back now.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be on my memories page, so I can't access it as easily as I would like to, to link to it here.  I was basically pondering how the world is kind of forming together into a group intelligence, a "LiveJournal Borg" in one component of it, and noting how we're getting to a point where, if anyone anywhere comes up with a good idea, then that idea can spread across the globe to get to wherever it would help humanity-- like a political idea could influence congress, and get them going on better policies.  (Heh... I suppose my vision is rather idealistic on this-- congress pretty much hardly gets anything done at this point in time.)

But putting asides aside, I did notice my emotional reaction to all this.  Basically, I want "a piece of the pie."  I already think in Globalization 3.0.  There are all these different areas of the world that I would like to continue learning about, and continue contributing ideas and perspectives to.  I keep seeing myself delving into them and learning about them, one after the next, it sometimes seems.  One thing about my life that's basically always frustrated me over the years has been that I'm not "out there doing things and getting paid for it."  I've always kind of held onto the belief that my interest and areas of expertise are so eclectic that they really don't mesh and meld well with any sort of "job" that someone would pay me for-- "jobs" always seem to be rigidly defined in accordance with practical production.

I do just want to have a job where I'm operating at a level that reflects my spiritual consciousness.  I had a lot of bad karma to work through, obviously, with the five years I was working as a contractor with NASA.  There's something incredibly discouraging to a human spirit when the person sees that the very system within which one is working is fundamentally limited to a level of consciousness and ambition far, far less than what one oneself operates at.  I'm not sure how else to describe that.  Perhaps I could say that even if I were running Goddard Space Flight Center, I still wouldn't feel that my influence on the world was effective or widespread enough.  (Granted, I'm not saying I could handle all the management aspects of that-- I'm far from proficiency in that area.  But, what I'm saying is that there is a certain level of "big picture" that I operate at, when I do whatever I do, and my level of focus is wider than one space flight center is... and, by definition, I am being restricted with my job if it does not relatively quickly recognize and make good use of my capabilities in that regard.)

I should also acknowledge that, when I list "major life goals," as I have recently (at least in one comment in the past week or two, if not anywhere else), I actually do remember this particular passion.  I characterize it as something like, "come up with a new form of creative entertainment medium."  This is a practical representation of the strongly held personal desire that I'm mentioning here.  Granted, I'm not sure if even that truly characterizes all the finer points of what I want to get done, and what wideness of influence I truly want to have... but it's definitely on the right track, hinting at this desire well.



Another quick note-- EFT, or emotional freedom technique, which I mentioned on here recently, pretty much definitely works.  I can certainly vouch for it, at least.  I went to a talk about it last night, and learned about doing tapping on one's meridian lines while focusing on particular issues... the idea is that you free up blockages in your body's energy flow.  This also affects emotions, but if you want to see how emotions are linked to the physical body, watching What The Bleep Do We Know? is what I would best recommend to cover that.  Actually, hmmm... it doesn't address meridians there, just neural connections as links to emotions.  Well, this is still cutting edge medical understanding, so people are still aggregating and building the theory behind it.  But the fact that it works is still of merit regardless.

Anyway, why am I so excited about it?  Well, any technique that, in response to me tapping about "sex issues" can bring forth _that_ much anger against Catholicism-- as seen in my post from earlier this afternoon-- and also get me addressing the emotions of my "I want a piece of the pie" career path and accomplishment issues... both within 24 hours after I start with it... well, wow.  Certainly pretty darn powerful stuff.

Needless to say... there are more emotional issues for me to work out as well.  But I've definitely just hit on a couple of the really big ones. 

I'm thinking about two things today.  One (thoughts over the past couple hours) is the difference between objective arguments and emotional arguments.  The other (from some ponderings of mine a couple days ago) is in regard to "personally becoming more global over time."


The objective arguments versus emotional arguments topic ties in somewhat to the Myers-Briggs scales of T and F.  However, I should note that it's not "T versus F," but rather more like, "how T are you?"  Basically, when you develop T, your thinking judgment, you develop the ability to make logical arguments in a more purely objective manner.  Basically, bad logic is logic that only applies in small cases: "people of this particular ethnic group are smart/lazy/etc."  The idea is that a simplified overgeneralization, a stereotyping, is applied to a category as a whole.  By comparison, better logic is logic that sorts things out more carefully.  Many arguments can easily be resolved if better logic is applied instead of worse logic.

Let me apply a "better logic" model to a popular current political issue: the so-called "gay marriage" issue, or "gay civil unions" issue, depending how you look at it.  We have two primary areas of concern here.  On the more Liberal side, we have an argument where people primarily want gay people to be able to have civil unions.  Basically, they want gay people to be allowed to join in lifelong commitments that allow for the same legal rights as heterosexual couples are entitled to by law.  On the more Conservative side, we have an argument where people primarly want "marriage" to mean "a union between a man and a woman."  So, when they hear "gay marriage," they very much do not want that, in part because it makes their own definition of "marriage" less specialized in specific ways that they have defined it... like they like the idea that people get married and then (in most cases) can biologically produce children.

Now, bad logic would be asking people on the Liberal side, "do you support gay marriage?", hearing back lots of "yes's," and then going to the Conservative side and saying, "hey, all these people support gay marriage!  Your institution of marriage is threatened!"

There's another careful aspect of the parsing that must be applied here.  Some Liberals support not only gay civil unions, but also gay marriage-- as in, they want religious community support for this, not just legal equivalence.  Likewise, some Conservatives support not only maintaining the definition of marriage, but also don't want gay couples to be entitled to _legal_ equivalences to marriage either.  But these two stances are extreme stances.  The question begged by the extreme Liberal stance is, "Why do you care what any given religious organization thinks?  If the legal matter is resolved, then just accept that the religious communities opposing you aren't idealized representations of 'what God wants' and strive to find or form better religions with better spiritual bases underlying them."  The question begged by the extreme Conservative stance is, "Why do you feel the need to impose the religious stances you emotionally believe in onto people who clearly do not feel the same way you do, and why do you claim that your emotions are 'better' than their emotions, enough to create objective law out of it?"

Overall on this issue, good logic suggests that we should appease the reasonable stances on both sides (the first pair of arguments), and ignore the overreaches attempted by the extremes on both sides (the second pair of arguments).  Bad logic gets people stuck in situations where they get Greedy about pulling for too much of an extreme on one particular side or the other, and not acknowledging the personal fault in doing so.

Overall on this topic, the problem I see here is that a great many people create a great deal of conflict in their lives, due to bad logic-- thinking they want something, and fighting for it, rather than realizing that they can get "the gist of what they actually want" by fighting a much easier battle... and in some cases, there isn't actually any battle that they need to fight at all.  Another key problem with bad logic is misinterpretation.  People often listen to another person's viewpoint, and inherently oversimplify the other person's perspective and belief structure, into "with me" or "against me."  Sometimes people date, and assume a greater deal of "on the same page" than is actually there, because of misinterpretation or a lack of openness... hence, a presumed level of agreement is assumed, which is far greater than the actually level of agreement.  Sometimes people hear statements, interviews, and so forth, by political figures (or other people who are making statements about their personal beliefs), and assume a greater deal of "ideological opposition" than is actually there.  My cousin has his whole "Liberal is big government with power held by a small group of people higher up, Conservative is small government with power more localized" argument.  My argument of Liberal versus Conserative, with me being Liberal to moderate, is more about "progressive versus traditional."  So, when I was hanging out with him on Monday, I was like, "okay, how about small, localized government, but progressive?" since we both seem to be relatively in favor of that particular combination.  So, a lot of the contention is resolved, at least in my mind.  Not sure why he still tries to paint a big "Liberal versus Conservative" wall in the way he does, but whatever.



Personally becoming more global over time...  Okay, let me explain this.  This is more of a personal emotional analysis, so it seems rather different from topics about logical refinement.

Basically, various people have various "better" and "worse" personal progressions that they care about... the idea here is that you work towards getting to states you think are better.  I figured, for me, it was better to get two EE degrees than not to, so I did.  That was worth putting the effort into.  Other people have other goals that they feel will move them to a better position.  This is emotional reality-- there's no objective debate here, and the idea is that it's probably good to support people in working towards whatever they feel is better, just as it is good to personally work towards getting to positions you yourself feel will be better.

One thing I've been facing with my life is, repeating the words I've used above, "becoming more global over time."  My Final Warrior novel actually ended up reflecting this, though I didn't consciously plan it that way in advance, but that's an aside.  What I mean by becoming more global is that, as time progresses, a person tends to expand his or her realm of conceptual understandings, and also his or her realm of known people.  This is like how they say the world is becoming smaller since it's becoming more interconnected-- the fact that the world is progressing in that direction is a key aspect of this concept.

Though this is a huge concept with a lot of areas of applicability, at the moment I'm concerned about it in the "dating" application.  In fact, that's probably the single biggest real world application of the concept for me personally... it's probably what got me going on thinking about this in the first place, and keeps me interested in the concept.  I'm thinking about this in terms of "going out into the world and finding your ideal mate."  For me, I basically see it as that there are six and a half billion people out there to begin with.  Of that overall set, there's a certain refined subset that matches better with me... we can refine both objectively and subjectively.  (I was just on Match.com refining this objectively last night, in fact.)  The goal is to find, say, the best match from the entire population of the world.  Now, okay-- some things make it a little less global than that.  For example, I pretty much only speak English.  Also, I'm "Americanized" in my culture.  I do like Japanese culture some (for example, watching Fullmetal Alchemist these days, renting the movie Spirited Away currently, and have played lots of videogames originally from Japan over the years).  But, in general, I'm mostly "American."

Anyway, there are a number of other types of things that one can do to naturally limit things down further.  But, my basic premise is this-- why should I "settle down" at this point in my life, when I'm only going to become more "global" as time goes on?  This is part of my motivation with the whole "getting a book published" deal, I've realized.  The idea is that, once I get my book published, I'm "out there in the world where people can find me."  So, while obviously only a certain percentage of the world is interested in any given type of creative expression, the idea is that, say, people who are big on satirical fantasy novels might be especially interested in mine.  That's then a good emotional connection.  My basic goal, in this sense then, is to emotionally connect with as much of the world as possible, then I can have a strong positive impact.  I see sex as connected to this as well, though that requires both the emotional connection and the "the person I'm connecting with is a cute girl" connection.  So, the emotional connection is the primary, and the sex connection would then extend as a specialized subset of that.

It's a lot like the "rock star" thing.  Though my medium of choice is more along the lines of novelist and game designer, there's a little bit of the "rock star" dynamic to my approach with all this as well.


There's another thing I've been thinking of, kind of, "here's why not everyone else would want what I want."  Basically, it depends on how you define compatibility.  I could pretty much split it up into "objective compatibility" and "subjective compatibility."  What I've explained so far would be objective compatibility.  The idea here is kind of like, well, kind of like the way it is in The Lake House.  The guy and girl meet by time-travelling letters when the guy is in 2004 and the girl is in 2006.  But, the thing is, the guy then literally meets the girl a little later in 2004.  The idea is that the connection exists anyway, whether or not the letters have been sent and the progression grown with time.  So, I'm _objectively_ compatible with someone if, say, I live my life, she lives her life, and upon running into each other at a given moment, we happen to have a great deal of compatibility.  Hence, time in relationships is more about coming to grips with the realization that "this person's soul is very close to my soul," in a sense that the closeness already existed beforehand, and further time spent together doesn't really change that.

By comparison, "subjective compatibility" is the type of connection that develops between two people simply because they've been around each other a long time.  For example, my sister Angela and her husband Jimmy.  They went 100 months and a day between when they first met (or first started dating... but I think first met) and when they got married.  So, clearly, there was an aspect of, "Jimmy has been around for a while."  He assimilated himself very well into the family, enough so that he may in fact be closer to the two youngest siblings than I am.  (He's been around for, like, 40-70% of their lives, as a crude estimate, and I've been moved out for slightly more than those same percentages.)  So, there comes a point where it's like, "yeah, Jimmy was around for such-and-such five years ago" and things like that.  So, the basis here is that the "self" is defined and redefined in potentially large ways, large enough that "slightly compatible" can eventually become "very compatible."  It's kind of like, "well, I don't really have anyone else I want to meet or go out with, so I'll keep working on this one."


Okay, so applying this personally...  Just like how the word educate means "to draw out," the way I work is that I'm not interested in "changing" people, or in having them change for me.  I'm interested in "drawing out" what's in them already, helping them be their true selves.  I feel that shaving off a square peg so that it fits into a round hole is a basis for resentment.  The more personal identity and individuation you have-- the better you know who you really are-- the more purely happy you can be, in just, quite precisely, being yourself.

If you're dealing with an extremely local context-- like I was in growing up, with a big family-- then the subjective parts of the people involved tend to mesh and adapt... but, however, there are also objective factors, because the souls choose the fit in the first place, sometimes showing up in groups that all "come from the same planet."  It's part "nature" and part "nurture."  You look at the spiritual side to see the perfection in the "nature" aspect of it (for needed compatibility and needed "lessons" and "continued differences of opinion" both), and you look at the physical situation where you can put effort in to work out the "nurture" aspect of it.  Once you're "stuck with someone," you basically have to work out the "nurture" angle of compatibility... but, if the "nature" angle is good to begin with, then it's a lot easier.


There's another aspect that needs clarification here-- the concept of "buying a house that's a fixer-upper."  When you have a human being, we're all "fixer-uppers" in a sense, given that we all have objective problems-- karma to balance and dharma to work on.  So, no matter who you have around you in your life, you're helping him or her with that... you're helping "fix them up."  But, compatibility isn't about objective weaknesses, it's more about "relative weaknesses."  There's a certain beauty in the flaws of another human being if they are the types of flaws that you enjoy helping out.  For example, if someone has psychological or emotional weaknesses, I like talking about that.  But, if someone's life is largely about "I have to physically do all sorts of things" types of problems to resolve, then that tends to be far less compelling to me.  So, we shouldn't have to "fix all our own problems" before we're "good enough" for someone else... but rather, we just need to find underlying dyamics that synch up.

Anyway, in wrapping up, back to my original point (for the second half).  I seem to have a vested interest in becoming as "global" as possible as quickly as possible.  I guess there's kind of this perception in my mind that I'll have "made it" after a book of mine is out in major bookstores nationwide.  Looking at my life as it stands now-- no presently existing love interest who's physically around.  So, my solution-- try to take one more step in globalizing more, reaching out to more worlds of people... hence the online dating.  But, I wonder... if I _did_ become more global, what if I reached a point where "anyone who wanted to find me could have found me" and I _still_ wasn't happy?

This song really characterizes that:
( song lyrics )

Ironically, Michelle Branch herself ended up marrying one of the other members of her band.  He wasn't "out there" in the big wide world at all... for two years or so before they got married, he was right there with her all along.

Semantic primatives in language:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage

Odd how all languages listed presume duality, rather than asserting oneness as a more accurate truth.  I think this means that humans are naturally conditioned to believe in duality even from primitive language structures, pretty much across the board.


Thoughts on the definition of "existence"... it's definitely not as philosophically simple as it may appear to be at first thought:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence

(or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_existence_of_physical_objects which links to the same page).


What is "real?"  Also interesting to define:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality

The concept of "truth" is defined on that page as well:
**
When two or more individuals agree upon the interpretation and experience of a particular event, a consensus about an event and its experience begins to be formed. This being common to a few individuals or a larger group, then becomes the 'truth' as seen and agreed upon by a certain set of people. Thus one particular group may have a certain set of agreed truths, while another group might have a different set of truths that have reached consensus. This lets different communities and societies have varied and extremely different notions of reality and truth of the external world. The religion and beliefs of people or communities are a fine example of this level of reality. This is well expressed in the famous quote by Henry Thoreau, "It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and another to hear." However, humans are fallible and are limited to individual experience. Truth cannot simply be considered truth if one speaks and another hears because individual bias and fallibility take away any assertion that the idea of truth, itself, exists.

Other views of truth assert that truth is that which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence, regardless of subjective inference. Truth can not merely be discerned by deductive reasoning but can only be more deeply understood by inductive study and skepticism.
**

I contend that "science" is an attempt to model reality objectively with some degree of accuracy-- a scientific model can continually be revised and improved upon.  By contrast, I contend that "art" is something a person experiences subjectively... it is not objectively "real," but rather some form of physical reality is somehow arranged with an attempt to create a certain "emotional reality" within the person observing it.  Hence, I contend that religion is more "art" than "science," but yet somehow many proponents of religion attempt to convert people as if their religious beliefs were more accurate scientific models than someone else's.  The "science" aspects that religion covers are spirituality-- namely, it is a model that syncretism converges on.

Hence, the syncretic approach is an attempt to understand spiritual matters with some level of objectivity.  Granted, spirits are not objects, so one can generally do far less concrete modelling about anything of a spiritual nature than one can expect to do about the "real world" as covered by the hard sciences.


How can you tell if you're dealing with a certainty or an assumption?  Well, here's a fun example-- it's not green, it's... grue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grue_%28color%29



Further thoughts on the concept of objectivity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_%28metaphysics%29

from part of that page:

**
Objective knowledge then is knowledge of objects, including others subjects, while subjective knowledge would be knowledge of oneself. This meaning of objectivity refers to the supposed division of the world into subjects and objects, and poses the problem of consciousness. Note that the term "subjective knowledge" as used in marketing and consumer behavior refers to a person's evaluation of the quality of his own knowledge.

Criticisms

The conclusion that one has found the "objective" answer to a problem (or the objective description of an ontological state) usually precludes the individual from exploring alternatives. This leads to problems because the premise may be incorrect or only partially correct.

Furthermore, taking an "objective approach" may not always be relevant, particularly in cases where it is impossible to be objective either because the relevant facts and viewpoints necessary are lacking, or because it is the subjective opinion or response that happens to be important. Thus it is possible to take an "objective approach" inappropriately in situations which call for an expression of subjective thought or feeling.
**


One wonders to what extent one should claim that reality exists beyond our own beliefs.  I think that depends on how one defines "belief."  I think there are both logical personal beliefs and spiritual personal beliefs.  Logical beliefs progress from the finite thinking of the left-brain, or the ego self.  Spiritual personal beliefs are a "knowingness" of how things truly are... there's a self-evident aspect of recognizing universal truths when we perceive them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism

I think this is basically a major part what I'm getting at, with all my spiritual and religious philosophizing.  The idea here is to take contradictory religious beliefs and to attempt to reconcile them together in a way that works.  Hence, you move past paradigms along the lines of "this is the one true faith" and you respect and value the various contributions that large groups of people throughout the world have brought into the mix.

I don't feel that I often take definitive stances, since usually stances are defined by a clear-cut dichotomy of "for" and "against."  Whatever the usual "against" represents, I'm generally emotionally mature enough to respect that other side and to weigh the merits of it, hopefully with as much weight as I would weigh that which I may have originally stood "for."

Now, syncretism is the natural progression of taking an emotionally mature approach to philosophy.  Philosophies are no longer oversimplified into "right" and "wrong" models that are easy to wrap the mind around, but that in practice often create more harm than good, for failing to incorporate important parts of the equation.  It is with great humility that we humans most recognize that any logical model we support is, in fact, finite, and does, in fact, have some limitations.  We can merely form the best, most inclusive models that we can at this time, and allow ourselves and others in the future to revise our models further, taking into account the assumptions that we've made, and building new theories that are less limited by "of course's" that we've included and haven't noticed.

So, in a sense, I _am_ taking a stance "for" syncretism, hence this is the point where "for" and "against" _do_ come into play.  So, in effect, I am standing against that which I perceive to be human Pride: the unquestioning support of a pre-existing model of understanding, and the resistence to improvement and acceptance, when faced with ultimately better models.

Though my understanding is that the highest level of truth is, I could say simply, the Oneness of All That Is, there is a point (beneath that) where that which is "me" operates not as a static quantity, but as a quantity that has an energy of purpose and a direction... like a vector in physics.  As long as I'm defined as some sort of "human being" among other human beings, as a force of some sort that has some sort of motivation, then it's important that I apply that motivation in "the right direction."  Humanity could just as easily be in a mode of "falling from grace and being kicked out of the Garden of Eden" as "returning to God."  Neither one is inherently "better."  But the situation of reality as it stands in the present moment is that we are, in fact, in a state of returning to God.

So, to reflect that we are returning to God, the key is to apply the best possible philosophical approach that supports this goal.  So, rather than holding onto a static creed (as one sees in organized religions, who by nature buereaucratically lag the curve of progress, rather than lead it), I think the best approach is to support an ever-improving philosophy.  The Wikipedia entry that I cited mentions Unitarian Universalism and Neo-Paganism as some of the most advanced syncretic religious traditions... hence, it's no coincidence that these are the ones that showed up at the top of my Beliefnet quiz results.

I'll actually go a step further in my boldness-- I think that anyone who is supporting non-syncretic religions is stubbornly holding things back.  Mathematically speaking, the less adaptable and syncretic the religion, the more it is a force for "evil" in the world, rather than being a force for "good."  Hence, the more support the individual gives in supporting rigidity over syncretism, the more "evil" the person is being, either philosophically or in actions following such motivations.

Note that this does _not_ translate into a purely Liberal political viewpoint.  Liberal ideas are generally new ideas, perspectives that first "feel good," then slowly take logic and realism into account.  Such ideas are still subject to the same types of potential groupthink issues that traditional ideas are.  A Liberal idea could very well be an "evil" Liberal idea if it opposes an underlying understanding that syncretism philosophically converges towards.  People tend to support "evil" Liberal ideas when they aren't recorrecting them within the widest possible syncretic framework.  That noted, any Liberal idea that _is_ rechecked to fit within the overall syncretic framework is a "good" Liberal idea.

The reality of the current political situation in the U.S. is that, while it partially reflects the best existing syncretic philosophical model, it also largely consists of a great many components that have either (a) grown from traditions that have since been deprecated by the current best syncretic model, and refuse to change, or (b) have popped up as new ideas that don't have any syncretic roots.

We are best served as a society, and as a world, by applying syncretic underlying philosophies to all our political decision-making.  Proponents of existing traditions that hold only a piece of the puzzle (i.e., Catholicism, the Muslim faith, and so forth) need to stop fighting so hard in support of their claims that their particular part is better than the whole, the sum of all the parts.  The biggest impediment to syncretism is the tendency of so-called religious "authority figures" to tout their truth with a confidence that exceeds their relevance.  This confidence stems from naivete-- it is the people who "know they're right" who are least able to transcend the flaws in their thinking.  Likewise, those who rebel against these excesses in authority, forming new Liberal thought, have to be able to see past the egotism that arises from the overzealousness of "proving someone else wrong."  In all likelihood, the old philosophy is partially correct, and the new philosophy is partially correct as well... and the only true progress that's going to arise will come from an optimal blending of the two.


A related interesting Wikipedia definition-- the fundamental bases behind the modes of persuasion that various people use:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion

It's a great problem in society that the ability to persuade often has low to moderate correlation to the extent to which people actually know what they're doing.  If they did, then Unitarian Universalist and Neo-Pagan philosophers would fare much better than die-hard religious fundamentalists, and the people at the extreme fringes of the political spectrum that make up a significant percentage of Congress.

I think my left-brain is an atheist, and my right-brain is God.


This is also interesting:

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist

Comments follow.

Ignosticism

Main article: Ignosticism

Ignosticism is the view that the question of whether or not deities exist is inherently meaningless. It is a popular view among many logical positivists such as Rudolph Carnap and A. J. Ayer, who hold that talk of gods is literally nonsense. According to ignostics, "Does a god exist?" has the same logical status as "What color is Saturday?"; they are both nonsensical, and thus have no meaningful answers.

Ignostics commonly hold that statements about religious or other transcendent experiences cannot have any truth value, often because theological statements lack falsifiability, because of an epistemological view that renders the ontological argument nonsensical, or because the terminology being used has not been properly or consistently defined — the latter view is known as theological noncognitivism.

The use of the word "god" is thus solely a matter of semantics to ignostics, dealing with word use and technicalities rather than with existence and reality.

In Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer stated that theism, atheism and agnosticism were equally meaningless, insofar as they treat the question of the existence of God as a real question. However, there are varieties of atheism and agnosticism which do not necessarily agree that the question is meaningless, especially using the "lack of theism" definition of atheism. Despite Ayer's criticism of atheism (perhaps using the definition typically associated with strong atheism), Ignosticism is usually counted as a form of atheism; Ayer (1966) was clear on his position:

I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it. (p226)

The ignostic position is mentioned (though the term ignostic is not used) as one of the three forms of "critical atheism" (in Smith) or "rejectionist atheism" (in Nagel). Active disbelief in god or supernatural beings is one other type of critical/rejectionist atheism. Finally, the third type is the positive claim that deities do not exist. Since critical/rejectionist atheism is a type of explicit atheism, it follows that ignosticism is a type of explicit atheism. There is some debate over whether it should be classified as weak atheism or strong atheism.

Ignosticism is distinct from apatheism in that while ignostics hold questions and discussions of whether deities exist to be meaningless, apatheists hold that even a hypothetical answer to such questions would be completely irrelevant to human existence.


****

I think about semantics a lot.  You can't have communication between different people unless you delve into semantics, because you have to know what meanings different people are giving to different words.  The vast majority of the words we use are generally objective enough that we don't have any significant problems-- we wouldn't be able to have scientific accomplishment if this were not the case.

The word "God" is loaded with subjectivity and semantic differences.  It absolutely amazes me that different people see this word so differently, and make such a big deal out of it.  Your definition of the word "God," probably more than any other single word, reflects and represents your own personal psychology.  The word carries a weight in it-- a weight just for you-- that tells you exactly which groups of human beings you like, which groups of human beings you dislike, which groups of human beings you trust, and which groups of human beings you _don't_ trust.  It tells you who you're supporting, and who you're rebelling against.

Unfortunately, your definition of the word "God" communicates very little of objective value to any other human being.  Unless, that is, you are able to abstract the word out to a sufficiently universal definition that encompasses the sum total of meaning for the word as comprehensively as you possibly can.


Ignosticism, as described here, really hits the nail on the head, in describing this issue.  Let's look at the question, "Does a god exist?"  Well, what does "exist" mean?  I don't think we can get a universal consensus on that either.  Do you define "existence" as a physical existence, or a spiritual existence?  Does love exist?  Well, not physically, it doesn't.  But yet we find it rather silly to attempt to write love off as non-existent.  The other perspective is that _only_ love exists.  Okay, so in that case, we're talking about a framework where the scientific, observable physical world becomes no longer of relevance.  So, in that case, "that which exists" and "that which is relevant" agree, but then we have this vast illusion that we observe with our senses.

Think about the concept of prayer for a moment.  Prayer is an operation that is performed in the spiritual world.  But, when you pray for something, you have to pray for something in the physical world... otherwise, you're just praying for, say, something like peace of mind, which you technically have control over anyway.  Ah, but what about praying for _someone else's_ peace of mind?  Well, to some extent, you only perceive "someone else" when you perceive them physically, with your physical senses.  Ummm... that's the physical world again.  What about when you perceive them emotionally?  Well, that's called empathy, and in that context, you feel what they feel, and there's no longer any grounds for distinction in deciding what's "you" and what's "them" in any rationally quantifiable manner.


So, we've established what "exists" depends on how you want to define that word.  But given the two realms-- existence due to physicality (physical reality), and existence due to relevance (emotional reality), we're now given the prospect of attempting to define the existence of a god.  Well, the left-brained approach has argued extensively that no god exists in the physical world.  Granted, there's also an alternative explanation-- a god could be so pervasive in the physical world that _anything_ in the physical world shows a god exists.  Or, alternatively, anything that's "good" or "perfect" can be a god.  Of course, "good" is defined by the "good guys," much like the way history books are written by the winners.

The other explanation points to a god existing in emotional reality, rather than in physical reality... with the idea being that the physical reality draws forth from the existence of a god in emotional reality.  This approach makes sense, and is extremely elegant.  In fact, if you observe all the major religions, they all share a common theme along these lines.  Once you abstract your god out to the realm of relevance, rather than the realm of proof, then you have something.  Furthermore, your definition agrees with everyone else's... including the atheists, because the purely left-brained approach ignores emotional reality completely.


Now, ignosticism comes into play as a highly relevant factor in this equation because it addresses this understanding from a much more logically precise framework.  There are two ways that one can frame a religion-- one is through concrete definitions, and the other is through abstract definitions.  When you define a religion through abstract definitions, you gain accuracy, but you lose specificity.  As far as I can tell, abstract Catholicism and abstract Buddhism are completely compatible.  In my understanding, abstract Bahai and abstract New Age are completely compatible as well, for example.  There is a conceptual complete overlap between the differing religions at this level.  You see this all-pervasive, comprehensive force in the non-physical realm that represents the all.  Oneness and unconditional love join together as the same concept-- you love something ultimately because it is you.  If it were truly separate from you, you would be completely emotionally detached from it.

Unfortunately, that which makes a religion a religion is its _concrete_ definition.  I could tell you that I am a Catholic and a New Age follower, for example.  But no-- the Vatican does not allow for that distinction.  Creeds are based on precise logical definitions, and concrete religion requires precise logical definitions of a concrete variety.  Defining terms concretely creates separation.  My favorite example: "Jesus is the only Son of God."  In New Age terminology, Catholics are saying, "Jesus is the only Ascended Master."  Of course, followers of Islam would equivalently be saying something like, "the Prophet Mohammed (praise be unto his name) is the only Ascended Master (or the only human with direct access to God's word)."  Hence, in this instance, we create centuries of everything from minor quibbles to major holy wars, all based on "exclusive rights" to God, via a _concrete_, historical human being, who supposedly exclusively fit or did not fit a certain perfect, divine criteria.


Logically, a great amount of conflict is created simply by people holding irrational attachments to concrete versions of religion.  When you transcend the inaccurate concrete versions of religion, you no longer need to look at it as something in the "correct" and "incorrect" categories... "the one true faith" and "something else someone else believes in that I believe is wrong."

Now, if you want to make the argument that creating irrational conflict and separation is a positive thing, because of its benefit as a game, then I cannot specifically argue against that.  There is, in fact, a game that most people on the planet are playing, when they play favorites like that.  Most of them don't appear to realize that it is a game, hence the game becomes real to them.  Well, to be more precise, it becomes real to them because it becomes emotional reality for them.  Like I said before, what makes something relevant?  It's relevant if it's part of your emotional reality.  If you care about something, that caring is your reality.  If you do not, it's not.  Though this differs greatly from physical reality, it is a much more appropriate assessment of "what matters and what doesn't."  Anything in science that gets fleshed out, as much has been, all stems from one underlying premise-- that many human beings enjoy fleshing out the map of reality, of how everything is, from an emotionally neutral context.

That, too, is a game, though.  Why do we think the objective rules of the universe exist all by themselves, outside our observations, outside our cares and considerations of them?  We just assume that if 6 billion people perceive something it is objective.  Actually, we usually go by a much smaller consensus than that-- a few scientists with a few double-blind experiments, and we treat it as absolute proof.  But we don't realize that _someone_ has to perceive the results of the experiments, before it gets into our brains.  There is no perfectly blind experiment, because the scientist who later observes whatever has been done is _still_ the one observing it, and creating subjective value to the objectivity-- telling the rest of us "how it is" and "why we should care."

Funny how, with anything that really seems all that perfectly objective to us in science, we hear it, and we knew it all along.  It's just a question of the language creating a logic to describe the natural laws.  Hmmm... we knew it all along, eh?  Well, wouldn't that mean that the natural laws were inside of us, as well as outside of us?  We're perceiving something, but then we recognize it.  "Educate" means to draw out.  It's much easier to learn that which exists inside us already, than that which is created by partial consensus, externally.  Math and science have a certain perfect beauty to them.  Einstein once said something like, "the hardest thing in the world to understand is the tax code."  Ah, essentially randomized, dicordant, hyper-intellectualization and over-complexifying at its finest.

This is also why I hate bureaucracy so much.  Reliable logical systems were easy to learn.  Stuff that kind of works in one localized setting, and totally doesn't work in another localized setting... ugh.


Perhaps summing this up overall, I think the world should be a heck of a lot less concerned with matter, and a heck of a lot more concerned with _what matters_.  If we stop making reality out to be this logically overcomplicated monster, and stop trying to convince people that reality needs to be as complicated as we happen to arbitrarily think it is... then we can start realizing that everything gets simpler and simpler as we look at it more carefully, and we can focus a lot more energy on resolving problems and helping other people do the same.

Yes, it really is that simple.


Logical complexity is a game... a form of art.  It's not something that we're supposed to use to scare other people with.

If anyone needs a quick, high-level concept to ponder for a little while...

Thoughts are electric, and emotions are magnetic.


Granted... "emotions" is a context-sensitive word.  Some people think "negative emotions" and other people think "positive emotions" when I say "emotions."

Are negative emotions truly emotions?  Or are they really just thoughts... traps holding you in place?  Don't we trap rationalizations in place, and keep falling back on them as if they were absolutes, to justify certain thoughts we have?

Regardless of how you characterize them, the world really could use a more universal model of thoughts and emotions, because we seem to have a lot of trouble acknowledging what's going on in our own heads, and seeing how to (a) put things in perspective, and (b) use whatever's going on in there most effectively, for the greater good of ourselves and of the world at large.

Anyway-- you can correct for semantics in your ponderings, but regardless, if you have a good model for how thoughts and emotions work, they can work _for_ you, rather than being things that you have a hard time acknowledging or addressing, that can then work _against_ you.

When you reach a point where you can almost definitively say, "everything I do is wrong," then you know you're about to succeed.

Why's that?  Because, if there's any way to logically quantify your choices into "right" and "wrong" like that, all you need to do is switch to exactly the opposite approach of what you've been trying.

Case in point: my currency day-trading.  Ever sense that one day when I got about a 21% overall gain in 24 hours (and 28% overall for the bulk of it), I've been in situations where I'm losing money.  Not just "yeah, I seem to be losing more than I'm winning."  No, I'm talking about _huge_ losses.  As in, if I make 3 trades, then all 3 are losses.  If I make 7 trades, then 6 out of 7 are losses.

I thought this over last night, around the time I saw my account balance plummet past the $7,000 range and into the $5,500 range.  It's been a week since that 21% gain day.  You pretty much have to base percentages on your account balance at any given moment.  So, if I was over $12,000, and now I'm around $5,500, then I'm talking about a greater than 50% loss over the past week.  Maybe that's 10% down every single day... rough overall approximation.  ($7,000 to $5,500 is down $1,500, and 15 out of 70 is about 21% itself-- so this is a 21% down day... as opposed to a 21% up day.)  The spread when I buy (the ante, so to speak) is much smaller than the range I'm losing.  So, yeah... the 21% increase was the exception, and the 21% _decrease_ is almost the rule.

So, what the heck is happening?  Well, I think I can explain it now.  Rather than thinking, "what goes up must come down," I've been thinking, "what seems to be breaking out might very well really break out significantly after it starts."

Well, that's not really how it works.  Usually, when a breakout happens in currency markets from day to day, it's due (as far as I can tell), from fundamentals, not technicals.  So, if Bernanke says something, or some key data is released at 9 am, then _that_ causes breakouts.  Everything else is a math game where so many people are fighting over the guessing and second-guessing that it pretty much averages out.  Well, in most cases, it does.

So, okay... this means that I can't really succeed on breakouts unless I'm on top of "guys making announcements."  I have a bit of information on that, but my main strength at the moment is with the technical curve predicting side.  Granted, this doesn't mean I _couldn't_ benefit from announcements-- after all, if I'm holding a position, and it goes in my favor, it goes in my favor.  As long as the gain limit isn't too tight (or as long as I keep trailing the stop loss and allowing for more gain) I'm good to go.

I think the 21% increase that one day was largely due to one position that ended up going significantly in my favor, that I had purchased a more than usual amount of shares for.  There were other positive positions as well, but I'm inclined to assume that that day in particular was probably more so an exception than a usual day.  Hence, positive results broke my general trend of losing money, which has been the norm.

If the spread between buy and sell was a big issue-- or if I also had to deal with trading fees, like with the stock market-- then it'd be trickier, and I'd be more concerned about natural attrition... getting eaten away at slowly over time.  But yeah-- it's possible to cover the difference of the spread and gain a little off of it with a single trade in five minutes or less, if it goes your way as predicted.  Of course, these are generally gains in the $30 or less range, and I'm looking more towards hundreds, maybe thousands.  But I think I got too caught up in the "big money," which tends to be rather technically unpredictable, and it'd be better for me to take smaller gains that naturally arise from, say, "the curve just went down a little by itself, so now it's probably about ready to go back up."

So yeah-- the five minute stuff works pretty well for me... or it will, if I go back to that strategy again.  The "leave it overnight and see what it does" attitude that presumes massive breakouts... that doesn't work.  It doesn't work for me, and I doubt it works that well for _anyone_.  Maybe if someone's very much on top of the fundamentals, enough to know what's being announced at 9 am and how it's likely to cause pressure on things, sure... but from a more technical, pattern based standpoint... no, doesn't work.

Granted, I'll still probably leave positions open overnight.  But I'll just play the ups and downs of the curves at the hourly/daily level, rather than presuming breakouts at the hourly/daily level, as I had.  Because, of course, hoping for breakouts like that was almost 100% wrong... and when the breakouts _did_ occur, they were often in directions opposing me anyway.

So, I've been almost 100% wrong, with my latest approach to strategizing.  Time to switch philosophies and see if I become almost 100% right.

I did a little bit of research (err... timewise it was just a little, informationwise I picked up a lot) building from a comment Ankh made about the impending Singularity that humanity is heading towards.  He was discussing it more in the context of teaching; I abstracted it out to look at the concept and overall effect on society.

The following Wikipedia link delves into the concept in question here.  This also provides some answers to some speculations from a discussion I had with mentalaurora a day or two back:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity


This is a huge, underlying concept, and extremely relevant to humanity.  That said, people can live their whole lives within that type of context of "here's how the world works and here's where it's heading."  But it's really an NT (Myers-Briggs/Keirsey-Bates) specific based concept.  Basically, it is an attempt to look at the world from a physical-evidence, trend based perspective.  While trends are not inherently incorrect (and, in fact, I have to vouch for their usefulness in trading), there is ultimately an inherent flaw in applying a physical world scientific model to "how things really work and where the world is headed," once the system overextends its limitations.  For example, part of this article talks about computer intelligence surpassing human intelligence.  While there's some merit to this when observing intelligence in a rational sense, the entire concept builds off of defining a person as a mind (well, with a body) rather than as a spirit.  Eventually, you have to be able to look at reality at a level that transcends the assumptions of "physical objects, rational intelligences" and start looking at human souls and spiritual oneness instead.

So, if you jump into reading about the whole singularity thing full force, without the proper spiritual context and understanding of oneness, then all sorts of questions arise like, "if machine intelligences become the dominant ones on Earth, then will they even need us humans any more?"  With deeper spiritual understandings in place, you don't have to worry about concerns like this, because the answers of "where things are really going" underneath the singularity becomes more obvious.


The interview with a walk-in that I linked to last night delved into understanding where things are heading, even in the near future, from a very spiritually minded perspective.  I'd say it's, perhaps, more NF than NT, but more important than that is the very enlightened spiritual perspective that underlies it (which I've also found underneath many books and philosophies that I've seen in the New Age category, though by no means does spiritual enlightenment need be restricted to there).

Tonight's singularity perspective comes from an interesting place-- on one hand, it's far more fit for "normal human consumption" than the walk-in interview from last night was.  The perspective matches up very well to our well-trained rational thinking based on empirical evidence.  Hence, I think few people would outright disagree with it.  (Well, details could be squabbled over, but the basic concept, probably not.)  But, on the other hand, it reflects the ultimate extreme of the best understandings we can come to without "getting it," when it comes to having spiritual perspectives of reality.

They mention paradigm shifts, leaps in human consciousness that take us to the next level.  I'm going to make the calculation that the next paradigm shift of human consciousness (a few at first, then the "hundredth monkey effect" takes over eventually, so everyone gets it) is one of spiritual awareness, and oneness awareness.

When humanity overall reaches this paradigm shift, pretty much everyone will "get" why the walk-in interview is from a perspective that's a cut above the technological singularity analysis.  Until then, a small, and increasing, percentage of the population "gets it," and we're kind of waiting for the rest to catch up.

Do I truly have the capability to learn anything... if a part of me already knows that I can transcend the level of reality at which that knowledge exists, or matters?

I guess that means that all learning exists within "the game."  We pretend not to understand, or not to know.  The word "educate" means "to draw out," and this is apt.  The sum total of all knowledge already exists within us, already _is_ us, at the deepest levels.


I do try to listen to people's advice.  But, there comes a point where advice is only fleshing out my reality at a sublevel.  If I learn more things that the Bush administration has done, then it doesn't change the fact of my oneness with God.  It just plays out a drama that I, as God, am playing out.

I hate to break this to people, but I'm not just "a human on Earth."  I'm also... what, a Godself?  Something bigger, something greater, something transcendant.

Perhaps this explains why I tend not to hold grudges.  My core essence, my "self," transcends the physical world, and everything in it.  It's kind of hard to be angry with "someone else" when you see a oneness between yourself and them.  I don't know how else to explain it-- it just becomes _obvious_ that life is a game, a drama acted out on a stage, when one sees it at that level.

My agenda, if one wants to call it that, seems to be that I am in favor of "being God" over "not being God."  Hence, I am in favor of greater awareness, and against lesser awareness.  The dynamic that drives me is one that pulls us up, brings us to increased awareness, deeper understanding.

I could, in theory, just as easily be an entity which had a drive of forming the illusion more and more... of corrupting things more and more from the deeper truth.  As a human being, I am, after all, an actor on the stage.

Well, for whatever reason, I've chosen something along the lines of 99% "pull people up out of the illusion, towards greater awareness," and 1% "pull people back down into the illusion, and reinforce the belief in the inherent relevance of smaller, separate parts of God, over other parts."


I suppose there must, by definition then, be a part of me in the mix somewhere which has a rather definitive preference... and God overall would not have that preference.  Becoming "more aware" and becoming "less aware" are equally valid overall.  In fact, in a time-based continuum, you have to become "less aware" first, before you can become "more aware."  You need to create the tension to create the release... it's just like music.

So, at that level, I do definitively stand for something.  My self-definition does exist as a role, a part of the overall, within a certain environment.  There is "that which I do not stand for," perhaps even "that which I am not," if I choose to look at myself at that level.  But, to look at myself at a higher level, I would have to dissolve strength of will, and sense of purpose, and self-identity.  It's all God anyway, right?  There's a level where "infinite strength of will" converges to "no strength of will."  It's kind of like, "I have so much power, I don't need to use it."

Hence, my allies are those who, overall, build towards harmony more than they separate.  My opposers are those who, overall, separate and divide more than they build towards harmony.  I cannot harmonize with separation-- to do so, I would no longer be my ego, and only be God.  Then you're not talking to "Anthony" any more, and hence, the beauty of the self-expression which is "me" is, in some ways, lost.  All that remains is the neutral self-expression... I could still write, but what "life" does writing have, if there is no personal agenda behind it?  With no agenda or purpose, I "may as well not have bothered to put my thoughts down at all."

So, last night I tried to answer a very interesting question-- what does "success" mean to me?

I'd had answers to it before, but one's definition of success often changes over time anyway.  I could also say that one's model of success can be continually refined over time.

Anyway, I got a very interesting answer.  It wasn't so much any tangible "thing" or combination of "things," as it was a snapshot, of a very short period of time in my life, about a year ago.  Basically, for a _very_ brief period of time, I had everything that I had wanted before and have wanted since-- girl, stable source of income, nice relaxing and at least moderately fulfilling job to go to for 40 hours a week, car, condo, and whatever physical stuff I own that may be of some relevance.

After the occasion of that "snapshot," I lost the girl (which went against everything I wanted), and I lost the job (which _is_ what I wanted, given that good reality became bad reality) and hence the income.

So basically, though I've also spent a lot of time building up my life in other ways, the central focus (in the sense of "what problem do I have to solve?") of the year since then has been to get the job/career/income thing worked out, to achieve a stable equilibrium with it.  Though I lost the girl too, I haven't so much pursued resolving that, since I see that as something that's now contingent on God-- either something will "just happen" to change things, or I'll be intuitively and emotionally directed to take some sort of action on that front.  So far, I haven't been.  When the time is right, the time is right, and either I'll know, or it'll be obvious.


Anyway, success is recapturing that snapshot.  I don't know how else to explain that particular, very brief time in my life, except to say that I went from "Earth" to "Heaven," but "Heaven" was still physically and logically contiguous with my normal life on Earth.  I didn't physically go to someplace that I'd never heard of, or anything like that.  I mean, okay, technically I did go to another part of Arlington that I hadn't been to before, in part of that timeframe.  But that's not inherently relevant to Heaven.  Most of Heaven was physically right here in my condo... it's just that my condo was cleaned up then, since I happened to have just cleaned it up within the week before that.

Well, given that it's been about a year since then, I can see that there are some aspects of myself that I've worked on, and developed, that weren't "there" when I was in "Heaven."  I mean, I didn't have LiveJournal back then.  I had only just been to my first MeetIn event-- hardly the same as it's felt for me on occasion since then.  I didn't have things going with MySpace.  I hadn't written Final Warrior.  I didn't have anywhere near the understandings of politics that I have now.  I didn't have The Daily Show as a recurring staple in my life, and The Colbert Report didn't even exist yet then.

Basically, given that I was thrown out of Heaven about a year ago, in returning to Earth, I've tried to make the best I could out of the parts of Heaven that I still have.  I didn't lose everything, after all... just "a girl" and "a job," and all the emotional and spiritual reality associated with each of them, and the financial reality associated with the job.

The problem is, even though Earth is much nicer for me now than it was just before and just after I was in Heaven, it's still not Heaven.  My definition of "success" is that I want Heaven back.  But, of course, what Heaven consists of is so intangible that you barely know where to begin, when you're on Earth, working to get back to it... and working to try to recapture little bits and pieces of the emotional reality of Heaven wherever you can.


It's like my Higher Self can pretty much just change a parameter or two in both emotional reality and physical reality, and all of a sudden I'd have Heaven back.  That's what happened before-- the circumstances to get to Heaven, and the circumstances to be thrown back out of it.

So, I've been thinking about why the heck I've been thrown out of Heaven, and what the heck I can do to get back there again.  I've decided, now as before, that the concept of relevance is karma.

Actually, I've also been thinking about card games-- playing blackjack with a 49% probability of winning, and looking at that model of reality.  Probability and karma are both very interesting concepts, and very interesting perspectives of reality.  If you want to win a card game, then you can look at your odds.  You can play according to your odds.  But odds follow a certain distribution, of how things "have to be in the long run" or whatever.  If you have an infinite amount of money to gamble with, then you never completely lose it all... hence, you can always win any finite amount.  But, if you don't set a limit on how much you want to win, then the inevitable progression is that you'll keep gambling until (a) you win all the money the casino lets you take home, or (b) you lose all the money you have to gamble with.  Given that the casino is financially "bigger" than the person, (b) tends to win out in the end sooner than (a).

But, with the probability model noted... what _really_ determines if and when you win or lose?  I mean, there's no set reason why a game has to have a 49% probability of winning-- the casinos could just as easily have a 51% game.  There will still be people there willing to keep playing until they lose all their money-- we have an imperfect human society, consisting of people who operate with imperfect strategies.  If you're playing a 51% game, and you always play it purely objectively, then you'll always ultimately win a small percentage of what you're willing to lose.  When I was in Atlantic City over the weekend, I started off by working off of a pool of $30-- I lost $10 to slot machines, then I lost $15 to blackjack, where there was a $15 minimum bet.  So then I took another $100 out of the ATM, and played until I came out ahead.  (I had $142.50 in chips, before I tipped the dealer $2.50.)  So, okay-- there's that principle.  If you only have $30, then you have to stop when you lose it.  If you're willing to cash in another $100, then you have to stop when you lose _that_.  But the group was about ready to leave, so I stopped just after I came out slightly ahead.  The feeling of "but I could make more" compels people to keep gambling.  But probability shows you that a slight gain is far more likely than a massive gain... and, heck, a slight gain is all you really need anyway, to come out ahead.

But yeah, I built my gameplay model off of (pretty much) a 49% success rate model that my cousin was using, modified by a karma model that my guardian angel was using.  I was mostly playing probability, but I followed intuitive nudges here and there, along the lines of, "skip this round."  This approach is essentially the same as what George Soros mentioned in explaining the "secret of his success" in part of the revised intro to The Alchemy of Finance.  If your back is hurting after you make a particular deal, reconsider it... sure, find some logic to support the "why" behind why it works-- but don't discount the fact that whatever causes the backache is connected to the deal you just made.  Though George Soros didn't spell out any spiritual beliefs in conjunction with this, the concept definitely explains the difference between people who are, when it really comes down to it, spiritual people, and people who operate from purely understood logical models.  Science, with the scientific method, is _never_ going to be able to explain the non-local connection between "backache" and "bad deal that you should change."  But, nonetheless, it doesn't change the fact that there is _some_ power greater than one's own rational mind, that one should defer to.

I should probably note that, when I first started playing blackjack in the casino there, I wasn't really following any model like that.  I was kind of trying to follow my cousin's suggestions.  After I lost the $25 or so, I figured I'd switch over to a combined probability/spirituality model.  So basically, I let my guardian angel decide if I should play or sit out for any given round, and I pretty much followed the probability model (with some slight intuitive variations) for the gameplay during each round.  I felt really good about the time in there when, due to my angel's suggestions, I sat out for two rounds in a row, and the dealer got blackjack both times.

I should also note that, in the car on the way back, the two guys sitting next to me were playing blackjack for a few rounds-- no money, just for fun.  I asked them to deal me in.  In one try, I got two aces.  We split them up, and I got a ten on each one.  Immediate double blackjack!  We ended up stopping after that-- I wasn't going to top that with repeated tries anyway.


So, in thinking about finances... I think that the karma here is trying to get me to accept, more and more, that my guardian angel knows something that I don't, and operates with a level of logic that explains the system better than my existing probability model does.  I mean, the only unproveable assumption I have to make is that (a) my guardian angel is directing me in whichever direction is ultimately for the best, and (b) that this means she wants me to win.

Now, (a), I can work with-- I have no reason to disbelieve that.  The problem is that (b) doesn't necessarily follow from (a).  I mean, it really depends on what level you're looking at here.  It's really a very subjective and personal type of thing, to try to figure out if you will truly be better off with "more money" or "less money."  I mean, the deadly sin of Greed is the deadly sin of Greed.  I just explained mathematically how, if you are completely consumed by Greed, when you gamble, you will always lose money until you run out.  There is no logical optimum point that's reachable within a reasonable probability.  I can see how, if I were a guardian angel directing a human being with a Greed problem, then the best and most loving approach would be to let the human lose all the money.

So, the philosophical question behind all this comes into play now.  I'm on Earth.  Things happen that are outside of my physical control and my rational understanding.  Some, I can measure probabilities for pretty accurately.  Others, I can only form crude models to explain.  I'm under the impression that I'm on Earth because I have karma that I'm supposed to be working out.  If I didn't have karma to work out, God could easily give Heaven back to me, most likely pretty readily within a span of just a few days.

So... if _my_ goal is to work out my karma as _quickly_ as possible... then shouldn't I "take the hit" for whatever areas of life I'm still working out issues with?  I'm not saying that I should be hit 100% all at once.  But, in general... shouldn't I be pushed to my limit, at any given point in time, for whatever I'm dealing with, until I learn my lessons?

Basically, that doesn't mean that I should be financially "hit" as much as humanly possible-- I don't need to lose tons of money over and over again to learn my lesson.  But, nonetheless-- shouldn't I be using a probability game to _make_ money, given the fact that I'm learning the difference between faith and "luck"?  Doesn't it make sense that I should be playing the day-trading game, complete with that potential for massive Greed hanging over my head, as I continue to analyze, more and more, what my intuition suggests, and how best to accept money in perfect and respectful quantities, without trying to exploit the system?

Lots of people lose tons of money in any gambling environment-- I understand that.  But I'm not here to play the game where probability always beats me.  I'm here to play the game where I find God _through_ probability, in looking _past_ probability.  I did this in 2002, when I really started questioning my faith and figuring out what was really going on behind science... and I'm still doing that now.  You have to keep pruning back the plant as the branches grow... you have to take good care of the golden goose so it keeps laying those golden eggs.  That's the basic idea of what I'm talking about here... and that's really the only system that looks like it can work out nicely for me, in a financially sustainable way.

Of course, the real issue-- how long do I remain in physical form, on Earth, having needs that may or may not continue to be fulfilled, that God can grant or take away, at any given moment?  How long until I completely transcend the game, having worked out all my karma, and resolved everything just right?

Care to gamble on that? :)

So, I had a nice, long discussion with my same age cousin last night, mostly revolving around politics and conceptual models of what various things related to politics are and/or mean.

This particular cousin is the type of person who likes to talk things out with people and figure out where they really stand.  He works out some precise logical definitions of various things, and uses his understandings to ask people questions about where they stand politically, so he can divide them up into categories.

I think there's a conceptual flaw in divisiveness in general, which I'll illustrate.  Note also that this is going to tie in with what I was saying about objective versus subjective thinking.  I realize that I was taking somewhat of an "objective thinking is bad, subjective thinking is good" approach before, and that I ended up equating that to T and F in Myers-Briggs.  My current perspective and/or deeper understanding is that neither T nor F is a bad approach, because you can start from either side and still end up taking both into account.  But, regardless, I'll still maintain that, through whichever approach you take, if you don't ultimately see things subjectively enough, then, well... there's kind of a problem there.  Fortunately, I think it's easy to resolve the problem... if you want to.

This will make a lot more sense after I present the example here:

My cousin laid out his perspective of what a Conservative is, and what a Liberal is.  First, I'll note that he claims to be a Conservative, and has said before that he's rather Conservative.  He does, however, occasionally note where he philosophically differs from "Conservatives" in some areas.

I'll divide Liberal and Conservative into "Type #1" and "Type #2," but I'll remove the designations in the definitions.  I'd like you to decide which one you think you are before I tell you which is which.  But, of course, don't stop there, because I'll invalidate the whole argument afterwards anyway.


According to my cousin, a (Type #1) is a person who believes that, when it comes to making laws deciding what's right and wrong, or in other words, looking to a moral authority to build one's arguments from, you start at the bottom and work your way up.  So basically, the masses elect the legislature and the President, and the legislature and the President follow from what they say.  So, the key here is that you want to localize power as much as you can.  If an issue can be decided by states rather than by the country overall, then it should be.

Also according to my cousin, a (Type #2) is a person who believes that, when it comes to making laws deciding what's right and wrong, that you start at the top and work your way down.  Hence, you have five Supreme Court justices that make the law of the land.  (Yes, I know there are nine Supreme Court justices, but he argues that you only need five of them present to make a legally binding argument.  One could also make an argument that you only need five of the nine to agree on something for it to become law.  I figure either applies, but both lead to the "five justices" explanation anyway.)  The idea behind this is that you can trust certain people to be better moral authorities than most of the population, and therefore it's better to go with their decision processes than to build it up more organically.



Figure out which one you think best fits you, then look behind the cut to see "which is which," before I invalidate the whole argument by giving my answer.

( So are you "Liberal" or "Conservative" in my cousin's head? )

Okay, now that you've seen which, apparently, is which, I'll explain the position that I came to in the end.

I decided that, when it comes to moral authority, I believe that people are inherently good, but that they are also often easily corruptible and/or confuseable.  For example, say your system derives power from the general populace, and you want to get a law passed in the favor of your particular organization (say, some big oil company, or whatever).  Basically, you launch a media blitz, playing by the rules in Thank You For Smoking, which makes it look like your argument is in everyone's best interests.  Is it _really_ in everyone's best interests?  Well, really, who knows?  The point is that it could be, or it could not be, and you can definitely come up with some arguments that "sound good" that make you, and the supporters of the law in question, sound like "the good guys."  Even if you're Big Tobacco, you can still play all sorts of tricks that make it look like your side is the one which is more aware and has more moral authority... as I noted in my recent post when I talked about that movie.  Anyway, the result you get here is that you convince the populace to believe what you believe... which, of course, is what happens to make more money for your organization, no matter how nefarious it may often seem.

Now, conversely, if the power derives from the top, then all you have to do is use relative moral authority tricks against those in power.  If you want to buy off an authority figure, then you can try a bribe (or guilt the person into not going against you, because they were willing to take your money).  Or, you can try blackmail-- invite them to a "safe, secret" party with poker and alcohol, then bring in some prostitutes and take some compromising pictures-- even "here's a picture that clearly identifies that the authority figure was in the room with prostitutes" can be rather damaging if it "happens to get out," even if the person in question left immediately after the point when the prostitutes arrived.  Or, you can play a tradeoff game: "I'll give you a substantial contribution to get such-and-such other bill passed, which you're really excited about and that will definitely help the greater good... if you just also vote in favor of the law I'm interested in here."


So basically, a population of people can be psychologically manipulated with spin, and/or corrupted or bought off in various ways, and likewise a small group of people in power could also be manipulated and/or compromised in various ways.  The examples I cited don't have to be all inclusive-- the point is, quite simply, that neither "the people in general" nor "the people in power" are above being influenced or persuaded.

So, my answer to the Liberal versus Conservative approach?  I prefer that laws be established through the route of _whichever_ group-- "the overall populace" or "a few key authority figures"-- is _less_ corrupted, and/or _less_ confused by lower level logics, overall.  Basically, a source with money can use that money to act in a way so as to promote a stance that will benefit the _lesser_ good, at the expense of the _greater_ good.  Companies are obliged to maximize profits for their stockholders.  They are not obliged to maximize profits and/or happiness for the general populace.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that the dichotomy that my cousin presented doesn't work.  You have to know the level of corruption, and/or the level of mindset confusion towards helping the greater good, which exists in reality in both bodies of people.  I personally guarantee that people with money and influence are working _both_ angles, and they're winning out significantly no matter _which_ way is "better."  In fact, if either approach were to end up winning out decisively, then they would just switch their tactics to bias the perspectives and actions of whoever was given the power by the side which won out.


I contend that I am Liberal to Moderate, by the emotionally straightforward argument that I feel better about the types of subjective arguments that Liberals around me make, than I feel about the types of subjective arguments that Conservatives around me make... and because my spiritual ideals are reflected more elegantly with the Liberal approach.  I find no inherently logical connection between "Liberal people" and "what my cousin said Liberals stand for."  I believe that he's building and/or appropriating that whole dichotomy simply because he wants to define a system in his head.  Then he uses this system to parse people out, so he can feel that he agrees with certain people and disagrees with other people, in ways which he thinks matter, but don't.

You can't define me by laying out a logical, objective structure, and claiming that I agree with it or don't agree with it.  I agree with _people_, meaning that I agree with what they personally feel in the deepest recesses of their hearts.  I don't agree with logical models that people use to attempt to simplify the inner workings of the human mind and heart.  Those models create "for" and "against," and I don't believe in "against."  All I see is this silly game where people do all this silly posturing to try to universally define things that really aren't defined with any true objective consensus.  My cousin's definitions are just as subjective and biasing (i.e., they're "leading the witness") as any other ones I've seen, so all they really do is support the agenda he wants to support-- one where you can divide people out and decide who you agree with and don't agree with.

My agenda is to bring people together, and to agree with anyone and everyone who doesn't play these games of insisting they disagree with me.  They don't.  Deep down, I'm right, and everyone agrees with me.  But I can't possibly explain what I _really_ believe in words, because that locks me into something that a person can disagree with.

Ken Wilber, in his book Quantum Questions, noted that it's not a good idea to try to say that science proves spirituality, or to attach spirituality to science.  Why?  Because tomorrow's science will be more advanced than today's science, and the current science will then become yesterday's science.  So then, what happens when your spirituality is now associated with yesterday's science?  Then, the spirituality becomes "wrong" since it's been "outdated."  Spirituality, like one's definition of God, should be transparent to transcendence.  It's subjective, and it should keep growing as we keep growing, just like science does.  The same applies to laws, since these are our current best logical models of what we truly feel inside is best for our society.

This "model" versus "belief" dichotomy seems to be the key struggle that humanity is stuck with, and trying to rise above here.

The human race overall is currently faced with two massively despised entities within its ranks.  Basically, we have "Al-Qaeda" and we have "the Bush Administration."  That's the best terminology I know of to define these two entities.  But they both have, if not power, then still massive influence, over where humanity stands nowadays.

A "model" is, of course, a philosophical structure that represents one's "map of reality."  Like science, it is set up according to a dynamic where it can be continually revised.  The strength of a model is that it can't be "wrong," but only "incomplete."  Humility plays a great role in forming and revising models.  The more humble your perspective, the more open you can be to incorporating new ideas into your model, to flesh things out more completely.  In having a model, the speed at which you can improve and expand the relevance of your model is directly proportional to how open you are to incorporating new logical ideas into the mix.  Note that the new ideas have to fit within the existing conceptual structure.  Ideally, all new ideas should be considered, but not all new ideas should overrule basic tenets of the model.  Basically, the new ideas should all fit in somewhere-- maybe they challenge the underlying premise, or maybe they simply explain a special case of something that the model already examines and includes.

A "belief" is a model which is not open to revision.  Beliefs benefit society in that, if one particular person and/or group brings a model into the mix which greatly transcends the models of most people around him or her, then the majority is greatly helped by "catching up" to the greatly improved model.  The practical benefit here is that the "average citizen" can be given a road map that will slowly and surely bring himself or herself up to the far more advanced understandings.


The problem we're seeing with humanity nowadays stems from the willingness of its populace to continue supporting, and/or listening to, power structures which are supporting old beliefs.  Basically, with the advent of the Internet and globalization, humanity has reached a point where many "average citizens" are now able to form and revise their own personal models at a continually increasing rate.  I like to compare this to an example of writing a book.  In the old way of operating, a person could say, "I have an idea, and I want to write a book about it."  So, the person would take, say, a year or two to write the book, and flesh out the idea for public consumption.  Hence, the book would convey a belief.  (This can apply to either a novel, through a message of the story, or non-fiction, as it works out.)  In the new way of operating, it's much harder to find an idea to write a book about which remains continually relevant over a longer period of time.  Whatever message one has conveyed in the book, that person will be exposed to enough new thoughts and ideas over the course of that year or two, that the consistency will generally be thrown into question.  (If you can churn out 50,000 words in a month, like with NaNoWriMo, then it's easier to bring something more consistent overall together, since of course you won't philosophically change as much in a month as you will in a year or two.)

Hence, we are becoming increasingly "real time" in our approaches.  Excellent models are starting to permeate more and more rapidly through blogs and posts... be they philosophical understandings, political approaches, or whatever else refines an existing subjective framework.

Conversely, our power structures have been set up so that people with specific beliefs remain in power for certain periods of time.  Likewise, those who have money have to throw that money towards a particular system which seems to best fit their approaches.  Humanity has a great deal of respect for confidence, where people present a consistent argument for how things work.  I think we like that reassurance, that there's a "right" answer, and that our leaders know what that answer is.  As long as it's better informed than our answers on the subject, it's easy to relax and assume that their answer is the best one.  Leaders who continually revise their answers are seen as, well, flip-floppers.  Granted, not all flip-floppers are good, but the public has a tendency to greatly overvalue the apparent confidence in "being right" over a truer confidence that emerges from always considering the possibility that one could do better.


Perhaps the best objective indicator of whether or not one's approach is _truly_ good is how well it works in the stock market.  The stock market has the luxury of not adapting itself to what you think is right, regardless of how good a speaker you are and how many TV stations you get to broadcast your ideas.  Hence, in the past couple weeks, I've developed a lot of respect for George Soros's philosophies of fallibility, and his success in the stock market which reflects far more an intuitive and flexible philosophy, than any rigid scientific method type of model.

In conclusion, while I see merit to having beliefs established for mass consumption, I do see a shift where we're now needing systems which revise beliefs in real time, rather than being able to basically allow consistent philosophies to hold power.  So, it becomes less and less about how "right" you seem to be overall, and more and more about how rapidly you adapt and revise to the situations and scenarios of the world as they continue to change.