The idea that animals should have the same rights as humans extends back to the 9th century BCE, along with the principle in Eastern religions of ahimsā, non-violence toward all living beings, advocating for kindness and non-cruelty expressed daily by a vegetarian diet. I guess they did not believe growing, breathing plants were living. An odd prejudice, one arising because humans are unable to hear plants screaming in agony when being cut, plucked, or extracted from nourishing soil. I wonder how much the trees wail when the fruit, a parallel with chicken eggs, they lovingly bear are removed from their mother plant, and the seeds are consumed...
When thinking about the lasting impact of decisions or responsible planning, the impact on the future must be taken into account. Businesses typically have monthly, quarterly, and annual targets guided by a five-year plan and longer-term ambitions. A couple looking to start a family will, when buying a home, seek out a location that will suit their future needs. They look as far out as the schooling needs for the youngest of their brood, maybe beyond, and the potential for turning a profit when selling their empty nest to downsize and travel. The cowardly fools in government look at impacts only to the next election cycle, driving short-term, supposed benefit, while ignoring long-term impacts to people, environment, or budget, such as Cheetolini's bill...
As humans with only our singular, first-person experience as a reference, we assume everyone experiences the world the exact same way we do. My red is your red, despite the color triggering emotional responses based on unique genetics and divergent experiences. My sadness feels like your sadness, irrespective of the truism that each person grieves in their own way. My conscious experience is identical to your experience with consciousness, even though there is no empirical way to test that assumption and prove either convergence or divergence.
For as far back as I can recollect, I have been fascinated by religion, by man's attempt to connect what they view as the ultimate power and the many masks those deities wielding that power wear. I had already set aside the religion of my birth due to conflicting texts and hypocrisy of both the hierarchy and followers when I became captivated by the enthralling PBS series, "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth." It was the first time I was exposed in a systematic way to the role of religious mythologies used in societies, including the many commonalities and underlying themes in supposedly disparate religious traditions. The motif of a virgin birth, a central tenet of Christianity, has roots in the future birth of the savior Saoshyant in Zoroastrianism, the original monotheistic faith, Hinduism with Krishna, Hinduism with Ganesha and Durga, ancient Egypt with Horus, Perseus in Greek mythology, Mars in the Roman pantheon, and many other cultures and religions.
If I were forced to choose between being intelligent or exuding wisdom, I would opt for the latter. Make no mistake, I prize intelligence, love when I learn things, I can add to my knowledge database, I've been cultivating for some 64 odd years. I define it as the ability to grasp abstract concepts quickly, recall information readily, and solve problems. The problem, though, intelligence can result in poor decisions when reasoning is disconnected from deeper understanding, giving rise to the caricature of the brilliant scientist with a total lack of common sense. We see this in federal politicians who tend to be lawyers, a profession requiring enough intelligence to earn a law degree, but who routinely make horrendous decisions when proposing or passing bills into law because they cannot connect short-term decisions with longer-term consequences. A great example...
One of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV involved a neo-Nazi, white supremacist seeking to create an all white enclave in North Dakota. To be clear, I do not condone in any way, shape, or form white supremacist ideology or any other reason one can conjure to prejudge another human being. He was ranting about nonwhites being inferior and raging against what he termed the ethnic impurity when races interbreed...vile shit in general. On this show, he agreed to a DNA test to prove his own racial purity, only to discover before a live audience that he carried 14% sub-Saharan African ancestry. In the span of a few minutes, he rolled through the first three stages of grief, shock, then denial, claiming the numbers were the result of noise in the system, therefore inaccurate, soon followed by storming off the stage in anger. All the while, the laughing audience jeered loudly.
The intrepid crew members of the Star Trek Enterprise bravely signed up for a five-year mission to explore life, seek out new planets, and survive. Unbeknownst to them, it was unlikely the red shirts would explore beyond one episode, a fact that may have altered their choice to join the crew, were they informed when they enlisted. I wonder if that would have altered their choice? In the Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov, the explorers had a 1,000-year plan, meaning the original colonists would never again return to their home planet and reunite with those left behind. I took a two year contract to work and live halfway around the world in a culture virtually unknown to me...
I have dabbled with being disciplined frequently over the course of my 60-plus years and counting. By discipline, I do not refer to hiring a prostitute to dress up as a nun who paddles my pasty ass to get aroused before having my body ravaged by wild intercourse. Nope. I mean self-discipline, training myself to do something in a controlled and habitual way to achieve a goal, such as when I attended university and set aside significant swatches of time for exercise, studying, and working, ensuring I could keep pace with my chosen curriculum. I was a commuter student traveling to and fro for a few hours every day. Any available time had to be sliced and diced...
The concept of permanence with respect to humans can be interpreted in at least two different ways. One permanence implies the person in soul form, a soul which God has foreknowledge prior to existence, enters the physical realm at birth in the form of a body, exists at death to persist in an afterlife divided into a pleasant place and a not so pleasant place. The final destination is dependent upon the karma of a lived life. Good karma means...
Independence is the ability to function autonomously and make decisions for oneself, while interdependence is the state of relying on and being relied on by others, often in mutually beneficial relationships. Symbiosis is an extreme form of interdependence wherein one species cannot exist independently of another, such as with the Pronuba moth and the Yucca plant. The female Pronuba moth pollinates the Yucca flowers, which is crucial because the morphology of Yucca flowers makes self-pollination nearly impossible. In return, the moth...
The beauty of the human mind, a characteristic arrogant fools claim is exclusive to humanity, is the conjuring of imaginary realms to mentally explore while the physical being, relaxing in a comfy chair, remains in a state of stasis. I don't believe imagination is a human only capability. I am not alone in this supposition. Science has shown behaviors in dolphins, chimps, rats, gray parrots, and, my personal favorite, corvids, especially the stately raven. There is a peculiar raven named Mortimer with whom I have had deep conversations on those rare occasions that he is not distracted by shiny objects or a freshly opened bag of spicy beef jerky. However, our interactions...
For a significant part of my life, perhaps from birth, I was a contrarian, typically taking an antagonistic stance against the prevailing winds of the day. I don't know if I am genetically predisposed, though I strongly suspect I am, to go against the flow or something in my environment trained me to embrace the struggle upstream rather than float downstream with the flotsams and jetsams. I suspect it was a combination of both genetics and environmental influences. I was born with a strong "I won't" that found me regularly refusing to do the simplest tasks without fussing. As a child of the 60s, my anti-establishment perspective was exacerbated as I, by osmosis, absorbed...
Truth is generally defined as something in agreement with fact or reality. Correspondence theory states that truth occurs when a statement or belief corresponds to the reality it describes. A critical nuance missing, though, is one of perspective, of context. Perspective can render one man's number six, another woman's number nine and vice versa. These two distinct realities mean there are differing true truths. In each case, one truth makes no sense to the other truth holder. The subjective nature of reality carries the baggage that truth is...
I imagine a question of this sort first arose when one would be ancient philosopher peered out of the window of the brick home from one of the first human settlements, looked past the central temple complex dedicated to Enki, the god of wisdom and water, past the settlement's boundaries, where a hunting party was returning carrying gazelles lashed to long sticks with their mouths open and tongues lolling, then looked beyond into the wilds and wondered why she felt the tug to abandon the city and disappear back into the steppe. Wondering why...
A fundamental flaw in the question, despite being uttered by the renowned astrophysicist Carl Sagan, is the presupposition that there is only one universe. Modern astrophysicists theorize that the number of universes is in the realm of 10 raised to the 10th power raised to the 16th power. A number so big, it is essentially infinity. I have difficulty wrapping my head around one observing infinity or with infinity collapsing into one. So, the answer I posit, will be under the caveat...
I have been enthralled with the visual arts for as long as I can remember, paintings and photography primarily. I am also intrigued by ceramics and sculpting, but not enough to try my hand at either. I would like to try turning spalted wood into a stunning bowl or vase. I lack the space for even a halfway decent lathe and the myriad tools necessary to perform turning magic. Primarily, though, my joy (and envy) come from people who can capture or arrange color in a perfectly framed photo or in an appealing aesthetic in a painting, such as the oil painting...
One of the life challenges humans must navigate throughout our lives is the effective management of our egos. The ego drives multiple life decisions, particularly when it is in some way challenged or offended by a second party not privy to our inner machinations. Without conscious thought, the ego, triggered unconsciously, reacts irrespective of the odds of coming out the better in a confrontation. A bruised ego will bite
If I had to venture a guess, I would say the meaning of life question has been around since the dawn of consciousness. Following fast on the heels of the statement, "I am!" came the question, "Why am I?" and has been an overarching concern ever since it spilled off a hominid's tongue. There is evidence the Neanderthals buried their dead ritualistically, so it may have occurred to them long before Homo Sapiens had the same thoughts. It is plausible Homo Sapiens learned...
I have heard a few possible answers to this question. The are two primary positions. Theists claim the mind, euphemism for soul, is primary, with the body little more than a temporary vessel in which the soul is forged by God's holy fire. The discarded body is destined for the pyre or an eternity trapped in a coffin after the soul departs and returns to its true home in Heaven. From a biological perspective, by existing, the body is animated by a life force, with the conscious mind a natural offshoot of the body's anima. The first position is called Dualism...
As infants and into toddlerhood, our brain embarks on a developmental course with an extraordinary burst of synapse production, a process known as synaptogenesis. Our minds rapidly absorb knowledge and experiences at an age when we are not mature enough to differentiate between the keep because it is helpful, discard because it is detrimental. The subconscious takes in all and stores all for future application when the frontal lobes are more fully developed. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for higher reasoning, reaches full maturity around the age of 25. That is...