Waxing Philosophical

René Descartes, philosopher; a wise and learned man
Said "I can prove that I exist; I think, therefore I am!"
I'd like to pose a question, though, that puts him on the spot:
A table doesn't think, so does that mean that it is not?

That verse was written by your friendly, neighborhood Halmanator back in the days of his youth, when he fancied himself a poet.

My tongue was, of course, planted firmly in my cheek when I wrote that verse.  As any logician will tell you, just because a premise is true, it does not automatically follow that its opposite is also true.  To wit: although thinking or self-awareness can be considered proof of an entity's existence, it does not follow that any entity which is not self-aware and unable to think does not exist.

We might extend the argument to say that an entity can also prove its existence by imposing itself upon the thoughts of one or more other sentient entities.  If you or I think about the table, we acknowledge its existence even though the table itself has no self-awareness or thought.

But if we accept that, we may blunder into the following challenge:  Hundreds of thousands of young children believe in Santa Claus.  They think about him so, given the previous argument, that is proof of Santa's existence.  But of course, Santa Claus doesn't exist ... or does he?

Perhaps the argument can be made that anything that occupies the thoughts of another does exist in some sense, especially if it occupies the thoughts of multiple others.  The tooth fairy, the bogeyman, Bugs Bunny, Darth Vader, Tom Sawyer, el chupacabra, Superman, Little Red Riding Hood and, yes, even God.  It may be argued that all of them exist in some sense, if only because we, the human race, have willed them to.

The Meaning Of Life

Yes, here it is, faithful readers; the moment that you've doubtless awaited for so very long now!  Today, The Halmanator will explain the meaning of your existence.  You knew, deep down, that it had to be leading up to this, didn't you?  I'm sure that many of you have wondered why this moment has been so long in coming.

I couldn't simply start a blog as an unknown and launch right into the eternal verities, expecting to be taken at all seriously.  No, I first had to establish credibility and trust.  To convince you that I have a true understanding of the Grand Design, I first had to enlighten you by ruminating on such diverse topics as song lyrics, patriotism, problem solving, the work ethic, loss, religion, childhood, healthy eating, communing with nature, poetry, simple pleasures, positive reinforcement, spirituality, interior decorating, the legal system, enjoyment, money, home repair, charity, technology, rationalism, music, time travel, transportation, bio-technology, silence and envy, to name but a few.  Having now undoubtedly convinced you of my keen understanding of the human condition, I can safely expound on its foundations in the secure knowledge that all potential detractors have long since been silenced.

For as long as human beings have been sentient, we have pondered our place in the Cosmos.  From whence did we come?  How did we come to be?  How are we different from the other creatures that inhabit our world?  How are we similar?  Are there others like us out there on other worlds?  And, most significantly, Why?  What is our purpose, both as a species and as individuals?

Most of those who have posited answers to these questions have done so in the context of either religion or philosophy or, sometimes, a mixture of both.  The religious faithful generally believe that we are the creation of a divine being or God, who is much bigger, smarter and more hygienic than we.  This, of course, still leaves the question of why God created us.  What is His purpose for us?  Some suggest a profound love, which is fine now that we're here, but still doesn't explain why He made us in the first place.  Did He love us before He even made us?  Some suggest that our purpose is to serve and worship God in order to increase His glory, like some kind of cosmic cheer-leading squad.  Some simply shrug their shoulders and suggest that the divine Mind of God is beyond our feeble understanding which, quite honestly, seems like a melodramatic way of saying "Who knows?"

Not everyone looks to a divine being to explain our existence, however.  Even atheists have rubbed their chins over the aforementioned questions.  The only difference is that they don't ascribe it to an omnipresent deity.  Such people tend to turn more toward philosophy for the answers.  Let's briefly examine a few:

Idealists suggest that what`s important is what goes on in our own minds.  The physical universe that surrounds us is incidental.  This philosophy doesn`t serve one particularly well when in the path of an on-coming train.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Realism, which argues that the physical universe is all that we can be sure of and that our minds are prone to playing tricks on us, so we can`t trust them.  This philosophy is best summed up by the premise that reality is that which doesn`t go away after you stop believing in it.

Neo-Thomism is a religion-based philosophy that seeks to understand God through a combination of faith and reason.  This philosophy argues that the complexity of the universe itself and everything in it implies a controlling higher intelligence.  To put forth an analogy, Neo-Thomism argues that, if one walks through a forest and finds a neatly-stacked pile of logs, one doesn`t think `My, what a coincidence!  A bunch of random pieces of wood happened to fall into this neat pile that I see before me!` Rather, one assumes that the pile of wood was placed there by someone.

Switching to the opposite end of the spectrum once more, we have Existentialism, which posits that there is no purpose or meaning to the universe.  This philosophy argues that the only authority that matters to ourselves is ourselves.  Everything is subjective.  "It's all about me".

Pragmatism relies on experiment and experience to explain the universe.  This philosophy holds that truth is not absolute, but determined by consequences.  For example, we see the sun rise in the east and set in the west, day after day, without exception.  For a long time, people concluded, quite reasonably, that the sun moved around the Earth.  That was the accepted truth, until some people began noticing the motions of the planets, which didn't fit the theory.  Further investigation was done and we discovered that the Earth moves around the sun.  The truth changed as our experience and knowledge changed.  (My counter-argument here is that the truth never changed, only our perception of it did).

When examining the aforementioned philosophies, it strikes me that they often concern themselves with answering the "what" and the "how", but not always the "why".  Those who question the meaning of life are often asking "Why?"

If one looks at the Big Picture, it's frighteningly tempting to conclude that our lives have no meaning in the grand scheme of things.  Think of the greatest, most powerful, most renowned people that you've ever heard of; Socrates, Tutankhamen, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, Cleopatra ... you get the idea.  All of them were renowned, not only in their own times but for ages after they died.  Yet all of them died and the world continued to turn without them.  As great as they were, what was the ultimate point to their existence?  They're gone now, as are all of their works.  Even the Pyramids are slowly crumbling.

You may argue that they shaped history and therefore the world that we live in today, but even that world itself must one day come to an end, and then what?  On the scale of eternity, how did they or anything that they did ultimately matter?  And, if one concludes that they didn't, then what are we multitudes who are not as great and as powerful and as renowned as they to think?  What about the vast majority of us who live more ordinary lives and who likely won't be remembered outside of their immediate family or close circle of friends after their deaths, and probably not for more than a generation or two even in those circles?  What is the point of our being here?

Here are my thoughts, and they are only my thoughts.  I'm no authority, I claim no special insight, and I may well be wrong.

With regard to our nature, or what we are, I'm partial to an explanation offered by the late Dr. Carl Sagan who said "We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself".  In other words, we are a part of creation but, significantly, we are a sentient part.  You might say that we're the mind of the Cosmos or, at least, part of the mind.  There may be other sentient beings out there like us, or unlike us.

As for our purpose, I sometimes feel that we attach too much importance to the question.  It's human nature to look for the "why" behind everything.  In fact, as far as any of us knows, this need for explanation is unique to homo sapiens.  All other living organisms on this planet, including those that are at least self-aware, seem to simply exist, doing what they were made to do and being what they were made to be, without worrying too much about the why or the wherefore.  Look at your dog or your cat or your goldfish.  Do they lose a lot of sleep over their purpose here?  Not in my experience.  On the other hand, my cat seems to have a perfect understanding of my purpose; to feed and shelter her, not to mention providing the occasional belly-rub.

But seriously, perhaps there is no "why".  Perhaps things simply are because they are.

Early one recent morning, I stood on the front driveway of my home and looked around.  It was very still and my gaze rested on the magnolia tree that grows on my front lawn.  As I regarded it, standing quiet and motionless, I considered that it had been standing there in that very spot for many years now, day and night, in fair weather and foul, through all four seasons.  It too is a living organism, though not like myself.  Unlike myself, the magnolia isn't concerned with its purpose.  It has no goals or aspirations.  It simply is.  And yet, it does serve a purpose.  Like most plants, it converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen for us non-plants.  Its leaves fall and decay, adding nutrients to the soil so that it and other plants may grow.  In the springtime, it sprouts attractive pink blossoms which adds beauty to the world and instills a sense of well-being to those who regard them. The magnolia tree doesn't need to strive to achieve its purpose, it just needs to be as it was made to be.

I thought about the well-known line from the Desiderata; "You are a child of the universe.  No less than the trees and the stars, you have the right to be here."  Maybe that simple answer is the best answer of all.

The Undo Button

Anyone who works with computers with any regularity these days is likely familiar with the ubiquitous "Undo" button.  It's a button, usually found somewhere on the tool bar of whatever application that you're working with, that reverses or "undoes" the last action.  Often, for the benefet of those of us who really tend to "leap before we look", as it were, you can click the button repeatedly, thereby undoing the last several actions.  Sometimes the button actually sports the word "Undo" but, more commonly of late, it's adorned by a simple graphic that looks like a bent arrow, pointing to the left (which, since we in the Western world tend to read from left to right, generally implies going backward.  I wonder whether Arabic word processor users ever mistake it as meaning "tab").

The idea dates back to the mid 1970's, when a research report with the riveting title of Behavioral Issues in the Use of Interactive Systems, written by Lance A. Miller and John C. Thomas of IBM (who else?) noted that "it would be quite useful to permit users to 'take back' at least the immediately preceding command". 

Implementing an "Undo" button isn't necessarily as simple as one might think.  You have to be able to restore things to the state that they were in just before the undesired action was executed.  If that involves restoring a deleted paragraph in a document, no major issue.  However, I'd be really surprised if the Pentagon computers that control the launch and guidance of nuclear-tipped ICBMs featured "Undo" buttons, though I must admit I'd feel a whole lot safer knowing that they did.

If I was to write a research report entitled Behavioral Issues in the Process of Everyday Living, (and believe me, I'm planning no such thing!) I would be inclined to add a similar note; "it would be quite useful to permit people to 'take back' at least the immediately preceding action or comment."

Who among us hasn't wished, at one time or another, that they could reverse a disastrously ill-advised action or comment as though it had never happened?  Drinking and driving, hurting a close friend or loved one with an uncaring remark, voting for George W. Bush or Stephen Harper, getting a "Mohawk", swinging a golf ball retriever around "Darth Maul" style in front of a video recording device ... all of these could be neatly taken back as though they'd never happened, and their consequences erased.

Politics would become a lot more interesting. Elected politicians would have an incentive to actually keep their election promises knowing that, if they didn't, their constituents might just "undo" them out of office.

Of course, the real power of the "Undo" button goes beyond simply fixing mistakes.  When working with computers, the "Undo" button gives us the boldness to try things that we might not otherwise risk, safe in the knowledge that, if it all goes south, it can quickly be reversed.  By encouraging us to take risks, the "Undo" button helps us to be more creative.

Imagine if life were like that.  Afraid to quit your safe, predictable but hum-drum job as a life insurance salesman so that you can pursue that life-long dream of squid jigging?  Go for it!  If you later find that wrestling with ink-spewing molluscs on a rain-pelted squid boat day after day inexplicably isn't as appealing as it at first seemed, just hit that "Undo" and, before you can say "I'm just too cranky without my silk hanky" you'll be back in your comfy little office with your tentacle-free actuarial tables, and you'll have a whole new appreciation for your formerly "crappy" job to boot.

Unfortunately, for reasons of His own, the Great Programmer has not seen fit to outfit our lives with the safety net of an "Undo" feature.  Maybe He lacked the cosmic RAM to store the state of things before making changes, but I doubt that's the reason. 

Some computer game developers refuse to allow the player to save their progress any time they want to.  Saving your game before venturing down that dungeon corridor with nothing but a +1 short sword with which to protect yourself, and then restoring your save point after you end up getting nostril raped by Foozle for your trouble, has the same effect as the "Undo" button.  However, some game developers intentionally prevent you from doing this because they feel that taking the risk factor out of the game ultimately makes it less fun.  Perhaps the Designer of the Game of Life likewise felt that a life without risk wouldn't be as rewarding and that taking the occasional chance is good for us. 

Whatever the reason, we must forge onward without the benefit of a reassuring "Undo" button on the toolbars of our lives,  meaning that we must ponder the possible consequences of our choices before acting on them, and pray that the program doesn't unexpectedly hang.

Vinyl Time Capsules

My mother's birthday falls this week.  Like many people, the older she gets, the harder she is to buy gifts for.  I mean, she's had a good life, rarely wanted for anything, sired the kind of son that most parents can only dream about and basically has pretty much everything she wants.

Mom doesn't own a record player and hasn't owned one for years now.  The one and only turntable that she ever owned was built into one of those all-in-one stereo cabinets; you know, the kind that has a receiver, turntable, tape deck and speakers built right into it, with compartments to store a few records and tapes thrown in to boot.  This wasn't the kind of modular sound system that's been the norm for the last 30 years or so; this was a stand-alone piece of furniture.  They were popular back in the seventies.  However, that old relic was finally taken to the curbside in front of mom's house some years ago, to be replaced with a much more diminutive stereo/CD player. 

Being the pack-rat that I am, I,  however, still have an old Dual turntable and a sizable collection of vinyl records to go with it so, having no further use for her old records, mom gave them to me.  I'd always had this idea that some day I might hook up the turntable to my computer and convert my favorite old records to CD, and I thought that mom might like me to do the same with her old records as well.  It was just one more of the many personal projects that I never seem to have the time for.

That's where I got the idea that maybe it was time to take the plunge and give mom a little trip down memory lane for this birthday.  So I dug out my old Dual, hooked it up to a computer and chose three titles out of mom's record collection that I thought she might particularly enjoy.  There was Harry Belafonte live at Carnegie Hall (mom was always a big Belafonte fan; I get a little embarrassed when she Calypso dances in public, particularly after a few glasses of wine), a German singer who goes only by the name of "Lolita" (no, it's not what you think - apparently that's a perfectly acceptable name among certain ethnicities) and, finally, the lady who's depicted at the top of this post; a fairly obscure Canadian country songstress by the name of Jean Pardy.

Jean Pardy was actually never one of mom's favorites, but I chose to convert the album for its nostalgic, sentimental value.  You see, I`d purchased it for mom back in 1973, when I was still but a young lad of ten years.  Records were still something of a novelty in our household at the time as the old stereo cabinet was still brand, spanking new so I decided to get mom a record for her birthday.  I didn't know much about music in those days.  I had no records of my own and I only listened to the radio when it happened to be on in the background so I marched down to the local Woolworth's department store, found the section where they sold records and scanned the rows of album covers for something that looked appealing.  The only reason I can offer today for choosing Jean Pardy is because I was a big fan of Popeye cartoons back then, and she appears to have shopped at the same fashion outlets as Olive Oyl.

As the album title suggests, most of the songs are tributes to Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders, Jean being herself a native of that maritime island.  Several of the songs sound as though they may well have been written by the iconic Canadian country/folk singer, "Stompin' Tom" Connors, with a few well-worn (even at that time) country favorites such as `D-I-V-O-R-C-E` thrown in for good measure.  Listening to the album during its recording (because analog recordings can only be duplicated in real time after all) I realized that I had forgotten how astoundingly bad this album really was.  Let`s just say it`s no mystery why Jean Pardy isn`t exactly a household name down in Nashville nowadays, or even in Thunder Bay for that matter (maybe in Corner Brook though).

And yet, I couldn`t help feeling a certain nostalgic pleasure as I heard those whining slide guitars, the wheezy concertinas and the clickety-clack of the spoons (yes, those are considered musical instruments among certain people of Celtic and Gaelic origin) and I waxed a little philosophical as I so often do, thinking how the music that I thought had been lost for all these years had been right there, safely stored away among the peaks and valleys that form the floor of the spiral grooves that are pressed into the two faces of that vinyl disc.

My thoughts have wandered off along those lines before when listening to my stereo.  It's sometimes incredible to me to think that an electronic box can reproduce any music that a person might imagine.  Beethoven, Caruso, AC/DC, Rolf Harris, Mike Oldfield, Lady Gaga... you name it, this box can faithfully reproduce any of their masterpieces without "knowing" anything about music.  More than that, it could even, theoretically, play compositions that haven't even been conceived yet much less written, if we could only feed the correct sequence of magnetic signals to it.  This idea is somewhat akin to the "Infinite Monkey" theorem which states that a monkey banging on typewriter keys for an infinite amount of time will eventually reproduce all of Shakespeare's writings.  If you fed random electrical signals to your stereo receiver for an infinite amount of time, it would eventually play any music you can name.

And now, having transitioned from the nostalgic to the silly and, finally, the completely whimsical, the nice men in the white coats tell me that it's time for my sedation.  I'll try not to stay away for so long this time, faithful readers.

So Learned, Yet So Misinformed

In Dale Wasserman's book, "Man Of La Mancha", Dr. Sansón Carrasco attempts to cure Don Alonso Quijana, who believes he is a knight-errant named Don Quixote, of his "madness" by pointing out that there have been no knights for nearly three hundred years. Don Quixote's reply: "So learned, yet so misinformed".

"These are the facts," insists Carrasco.

"Facts are the enemy of truth", counters "Quixote".

Dr. Stephen Hawking, renouned physicist and mathematician, widely acknowledged as one of the world's greatest intellects since Albert Einstein, announced In a recent interview with Britain's Guardian that heaven is a myth; a "fairy story" for people afraid of death.

During his interview, Dr. Hawking made it clear that he does not believe in a god, a heaven or hell, or even the concept of a soul. We are, says Hawking, nothing more than a collection of neurons and synapses firing off in our brains. When our brains die, we cease to exist. The end. That's all she wrote. Thanks for coming out.

Before continuing, let me assure you that this is not going to morph into a rant about the folly of secular pagans who refuse to believe in God and the Holy Bible. Those who know me know that I am not a particularly religious person. I question everything and I don't believe that any one religion or philosophy has a true understanding of the mind of God. I don't even necessarily think of God in the traditional sense; a mystical, all-powerful being who created everything and who manipulates events according to some Divine Plan. On the other hand, unlike Dr. Hawking, I do allow that there are probably things about which I not only have no knowledge, but which my mind may be completely incapable of even imagining or comprehending. I don't assert that Hawking is wrong about there being no heaven, no afterlife and no soul. I do, however, suggest that it's a little arrogant of him to insist that his opinions are unassailably correct.

I do agree with Hawking's suggestion that our time and energy might be better spent improving the world that we live in and the lives of those that live in it, rather than living only for some nebulous promise of eternal bliss once this life has ended. What if Dr. Hawking and his ilk are right, and we really do cease to exist, completely and utterly, once our brains have stopped functioning? That would mean that this life is all that we have. How sad to waste it in the vain hope for something better.

My criticism of Hawking, isn't about his rejection of religious philosophy so much as his refusal to consider that there may be forces and phenomena which he simply does not understand. The fallacy commited by many scientific minds is an adherence to the belief that "If I can't see it, detect it, measure it, quantify it or explain it, it doesn't exist". By insisting that there is an explanation for everything, science does not allow for the notion of miracles.

Ironically, some may argue that Hawking himself is a living, breathing miracle. The motor neurone disease, which has confined him to a wheelchair for most of his life, was expected to kill him within a few years of its original diagnosis. That was over 49 years ago, yet Dr. Hawking still survives.

Certainly, science must get some of the credit for this. Without the advanced medicine and technology that helps him to communicate, to move from place to place and even just to eat and to breath, Dr. Hawking would surely not have lived nearly as long as he has. The trouble with intellects like Hawking is that they give all the credit to science and technology alone, not allowing that there may be something greater, something more intangible and impossible to measure, record or even detect, at work as well.

Most of us are familiar with the old paradoxical riddle that asks, if a tree falls in the middle of a forest with no-one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Dr. Hawking, pondering this question from a purely scientific point of view, might accept this answer; as the falling tree strikes the ground, the impact generates sound waves. The fact that there are no ears present to detect these sound waves is immaterial. From a strictly physical point of view, the tree has indeed made a sound.

If we accept this, let us then change the question slightly. What if a deaf person is in the vicinity of the tree when it falls, and what if that person is not facing the tree? Let's assume that it's a small tree, too small to cause any vibrations that the deaf person might feel when it lands. This person would be completely unaware that a tree has just fallen over, yet the event has surely occurred. The person's inability to detect the sound waves made by the tree does not invalidate their existence.

Scientific minds like Dr. Hawking make the mistake of assuming that they know all that there is to know. They don't allow that there may be phenomena that science is, as yet, unable to detect, record, measure or study.

So learned, yet so misinformed.

War and Peace

Some time ago, I wrote in this blog about my thoughts on the book "Moby Dick" and I mentioned, too, that I had planned to tackle "War and Peace" next. In fact, I'm still reading it. I'm about half way through. I could have finished it by now, in spite of its notorious length but, like many substantial literary works, it starts out slowly, setting the stage and establishing the characters, and it can take a while before it really begins to capture the reader's interest. Consequently, I had set it aside for a while after starting it and, even now, I read only a chapter each day, and the chapters are short, though numerous.

Even so, I must say that I'm enjoying the book considerably more than I did "Moby Dick". Leo Tolstoy, the author, has woven a fascinating tapestry of aristocratic families made up of interesting characters whose lives and fates are interwoven against the backdrop of Imperial Russia's war with Napoleon. Tolstoy also displays a keen understanding of the human condition, as evidenced by the following paragraph.

At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second.

A most astute observation, and I paused to think about why this is. I think that it's because our individual problems are our own. Since they affect only ourselves, we know that it's up to us to solve them. When a larger problem threatens society as a whole, everyone hopes that someone else will solve it. I think that's what's happening with the issue of global warming. If the climate is really changing, we may be witnessing the genesis of an unprecedented disaster; one that threatens not only all of mankind, but every living thing on this planet. At the very least, it would mean starvation, famine, war and death on a scale never before seen. So some choose to deny that the problem exists, and even the majority of those who do accept that there is a threat leave it to others to deal with the problem. I would argue that this was at the heart of the failure of the Kyoto and Copenhagen conferences on climate change. Every participating nation felt that the problem was the responsibility of the others. None were willing to stand up and declare "The buck stops here!". Meanwhile, the problem continues and no meaningful action is taken. I can almost hear Tolstoy muttering "Я сказал вас так!" (or, since French was apparently very much in vogue in Imperial Russia, at least among the aristocracy, "Je vous ai dit ainsi!"

Tolstoy also presents us with this second insightful bit of analysis:

On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.

What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich, Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"- and there would have been no war.

We can understand that the matter seemed like that to contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the war was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

I wonder what this world will be like 100 years hence, and what the historians of that time, if indeed there still be any historians, will have to say about the actions and motives of those who steer the course of history today?

The Great Programmer

In his blog, Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert, for those of you who have been holed up in a cave) has, on occasion, mused that we may be nothing more than an elaborate hologram or computer program created and run by some higher being. In one example he cites having had a vision, earlier in life, about becoming famous which, in a very real sense, he did. He postulates that he may, in fact, be nothing more than a holographic self-portrait of the higher being that actually created him.

I like Adams, but many of his theories evoke a decided "yeah, right!" from me. This one certainly did. Until I started watching nature shows.

Ever since I got a wide-screen, high-definition TV, I've really gotten into the BBC Earth documentaries such as "Planet Earth" and, most recently, "Life" (the version narrated by David Attenborough, not Opra Winfrey, thank-you-very-much!)

If you'll bear with my going off on a tangent for a moment, I can't resist noting that my dad, who enjoyed all kinds of nature shows, would have loved these documentaries, especially on high-definition display technology. It's a shame he didn't live to enjoy them.

Getting back on topic, these nature documentaries have reminded me of something for which I have no rational explanation, nor has anybody else as far as I know. More incredibly, extending Adams' theory that humans are nothing more than computer programs to include the animal world as well would provide as credible an explanation for this phenomenon as any other. The phenomenon? In a word, instinct.

"The Pocket Oxford Dictionary" (which happens to be the only dictionary that I have handy while writing this) defines instinct as the "Innate propensity, esp. in lower animals, to seemingly rational acts; innate impulse or behaviour; intuition". In other words, it's that "magical" gift that animals have for knowing what to do and how to do it, without actually having to learn it. All cats wash themselves regularly. Momma cat doesn't have to teach them this. It's an instinct.

That was a simple example. The Monarch butterfly provides us with a much more incredible one. Each fall, great swarms of Monarch butterflies fly from southern Canada, across the North American continent, over 3,100 miles, to converge in a small town in Michoagan, Mexico, where they mate. In the spring, their offspring migrates northward, back to Canada. Since the lifespan of a Monarch butterfly is only a few months, none of them ever make the trip more than once. Each makes a one-way trip, then spawns and dies. So how does each new generation know exactly where to go, or how to get there?

The male garibaldi (no relation to Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian political activist), an orange, tropical fish that looks like a goldfish, prepares a nest, entices the female to lay her eggs in it, and then fertilizes them and chases her off, since she's likely to eat the eggs if given the chance. How does the male know this? And why isn't he tempted to eat the eggs?

We call it instinct, but I can't help noticing that instinctive behavior of this sort is very similar to the behavior of a computer program that's been hard-coded to perform a given function. The computer isn't taught by other computers. It doesn't take it upon itself to search Google for instructions on how to open a window or play a video or send and receive e-mails. Some programmer has given it those instructions and, as a result, it simply knows. Electronic instinct.

Maybe Scott Adams' idea isn't so far-fetched after all. Maybe there is a Great Programmer, and the reality that we perceive is just His program, executing its routines. On a darker note, as I observe the world and I witness the on-going unrest in the middle east, the increasing economic disparity between the wealthy few and the proletariat masses, and man-made ecological disasters such as last summer's BP oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, I can't help but muse as to whether we share more in common with software bugs and computer viruses than we do with useful programs.

Spirituality

I normally try to stay away from religion on this blog. It's much too sensitive a topic, and too hard to discuss rationally. Up until now, I've written only one post having specifically to do with religion, and one other one that touches on the subject (in a poem). However, I found myself in church last Sunday morning, asking myself why I was there. I'm not particularly religious, you see. When my daughter was younger, I would go to church in order to set an example. Although I'm not religiously devout, I felt that she needed exposure to religion, else how could she later make a decision on something about which she knew nothing? By the same token, I've never been the kind of father who insists that his child must do something that he himself is unwilling to do. Now, however, she's approaching the age at which she must decide for herself what her beliefs are. My tenure as her Shining Example is almost at an end. Hence, my dilemma. Why was I still there?

I was raised Roman Catholic. When I was a child, I was a True Believer. God was good and the devil was bad and kids who went to church and said their prayers and behaved well went to heaven when they died. Those who didn't believe in God were bad, and they went to hell when they died.

As I grew up, I became aware of more and more subtleties, nuances, exceptions and contradictions that the priests and my teachers tried hard not to dwell on during my years of indoctrination into the Catholic faith. For example, I learned that there are other religions that don't recognize Jesus of Nazareth as a deity, such as Judaism, Buddhism and Islam. Most of these religions worship a single, all-powerful, omnipresent deity although they call it by different names; Jehovah, Yahweh, Allah. However, the various religions differ radically in the details of their beliefs.

Even Christianity, I learned, is divided into several sects that disagree with each other about the details of the Christian faith. Roman Catholics aren't the only Christians. There are also Lutherans, Baptists, Mormons, Presbyterians, Anglicans and Jehovah's Witnesses, to name but a few.

Now here's the kicker; each sect is convinced that theirs is the true and correct faith and that all of the others have strayed from the path, just as each of the major religions is likewise convinced that they are the Chosen People and all of the others are either infidels or at least sadly ignorant of God's true nature.

I also learned that there are people who don't believe in the existence of an all-powerful deity nor a heaven or a hell or even an afterlife at all. We call these people atheists or agnostics and I was taught to see them as evil and immoral. Then a funny thing happened. As my life progressed, I met a few self-professed atheists and, to my surprise, some of them seemed neither evil nor immoral to me. They just didn't happen to believe in that which they couldn't see. They made me start asking new questions. My religious teachers generally discouraged questions, because questions lead to doubt, and doubt is bad.

Why do we need a God or the promise of heaven or the threat of eternal damnation as an excuse to live good lives? Does it make sense to neglect this life in favor of an afterlife? What if there is no heaven? What if the world in which we live is all that we have, and all that we'll ever have? Wouldn't it be a good idea, then, to work on making it as heaven-like as possible?

I further discovered that, just as not all atheists and agnostics are necessarily evil, not all religiously devout people are necessarily good either. Some outwardly pious religious authority figures have used their religion as a vehicle to hurt and abuse. The Catholic church burned those who questioned its doctrines as witches and heretics for centuries. Certain radical Muslims seem to believe that they have been charged by Allah Himself to destroy the infidels of other faiths. In the late nineteen-eighties, The "reverend" Jimmy Swaggart was caught spending the money donated to his ministry by the faithful on prostitutes.

At some point, I went back to asking myself some fundamental questions:

Question: What was I taught when I grew up?

Answer: That there is God and there is the devil, and they compete for the souls of humanity.

Question: What's the difference between the two?

Answer: God is good. The devil is evil. God wants us to be good and to do good. The devil wants us to be evil and to do evil.

Question: Why does God want good, rather than evil?

Answer... Wow. I had to stop to think about that. Why is good preferable over evil? Why can't everyone act purely in their own self-interest, and others be damned? What's wrong with looking out for Number One?

Because that way leads to chaos and anarchy. Nobody is an island. We all need the help of others from time to time, and we accomplish more and improve our world and our lives when we work together. That means being empathetic of other peoples' wants, needs and feelings and acknowledging that everyone else has the same rights as I do. There's nothing wrong with acting in my own best interests, as long as doing so doesn't involve hurting someone else. Unfortunately, every situation is not a zero-sum game. Sometimes, there has to be a winner and a loser. "Aye, there's the rub", as Shakespeare so eloquently put it.

The religious and the secular are often at odds with each other. I've heard both sides argue their positions many times and, unfortunately, those arguments often focus on ridiculing opposing beliefs. Religiously devout Christians insist that we must be Born Again. We must accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. Only in this way can our souls be saved. Any other path leads to eternal damnation, with much weeping and gnashing of teeth. The secular sometimes deride the religiously devout as mindless simpletons who have been brainwashed by superstition. "I refuse to believe in that for which there is no evidence," they declare.

Where do I stand? I don't know. I'm not a very good Roman Catholic, and I question many of the beliefs of the faith in which I was raised, yet I'm prepared to allow that there may be forces in the universe of which we humans know nothing. Just because I can't perceive something, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. If I were deaf, I could hear no sounds, yet the sound waves would still be there for those with the ability to perceive them. In that sense, I am neither an atheist nor an agnostic.

I don't believe that any one religion has a monopoly on truth. I think that they share many common ideas and that, in the end, they all strive for the same fundamental goal; the promotion of good over evil; but they waste too much time and energy bickering about the details.

I believe that good makes more sense than evil, because good leads to harmony whereas evil leads to chaos; therefore it is incumbent upon each of us to try to improve this world in any way that we can.

I don't know what, if anything, lies beyond death, but I believe it will take care of itself as long as I stay true to myself and my beliefs. If there's nothing beyond death, then I will neither know nor care after I die. If there is more, then I will discover it with the same fascination with which I've discovered this world since being born into it.

So, getting back to my original question, why was I in church last Sunday? Because I need to feed my spirituality somehow and, for all of its imperfections, the faith in which I was raised still accomplishes that. Once in a while, I still find ideas there that are worth meditating upon.

If I some day find myself standing in judgement before God, I will not say "I believed", nor will I say "I disbelieved". I will say "I didn't know, but I did the best I could with what I was given, and I tried to treat others the way I would want to be treated, most of the time, anyway." I don't think I would much care for a God that would condemn me for that.