Sacred Numbers of Speech : 1, 2, 3, & 4

I had a long walk home this evening because the Boston bus system stopped running early on Christmas. But after a long night of debating things from science, mysticism, energy resources, unsolved problem in mathematics, and Tolkien, I had time to think about why certain numbers were sacred during this walk. For a number or a geometry to be considered sacred it must be found naturally and ontologically in according individual instances. For example, Platonic solids are sacred because one solid is a duality of another, such as the icosahedron is a dual of a dodecahedron.

But what about certain numbers? For instance, the number 2 is sacred, but why? There are two ways to find its significance as a number : ontologically and in speech patterns.

Let's begin with 1. One is a singularity, non-polar, and autonomous. This is obviously sacred as 1 exists naturally and ontologically. My solipsistic existence ontologically gives rise to a singularity. It also exists as a manner of speech, such as the autonomous statement : "I am."

The number 2, on the other hand, is different. Ontologically, referring to a singularity automatically infers that "I" is a separate entity from that singularity, thus creating a duality. The duality occurs naturally as well, such as man and woman, light and dark, up and down, warm and cold, et cetera. This occurs in speech, such as if I say : "You are..." I am referring to "you" as a separate entity from myself, thus establishing a polarity of "you" and "I". Or again, if I say "He looks lonely." I am referring to "he" as an entity polar to my singularity. Therefore, the singularity is destroyed and ontologically a duality emerges.

The number 3 is not much different, as I have already used it above in : "He looks lonely." Saying this sentence to "you", a duality to myself, establishes there is trinity, or a third entity separate from "you" and "I". Even if I were saying this sentence to myself I am structuring this sentence as if there were a hypothetical second entity to say this to. So, in this instance, a trinity can emerge linguistically from a singularity.

The number 4 is the blurry bounds of where the primary sacred numbers end. 1, 2, & 3 ontologically exist to themselves, and they are prime numbers, and therefore isolated. Four is a dual-duality, that is 2 x 2. But the significance of 4 arises in our speech. For instance, if I say to you : "They are going to the movies tonight." This establishes that there is more than a trinity, and at the very least a quaternity. I am signifying that there is, at the very least, a duality that is separate from us as a duality. But, of course, these are fuzzy lines, as "they" can refer to any number more than one separate from the us. "They" could refer to five, or forty-two. Logically, all number greater than three cannot be considered important (and possibly even primary) sacred numbers due to their absence in our speech.

But this does not mean that 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 and... are not sacred numbers. 4 is sacred because it is a dual-duality. 5 is sacred because it is the number of appendages on each hand and foot, the number of retrogrades per cycle in the geocentric orbit of Venus, a prime number, and so forth. And though 5 may not be a dual-trinity (6) or a tri-trinity (9), it is a dual and a trinity (2 + 3). 6 is a sacred number, not only because it is found in nature, but it is a dual-trinity. And so the list keeps going and 12 is usually considered to be the last of fundamental sacred numbers, though there are others beyond this.

1, 2, and 3 are sacred because they are the building blocks of higher sacred numbers. But hidden in our speech we find the significance of these sacred numbers, or at the very least, what sacred numbers were primary and which ones are secondary.

Globalization & Jesus : A Christmas Story

Jesus was not the only deity born on December 25th, nor was he the first. In fact, one incarnation of Buddha was born on December 25th, 563 years before Christ. Among the ranks of winter solstice born deities are Horus (Egypt 3000 B.C.), Osiris (Egypt 3000 B.C.), Attis (Greek 1400 B.C.), Krishna (India 5771 B.C. & 1400 B.C., two incarnations), Zoroaster / Zarathustra (Persia 1000 B.C.), Mithra (Persia 600 B.C.), Heracles (Greece 800 B.C.), Dionysus (Greece 186 B.C.), Tammuz (Greece 400 B.C.), Adonis (Greece 200 B.C.), Hermes (Rome 200 B.C.), Bacchus (Rome 200 B.C.), and Prometheus (Greece and Rome, before calendars).

So why December 25th? What is so special about this date that practically a whole pantheon of gods were born on this day? It is the winter solstice. Although our Gregorian calendars place the solstice on the 21st, the old Roman calendar, known as the Julian calendar, places the solstice on the 25th. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, that is the darkest day of the year, and it marks the time in which the days begin to grow longer again. This was considered a promise of spring to come and a sign of rebirth, hence why vegetative deities (namely all the above) are born on this day.

But the fact that these gods, and probably more, are born on this day is not the only coincidence between them and Jesus. Of them the following are born of virgins : Horus, Attis, Krishna, Zoroaster, Mithra, Heracles, Dionysus, Tammuz, Adonis, Hermes, and Bacchus. We could certainly compare all of these to Jesus, but let's just focus on a couple of them and their correlation to Jesus :

Horus's early father was named Seb, which is synonymous with Joseph. As a child he taught the priest in the temple. He went on hiatus for many years and when he returned he was baptized in a river. Horus had twelve disciples. He performed miracles, healed the blind and the lame, and raised the dead. Actually, he raised El-Azarus, which is synonymous with Lazarus (though originally derived from El-Osiris). He preached a sermon on a mountain. Horus was crucified and flanked by two crucified thieves. He was buried in a tomb, and three days later was resurrected. He was known as the "The Way", "The Truth", "The Light", "Messiah", "The Shepherd", "Son of God", "Son of Man" (Manson), "The Lamb of God", "KRST" or "Christ", and "The Anointed One". He was, to top it off, a fisherman and was attributed with a fish (the Ichthys).


Krishna's earthly father was a carpenter. He birth was signaled by a star in the eastern sky. He was placed in a manger. Angels and shepherds attended his nativity and brought gifts of spices. He performed miracles, raised the dead, and healed the sick, the lame, the blind, and lepers. Krishna had twelve disciples. He was crucified and flanked by two thieves. Known as "Son of God" and "Lord" and "Savior". He represents the second entity of the Hindu trinity. His disciples called him "Jezeus" or "Jeseus", which translates from Sanskrit meaning "pure essence".

Now, I personally find the accusation of Christians "stealing" from other religions to be a bit unfair. Although the Romans "stole" practically their whole mythology from the Greeks, we usually say the Romans "borrowed" from the Greeks. We might say, then, that the Christians simply united primary deities from other cultures to unify the nations under one religion. Point in fact, this is precisely what early Christianization was trying to do : to bring the world together into one belief system. Albeit, latter Christianization was far more forceful, unforgiving, unnecessarily brutal, and very violent.

Does this all sound vaguely familiar? Sure, we are experiencing it right now from the 20th Century until today in the 21st Century. It's called globalization. Globalization is the attempt to bring all nations and cultures into one political, economical, monetary, and social system. It involves incorporating the successful systems used by certain nations and rejecting the faulty systems of another. Globalization primarily tries to focus on creating a global economy that unifies different monetary systems, and often unites under one form of currency (for instance, the Euro). Social and cultural unification and adoption is usually a side-effect, though it may be intentionally by some nations. For instance, African cultures adopting American clothing styles and Oriental countries building McDonald's and Wal-Marts.

Considering how Jesus is so well tied to other deities of other nations, we can fairly safely say that Jesus, the "pure essence", was the precursor to globalization. For those who like equations :

Horus + Osiris + Attis + Krishna + Buddha + Zoroaster + Mithra + Heracles + Tammus + Dionysus + Hermes + Bacchus + Prometheus = Jesus

∴​ Jesus ≤ Globalization.

Why Are Myths Metaphors?

Joseph Campbell went to great lengths to demonstrate that myths of antiquity are metaphors. The term myth is often used to denote a "lie", i.e. myth is often synonymous with falsehood. This could not be further from the truth. Myths are only metaphorical stories to describe an abstract concept.

Why would they use a story to describe an idea rather than just saying it? For instance, the Upanishads had an idea that originally there were no sexes, i.e. male and female, but that they were originally united and later divided. This concept is not all that unfamiliar, as it is in the Bible. Most Americans are familiar with the creation of Eve,who was rendered from Adam's rib. This meant that the soul of woman was originally united with that of man's and the soul of woman was drawn from a united state with man. What this indicates is a knowledge of unisexual beings originally capable of doing what dou-sexual entities have to do when combined (namely sex and reproduction). This is a recognition of a simple, unified state of existence and probably designates the concept of asexual organisms in the beginning of the evolutionary chain (evolution was an idea that existed in the time of the Greeks and possibly earlier, hence why the Greeks has a similar myth).

So once again, why a story instead of saying it? Abstract ideas are not easy to grasp and we often use metaphors to describe them. As discussed in the posting The Meaning of Life Malstructured we constantly use metaphors to describe abstract concepts, such as love and life. These abstract ideas are structured and explained in terms of some more objectively and concretely understood experience. One may notice that a person learning a new language often tries to describe certain complex ideas in terms of something else that they know how to say in the new language. For instance, a friend of mine from Vietnam was trying to discuss his tectonic / stereotomic idea for his building design on a pedestal. He said, "Earth is soft," then he hit his fist on the table and continued, "Table is hard. We use hard to set building on soft Earth." Children often do much the same thing to suit their curiosity.

Our ancestors were new to this condition we call "consciousness", and consequently describing their wonder for "life, the universe, everything" was structured and understood to them in metaphors, i.e. myths. This can be considered a sort of childish condition, in which our ancestors comprehended a great deal, but they could only understand it in terms of mythical metaphors.

We do much the same thing today in modern science. Scientists very rarely talk about a subject in terms of the subject alone. For instance, when we talk about the expanding universe we use metaphors and analogies to describe the idea, usually an expanding balloon. We know that the universe is not necessary like an inflating balloon with images of galaxies adhered to it, but it is a means for us to understand the concept. Really, the expanding universe is based on the interacting forces of dark energy accelerating the inflation speed faster than matter and dark matter can condense the universe. These forces are governed by thermodynamics, electromagnetic fields, and gravity. The reality of the expanding universe is too abstract for us to grasp, and, in fact, we more of less lack the formal language necessary to describe it. Thus we use a parable, an analogy, a metaphor, a myth to describe these new and highly abstract concepts.

Until these concepts are understood in their own terms and we have a language to describe the terms of those concepts, much of what we conceptualize as truth will remain mythic. And thus, the myths survive. They are our arts, our businesses, our religions, our politics, our education, our sciences, and, most emphatically, our lives.

Ambivalence : Daedalus & The Continuing Archetype

It is truly a wonder to gaze at the night sky and witness the incredible destruction and creation of the stars; the dance of death. It is also a wonder to view the beauty of poisonous frogs and flowers, which evolved their mechanisms of death to avoid death. It appears to be a contradiction in our metaphors to comprehend beauty as something destructive. But this is the very ideology of Hinduism. Kali, the black goddess, whose prime altar is the battlefield. But Kali is only an incarnation of the same deity as Siva (the destroyer) and Brahma (the creator). They are dichotomous and, yet, synonymous. It is only through death and destruction that creation can begin. With every beginning there is an end. This is the very nature of the architect, who must destroy to create. This is the very nature of God and of Creation. This is ambivalence. Not indifference, but disregarding the necessary means to achieve something greater than the costs.

I have spent quite a bit of time analyzing various pop-culture characters and the archetypes they follow. One character that took me quite a bit of time to unravel is Dr. Gregory House. Now, I met Hugh Laurie in New York City a couple of years ago (yes, he is just as cynical in real life as he is on the show), I bought him a beer, and he cued me in on a little trivia about the character House : he is based on Sherlock Holmes. They both have one close friend whose name begins with W and ends in -son (Wilson - Watson). They are both addicted to some drug (House - Vicodin, Holmes - cocaine). They are both geniuses in their fields. They both love puzzles. Both are antisocial and egoist. House's apartment number is the same as Holmes's street address (221B). Watson walks with a cane, House walks with a cane. And the phonetic synonyms of "House" and "Holmes".

The question that had me pondering was : what is Sherlock Holmes's archetype? Then it struck me in my mythology studies, he is based on Daedalus. Daedalus is the Greek mythological character who built the labyrinth to house the Minotaur and the wings for him and his son, Icarus, to escape imprisonment in the tower of King Minos. Now, we often associate Daedalus with being an artists, inventor, and architect (hence the artist periodical Daedalus). Yes, he was so, but he was of the most unusual sort. What he designed, built, and invented were often monstrosities, and the consequences of his inventions were devastating. The Labyrinth was to house a monstrous child of Zeus and King Minos's wife, which adolescents were fed to. The wings of wax resulted in the death of his son when Icarus flew too close to the sun.

The consequences of Daedalus's inventions were of no concern, but only that such an invention could be achieved. This is the nature of House, whose indifference towards patients and colleagues is to no avail in his pursuit of solving the diagnosis. It is the Daedalus archetype that is coherently found in the destructive dance of the stars and in the deadly evolution of poisonous species. It is the ambivalence of nature and the universe that creates the wonders we experience. This natural indifference towards the consequences is what has achieved the greatest marvels (and even very small ones) we experience.

I am here reminded of where this Daedalus figure enters contemporary industrial society : science. I recall the great debate of stem cell research, and the arguments of "having to abandon the research", or "is it God's will?" "What is the cost we have to pay?"

Is human life worth the cost of human life? Must we take life to save life? We say no, but we always forget the military, were we take lives to save lives, albeit this is under a different context. The Daedalusistic ambivalence has apparently lead to curing paraplegics, and most recently curing HIV. Earlier this month it was reported that the injection of CCR5-mutated stem cells has cured at least one individual. Of course, this is not a practical means of curing AIDS, as only a very small percentage of patients meet the criteria for such an procedure, as well as a small percentage of donors can produce the stem cells need. But scientists have made a major breakthrough in preventing the propagation of this fatal disease that has plagued us for almost 40 years now.

So are we justified? Do we need to be justified? Will ambivalence destroy us or propagate our existence? It is natural that all things must die, and, likewise, death augments life. With destruction comes creation. With more destruction comes more creation.

"Are you justified in taking life to save life?" -The Great Debate, Dream Theater

The Mind Of God

Several decades ago Stephen Hawking began his search for the Mind of God. He works through this process and how to realize it in his book A Brief History of Time, and his last sentence of the text reads :

"If we find the answer to that [the unified field theory], it would be the triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God."

Right there, in that very sentence, he reveals the underlying component of understanding this mind : human reason. This mind has been referred to by many names in the course of history. Timothy Leary called it the Universal Mind; William Blake called it the Doors of Perceptions; Aldous Huxley, using Blake's term as well, also called it the Mind at Large; the Yogis of Hinduism call it Universal Consciousness; Carl Jung called it the Collective Unconscious. All these names refer to the underlying structure of everything we comprehend.

The problem is for a mind to realize that it is. The very fact that we say I am speaks for this idea. This is what is referred to as a sentient being, something that actively recognizes and comprehends itself as a solipsistic entity, and through that conduit of the self constructs a reality to navigate external stimuli. This is the very nature of human reason. With reason we comprehend and structure our reality. A computer is not a sentient being because it cannot realize its own underlying processes that it uses to construct its reality, that is, its enslavement to humans, albeit these days we are trying to help computers to do so. I think, therefore I am.

The fact that we can and do comprehend a great deal about the structure of the external stimuli to ourselves, that is we understand, as well as can predict the actions, of the universe and our environs. This very comprehension is what was used to establish the structure of the universe. The evolutionary process of natural selection never intended for us to comprehend how the very small works, nor the very large. Natural selection only intended for us to understand the middle scale. We did not evolve to understand the sum of all histories or dark matter, nor the beginning of the universe or gravitons. But we do, or are at least very close to understanding it.

The debate for God's existence aside, human reason is the Mind of God. It is our ability to structure a reality from dualities : male - female, light - dark, up - down, inside - outside, good - bad, et cetera. This was the gift God gave us with the Fruit of Death; the Tree of Knowledge God tempted us like children to take part of. As the serpent said, "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

We have the Mind of God.

The Meaning of Life is Malstructured

A thought occurred to me earlier today and that is "life is a metaphor". Essentially, we understand and structure our concepts about life in experiential terms of another subject.

To grasp this concept of thinking, talking, and conceptualizing in terms of metaphors I will use an example described by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By. One of their examples is love, which we metaphorically structure in different ways :

LOVE IS A CONTAINER
   He is in love.
LOVE IS MADNESS
   She is just crazy about him.
   Harry went wild for her.
LOVE IS MAGIC
   She put a spell on me.
LOVE IS WAR
   He persued for her and won her hand in marriage.
LOVE IS A PHYSICAL FORCE
   Their relationship is filled with energy.
   I was drawn to her.
   His whole life revolves around her.
LOVE IS CHEMISTRY
   Their is chemistry between them.
   Light my fire baby.

Very rarely do we discuss love in terms of an emotion or a psychological occurrence, and even then we still speak metaphorically about love. Our concepts of life and its meaning are structured and understood in a similar manner :

LIFE IS AN ANTAGONIST
   Life is a bitch.
LIFE IS A CONTAINER
   There is so much in life to enjoy.
   Life is full of mystery.
   In my lifetime I have traveled the world.
   I want so much more out of life.
   What is my purpose in life?
LIFE IS PATH
   I have come so far in my life.
   She doesn't know where she is going in life.
LIFE IS BUILDING
   This is the framework by which I live my life.
   God is the foundation of my life.
   I built my livelihood from my rugged past.
LIFE IS A FLUID
   Just go with the flow.
   I'm just cruising through life.
LIFE IS WAR
   I fought my way through life to get where I am now.
   His life is a battlefield.
LIFE IS AN ENTITY
   My children are my life.

It is very hard, of course, for us to conceptualize life as life itself. It is sort of like how physicists always try to use analogies to explain complex ideas. For example, the expanding universe is explained as an expanding balloon. Light are explained as ripples in water (waves) and as billiard balls (particles). But they never really talk about the expanding universe as an expanding universe. We have to render foreign concepts in terms of a familiar experience, such as balloons, playing pool, war, containers, et cetera.

Every human on this planet has a natural curiosity to the nature of life, its meaning, and their purpose in life. But considering we understand this peculiar concept of life in metaphors, in terms of another familiar experience, then we are subjectively interpreting life, not as life, but as something else. It is our inability to comprehend life as it is, and therefore we lack the mental capacity to objectify it in terms of a concrete experience, in which we would not discuss life as a metaphorical structure, but as it is.

This latter part is, more or less, and extension of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, in which our reality is limited to our vocabulary to describe it. For instance, if I walk into Ethan & Allen and see a light blue sample I say it is "light blue". But someone who works at Ethan & Allen, having more words to describe more colors would say they see "coral dust blue". The Philippines have a single word for purple, blue, and green. Obviously they see purple, but they comprehend it as a variation of blue and green. A person who doesn't know much about cars really only sees a car. So if a Hyundai Sonata cuts them off in traffic they might say, "Oh, that right. Just jump right in car!" But someone who knows more cars would say, "Thanks for cutting me off Sonata!"

Because we do not have a sufficient vocabulary and conceptual structure to comprehend the meaning of life, and until we do life will remain an abstract concept that we experience subjectively. Until we can objectify life as a fundamental experience that is as basic as war, spatial orientation, container, path, et cetera, then life will remain subjective to our reality. So far, life is an illusion that cannot be comprehended without the use of metaphors and analogies.

So what is the meaning of life? It is a metaphorical number (42). It is a metaphorical stick that bends (as Howard Roark bends the stick into whatever he wills it to be). The meaning of life is anything objectively concrete, except for life itself. The only objective statement I have encountered about the meaning of life was from Joseph Campbell : "The meaning of life is life."

Ancient Knowledge And The Illusion Of Progress

You know how religions are always bickering that their faith is the correct one and all others are false? Well, when modern science is placed into the criteria of "what is correct", it seems to be that of all the world religions Hinduism is really the one that fits the grand picture. Or is it the only one?

Think about it. The Hindus are one of the first cultures to invent the idea of infinity, an element that plays a huge roll in cosmology, physics, and mathematics. Consider also their incredibly large numbers. For instance, the incarnation of Vishnu while sleeping is Brahma, and Brahma sits on a lotus that sprouts from Vishnu's navel. Brahma watches the dream of Vishnu, which is the dream of the universe. When Brahma blinks a world age ends and another begins. A world age is 360 human years. The dream is divided into four stages, which are the various yugas. The first, the Krta being 4800 Divine years (1,728,000 human years); second being the Treta Yuga being 3600 Divine Years (1,296,000 humans years); third, the Dvapara Yuga being 2400 Divine Years (864,000 human years), and finally the Kali Yuga being 1200 Divine Years (432,000 human years). All together the length of Vishnu's dream is 12,000 Divine Years, or 4,320,000 human years. And that is only half the Cosmic Day! So Vishnu spends another 4.32 million years doing house cleaning (usually setting everything on fire and starting a flood) and then goes back to sleep to start the whole cycle again. Now these are immensely huge numbers. Of course, we know that the universe is roughly 13.75 billion years old (give or take 170 million years). This means that the Hindus were off by a lot (1 : 0.000628). Which is the equivalent of thinking New York City and Los Angeles are about 1.5 miles away from one another. Then again, according to the Christian timeline in which the universe is 10,000 years old LA and NYC are about 9.5 feet apart!

Okay, so we know things are way bigger than we had originally thought two millenniums ago, but certainly the Hindus captured the spirit of this idea. So? They were still wrong... or were they? It is entirely possible that the ancients knew far more than we given them credit for, and they were probably far more advanced than we think. I believe that Christian, Judaic and Muslim scriptures still captures the spirit of modern science, we just have to look beyond the dogma. Consider again how long Vishnu's dream is : 4.32 million years, which is similar to the length of the Kali Yuga (or Dark Age), which is 432,000 years. 432 is not an arbitrary number, for it crops up in other religions and in science. Here :

- In Norse mythos multiply the number of doors in Valhalla by the number of Einherjar that will pass through each door : 540 x 800 = 432,000.
- In the Bible 1656 years pass between Creation and the Flood, which is 86,400 weeks (or 43,200 x 2).
- In biology an average healthy human heart beats once per second. 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours = 86,400 heart beats per day (once again, 43,200 x 2).
- In astronomy the number of years it takes for the spring equinox to pass through all the zodiacal constellations, known as the Procession of the Equinox, is 25,920. Divide 25,920 by 6 equals 4320.

It is entirely possible the ancients knew far more about the structure of the universe and nature than we give them credit for. The Kali Yuga is 432,000 years, which would coincide with the Procession of the Equinox. Kali, being the Goddess of Death, also means "black" (hence Dark Age). But Kali also means "time", hence our link between death and the procession of time. Now, we can accuse Judaic religions for being ignorant and believing the universe is only 10,000 years old, but we can see clearly above that they understood a number far larger than 10,000 and understood the Procession of the Equinox. So why don't they just say it? Usually the best way to save information from being lost is to work it into a belief system. A king may be advised that eating pork is bad for human health, but just because the king says we shouldn't eat pork doesn't mean we will (consider the Prohibition on alcohol). But if the clergymen say it is a sin to eat pork, that is another story. The same could be said for pork as not mixing dairy and meat, since raw, unpasteurized dairy has bacteria that can spoil meat during digestion; or even tattoos, which can get infected, and people died of infections back then. It is entirely possible (and this is speculative) that ancient astronomers knew that the earth is really old, millions of years old. But who would believe that? To save this knowledge they would have worked it into their myths, the science of their age.

Look again at Vishnu's dream sequence. There are four yugas, which can be considered the four stages of sleep (not including REM). Could they have understood stages of sleep? Or is this speculative? What about something else, such as the four elements : earth, air, fire, and water. We know now that substances are made of elements from the periodic table. But the four elements could be an understanding of the four states of matter (not including the fifth state of condensates) : solid (earth), gas (air), liquid (water), and plasma (fire).

Understanding modern science requires a foundation, and that foundation so happens to be the myths of antiquity. It is easy to underestimate the scientific knowledge of myth. But dig deeper and we can learn so much more about the underlying structural comprehension of science. We consider progress as something that is correlated to time, and as time marches on progress propagates. Likewise, we assume if we go backwards in time progress is reversed. By that deduction we assume we are smarter than our ancient ancestors. But illumination of the myths show that they were right on par with us, which seems to be the very antithesis of progress and time. That being said, how do we explain why there are cocaine traces found in an Egyptian mummy? Cocaine being strictly a Meso / South American crop, unless there was intercontinental trade 2,000 years before Columbus. How do we explain the dead accuracy of Mayan predictions of Venus's orbit, which is in 0.1% error? That is unless they had more accurate tools for studying the stars 1,500 years before the telescope.

It is naive to think we are better than our ancestors. As Foucault said (and I paraphrase) : "The ideas of one age are no better than the ideas of another age. They are just different."

The structure of the Universe :

Yes Is More! A Changing Metaphor For Architecture

Yes Is More is the motto for the Danish architectural firm Bjarke Ingles Group (BIG), which follows an evolving series of precedents in mottoes from the last century. A brief evolutionary account will suffice :

Less Is More (Mies van der Rohe)
Less Is A Bore (Robert Venturi)
I'm A Whore (Philip Johnson)
More Is More (Rem Koolhaus)
Yes We Can (Barak Obama)
Yes Is More (BIG)

Each of the above metaphors and metonyms represent the respective Zeitgeist of each. For instance, Modernism was about the paring of ornament and reducing architecture to its most simple and basic austerity. This was seen as progressive as it was a break from past historical precedents which had dominated architecture for centuries. Since less ornament is progressive, and progress is good (more being metaphorical for good), the metaphor Less Is More arises. So Venturi's Less Is A Bore counters this Modernistic rationalism. Subsequently Johnson's I'm A Whore is honors Venturi's Less Is A Bore and breaking from Modernism, while adopting classical forms and shapes. In Johnson's metaphor he is being a whore by "working" (flipping tricks) with multiple architectural styles (clients). More Is More is relaying the honesty of architecture to architecture itself and the designer being conscious of this ontological aspect of design. Rather than allowing less to represent more, more should represent itself. So the more and more we build, the more and more entropy should follow, likewise equilibrium and organization. Progress is progress, and nothing less. Obama's declaration Yes We Can embraces the optimism of the new era, and is, likewise, metaphorical to progress.

BIG's metaphor adopts all the above, being a whore by saying yes to rules, requests, and constraints; being progressive by saying yes and, consequently getting more; being ontological by allowing yes and more to represent each other; yes in embracing optimism; yes in order to not be a bore.

I am curious if we will one day see Yes Is A Bore, or No Is Yes... or even You're A Whore!

And The Verdict Is... We Just Love Death!

Humans don't change. That is about the only thing I can say with almost sincere confidence. Some would argue that this is not so and that they know someone who has changed. For instance, recovered alcoholics. But most addicts of any kind usually find another addiction that is more "healthy". Tobacco chewers often start chewing gum (which is why every baseball player in the dugout chews gum). Some fill all their time with their family, in which obsession turned from a substance to children, which is seen as a good thing. The fact still remains that the addiction / obsession changed forms. But the underlying mental necessity of attachment did not.

One thing that has never changed throughout human history is our love and addiction to violence, death, and suffering. (Faces of Death, need I say more? I will.) This masochism is rooted very deep within us all. Although we don't actually watch people getting slaughtered in mass numbers like the Romans, we still have a more "civilized" form of fulfilling our love of death. That civilized mechanism is called a television, which allows us to spectate actual or fictitious pain of others at the center of our homes (newspapers and the internet are alternatives). Some would claim they don't watch such sick forms of entertainment, but realize that we all do. Whether it is watching the news, Law & Order, Lifetime Channel, medical shows, et cetera. The latter is probably one of the strongest amongst us. The band Tool uses this idea in their song Vicarious, in which "Vicariously I need to watch things die! From a good safe distance." From a political stand point, as Neil Postman so elegantly puts it, we are "amusing ourselves to death."

Not only is it entertainment, it is also one masochistic form of humor. I recall seeing a book on a display table called The Little Book of Bunny Suicides, which depicts comical illustrations of bunnies killing themselves. Not only did I find this book humorous, I stood aside for a while and perused another book close-by to see if others would be drawn to it. They were. And all found it hard to put it down. But none bought it, probably remembering the stance social concerns have on such a book.

But even the horrors and excitement of the Roman Colosseum still echoes today with backyard wrestling, boxing, professional wrestling (fake or real), dog fights, cock fights, and the likes. It is necessary for us to see things suffer. It makes us feel dominant. It makes us feel alive. Some take this too far and start raping and murdering. Some prefer to be safer and enjoy hearing about how horrible their ex-girlfriend's life is (something I am guilty of).Others like to be in the middle and watch it happen on TV or in books (something I am definitely guilty of). No matter which part of the spectrum you lie in, we are all guilty.

Our love of death may not be Roman, per se, but we still love death. As Private Joker once put it : "A day without blood is like a day without sunshine."

The New Defense : What Should I do?

It has been classic infantile dependency throughout history for humans to find someone else to blame besides themselves. Usually this is done through a number of defenses that transfer the blame to a higher authority or to some controlling mechanism. The former is usually accomplished by blaming the government or parents or God, and good example is the Nuremberg Defense : "I was only following orders". The latter is achieved by blaming something that would involuntarily and indirectly control you. This one has produced some of the most ridiculous blaming schemes in history, such as "Marylin Manson made me do it" or the classic Twinkie Defense, or just plain ole' fashion defect by mental disorder / disease.

But now we have a new defense, and thus far it is the trump card of trump cards : the "What should I do?" defense, and it has comically and explicitly played into South Park, and has recently been making its way into other shows like Criminal Minds. "What should I do?" alleviates the blame from the accused and onto something implicitly vague. In fact, no one or thing is being blamed in this defense. Incredibly, the accusation itself deteriorates almost completely simply because the question has no answer.

Are we ready to face this defense in court? Can the prosecution work its way around this defense as they had to in the Manson Trails or in Nuremberg? Or will it produce a minor sentence due to the nature of the defense's ability to alleviate the blame from the defendant, as it did for Dan White with the Twinkie Defense for murdering (though ruled as manslaughter) Harvey Milk and George Moscone?

Of course this defense would never hold up well in court, just as the Nuremberg Defense didn't go over well for the Nazis on trail for war crimes. But it does make for a good defense in the case against spouses / significant others, employers, parents, professors, friends, and landlords. This defense echoes the ideology of Charlie Manson : "Nothing is right, nothing is wrong. There's nothing to blame. There is only Now. Now, go out and kill some piggies for me." (That last sentence is only implied). Welcome to society's era of the figurehead, where the Man Behind the Curtain has yet to be revealed in whose to blame... even though there is no Man Behind the Curtain and the magic is only in your mind.

Do You Know What You Are Asking For?!

Recently, and I mean in the past decade, there has been a large, and I mean large, demand of people (usually white people) for a "return to the past", to the "golden days, and "back to nature". Do you realize what you are asking for?!

For instance, milk, which has recently become popular to drink raw, i.e. unprocessed and unpasteurized, from the cow to the glass to your mouth. Sounds great, it is a return to the traditional way of consuming milk without all that unnatural treatment. It's natural! It's also natural to get diphtheria and typhoid fever too from drinking non-pasteurized milk. That was why pasteurization was invented, so we no longer had to suffer from those diseases. This ideology of "returning to the past" is on par with the Tea Party movement : it propagates and augmente the recent tendency of American culture to regress from the progress we have made. And for people who are so obsessed with anti-bacterial products (bacteria, which so happens to be a natural occurrence) prefer to drink something that can and will get you sick. Not to mention that the FDA has made it illegal to sell or purchase non-pasteurized milk. It's a bit like moonlighting moonshine, but far more whimpy.

Also like the Teabaggers, this idea of returning to the past (or regressing) and to nature is similar to the Conservative idea of "small government". It is really only, as Bill Maher has pointed out, small government where they want small government. It is not some all-encompassing criterion under which all standards, regulations, laws and unions will abide; it is small government under an arbitrary microscope; hence why they do not ask for small government when it comes to the military. Same with returning to the past. Let's drink something that will cause diseases that pasteurization remedied 150 years ago... well, why don't we also do what we did 150 years ago : own slaves and allow women no rights! And while we are at it, let us embrace the idea that the earth is flat and that lightning is the work of the gods. It's return to the past where they want a return to the past.

The ideology of returning to nature is emphatically ridiculous. Yes nature is a self-sustaining system that is beautiful, but nature is one awesome monster. It is because of it's destructive ambivalence that nature is so beautiful. Everything evolved to survive, and a lot of those evolutionary moments were apart of a need to reproduce sexually, which required beauty. The night sky is only beautiful because it is a dance of destruction, where stars burn at immensely hot temperatures and explode, celestial bodies bombard one another, and galaxies collide. In nature and in the heavens the only way anything is to be created is to destroy something else. That's life.

To return to nature is to regress the human race from the habit of living, i.e. playing golf, going to farmers markets, taking kids to soccer games, making money; to survival, i.e. staying alive long enough in order to have sex and pass on your genes, which entails avoiding being eaten or getting a scratch that might get infected and consequently die from. Nature is the true dog-eat-dog world. The entire propagation of life rests on the cycle of killing, eating, and dying. That includes vegetarians as well : vegetarians kill plants and eat them in order to continue living (get over it). They even kill thousands of rodents, nominally every harvest season when farming equipment kills the communities of hundreds of rodents thriving in the crop fields. Life cannot propagate without death, which is a long recognized and honored fact of life by the Native Americans.

A return to the past and nature entails living in a world where it would be easier to get a woman than it would be to get food, which is usually the case for African tribes and, hence, the high percentage of HIV and hunger. Some men would think it would be great to be able to live in a world where getting a woman is easier than getting food... right, so long as you can live long enough to reach puberty (usually a 1 : 40 chance against) in order to enjoy the qualities of sex. But even in that case you will only be able to enjoy sex for about ten years and then die from scurvy.

There is a reason for progress and advancement of civilization, not to ruin your false ideals of a simpler way of life, but so we no longer have to endure the hardships of nature. Drink your raw milk and eat your organic produce, but don't think for a minute you are returning to simpler times and reconnecting to nature. It is because of anesthetics that we don't have to endure the natural pain of child birth, and because of vaccines that we don't have to face the possibilities of disablement from polio. It is because of gasoline that we don't have to pay high prices for bread because the grain was also bought to feed the horses we (literally) worked to death to get around NYC. Just know what you are asking for when you ask for a return to the past.

You can't get much more natural than this :

Don’t Ask What Your IPad Can Do For You… Ask What You Can Do For Your IPad

The point of technology has always been to serve us, and so technology always existed as an extension of our selves. Marshall McLuhan makes the perfect summary of how this medium works : “The wheel is an extension of the foot. The book is an extension of the eye. Clothes are an extension of the skin.” Essentially, when our own biological selves do not suffice we create a medium, that is, an interactive technological interface, as an extension of our own bodies to suit whatever it was that our own selves were lacking. How might this work? Well, let us take the book as the example. Our DNA is the coding of how to duplicate certain amino acids and nucleotides that are crude copies of certain data, i.e. how to process proteins in chicken or fibers from wheat, or the color of the eyes and skin, or the rate at which the pinkie toenail grows. When this data was not sufficient the evolutionary process developed brains to store extra data that could not be stored in a genetic sequence. The primitive part of the brain holds instincts, emotions, and anything that is more or less built from genetic sequencing. When this was still not sufficient the brain was enlarged and developed the ability to acquire and remember learned information. This information was usually how to throw a spear or what a saber tooth tiger looks like and to stay away from one. Eventually society developed to a point that there was more information than could be passed down through oral tradition, and so came the advent of written language. The book itself is an extension of the eyes, a direct interface that correlates with a process similar to the eye. The content of the book is an extension of the brain and of memory. A library can be thought of as an extension of the Collective Unconscious.

Well, needless to say the process of creating books could not keep up with the amount of information being generated. So we developed computers and digital memory. The computer is not “like” a brain, but rather is an extension of the brain. As the screen is an extension of the eye, the keyboard is an extension of the mouth, the mouse is an extension of the fingers, and so forth.

McLuhan adapts an old saying by Winston Churchill : “First our tools are adapted to us. Then we adapt to our tools.” We don’t think of ourselves adapting the computer, but we have. We originally communicated information to another mind by verbally speaking the information. Then we were able to communicate across long expanses of time and distance through writing. If you are reading Shakespeare, then you are encrypting the information of a mind centuries old and across a big ocean. Now we can do so even faster, and even to other planets, with digital media interface. But we had to learn to read and write in the interface of the book, and how to encode that data. Today we have to adapt ourselves to read and write in the computer’s interface.

Most of us find the computer second nature, and that is because the adaptation of ourselves to the tool was provided early in life, say around the same time we learned to read and write. For a good majority of us, that is anyone over the age of 30, the smart phone and all its components is a stockpile of the Blinking 12 phenomenon (that is, when the tool is provided but no one knows how to use it or simply doesn’t want use it, much like setting the time on a VCR, in which case it usually just blinks 12:00). But the Blinking 12 phenomenon only exist for the generation that has to adapt to the tool at a point when the brain is less likely to program such abilities for second nature. It is the younger generations, those 20 and younger that are more applicable to program and retain such media interface, such as a smart phone or IPad as a useful extension of their selves. Welcome to the dumbest and most useless technological generation of the 21^st Century. Your tools won’t adapt to you anymore, you must adapt to them. To do the reverse is to become obsolete.

We were the parasites to our tools and fed off of them. Now they feed off of us. Maybe this is what advertisement is telling us : Adapt to our product or be useless.

Is Your Smart Phone Smarter than You?

I owe this posting to a friend of mine, who some happens to have the same name as me. If I recall correctly he said and I paraphrase, "How is it that your phone can download an mp3, surf the web, send a text message, conference call with your boss, and stream FM radio... but you can't drive while using your smart phone?"

I assumed that applied to morons, and I assumed myself to not be a moron. But I just got a smart phone last night, and I found I could not walk in straight line to my house while using it (something I could do well with a normal phone while text messaging the old fashion way). What happened?

I will call this the Smart Phone, Dumb User paradox, or SPDU paradox. Obviously the average human cannot use a smart phone any better than a normal cell phone while committing to a typical task. In fact, the multitasking performance goes down. Essentially, the human brain has so much RAM and can only process so much at once, i.e. our attention is limited. Really, the human brain can only do one task at a time, at least doing it well. When a person multitasks the brain just switches between two tasks very quickly. But, the efficiency the tasks are performed greatly drops. For instance, even with the advent of Blue Tooth, cell phone related vehicular accidents have not changed. Just because you use a hands-free phone won't make your driving habits better.

So why is it worse with smart phones? Probably because smart phones require a different interface to interact with it, i.e. scan-scrolling menus, swiping icons to activate them, digital key boards, et cetera. The more interactive the interface becomes the more the brain is required to interact with that interface. Normal cell phones required only to be told what to do by simply hitting buttons and would wait until the command was completed (sort of like LINUX, but with an interface). Now more is necessary and more of the brain's RAM is taken up.

Is the SPDU paradox the price we pay for our technology? Granted, the technology is incredible and definitely beneficial. I was rediscovering a childhood passion of studying the movement of the planets and the arrangement of constellations with my Google Sky app last night. But now I have no idea how to walk or talk to someone while I use my phone (unless they are on the phone with me). Welcome to the Information Age. Enjoy your depleting Random Access Memory until human evolution catches up.

Obesity : The Plight of the Fat Man (or Woman)

Any medical doctor will tell you obesity causes depression. The problem I find in this clear-cut statement is the causal relation between the two. Many people still think that the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella) causes autism, even though it doesn't. It is simply because around the same time children usually receive their MMR vaccine is about the same age signs of autism are detectable, which is around age two or three.

So does obesity cause depression directly? That is, simply by being overweight you become depressed. Or is it a social factor? I suppose many doctors say both. And I suppose another good many would say it is indeterminate. The media essentially advertises that if you don't use this or that product you won't get laid (with "sexy" men and women in the ads). Weight loss program ads make it sound you will be miserable unless you join their program ("Get your life back!"). And today being obese is simply unattractive by today's standards.

But wind back the clocks four or five hundred years. In the Middle Ages (though the middle of what I cannot know) it was attractive to be fat. If you had a big gut you had money, because you could afford to get that fat. So back then, by pure logic and not causal influence, if you were fat you had money and women and power. What was there to be depressed about?

So where is the good ole' jolly fat man? Has the media killed the age old mantra of "fat people are jolly"? Or is obesity a cause of depression? Well not all overweight persons are depressed. I still remember a friend of mine from high school, Danny, whose self-proclaimed nickname was Fat Daddy. (Danny, I miss you and all the humor you brought to our lives. Those were sincerely the most laughter-filled days I have spent on this earth and I doubt anything will compare to them again.) But Danny killed his father at age 16 and was sentenced to 15 years in prison and, consequently is bipolar. Is a duality plague at work? Probably not. Depression is something like MS or homosexuality : it doesn't happen to just one set of people. Healthy people get depressed. Anorexics get depressed, and usually depression causes anorexia. White people get depressed, and so do Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Indians, Native Americans, and aborigines. Now I'm not a medical doctor, but I would suspect the causality of depression and obesity are significantly vague, albeit a good percentage of obese persons are clinically depressed and are, statistically, depressed more than healthy persons.

To illustrate a point on the social factor involved, what if, say, in 150 years having a nice tan and a body cut like Greek marble with a vogue haircut is not what is defined as attractive, but rather intelligence. Being more intelligent means you can get a better job and better be able to support a family. So a person of high intelligence would be more attractive by their GPA, how many books they read a week, and the nature of their PH.D work. Creating a social atmosphere as such medical doctors would probably say that stupidity was linked with depression. Sound adequate today? No, probably because ignorant people can by sheer luck of genes be "sexy" and get mates and fame, and would be far less likely to become depressed (unless a chemical imbalance kicks in).

Oh, where have all the fat men gone? The media kill them, every one. Oh, when will they ever learn?

Facebook and the New Narcissus Pool

I have long held the conviction that Facebook is nothing more than a generator of narcissism. It's "social networking", as it is so delightfully called. But in reality Facebook is a place of egocentricity and self-promotion. How so? Look at your status updates... if they are about you and what you are doing, then we can safely call it narcissism. Especially if it is about you majority of the time.

It isn't that astonishing that psychologists and anthropologists are studying the aspects of Facebook. Recently published in Scientific America (November 2010, article by John H. Tucker) the findings of Mehdizadeh, an undergraduate at York University of Toronto (now graduated), about narcissism and low self-esteem through studying users of Facebook. This was studied by the frequency users sign on, how long they stay logged on, the frequency of status updates and wall postings, and photo sharing. If I may use a portion of the article:

After measuring each subject using the Narcissism Personality Inventory and Rosenberg Self-Esteem  Scale, Mehdizadeh... discovered narcissists and people with lower self-esteem were more likely to spend more than an hour on Facebook and were more prone to post self-promotional photos (striking a pose or using Photoshop, for example). Narcissists were also more likely to showcase themselves through status updates (using phrases like "I'm so glamorous I bleed glitter") and wall activity (posting self-serving links like "My Celebrity Look-alikes").
Self-esteem and narcissism are often interrelated but don't always go hand in hand. Some psychologists believe that narcissists - those who have a pervasive pattern grandiosity, a need for admiration, as well as a lack of empathy - unconscious inflate their sense of self-importance as a defense against feeling inadequate. Not enough empirical research has been produced to confrim that link, although Mehdizadeh's study seems to support it. Because narcissists have less capacity to sustain intimate or long-term relationships, Mehdizadeh thinks that they would be more drawn to the online world of virtual friends and emotionally detached communication.

So right there we might have a case of Jungian symbols of transformation and the alteration of unconscious archetypal motifs into various similar patterns. For instance, the evil mother motif may crop up later in life as an irate female boss in dreams (the Hamlet Complex). So, Narcissus laying by the pool admiring the one he loves, i.e. himself, is transformed into Facebook. I guess we can change that Caravaggio painting of Narcissus updating his status about how some creepy nymph kept repeating everything he said.

Welcome to a new era where social networking doesn't connect us all as it promotes itself, but means we get to know ourselves, as the Narcissus myth implies. But I guess all we can learn about ourselves is that we are all full of ourselves. I suppose class reunions every tens years wasn't enough, and now we can have them everyday with social networking.

A Struggle in the Economy = A Struggling Justice System

What, above anything possible, would be the worst we could lose in this recession? Your job? Well that is pretty bad. Your health care? That is certainly worse. But those are things that affect individuals separately, not collectively. How about a failing business? That affects a collective, but only a small portion. On a societal level, certainly the worst thing we can lose is exactly what this country was founded on : justice. Without justice we certainly have no rights or individual and collective freedoms. Most would emphatically agree, with the exception of a large number of idiots (from the Greek word for "inward" or "private" and the word "individual" itself is possibly derived from idiot). Sure, without justice our society would be flooded with criminals and con artists.

But one would argue that most cities haven't cut budgets too much on law enforcement and have increased the number of police officers. This, of course, is variable from city to city and from region to region, but mostly true. But the police are not the whole equation to justice. As Dick Wolfe (creator or Law & Order) puts it : "In the criminal justice system the People are represented by two separate and equally important groups : the police who investigate crimes and the the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders..." In the past six months, since the Stimulus Package ran dry, civil courts have had to lay off a good portion of their staff, which means more work per person. So the police can bring in offenders, but if the civil courts cannot handle the work load a lot falls through the cracks. I recently spoke to an architect working on the Brockton Courthouse and he mentioned that they were not just renovating the building, they had to volunteer billable hours of clerical work.

Of course, a good deal of technology has been developed and commercialized and is available, which can help relieve the issues that arise with budget cuts. One new technology that is experimentally being used in courts is teleconferencing; essentially, holding trials digitally. This helps save the costs of transporting defendants and detainees from jails and juvenile centers, as well as paying for jurors' hotel and meals, and the judge only has to come into the office have drinks with the DA. Sounds great, but then there is the Sixth Amendment that is violated, the Confrontation Clause : the right to face your accuser.

Ideologically, the judicial system is what maintains Democracy. Without it the Nation loses all concepts of justice. Justice, the foundation of this country and the protection rights and freedoms. Now, all of this I have certainly over-hyped, simply to illustrate a point. Our judicial system is certainly suffering in this economy, but the civic staff are just working harder. Justice seems to be served, though it is struggling to do so. But the point is, of all things we can possibly lose, the worst is justice. That is what distinguishes the human society from the ambivalent natural world of "kill or be killed" and survival. Justice is our natural order of rights and freedom. Most strongly, freedom from.

Star Stuff : Where is the Line Drawn of What is Human?

It is truly a funny thing the history of the Universe and, particularly, evolution. The long debate of The Other has its blurry lines of what is human. Seventy years ago Africans or any persons of dark skin were not considered human. Eighty years ago women really didn't count much either. Take the timeline back further to Ancient Greece, in which anyone who was not a Greek was not considered human. But we know that we are all the same. Richard Dawkins once noted that if you were to take two chimpanzees or two different groups in the same geographic region their DNA would be far more different from each other than a white homo sapien sapien's DNA would be from an Australian aborigine. We are identical with very very very minute differences, such as skin tone and hair color. "We are all Africans".

Dawkins also once questioned where the line of what is human drawn? Dawkins gives the example : if you were to bring an Australopithecus to church would they consider him or her to be on par with a homosexual? That is, would they deny this ancestor of ours admittance because he is not our kind of human? But this Australopithecus would certainly be human, and evolution shows this. Even if he or she were admitted, where is line drawn? What about chimps? They are our cousins on the long evolutionary line. They may not be of our lineage, but they are still family! How about an arboreal ape, who are certainly our long extinct ancestors? Do they count? If we jump back really far in time, what about a fish? We descended from fish. How about single cell bacteria? They started the whole process of life. Maybe we could just bring in a big bowl of nucleotides and amino acids which constitute the building blocks of DNA. Is that sacrilegious?

The human line between people of different races, genders, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation would be abolished overnight if aliens from another world come to destroy us. It would probably be something like Ronald Regan's dream of the human race uniting to destroy them. But if we found life on another planet would we call them family as well? One might argue : no, because they're not from earth and most certainly not part of our evolutionary chain. Carl Sagan mentions frequently that everything in the Universe is made up of "star stuff", and he means everything. We too are made up of star stuff, and so too would creatures on another planet. The evolutionary chain goes back much farther than the first accidental accumulation of nucleotides and amino acids, it goes back to about a few billion years after the Big Bang when dust particles started to condense together by gravity and form the first stars. The stars explode and give birth to new stars, and even planets. Stars are what makes elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

If that is how far the evolutionary chains goes back, then can we call creatures on another planet brothers and sisters? Sure. But let's say humans wanted to start blowing up stars and planets with no life on them, let's say, hypothetically, to extract various materials and minerals. Can we call those stars and planets brothers and sisters? They make the stuffs of life and give it homes. They are made of the same stuffs we are made of. Don't they have a right to exist just like humans?

So where is the line drawn? It is most certainly is blurry line when trying to decide what is human. But in the spirit of Carl Sagan, we are all stars. As Joseph Campbell once said : "We are in the heavens!"

Your baby picture with your cosmic family :

 

Zombies : Fear of The Other or Just Plain Fear?

Why are all these zombie films, alien films, and vampire films so popular? Because they play on our fear of "The Other", whatever that other may be : immigrants (usually expressed in alien films), Communism (usually vampires and zombies), terrorists, Muslims, Jews, Protestants, and anything else that stimulates the natural human tendency to be xenophobic. It is the films like K-Pax and ET that express a mutual understanding and coexistence between two similar, yet different peoples (films we rarely see).

Now the big question is not about how they play on our fearful tendencies towards things we don't understand or identify with, but rather : is the fear they impose something legitimate? A biochemist from a neighboring lab of MIT (I suspect Novartis Institute for Biological Research) came into work today and was sincerely worried about zombies; legitimately worried about zombies. He even emphasized his point by saying "And I'm a scientist!" Could there be something to this? Or has he been watching too many zombie films lately?

Sure nanotechnology has produced some great results in the production of materials, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, and the medical field in general. About two years ago I was at an ASHRAE conference in Charleston, SC and the speaker was discussing nanotechnology and he was particularly excited about a breakthrough in making a virus that can attacks cancer cells. Last I checked this virus is still not 100%, but it will certainly strike a cold chill in someone who has seen I Am Legend (the virus to battle cancer turns people into zombies).

Now people can fantasize all they want about how they want (or actually believe) vampires are real, or zombies and aliens will arise and attack us. But aside from this masochistic wishful-thinking, we know this is just plain silly. So if we are scaring ourselves silly, we are doing one fine job of doing so. Or is it the same xenophobia manifesting itself in a new form? A form we actually invented!

What's the Point? I Mean Besides Making Our Lives More Mundane

I got into an argument at school with my fellow classmates over M-Theory and the higher dimensions, i.e. the 11th Dimension. I am currently using the process string theory uses to achieve higher spatial dimensions in order to create a building. And one fellow said, "Why? Why do scientist waste all that money and time to think up such wacky stuff?" Of course, it never crossed his mind that architects waste a lot of time and money to create buildings based off of theoretical ideas like the primitive hut or tectonics. The latter being what we are addressing in my class. And like scientists, architects get awards for "wasting" money!

But what is the point of continuing manned missions to the moon or sending a satellite to Pluto? We won the Space Race, right? Why are scientists and astronomers still interested in wasting tax dollars (people usually think it all comes from tax dollars, but a good chunk of it comes from donations) on those things? Or why are we wasting money on building something like the Large Hadron Collider to investigate things so small they don't matter?

Hmmm... so, just let me get this straight : just because all the wonderful and magnificent things we discover with modern technology about modern physics has yet to be brought down to the level of the mundane so you can use it in a pedestrian way it is all considered pointless? Even if it was brought down to a mundane utility people would only take it for granted. Think back to the Space Race. Now think about all the technological developments that were necessary to get to the moon. A lot of money was spent, yes, and there were a lot of failures to quickly learn from. But all that technology and infrastructural developments lead to things like microwave ovens, freeze dried food, lasers, compact discs, digital watches, smaller computers, cell phones, et cetera. All of these items and more are taken for granted.


So what's the point of 11 dimensions, holographic universes, gravitons, and the LHC? So that in a few decades we can take the developments from those explorations and commercialize it to a mundane existence that the egocentric layman will take for granted. That's the point : so that you may take it for granted one day. Thanks for making the cause of understanding our world sound less worthwhile.

And Today the SEC is Up 25 Points

Is the US taking a secular shift? Is religion on a downfall? According to Boston's MetroNews many churches in the Northeastern United States are for sale because congregations no longer "need as much space as they once did." This news unto itself does not indicate a secular shift, as that conclusion is based on causal relations that are not necessarily correlated. It could simply be a signal that churches no longer serve their purpose as a public institution (many churches have become privatized, such as Evangelical and Scientology churches). It could also be a sign of churches failing to deliver their message to the congregation in a changing Zeitgeist. Many people today still hold their religious beliefs and rarely go to church, save maybe on Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday.

A sign of a secular shift is in the statistics. According to the Metro 26% of Millennials (born after 1981) claim themselves to be religiously unaffiliated, as opposed to the Baby Boomers being roughly 10% unaffiliated. Now, the Metro calls them "religiously unaffiliated", which is a nice way of saying "atheist", simply because "atheist" is a controversial word, for whatever reasons I cannot understand. But, 26%! That's not even a minority! That out ranks (in the United States) Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, and the Tea Party!

So what happens to these churches? Many of the churches in the Northeast are being demolished, and very little effort has gone on to call some of these structures "historic" in order to prevent demolition. Before I left Savannah, Georgia a church a couple of blocks up the street from where I was living was being converted into condos (with one of the bathrooms in the bell tower!).

The big question right now is should we conserve these "cultures" or "religions"? The question I feel that is more important is : should we conserve and save a system that fails to serve society? This is a heavy question considering that most congregation are privatized and serve only themselves. This question goes beyond religious beliefs and faith, but is concerned with society at large. If it is a private institution and no longer serves its civic duty, then as a private institution it must save itself. Churches already get tax exemption, why should they get tax dollars to save themselves?

This does seem like a very hostile question, but instead of "churches" and "congregations" let us say "government" : if a privatized government no longer serves its civic duty to society should we preserve it? Most people would advocate it to be abolished. Considering this country is constantly try to meld church and state (something that is supposed to remain separate), the question of saving congregations is a heavy question indeed.

The Ugly Side of Being Healthy

I first encountered the term orthorexia, a still controversial condition in the medical field, from Joe Juhasz's blog. But I more or less dismissed the idea of being so healthy it was actually unhealthy. That is until this morning on my way to the subway I saw a young girl eating raw broccoli, but she looked anorexic. I realize that raw broccoli was probably her whole diet (though she could be recovering from anorexia, but in that case I would expect her to have a hot dog).

Exactly what is the ugly side of being healthy? Aside from being so healthy it is unhealthy, the truly ugly side is that it won't stop you from dying. Is being "healthy" a side effect of living? As opposed to surviving? Are we so domesticated that it has become a symptom of modern civilization to be healthy? Is being healthy on par with playing golf and watching TV? We don't need to be healthy or play golf to survive long enough pass on our genes.

The only thing that being healthy and being unhealthy have in common is that death is for certain. The problem with the two poles is the inherent psychological judgment passed on them. One is frowned upon and the other is not. But being healthy is so highly revered that it can be unhealthy and still kill you! Just like smoking cigarettes : if you quit you're still going to die.

Of course, a rebuttal would be : "But if you eat healthy and quit smoking you will live a long, healthy life." AND? And you will still die. Isn't "long life" and "healthy living" symptoms of domesticated living and not survival? If we were surviving we would live just long enough to mate and pass on our genes. Congrats! Death is still certain!

"What will happen at the end of living? And the beginning of survival?"
-Chief Seattle