Are We Building an Advance Boredom?

Lately I have been working on the Vitruvian Man problem with a fellow co-worker; the problem of how the human fits into a circle and a square, while still accounting for all static and dynamic anthropometrics. During our research and geometrizing we encountered the question of creating a measurement system (like Le Corbusier's Modulor, as well as Albrecht Durer) from our proportioning system. We ultimately decided we would leave that for ergonomists.

Now ergonomics is a study of human measurements, i.e. anthropometrics, in relation to everyday products, such as a chair, or a door knob, or a bottle of water, and even buildings, airplanes, and cars. Ergonomics is a study the roots back to ancient Greece, simply because the ancient Greeks had enough time to just sit around and think about things.

What else did the Greeks think about? Well, philosophy was a profession, on par with farming, governance, teaching, and construction. They invented numerous subjects of study (that is any kind of -ology), many of which we still use today : economics, politics, physics, metaphysics, rhetoric, grammar, ecology, biology, et cetera. It may be safe to say that the Greeks were one of the most bored civilizations in ancient history.

I believe the peak of their boredom hit when they built the Parthenon, the temple to Athena on the Athenian Acropolis. The Greeks recognized that due to visual perspective that objects appear smaller as they recede into space. So if one looks at a wall head-on (perpendicular to the wall) the left and right sides of the wall begin to curve back in space away from the viewer. This is because the flanks of the wall are farther away than the center of the wall. So when they built the Parthenon everything on the facade was curved outwards, and curved upwards towards the top of the structure. So when one looks at the facade head-on the curved edged are corrected by optical perspective, and so appear straight. The columns all have a slight bulge to them known as entasis. If the curve of the columns on the Parthenon are considered the arc of a circle, and the arc is continued downwards, the trough of the circle will be one mile underground.

Yes, the Greeks, indeed were some very bored people.

It appears the whole structure of civilization and society is based on being incredibly bored, so one just fills their time with thinking and coming up with activities that in no way directly encourage the survival of our species. I say "directly" with emphasis, because some bored person at some point felt like studying fungi and invented penicillin (I know this isn't exactly how the discovery of penicillin happened, it's call hyperbolization of narrating).

Just think of all the useless things we do to fill up our time from the day we are born to the day we die; things we make sound important and pertinent to our lives : football, The Cooking Channel, figuring out how to trisect an angle, golf, starting a band, or writing a blog posting on the boredom of civilization. In the case of the latter, I was bored and trying to work out dynamic anthropometrics of the body, and found my self bored again, so I began thinking about being bored. I was meta-bored. At some point in history (the Greeks) someone was bored and starting thinking meta- things, like metaphors, metacognition, meta-language, and meta-meta-whatever. One of my favorite books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, was devised by Charles Dodgson to keep his three girls from being bored while they traveled from Cheshire to Oxford.

We play and fill our time with activities of no practical value to the survival of our species. There is another name for that : domestication. Dogs don't have to survive, they have human masters to pamper them from birth to death. So most dogs play and beg for attention, which is nothing practical for their survival, save that their owner continue to take care of them. We don't survive, we play golf, do yoga, and talk about wines and cheeses. We are not all that different from the very animals we take care of. A bored dog wants to play fetch as much as a successful Wall Street CEO wants to play eighteen holes.

Anytime we start considering truth, beauty, peace, and love we are within the confines of domestication. Nature is ambivalent, both caring and deadly, peaceful and dangerous, beautiful and ugly.

A music theory teacher of mine once told me : "Boredom is self-satisfied ignorance." This has a good deal of truth to it. But then again, if the advancement of society is based on boredom, then is the advancement of society the augmentation of stupidity? That may be a fallacy, but it has a good deal of truth to it.

Then again, the irony of it all is : the advancement of civilization was founded on boredom, and this boredom birthed a civilization that has become dependent on the products of its boredom. So the survival factor has inherently resurfaced : if we don't maintain the products of past boredom, while also producing new products as a result of further boredom, then society will fail.

And Other Crack Pot for South Carolina

I must admit, I love South Carolina. It's my home state after all. I was born and raised there. But my love for my home state is kind of like my love for people : I want to love them, I want to have faith in them... but, dear lord, every time I give them a chance they go and blow it. Hence my constant deposition of disappointment.

Aside from Governor Mark Stanford's affair, and him deliberately making the whole thing worse after Michael Jackson died; or SC democrats nominating Alvin Greene, a complete moron, for the Senate seat; or House Representative Joe Wilson calling the President a liar in front of Congress; or Senator Jake Knotts calling Nikki Haley a "towelhead"; or even in 1844 SC Senator Preston Brooks beating a Massachusetts Senator with his cane in front of Congress (Charles Sumner had it coming)... and so on... South Carolina has a new one to add to their list : Miriam Smith : Link Here.

Miriam gives a whole new definition to the term "Bible Beater", and, consequently, what happens to Bible-Eaters. Her nephew's pitbull was chewing on her bible and she hung the bitch from a tree with an electrical chord and burned the dog alive. I believe Adolf Hitler would have had a hard time stomaching this act. She claims she did it because the dog could be a danger to the neighborhood children. Right, just like the Jews were a danger to the State of Germany. Bullshit.

This so happens to be another instance of the pure ignorance brought about by the devoutly religious. We only need to consider what happened to the promising young scientist Kurt Wise, who turned down everything for the Word of God.

Not to bash on religion, but the devoutly religious can be absolutely stupid. But then again I have met some really stupid Atheist before, but they at least never did anything incredibly moronic on account of their lack of faith. Then again, two of my closest friends happen to be Catholic (both believe in evolution, but only one believes in the Big Bang).

It's not so much of a question as does religion make people stupid? But more so where does stupidity come from? Thanks to Miriam Smith religion has happen to hit an new low thanks to you, as does South Carolina. I want to love you SC, but you constantly disappoint me... hence why I moved to Massachusetts.

Impossibility of Visual Synchonicity

Dream Theater, one of my favorite bands, has one album that I consider to be the nexus of all their album  Metropolis Part 2 : Scenes From A Memory (although most albums that apply to this nexus album follow MP2 : SFaM, though a few albums prior to it do still link to it). One particular piece of evidence is in the first song on the album, the song "Regression" :

"Hello Victoria, so glad to see you my friend".

The next song, "Strange Deja Vu" has the following lyrics :

"There's a room at the top of the stairs.
Every night I'm drawn up there.
And there's a girl in the mirror.
Her face is getting clearer"

To give some background, SFaM is a single story of love, murder, hypnotherapy, past life regression, and strangle loops. The main character Nicolas is being haunted by a girl in his dreams, a girl named Victoria. Victoria is him in a past life. The girl in the mirror is Victoria, so what he sees in the mirror is his past.

The former set of lyrics is reused on their album Train of Thought in the song "This Dying Soul" :

"Hello mirror, so glad to see you my friend.
It's been a while."

"This Dying Soul" was written by Mike Portony about recovering from alcoholism, because he was an alcoholic, and it is number two of five songs written about recovery from alcoholism ("Glass Prison", "This Dying Soul", "Root of All Evil", "Repentance", and "Shattered Fortress", and each song is broken into movements so that there are twelve movements in all, as there are twelve steps for recovering from alcoholism). What these lyrics refer to is the past seen in there mirror, namely his past as an alcoholic.

But the mirror always reflects the past. Always. Consider the Mitch Hedberg joke :

"A guy hands me a picture of himself and says, 'Here's a picture of me when I'm younger'... Every picture is of you when you younger!"

But every reflection of yourself in the mirror is of you when you're younger. I'm reaching into Einstein's relativity here, but there is a certain amount of time it takes light travel across a certain distance (assume that we are not moving, because if we were on a moving train that only complicates matters). So there is an x amount of time it takes for light to bounce off your face towards the mirror, and then bounce off the mirror into your eyes. Then there is a certain amount of time it takes to your eyes to process the information, encode it, send it to the brain, and for the brain to decode it. Albeit all of this time is very minuscule and negligible, but there is a certain amount of time that elapses in this time period, which is dependent on the distance from the mirror (as well as, if applicable, how drunk you are).

So the reflection in the mirror is always of the past, though a very recent past. But there is another implication to this theorem : you can never see yourself in the exact same instance in time as you are in currently. There is always a delay. So if you could see a neutrino pass through your face, the moment that it occurs isn't seen and processed in the brain until a minuscule fraction of a second later (assuming you're looking in a mirror and that neutrinos are visible).

The past is the only thing that can be seen ever, so visual synchronicity is impossible; that is, so long as we live in an expanding universe. This all so happens to make M. C. Escher's Hand With Reflecting Sphere all the more fascinating, particularly in breaking the fourth wall.

Ephimenides & Doctor House

Doctor Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie, has several key concepts that dictate his practice, his demeanor, and ultimately his general philosophy of everything. But one thing he constantly says (usually in obtaining patient history) is : "Everyone lies".

In looking at some of Hofstadter's concepts of strange loops, one that echoes precisely what House is saying was infamously uttered in ancient Greece. The Cretan Ephimenides once said : "All Cretans are liars." But in the subject of strange loops we must remember that Ephimenides is a Cretan, and therefore he is also saying "I am a liar." Hofstadter points out that this also means "This statement is false."

So House lies (which is typical of him to get his way). But he also makes false statements (he typically is wrong about twenty times before he is finally right). Ontologically House is Holmes. Strange.

But then again, if he lies, then is the statement "everyone lies" false? If that was so then everyone tells the truth. If everyone tells the truth then House would never say "everyone lies". Or, if he did then the statement would be true, and therefore false. It is like superposition in metaphors, and therefore superposition and entanglement in conceptual du(re)ality. In that case, all reality is in one position, transparent, and that one position of transparency (i.e. two or more bodies occupying the same space independently) is everywhere... and infinite everywhere is one place.

So the mind of House is a superposition conceptual metaphor in the confines of infinite singularity. Way to go Hugh.

Implications of Metaphor in Social Interactions

My last few postings have been circling around the inherent existence of metaphors in myths, religions, linguistics, numbers, sociology, psychology and so forth. But understanding the existence of metaphors embedded in a multitude of fields in reality is only one part; the other, logically being its implications in real world dynamics.

I recall several years ago talking to a devout Christian about Hinduism and their pantheon of deities and the various incarnations of each and what not. She suddenly stopped me and emphatically disagreed that the religion is inherently flawed. I initially assumed she figured Hinduism was flawed because they don't believe in Jesus (though many sects of Hinduism consider Jesus to be an incarnation of Krishna). Turned out that she simply did not understand how their entire vast pantheon is really the incarnation of one deity. I remember her saying something like : "It just seems so silly that Krishna, Siva, and Brahma are all Vishnu. Why would they be different gods and yet the same god?" I explained to her that she already understood the concept, and that the same concept existed in her own faith as well : God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all separate and the same. And that is how two people of differing beliefs (though I am not Hindu, I just like studying religions) made an accordance.

Essentially the idea of the Christian Trinity was already a concrete concept to her. Where the Hindu pantheon was rather preposterous and unfamiliar. Her own concept of the Trinity was used a metaphor to understand the Hindu pantheon. Though she doesn't have to convert to Hinduism she now has an understanding of their belief structure.

The question that really exists right now is : is it necessary for social hatred to exist? Exactly what good does it produce? We all have roughly the same idea on many thing, just same ideas are a little different from another. For instance, is it necessary for Communists and Democracies to hate one another? In their own way both believe in equality of individuals, albeit each has different means of construing this equality. Is it necessary for Red Sox fans to hate Yankee fans? (Something I have to deal with everyday). Both groups like football! What exactly is the problem? Or is it necessary for Mac and PC users to hate one another? They both use computers, but the OS so happens to be a bit different.

But a funny thing arises in many social interactions when context of origin is removed, i.e. away from homeland : differences tend to disappear. A Yankee fan may hate a Red Sox fan at a sports bar in New England, but if the two encounter one another in Germany they will probably buy one another drinks and happily discuss football. Sometimes context is not necessary at all. For instance, anytime I encounter another Patrick we tend to act like good buds, though we may have just met (this happened at work the other day).

That is the gripping aspect of metaphors : they allow us to achieve an understanding and accordance with something that is unfamiliar or foreign to us. Metaphors can do that because of a certain similarity between the unknown and known, and the unknown is made agreeable via a concrete concept, i.e. the metaphor. A Yankee fan may be foreign and, therefore, disagreeable. But once we are no longer in America we realize that that little difference doesn't matter, we are both American and we like football! (I must stress here that I don't actually like football).

Metaphors allow us to have flexible notions of reality and, therefore, a flexible world view. They allow for mutual understanding, as the function of metaphors are to provide an understanding of the unknown through something that is already known. They potentially allow us to understand one another, regardless of our differences.

Inflexibility in our conceptions of reality typically results in mutually indoctrinated hatred and looks a little bit like :

Etymology : Do You Understand?

Given my current research in linguistic metaphors lately, one thing still troubles me : are the metaphors of word roots, e.g. etymologies, inherently structured into our common language? That is, the etymologies of word, which are often very different from how we actually use the words themselves, do they dictate a metaphorical understanding of reality. Let me give a few examples :

The word renovation comes from the Latin renovatio, which means "rebirth" and is where we get the word Renaissance. Here I would suggest that the etymology of the word corresponds to the manner in which we use the word in common speech. If a family decides to renovate their house, we usually mean "fix up the house", which usually entails new carpet, cabinets, getting rid of that ugly 1970s wallpaper and giving the outside a fresh coat of paint. But common speech is incredibly subjective and typically dependent on experience and cultural background. So once the house is reborn it does present itself with new life, as if it had a renovatio.

The word invent comes from the Latin invenire, which means "to find". Here I would suggest that the two are similar, but to our common speech the word and its root seem to have distinctly different properties. To say "I invented that machine" and "I found that machine" seem inherently distinct. To invent something seems to us to be created ex nobo, while to find something is to discover something that already existed. But they are very similar and they correspond in everyday speech. For example, when a new institution is created it is often stated to have been founded in such and such a year. This founding corresponds to the notion of invenire as it already existed and just had to be found.

The word garden comes from the Latin gardinus meaning "enclosure". Once again, I would suggest the two are some what similar, but our conception of the two in common speech are distinctly different. We typically think of a garden as a place of vegetation, often where food is grown. A synonymous word to garden is paradise, which, because of cultural reasons (i.e. Christianity : Garden of Eden) we consider the two be similar. Consequently paradise comes from Arabic pairidaeza, which is a compound of pairi- "around" + diz "form, wall". We would consider the two to be distinctly different in the case of paradise, as paradise is usually thought of being a place of wonder, relaxation, and pleasure (Eden being Hebrew for "pleasure"). Though the word and the root seem to be two different things, we naturally impose boarders on things that do not have boarders. When we do make a garden we establish some kind of boarder to it, such as a line of bricks, or raise the soil behind retaining walls, or simply change the ground cover (i.e. mulch or straw). I would suggest the word and its root to be similar, but they are more dissimilar than they are similar.


Other words tend to be vastly different from their etymology. The word genius, which is Latin and means "spirit" and is synonymous with the Greek daemon. But it does not mean spirit in the sense of a soul or ghost, but rather that we each have a genius. This is profoundly different from our concept of genius, in which we usually say "You are a genius", rather than "You have a genius". The genius was thought of as a sort of personal god, a deity that attended one person and one person only, and was that person's link to higher deities. This was the case in Mesopotamia, as genius comes from the Arabic genii (as in the genie in the lamp). The genie was thought of as each person's individual deity, sort of like a guardian angel, and were often represented as small figurines. The genius was typically thought of as a sort of muse, which further confuses the matter. The word museum is a compound : muse + um, or "place of the muses", as museums were filled with the art and beauty inspired by the muses. No one was ever thought to to invent anything on their own, but rather a muse or genius or daemon or genie gave them the idea. So no one could be blamed for anything, as they were commanded by the gods of what to do, thus were not responsible for their actions. This is probably due to the bicameral mind, and they could not conceive of ideas ex nobo on their own. I suggest that our conception of genius is vastly different from what the term originally implied.

For more on this idea of genius watch Elizabeth Gilbert's (yes, she wrote Eat Pray Love) lecture at TED Talks : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA ... though the problem with her idea is that we cannot return to the idea of having a genius, as the bicameral mind has disintegrated in our point in history.

The final word I wish to end this with is understand, which seems like a basic word as it is a composite of two English words : under + stand. When seen like that, what is that suppose to mean. Our conception of understanding implies that the information given to us has been received and interpreted correctly and that the information was "grasped" (metaphor). Understand seems to be one of those words that is a bit difficult to define, as mentioned before. The process of understanding should be described and understood first : person A speaks and person B hears. Let's say Person A commands person B to do something, in which case person B obeys. The process of listening is similar to obedience, as one has to block out everything else that is going on and hear attentively. The term obedience comes from the Latin obedire, which is a compound of ob + audire,  which means "to hear while facing [someone]". So hearing involves a hierarchical relationship in which one hears and obeys, while the other commands (refer to Julian James's Origin of Conscious in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind for further implications of this process). Obviously, whoever is hearing the command would have to understand the person higher to them in order obey. This would probably be the root of the word understand. Let's say a king, while sitting on his throne, tells his servant to run an errand. The servant would hear and obey, thus standing under the king. If the interpretation of the word is correct, then its origin is probably due to the fact that kings and gods sat on thrones and everyone else stood below them. I suggest that our conception of this word is vastly different from its roots.

So do we understand the etymologies of words in our everyday speech? For the most part, I would say yes, as most words we use are similar to their origins, as is the case of renovation, or garden, or invent. But there are several words which are vastly different from their origins, such as genius, or portal, or understand, or paradise, or am.

Hammurabi being given the Code from Marduk:
Do you understand?
I under + stand.