On The Shoulders Of Giants

I am moving soon and I would like to dispose of as much as possible, so I’m going through everything. Last night I found an old notebook. I opened it and read parts of it. I came across something that I had written in code and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t decode it. I had forgotten the key. For a moment I felt sad. I felt like that note and that memory have most likely permanently died and there was no way I could recover them. I felt like a surgeon whose patient has died and there is nothing she could do about it.

I just can’t trust the former CEO of Goldman Sachs to save this country at a time of crisis especially when the price tag is so high. My gut is telling me that something is seriously wrong. This is so much like the Iraq war. They said “mushroom cloud” and everybody went along to look patriotic. I think this bail-out plan requires a pause. Comment please.

The questions is: is there a god or not? Is the universe composed of matter only or there is more to it than that? I have looked at the arguments of both sides and found neither of them convincing. In my view, by argument alone, you cannot prove or disprove god. What about evidence? Is there any evidence that points to the existence of god or otherwise? In my opinion there is only one convincing evidence: the enlightenment phenomenon. The enlightenment phenomenon is when someone through meditation, solitude, seeking of truth or otherwise experiences something unique and as a result becomes enlightened. Of course, there are degrees to enlightenment and the experiences vary greatly. But in some cases we can say with a good degree of certainty that a person has been enlightened: Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, Ali, Rumi, Shams. These individuals and many like them have had unique experiences and became enlightened and transcended their backgrounds and rose to new dimensions. To me, that fact is miraculous and an evidence pointing to the existence of god. The rational mind would then want to know if religions came from god. My answer is most likely yes. The next question is if most religions came from god, how come they are tainted with misstatements, pandering and intolerance. In other words, for example why does god have a beef with homosexuals? I have thought about this question most of my life and I recently have arrived at an answer: the answer is that every religion was a political movement in a society that was far from Utopia, and in order for that political movement to succeed in such societies, it had to be tainted and it had to be brought down to the levels that people could swallow. I believe that homophobia in Islam doesn’t come from god but it is a left-over from the Arabian society of 1400 years ago. The reason that god said he created the world in six days, was that it was an easier sell back then than a scientific explanation of how the universe came about. The unfortunate thing is that religions are never honest about this fact because they can’t be. How can they criticize the same people that are going to carry the message to the future generations? It’s impossible. So we have to live with sketchy religions at best that are completely out of touch with the majority of us today. But not all hope is lost. If we look at religions as vectors, arrows that point from one social state to another social state, and put every religion in the context of the society that it was introduced in, I think the directions these arrows pointing are pretty clear.

“We must not, Charlie, blink, Charlie, because, Charlie, as I’ve said, Charlie, before, John McCain has said, Charlie, that — and remember here, Charlie, we’re talking about John McCain, Charlie, who, Charlie, is John McCain and I won’t be blinking, Charlie.”

Frank Rich of the New York Times is on fire.

Even Thomas Friedman blows a gasket.

So, New York Tims, what is the mood in China after the Olympcs? ha?

I’ve mentioned this before. I believe that within every one of us there is an spectrum of selves. We could be kind and gracious or mean and petty to some extent. Politicians and candidates have to decide where on the spectrum they want to appeal to. Why do they want to trigger. I think with a country with a history of slavery, Hiroshima and Vietnalm, it’s easier to appeal to the worst.

pan·der (păn’dər) pronunciation
intr.v., -dered, -der·ing, -ders.

1. To act as a go-between or liaison in sexual intrigues; function as a procurer.
2. To cater to the lower tastes and desires of others or exploit their weaknesses: “He refused to pander to nostalgia and escapism” (New York Times).

[Middle English Pandare, Pandarus, from Old Italian Pandaro, from Latin Pandarus, from Greek Pandaros.]

We have all heard that nobody’s perfect, at least in our times. Here are my thoughts on this notion. Imperfections are in fact contradictions, or violations of common sense and logic. Think of a person as a system composed of thoughts and actions. Pass this system through a contradiction/violation machine and mark all the imperfections. I bet that nobody passes this test without some flaws. So the right question is how big is the size of your contradictions and violations and the other question is how open are you to hearing about your own flaws. Because that seems to be one of the easiest ways to minimize the size of your flaws or the hole in your system - if that is what you are up to, that is - to use friends and family as a way of finding our own faults and trying to improve ourselves. I give myself a passing grade on the second question. I’m usually open to constructive criticism but I have noticed that among my friends this quantity varies a lot.