Where all the EFH2T went/Go with (my) flow

Ah, insomnia. What a productive way to spend an early morning. Since I’m unable to sleep, I’m finally getting around to addressing the disappearance of Everything From Here To There. The site is on hiatus until Billy has time to write again. So in the meantime, I will try to post more blarticles, and I have archived all of my EFH2T posts with their corresponding posts here (which can be accessed using the handy dandy “Categories” list to your right), except for “Go with (my) flow” which I apparently forgot the first time around. So here it is:

Go with (my) flow

Many zen-minded philosophers and spiritual teachers have told us to “flow” with life, to not fight the current of life and where it brings you. I think that’s generally good advice, but it’s also turned into a justification of a lifestyle that makes me pull my hair out in frustration. There are people who, despite making commitments, setting appointments, and otherwise binding themselves to their peers, tend to be flaky. Some of these people have the same argument for their behavior:

“You just need to learn to go with the flow.”

I’ve had a few conversations with people who, like me, are inclined to be punctual and accountable when we make clear-cut arrangements, and I’ve learned a few things lately.

A lot of these “go with the flow” type people are actually exercising an inflexible control over their environment. They may seem super earthy, or they may be otherwise unstereotypical type A personalities, but what I’ve noticed is that they continually play out the same scenario: they make plans, and rather than meet on equal terms, they force the other person to wait, or to reschedule, adjust, etc. It makes me wonder, if you’re trying to “go with the flow”, why make plans at all?

I think there is a hidden message in the argument. “Go with the flow” might mean, “Go with my flow. Don’t expect me to do what you expect.”

You might think that someone who seems completely unaccountable in the name of “go with the flow” would be someone not in control of his or her environment. But isn’t steadfastly abstaining from fulfilling your own self-imposed expectations a form of rigid control?

An example: I was just in Venice performing for the Biennale art festival, and there I met a funky middle-aged Italian man who was part of the community of people around this particular gallery. He is a bit of an enigma—the type of person whether you never really know is paying attention until he makes an out of the blue insightful remark amidst a lot of non sequitur ponderings (sounds harsh, but I actually liked him quite a bit). He randomly proffered a lecture to me on how I cannot make plans in Venice, that I have to see where the city takes me—a very “go with the flow” kind of guy. However, he made plans with one of the other artists to do a photo session before her performance, for which he completely flaked. When she confronted him about it, he gave her the same sort of lecture, completely defying her to hold him accountable for his own plan.

These types of situations usually drive me nuts. However, I have discovered an interesting sense of freedom in some of these relationships lately. For the first time I think in my entire life, I have, with these people, made a conscious decision to be a bit flakier, to show up when and if I feel like it, and to feel less obligated and accountable.

While our group was out celebrating after our performance night was finished, my enigmatic Italian friend invited us all to meet at his place the next morning to exchange photos of the night. We set a specific time, 10am, because I had to catch a plane that afternoon. As I walked back to the hotel with the artist whom he flaked on earlier that evening, she said to me, “Don’t expect him to actually be there.”

I shrugged and said, “We’ll see,” and thought more about it that night as I packed my bags. I decided that the best way to approach the situation was to not put myself in a position to be unhappy—to not rely on someone who I know is unaccountable. In the morning, I had a leisurely breakfast and did not rush to check out of the hotel. I didn’t feel like it. I felt like taking my time and showing up an hour late, and if the meeting happened to work out, then great, but if not, it only left me with an hour to kill, and that was just fine.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, our enigmatic friend was nowhere to be found that morning. Not even the guests staying in his apartment had any idea where he’d got to. So instead, I had a very pleasant conversation with another artist at the gallery downstairs, and trotted off at a leisurely pace to the bus station.

I would never in a million years let myself behave like this with someone I know is going to fulfill their commitments, but under different circumstances, I might have been angry and disappointed because I showed up on time, and where the !@#$ was he? I might have even shown up on time expecting him to disappoint me, which now seems a bit masochistic.

I do think it’s a shame we didn’t get together that morning, but I’m glad that I got to exercise this outlook. I think if we want to avoid making ourselves crazy, it doesn’t hurt to adjust—or let flow—our expectations. To be fair, I do wish that the people on the other side of the river would flow a bit more in my direction as well.

I guess the real question is… How do we all go with the same flow?

EFH2T: The Defensive Finger

My latest post on EFH2T, about how we can sometimes turn into angry d-bags when we know we’ve done something wrong:

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » The Defensive Finger.

The Defensive Finger

Ah, Los Angeles. I was driving through the residential area of West Hollywood one recent sunny day when to my dismay, a man in a blue car ran his stop sign and drove into the intersection ahead of me. Given that he had a two-way stop sign and I had right of way, I felt fairly justified in giving him a “Hey, are you crazy?!” honk of my horn. Without any hesitation, his arm sprang up and displayed his middle finger, a shining beacon of “go f!#% yourself”.

I’m so happy to be driving a car again that I can’t be bothered to get upset by the millions of people who are like this in LA (besides, the worst driver here is about average in Europe). However, this man’s instantaneous reaction to my calling out his mistake made me think about how common it is for an offender to turn into an accuser, and how we sometimes get angry in response to someone else being upset with us, even—and especially—when we know they are right.

My top two examples of this Defensive Finger behavior are, ironically, in some of the highest and lowest tiers of global society: politics, and trashy talk shows. The only real difference between the way politicians behave during debates and the way seedy dramas unfold on daytime TV is the amount of physical bitchslapping involved. But if you break down the pattern of communication, they are about equal: one side accuses the other of some wrongdoing, and in response, the accused rarely addresses the accusation, but rather immediately returns with an even more impassioned accusation towards the accuser. And always while each accusation is being made, the other party is talking with his or her body: scoffing, smiling sarcastically, shaking the head, and making hand gestures that either literally or subtly add up to “go f!#% yourself”.

On a more local level, maybe you’ve had an experience where a friend has let you down in a big way, and instead of apologizing and admitting that they hurt you, they become distant or even turn the situation around on you to make you seem like the bad guy. Maybe you have been the bad guy yourself—I know I have, and that’s kind of the sad thing about this defensive behavior. Sometimes we hurt people, behave recklessly, break promises…. That is a simple fact of life, and something we all have in common. So why, then, do we have such a hard time admitting it?

I think the times when I’ve been like this have been over mistakes that I knew could have been easily prevented, and I guess that my anger over those mistakes came from my greater perfectionist complex and this feeling of “you’re not perfect, so how dare you”. Perhaps some other reasons people give the Defensive Finger are feelings of helplessness or entitlement from being hurt or disappointed in the past, and maybe sometimes people really don’t understand or even care about the effect they have on others. I’d like to think that isn’t the case most of the time, but I wonder if I had crashed into the man who ran the stop sign, would he have apologized or started shouting at me and thrown a tantrum?

It’s hard to believe that people will respect us, let alone love us, once they know how flawed we are, but I’ve really come to admire people who can own their mistakes. It takes a lot of self-confidence to admit to each other that not only are we flawed, but we can, and do hurt people sometimes. What’s funny is that owning the mistakes we make actually empowers us in the eyes of our accusers, whereas being angry and defensive when we are most definitely in the wrong just makes us look like crazy fools, and does not save any face for our sad little egos. Worst of all, we know when we’re wrong, and we will keep knowing even if we deny it. And at the end of the day, we’re the ones who have to live with ourselves. Our flawed, stop sign running selves.

There is a lot to be said for that little courtesy wave we give each other on the road.

EFH2T: The Spectrum of Dissent

This week’s post on Everything From Here to there talks about the different shades of dissent:

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » The Spectrum of Dissent.

The Spectrum of Dissent

All of these posts about anger on the site lately have me thinking about the issues I care about, and what is or is not being done about them, like the ongoing struggle to legalize gay marriage. It’s something I feel very strongly about as a fundamental human rights issue, and I felt really angry when Prop 8 went down and powerless because I was living in Germany at the time. So I moved back to LA thinking I’d get all activist-y and help stir some @!#% up, freak out some squares and so on, expecting that when I started talking to people here about the issue, they would be bursting with rage. So far, they aren’t.

I had a conversation with a gay man last week about Prop 8 and the state of the rainbow these days, and his coolness towards the subject really surprised me. He basically said that he wished people would be a bit more patient and give those who are afraid of homosexuals and gay marriage more time to adjust as these “alternate lifestyles” become more and more accepted into the mainstream. He appreciated when people didn’t cram their beliefs down his throat, so he didn’t believe in doing it to someone else.

While I completely agree with the idea of patience and acceptance of others’ beliefs, part of me still wondered whether anything would change without those who stand up, flail their arms and scream at the top of their lungs. I thought about that for a while, then after reading through the good ideas in the Anger 1-5 posts, I’ve tried to form some chain of causality in my head that results in large scale social change.

If we all picked sides, then sat back and didn’t do any down-throat-cramming of our perspectives, we’d all live in a state of passive discord. At some point, someone is taken over by passion for their point of view, stands up and starts shouting, and that’s where dissent gets tricky. One person shouting equals man on a soapbox—news pundits, for example—while everyone shouting equals a riot, like the Iranian election riots. Since everything has an equal and opposite reaction, you can anticipate that the more people are shouting about something, the greater the reaction will be from the side they are shouting against.

So what if something happens that affects a lot of people very deeply, but only one man gets up and shouts about it? What if only the Iranian pundit-du-jour made a fuss over the elections, and everyone who agreed with him sat back quietly and nodded, saying, “Oh, he’s right, but we just have to be patient.” If there hadn’t been such a large public outcry, they wouldn’t have gotten the rest of the world’s attention. Regardless of the outcome of those awful and tragic riots, there are a lot more people paying attention to the issues in Iran now.

But what if people rioted in the streets every time there was a social disagreement? If we were constantly screaming at each other, throwing rocks, and burning cars over every issue without any other course of action, we’d either burn out our passion so quickly that the fight would fizzle, or we’d create such a strong opposition against us that there would be no chance of what we’re actually saying ever being heard, and we’d just be fighting for fighting’s sake—look at Israel and Palestine and how hard it has been for them to back up and just have a discussion. When discord reaches that level, the opposing sides seem to be pushing harder and harder on opposite sides of a wall, and all of their effort goes toward holding the wall in place.

Social evolution needs the entire spectrum of dissent. We need everyone, from the big screaming crowds to the more reserved supporters, to move issues along, and the reason is that we don’t all identify with the same kind of passion. Some of us are really turned off by fanaticism, but still want to express some kind of support. Some of us find anything less than full out demonstration to be an insult to The Cause, whatever it may be. Personally, I identify with the passion of individuals on the ground, and can’t stand the soapboxery of pundits and speechwriters, but some people feel better hearing about the issues they support while staying out of view.

The important thing is that we support what we believe in, however that feels right to us. We must all find where we belong on the spectrum, and not assume that dissent is one-size-fits-all.

EFH2T: Living with Bears

My latest post on Billy Corgan’s blog about holistic livin’:

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Living with Bears.

Inspired by this pamphlet sent to me by my sister, who finds completely banal things as funny as I do, god love her.

Living with Bears

My sister recently sent me a hilarious pamphlet she found in upstate New York entitled “Living with Bears”. It’s all about how to coexist with the indigenous and migrating bears that sometimes mosey into the wooded neighborhoods of New York, and why bears behave the way they do. It says things like:

“What should I do if I see a bear? Don’t panic. Bears are more likely to be afraid of you than you are of them.”

“Never approach, surround, or attempt to touch a bear. Always leave a clear escape route for the bear.”

“How to prevent bear problems: Proper storage of garbage and removal of bird feeders are the two most important steps you can take to drastically reduce nuisance bear problems in your area.”

And so forth.

Once I got over how funny it was, I started thinking about how much easier life would be if we gave ourselves permission to objectify the differences between each culture, gender, and lifestyle in this same manner, distilling it all into a three-fold pamphlet that we could each hand out.

I guess the first thing people are afraid of is that by objectifying the differences between people, they would be accused of being racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. As a comedian, I have a bit of license to go at these topics with greater abandon, however as a person, and a white American one, I have felt the cultural conditioning that is “treat everyone exactly the same”. While I agree with that idea from a human rights perspective, from a cultural perspective, it’s actually a bit insensitive when you look more closely at what it means. The truth is that culture shock can be extremely upsetting. We’re so concerned with not offending different cultures that we don’t know how to react when the differences bother us, i.e. pretending to be indifferent and behaving passive aggressively while the indexical shock grates on our nerves, when we could just point these differences out in objective terms and address them head on.

I wrote a bit about cultural indexicality before, and how certain types of behavior mean different things in different cultures, for example, how some Russian women I used to work with found whistling indoors to be extremely offensive. What if, on the first day I met them, they handed me the pamphlet “Living with Russians”, which explained the many superstitions they have involving whistling? Conversely, I could have handed them my “Living with Americans” pamphlet, which would explain that we generally like to do whatever we please when it comes to our personal space, and we may seem insensitive to a culture that has a lot of customs or superstitions, however we are not fond of people we don’t know well making extremely personal remarks about our looks or body (they all felt the need to point out every time I gained or lost a pound, and it drove me nuts).

However, this raises another problem: after the pamphlets are distributed, we’d have to figure out who is “right”, and who should concede to alter their behavior. In the case of the whistling incident, should I be sensitive to the Russians’ superstition, or should they be more willing to conform to the local culture?

That, of course, is trickier. But if we were allowed to objectify these differences, instead of being aware of them but forced to pretend as if we aren’t, I think we’d be more content to make choices based on these objective, impersonal pieces of information than we are with all of the unspoken differences we deal with now. A lot of the cultural and interpersonal ego battles that prevent us from getting along stem from a deep desire to be understood for the simplest things without having to go out of our way to call attention to them.

I’d personally love to hand out a “Living with Ve” pamphlet to everyone I meet. It would say things like, “Ve is prone to extreme moodiness and lack of focus before noon.” and “Store sugary food in tight containers and keep them in a secure place out of Ve’s field of vision lest she will, due to an overactive enthusiasm for candy, be forced to devour your sweets as soon as you turn around.” (Somehow I think the above two statements may be connected, but I digress.)

Think of how easy social life would be if we were allowed to make these pieces of information so objective and distant from our egos! What would your “Living with…” pamphlet say?

Since there’s currently no government subsidy for such pamphlets, maybe for now we can just try to see the differences between us, our lifestyles and our cultures as objective things, and not let them rule our relationships, or get under our skin. As with bears, acknowledgment and acceptance of our differences is the key to Living with Humans.

EFH2T: Life Labyrinthitis

My latest post on Billy Corgan’s blog about holistic livin’:

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Life Labyrinthitis.

Talks about the causes and effects of vertigo, of both physical and psychological origin.

(Posted a week late, but written during that badass rainstorm last week.)

Life Labyrinthitis

I just moved back to Los Angeles from Berlin a few days ago, and I’m experiencing what I call life vertigo: that swimmy, disoriented feeling we feel in response to a change of conditions like a big move, changing or losing a job, death of a loved one, divorce, or other drastic changes. Over the course of my move, my perception of time has been bizarre, I’ve acquired countless bruises from repeatedly walking into stationary objects, some simple everyday tasks are comically outsmarting me, and I can’t seem to keep more than one thought going in my head at a time. In spite of all this, I’ve managed to get a lot done in a few days, and am soldiering forth to establish my life again.

However, as I drove on the freeway today in what was probably the most incredible rainstorm I’ve ever seen in LA, I occasionally felt overwhelming pangs of panic in my chest. My heart felt like it was about to explode, and parts of my brain were screaming at each other that something horrible was happening. The rain was epic, but this feeling of panic was not precipitated (no pun intended) by any events in particular, or by a lack of bad weather driving experience, and so I felt that I was having an irrational physiological response to a sudden change of conditions, the rain and flooded streets, layered upon another rather large sudden change of conditions, moving across the world; my mental conduit for properly interpreting the changes in my environment was inflamed.

All of this got me thinking about the physiological causes of vertigo, like labyrinthitis, or inflammation of the inner ear. The name stuck out as a fantastic metaphor: we navigate through the labyrinth of life, feeling as if we know where we’re going only to find sometimes that we don’t recognize where we are and can’t see how we got there, and so we feel disoriented and panicked because we can’t tell which is the right direction. What I find really interesting about labyrinthitis is that the prolonged vertigo associated with it can directly cause anxiety, panic attacks and even depression because of the brain’s chronic misinterpretation of sensory input, i.e. perceiving physical danger where there is none.

A common treatment for labyritnthitis-related anxiety and depression is the same as clinical anxiety and depression, which is to prescribe anti-depressives. I’m not proposing this as a commentary on depression medication, but it seems a bit strange to treat depression resulting from a physiological condition the same as emotional depression, and I think that’s telling of our symptom-obsessed culture (and the industries that encourage it).

The problem with only addressing symptoms is that we sometimes don’t look deeply enough past the symptoms, whether emotional or physical, to see what is causing them in order to find a real solution, and can end up covering deep wounds with band-aids. That might mean treating the symptoms of chronic vertigo while the cause worsens, or in my case, it might mean treating the panic I felt on the freeway without addressing the deeper anxiety from moving across the world, or even more deeply, why that move provokes so much anxiety in the first place.

Generally, it’s been shown that people who feel that their condition is out of their control are less likely to improve than those who try to have some positive control, and it’s as true for life vertigo as it is for medical vertigo. A patient who doesn’t believe that they can be helped is no better off than a panicked driver who lets go of the steering wheel or a weary job hunter who doesn’t submit a resume; if we want to get through it, we have to try. For me, that meant looking past the panic, taking deep breaths and calming myself down so that I could navigate through the rain safely, keeping in mind that my body was overreacting due to deeper causes. And for all of us, it means not letting the overwhelming feelings from the changes in our lives take control of our perceptions so that we can navigate forward through the labyrinth of life, even when we’re not entirely sure which direction forward is.

EFH2T: Remembered Worlds

My latest post on Everything from here to there:

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Remembered Worlds.

Talks about my wacky theory on how we create the worlds in sci-fi and fantasy stories. Remember folks, it’s just a theory.

Remembered Worlds

I watched Avatar this past weekend, and it got me thinking about the fantasy worlds created from human imagination, like Avatar’s Pandora, the world of wizards in Harry Potter, and the comic book universes of superheroes. What I’ve come to wonder as a lover of science fiction and fantasy stories is whether these worlds might be created out of lingering subconscious memories of past incarnations somewhere other than Earth.

There have been studies of past and between life regressions where several people have independently given very similar accounts of incarnations upon other planets, and have described strong opinions of spirits about the different planets on which they have lived. Is it possible that some of the fantastical things created by what we believe is our imagination might be faint recollections, or even nostalgic longings for these other worlds?

The theory gleaned from past and between life regressions is that when a spirit inhabits a new human on Earth, the person should start out with no conscious memory of where they come from, or any detailed awareness of the nature of the spiritual universe or any past incarnations. However sometimes, especially as we grow into our adult maturity, we start to feel a nagging sensation that maybe we come from a place much warmer, brighter, and more loving, and that feeling can consume us if we don’t feel connected to or motivated by our lives on Earth, with all of its hardship and suffering. For some people, this feeling can even lead them to commit suicide to escape a life on Earth.

Likewise, we can start to feel more connected to fantasy worlds than we do to the “real” world. Some people feel so connected to a fantasy world that they start living as if they really are a vampire, a wizard, or a member of Starfleet. People might just call them geeks, but what if they are channeling memories shared in our collective consciousness of these other worlds on which our spirits have previously incarnated?

If there are worlds out there on which we have superpowers, magical powers, or any other abilities that we don’t have here, that could help explain our human race’s compulsive obsession with acquiring power, and why for some people, no amount of power on Earth will ever be enough to satisfy them; if what they really want is to once again be able to fly, breathe underwater, connect psychically with animals, or shoot lightning bolts from their eyes, then mere money and material possessions won’t compensate for their limitations.

The idea of superior worlds or superpowers is so ubiquitous among humans’ creativity, and so many people feel such a strong connection to these fantasy worlds, it makes me think that maybe we didn’t just invent them from nothing. It would be amazing to find out after my spirit moves on that Superman’s home planet of Krypton and Avatar’s Pandora were based on real planets, and that somewhere in the universe, we really do use magic wands on a daily basis.

Even if those worlds are created from our deepest memories, while we are here on Earth, they are just fantasy. Obsessing about what we can’t do won’t help us learn what is possible. Committing to who and where we are right now will help us feel more at ease on this crazy rock. But if those other worlds are real, I wonder what memories about our lives here are recalled, and what the fantasy world of Earth as seen through the eyes of an alien would look like. What are the most amazing and special things about being a human on Earth that we will long for after we are gone?

EFH2T: Wait for the Birthday Girl, Don’t Whistle, Bless You

My latest post on Everything from here to there:

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Wait for the Birthday Girl, Don’t Whistle, Bless You.

I’m back online after many agonizing weeks of living in an internet-free apartment. And no, I couldn’t just go to a café. It’s cold out…!

Wait for the Birthday Girl, Don’t Whistle, Bless You

There are a lot of different social conventions by which we measure each others’ agreeability, some of which may seem obvious to us, although a bit random to an outsider. A recent incident got me thinking about social indexicality, the signs and signals we give that indicate who and where we are in relation to one another. Indexicality is a general term for signs that indicate state or causality (ie, smoke is an index of fire). Socially, we can make strong judgments about a person’s overall character based on small individual signs and of what those signs are indications.

The incident was this: one of my students made a special birthday cake for me this past weekend and brought it to the club where we perform so we could all enjoy it after a late show. The group sat together with the cake, waiting for me to finish working to begin eating. As I was just about to join them, I heard the group telling one girl to wait for me, but she said that she didn’t want to wait any more, and so took the first piece of my birthday cake. I was a bit baffled, because it seems like such an obvious social agreement that the person whose birthday it is should at the very least be there before the cake is eaten, which is what the rest of the group tried to tell her. By itself, it’s not a very big deal, but from the perspective of social indexicality, does an action like that indicate a deeper character state?

I’ve been on both sides of the question, having worked and lived in several other cultures. You could call culture shock “indexical shock”. Many years ago, I worked with a group of Russian women who had a lot of superstitions and traditions of which I was oblivious. One day I really upset them by absentmindedly whistling, because they had a very strong superstition about whistling in the workplace—something about blowing money away from the business—which they considered extremely rude. They were also very adamant about everyone frequently knocking on wood (or your head, if no wood was available—I still do this sometimes!).

Living in Germany, it’s been difficult to not judge people as individuals for the culture’s lack of similar social indexicality to mine—for example, I’m used to the indexical of “if you hold the door for other people, then that means you are a nice person.” Berliners don’t generally hold doors, nor do they engage in many other pleasantries that many Americans find essential for whatever we consider to be civilized coexistence. Feeling that judgment against a large group of people is very alienating, though, and can become a persistent subconscious preoccupation.

Some of our American indexicals include things that baffle many Europeans, like our compulsion to extend invitations out of politeness without actually wanting to fulfill them and our general will to over-consume as a sign of prosperity. One English-culture convention I don’t understand is that we’re still compelled to say “bless you” when people sneeze out of sheer politeness or fear that someone will think we don’t care, despite the fact that the action is based on thousand year old superstitions in which no one actually believes any more. Sneezing, in itself, is not an event that warrants any reverence, yet it’s a popular notion in our culture that if a person doesn’t say “bless you” after someone else’s sneeze, then that person is being rude.

None of the actual conventions are the point, of course, because whether or not something is considered the “right” way to behave is entirely relative to the culture and the subject of endless debate. Essentially, it comes down to what we respect as individuals; a convention becomes a convention because enough people agree with it that it becomes the standard indexical of fill-in-the-blank: nice, rude, generous, hygienic, considerate, selfish, etc.

So how much can we know based on indexicals? Is it appropriate to judge based on a person’s agreement or lack thereof with popular cultural conventions? I think it is valid in a lot of ways, because it helps us feel relaxed to know we are surrounded by people who value the same characteristics that we do, and we can’t very well go around asking people, “Hey, are you nice or are you rude?” We need some sign that indicates in a way we understand that a person possesses these qualities in a way in which we sympathize.

However, there is a difference between social agreement of indexicals and social conformity. Indexicals, as indicators of character traits, are more intuitive, or at the very least associative on a deeper psychological level. But if we’re consciously agreeing to a convention like saying “bless you” without actually respecting its validity as an indicator of character, which I have done and still do sometimes, much to my own dismay, then that is where the action stops being an indexical of individual character and becomes a sacrifice to conformity. Whether or not that sacrifice is worth making is up to you.

I recommend thinking about what you do and do not respect as indexical indicators of character versus blindly accepted cultural traditions. As we go through the major changes expected over the next few years, this could help us feel more relaxed with each other and in general. Personally, I do support the indexical of “if you wait for the birthday girl, then you are considerate”, but I firmly resolve to stop saying “bless you” when people sneeze. Why not say “bless you” because I mean it instead? That seems much nicer.

EFH2T: Here, or on the Horizon?

My latest post on Everything from here to there:

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Here, or on the Horizon?.

Here, or on the Horizon?

We live in a miniature version of the universe. There is a boundary called the cosmological horizon beyond which we cannot see because of the limited distance light has traveled since the beginning of time. As the universe expands, the horizon changes, revealing but still hiding from us the far, far future.

I like applying principles of the macrocosmic to the microcosmic, and this idea of the cosmological horizon got me thinking about some things here on Earth. If you imagine knowledge as the universe, then there is a boundary between what we can foresee knowing, based on what we already know, and what we can’t even fathom because our minds haven’t stretched that far yet. In other words, 200 years ago, with the invention of the locomotive, people could probably start imagining such vehicles as automobiles in the future, even though the practical knowledge was still missing. However, it probably didn’t occur to anyone that the automobiles could hook up to handheld music playing devices, or would release six airbags upon impact, because those ideas were way beyond the horizon of knowledge at the time.

So I started thinking about our current knowledge horizon, what we can imagine learning, and where the boundary lies. It’s very possible that we are on the cusp of revealing something extraordinary in any area of research at all times, but not all areas are given the same priority, or the same resources.

For example, In January 2006, NASA launched its New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, which will give us the first real look at our farthest neighbors and the mess of stuff collected in the outer rim of our solar system. I can’t tell you how excited I am to see an actual picture of Pluto and Charon and the new dwarf planets in the KB and scattered disc regions. I’ve always been a huge astronomy nerd—the first thing I ever wanted to be was an astronomer, in fact—so I was shocked when this thought popped in my head one day:

“Is this really necessary right now?”

It’s a terrible thing for me to think, and I immediately felt guilty because of how much I love astronomy. But a lot of problems have piled up in the world: environmental demise, economic meltdowns, human rights atrocities, the rates of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, etc. I wondered if sending a $650 million probe to the edge of our solar system was really the best way to use our resources to push the knowledge horizon, and moreover, how much of our global resources are put towards scientific exploration that is not, at this point in time, of any particular use to us, like New Horizons, Cassini, the LHC, and other big ticket projects.

There are a few ways to look at this. The avid advocate of science in me—and I’m only using scientific research as an example, not in any way suggesting that there is nothing less important—says that all areas of knowledge are intrinsically linked, and there’s no way to eliminate the possibility that research into the depths of our solar system has a positive effect on research into disease prevention or environment-improving technology. Also, scientific exploration enriches our lives and helps us relate to the universe. But the pragmatist in me wonders if it’s not a bit irresponsible to take resources away from an area that is an immediate problem, like climate change, and give them to a project that is, like New Horizons, more or less about curiosity.

NASA does have many projects that are environmentally driven, however its annual budget is $17.6 billion compared to the EPA’s $7.3 billion. While many of NASA’s exploratory missions may, at some point in the future, help us better understand the Earth’s environment and why these changes are happening and how to stop/reverse them, is there enough support for practical solutions to real problems right now?

Imagine what could be done with an extra $650 million… How many portable water purifiers could be distributed to impoverished areas of the world? How many buildings could be fitted with solar panels? For how many people could that amount of money provide health care? Could we find a cure for AIDS and cancer sooner? Could the US implement a broader and better recycling and toxic waste management program? And so on…

But on the other side of the argument, if we cut funding for exploratory projects, how do we know that we aren’t setting ourselves up for a big problem in the future—a problem that we can’t foresee because it is beyond our current knowledge horizon? Or how do we know that what we discover in an exploratory project won’t cause a train-of-thought revelation in a completely unrelated area of research? And practical reasons aside, wouldn’t we miss them? I recently watched a video of aurorae on Saturn over and over, completely mesmerized…

I guess it’s a question of either trying to push the knowledge horizon for the sake of seeing more, or making practical use of what we’ve got right now. Honestly, I have absolutely no idea what is right; it breaks my heart to think that I won’t have the chance to jaunt off to Jupiter someday, but it also breaks my heart to think about all the people who don’t have clean water, or the consequences of our inability thus far to come up with a healthy way to live on this planet.

Sadly, the rate at which our knowledge horizon expands is usually proportional to the amount of money put towards it. I hope that as our horizon expands, a solution to that problem will be revealed. If we’re lucky, a high-resolution image of Pluto will help us get there.

EFH2T and H.G. Wells: The Superlative Now

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » The Superlative Now.

My second post on Billy Corgan’s holistic livin’ blog looks at H.G. Wells’ description of the world in Comet, and compares the “bad” world then with the “bad” world now.

I’m honestly starting to wonder if we’ve always hated the world, or if there’s ever been a time in the past where people have been generally cool about things the way they were. It seems that as the world gets smaller, our complaints get bigger.

The Superlative Now

I just finished reading In the Days of the Comet, written by H.G. Wells over one hundred years ago, which is a before and after description of the world and relationships around the time of a great “Change”. Without giving too much of the story away, I’m amazed by the similarities in the lead character’s description of the “before” world, the bad world that everyone was so happy to see disappear, and our world today, the world that we all seem to be hoping will disappear as well. Aside from the dated vocabulary and writing style, quite a lot can be readily adapted to describe the world as it is now.

On the economy:

” Here… we’re on the verge of the biggest lock-out in the history of this country-side; here’s distress and hunger coming, here’s all the capitalistic competitive system like a wound inflamed…”

On war:

“On no conceivable grounds was there any sense in modern war. Save for the slaughter and mangling of a multitude of people, the destruction of vast quantities of material, and the waste of innumerable units of energy, it effected nothing.”

On material inequity:

“…Through the private ownership of land that had resulted from the neglect of feudal obligations in Britain and the utter want of political foresight in the Americas, large masses of property had become artificially stable in the hands of a small minority, to whom it was necessary to mortgage all new public and private enterprises, and who were held together not by any tradition of service and nobility but by the natural sympathy of common interests and a common large scale of living.”

On religious extremism:

“You can no more understand our theological passions than you can understand the fancies that made all ancient peoples speak of their gods only by circumlocutions, that made savages pine away and die because they had been photographed, or an Elizabethan farmer turn back from a day’s expedition because he had med three cows.”

“Suffice it that we lost our tempers very readily in pursuit of God and Truth, and said exquisitely foolish things on either side.”

On the environment:

“Young people nowadays can scarcely hope to imagine the enormous quantities of pure litter and useless accumulation with which we had to deal…”

On health:

“…A large part of the physical decline that was apparent in our people during the closing years of the nineteenth century… no doubt due in part to the miscellaneous badness of the food they ate…”

On popular culture:

“…Penny fiction, watery, base stuff, the dropsy of our nation’s mind… warped and crippled ideas and contagious base suggestions, the formulae of dull tolerances and stupid impatiences, the mean defensive ingenuities of sluggish habits of thinking and timid and indolent evasions.”

And so on.

Reading this book, I’ve been reflecting on the idea that we seem to be generally convinced that “now” is always the greatest challenge, the most dramatic time, the superlative moment, and it continues to be. But if we have felt that way in the past, why do we keep feeling that way? And why do we continue to have reason to feel that way?

There’s a whole school of thought around the concept of focusing one’s energy and attention exclusively on “now”, not living in the past or in the future. I’ve studied that idea and been convinced of its merits, but I feel that something is being left out. If we don’t reflect on the past or consider the effect of today on the future, how can we have any perspective on the present?

Here’s a silly example: as I write this, I am recovering from what is, in reality, a very minor cold. I hate being sick, as do most of us, so I tend to feel a bit pathetic and dramatic whenever it happens, probably just because of that feeling of general helplessness and lack of control over my body. That, and it feels nasty.

Amazingly enough, however, I have to go out of my way to remind myself that I’ve been much more sickly in the past—in fact, I know that the worst flu I’ve ever had happened about a year and a half ago—and that in just a few days I’ll be fine again. Even though I completely understand those facts, it still feels just a little bit false, because I can only really experience the way I feel right this second.

As a larger example, if I look at my life objectively, then the lowest point has to be when I was 15 years old. Even now, I go back and forth between feeling like it was all a horrible nightmare, and feeling like I’m reliving everything I went through all over again. But somehow, even though intellectually I see that as the worst of the worst, it still feels as though all the pain I feel today, now, in this moment is somehow bigger; even though I “know” that whatever trials I face today are trivial by comparison, it’s sometimes hard to muster the energy and motivation to face them.

Wells’ protagonist, on his former life:

“…Has not some queer nightmare spirit out of dreamland slipped a pseudo-memory into the records of my vanished life?”

Wells’ book demonstrates this “superlative now” idea on the large scale; we, as a global community, seem to understand intellectually and have some perspective on the challenges we face today based on the trials of the past, but in practice, that understanding sometimes feels false.

I’m currently living in Berlin, a place with some obvious dark points in the past. Everyone still talks about the Wall all the time, but it’s very romanticized and glamorized the way people tell the story now. Then there’s the Nazis, which the Germans on a personal level try their hardest not to talk about, but on a national level take a stern, confrontational stance to talk about publicly.

But the things people are upset about these days are taxes, the Deutsche Bahn, the welfare system giving people too much money, the welfare system not giving people enough money, the weather, how lame the Berlin club scene has gotten, etc. I’m generalizing, but the point is that I have never once heard anyone say, “Y’know what? This is nothing compared to WWII.”

I am not suggesting that we all start living in the past, or to take the problems we face today—both personally and globally—less seriously, but I feel that at least for myself, freaking out about every little thing that comes up in the “superlative now”, regardless of how trivial it might be, is a waste of energy.

When we feel that now is the most difficult time ever, I think it can seem like an extremely daunting task to try and improve things. So maybe having just a bit more perspective could help us put the energy we use freaking out to practical use; that energy could be motivating instead, as if to say, “We’ve gotten through greater challenges, so we can do this.”

The characters in Wells’ book figure this out as well. After the great Change, everyone is immediately struck with horror and guilt over what they now considered to be a lifestyle based on utter insanity and cruelty. But they don’t allow themselves to dwell, knowing what work there is to be done to make the world the place they envision from their new perspective.

“I was doing nothing to prevent it all! …And it’s fools like us that lead to things like this! …But this is being a fool. Talk! I’m going to stop it.”

EFH2T: Blind Science/Blind Faith

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Blind Science/Blind Faith.

My first guest post on Billy Corgan’s new blog about holistic livin’.

Blind Science/Blind Faith

Working with the concept of Holistic Living, I reflected upon something that affects me on an almost daily basis: how science and spirituality turn a blind eye to each other to preserve themselves. (I’m not speaking of anyone in particular, but rather the idea of using science or spirituality as the exclusive foundation of a belief system.)

The two extreme arguments go something like this:

Science: The universe is made up of matter. We can, through experimentation and observation, see it.

Spirituality: The Universe is divine. We can, through faith, believe in it.

And the flaws in those arguments go something like this:

Science: Well, ok, 95% of the universe is kind of “missing”.

Spirituality: Prove it? Sorry, that’s not what we do.

At the root of both these perspectives is control. Scientists research and experiment in an attempt to discover the Truth; the unified theory of Everything. The idea seems to be that if Man can completely understand his environment, then he can exert complete control over it. But when science encounters something inexplicable that doesn’t fit within its parameters, it is often ignored, or worse, mocked.

Spiritualists, through prayer and meditation, also attempt discover the Truth; the meaning of life. The Everything. The idea here seems to be that if Man can completely understand the nature of his existence, then he can exert complete control over it—even by surrendering control over it. However, anything in the material universe that might contradict strong spiritual convictions is often ignored, or mocked… or killed.

It seems obvious on paper that everyone’s chasing the same Everything, and the reason why we don’t have It could be on account of a protective blind spot that forces a wedge between the two belief systems.

I wonder what kind of conversations took place when scientists believed that the world was flat, or that the sun orbited the Earth; how many people spoke with absolute certainty, and how many people questioned the accepted Truth of the day? I am particularly interested in the evolution of scientific truths as a student of astrology, hoping that someday it will be at least (re)accepted as a valid scientific theory as well as a metaphysical practice. One of the most common arguments against astrology is that it can’t answer all of science’s questions, when it seems more likely to me, as a believer in astrology’s validity, that science just doesn’t accept the answers because they don’t fit under its umbrella. I could be completely wrong, of course, but I wonder if Copernicus felt the same way.

However, throughout history, some arguments for or against ideas have been supported only by an absolute faith. I grew up surrounded by a group of people who believed they were conversing directly with God—whether or not they were is not the point—and what struck me was, again, this powerful conviction with which they spoke; if they received from God that the Earth is flat, then it would be Truth, despite any sign to the contrary. Beyond the debate of literal facts, many people have died in battles only because of their, or someone else’s spiritual convictions.

The point is that integration of the two belief systems works better than selective acceptance of reality.

Where did all the brilliant breakthroughs in science come from? Someone had an idea first. And where did the idea come from? Part of it is logic, but the spark was that special voice in our heads—call it God, or intuition… the voice that says, “What if…?” But what if no one ever listened to that voice?

And what if we never took that idea and put it through the scientific process? We might still be in the forest staring at the two rocks in our hairy hands, grunting about how we’re sick of eating cold rabbit. (Some might argue we’d be better off, but I digress.)

Most of us probably live somewhere in between the two extremes, so the challenge is to know when we’re using the blind spot to avoid fully integrating them. Am I ignoring something inexplicable in my life because I don’t understand it? Or do I have a conviction that I suspect may be getting in the way of my living a healthy life, but stick to it just because it’s what I believe?

The blind spot between science and spirituality can be cut with Occam’s razor: “plurality should not be posited without necessity”. (Is it a coincidence that Ockham himself was both a scientist and devout Catholic?) The argument is basically that if multiple theories describe the same thing, the simpler one should be used. In this case, the two theories seem to describe the same thing, but because of the blind spot, they argue that they are different.

The thing of it is, there is no room for faith in science, because science can’t handle the uncertainty. And there’s no room for science in spirituality, because the definition of faith says it can’t—or won’t—be proven. But what if they are the evening star and the morning star—two sides of the same belief system? Maybe they just need a new title: spirence!