Some thoughts written to an emerging friend ...

On friendship:

I don't know if I want friendship with anyone else at any point prior to a friendship "happening". It's kind of something that happens. I NEVER start off with "friendship" as a goal. Mostly I pursue doing things with others who motivate me because I don't do much of anything outside of my "stirring mud puddles" unless there is someone else involved with whom I experience that sense of "wanting to do" something ... out of which friendship sometimes happens, but mostly it doesn't (EXTREMELY rare when it does ... to which I would add, thank god!) ... and I am always surprised when it does. And that's due in great part to my not pursuing friendship except when lo and behold it's there, already happening.

In examining my friendships as a result of this dialog between us, I think I am drawn to those who who make me think more deeply about things I want to think about, and who are able to motivate me to do stuff with them ... "stuff" that is interesting and "worthwhile" to do (in my estimation of these things)... stuff that stimulates my mind. For instance, as to group activity, I don't enjoy dancing. Nor do I enjoy something like building a house for low income families with other like-minded individuals.

These examples—dancing and building houses for low income families—are taken from real life ... my life. People I know and admire enjoy both of these activities. I don't. It used to be that I would try to accommodate their interests, then I learned it is better to find the mutually enjoyable activities and do those things together. But sometimes it is difficult to convince someone that I really don't enjoy (to look forward to or to participate in) some activities ... and that I do enjoy the other person in the mutually compatible activities.


On enlightenment:

No, I don't believe I have achieved "enlightenment" on any other level than my own personal satisfaction with who I am and what I "have". And the very real sense my life has been full and complete ... I don't have ANY "I wish I would have been able to do that's" in my life. And it is because (I think) I made choices that I wanted to make ... and took the consequences, tried to "carry my own water", as Nick Nolte's character said in one of his movies.

I have absolutely no doubt that as long as I continue to live and can retain my ability to reason, I will continue to live this way ... in this sense I will continue to grow and change, because that is living.

On regrets:

Some of my choices have brought pain to others whom I loved and cared about. I do regret that. The alternative--I believe--was to remain imprisoned in the expectations of others. I chose to be free. I don't regret that choice.

On the nature of the cosmos:

I accept chaos theory and the "proof" of the inherent complexity of the cosmos as expressed in fractal mathematics. The flapping of the butterfly's wings does make a difference. But it is not for the butterfly in China to try to control the hurricane in the Caribbean, it is for the butterfly to flap its wings.

Chaos theory and fractals allow me to believe that the cosmos (the totality of what we know and don't know about "what is") has the inherent complexity required to produce life. As we existentialists say, it doesn't matter whether God exists or not. There is enough here to explain what's going on without resorting to God. In fact, if God does exist then we have more philosophical problems (conundrums) to deal with than if he/she doesn't exist.

And in trying to resolve these conundrums stemming from a belief in a God, we tie ourselves in social knots ... when simply being human beings would be so much more satisfying and enjoyable.

Chaos theory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In mathematics and physics, chaos theory deals with the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamic systems that under certain conditions exhibit a phenomenon known as chaos, which is characterized by a sensitivity to initial conditions (see butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, the behavior of systems that exhibit chaos appears to be random, even though the model of the system is deterministic in the sense that it is well defined and contains no random parameters. Examples of such systems include the atmosphere, the solar system, plate tectonics, turbulent fluids, economies, and population growth.

Systems that exhibit mathematical chaos are deterministic and thus orderly in some sense; this technical use of the word chaos is at odds with common parlance, which suggests complete disorder. See the article on mythological chaos for a discussion of the origin of the word in mythology, and other uses. Chaos theory deals with deterministic systems, and a related field of physics called quantum chaos theory studies non-deterministic systems that follow the laws of quantum mechanics.


Butterfly effect
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The butterfly effect is a phrase that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. The idea is that small variations in the initial conditions of a dynamical system produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. Sensitive dependence is also found in non-dynamical systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.

The practical consequence of the butterfly effect is that complex systems such as the weather are difficult to predict past a certain time range - approximately a week, in the case of weather. This is because any finite model that attempts to simulate a system must necessarily truncate some information about the initial conditions—for example, when simulating the weather, one would not be able to include the wind coming from every butterfly's wings. In all practical cases, defects in the knowledge of the initial conditions and deficiencies in the model are equally important sources of error. In a chaotic system, these errors are magnified as the simulation progresses. Thus the predictions of the simulation are useless after a certain finite amount of time.

Edward Lorenz first analyzed the effect in a 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Sciences. According to the paper, "One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings could change the course of weather forever." Later speeches and papers by Lorenz used the more poetic butterfly, possibly inspired by the diagram generated by the Lorenz attractor, which looks like a butterfly; other theories propose that the phrase's basis is to be found in fiction (Ray Bradbury's 1952 story "A Sound of Thunder"), but there is no proof available that Lorenz was swayed by literary precedent. The idea is now often stated something to the effect of, “a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo could cause tornadoes in California.”

Fractal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A fractal is a geometric object which is rough or irregular on all scales of length, and therefore appears to be 'broken up' in a radical way. Fractals can be most simply defined as images that can be divided into parts, each of which is similar to the original object. Fractals are said to possess infinite detail, and some of them have a self-similar structure that occurs at different scales, or levels of magnification. In many cases, a fractal can be generated by a repeating pattern, in a typically recursive or iterative process. The term fractal was coined in 1975 by Benoît Mandelbrot, from the Latin fractus or "broken". Before Mandelbrot coined his term, the common name for such structures (the Koch snowflake, for example) was monster curve.

Fractals of many kinds were originally studied as mathematical objects. Fractal geometry is the branch of mathematics which studies the properties and behavior of fractals. It describes many situations which cannot be explained easily by classical geometry, and has often been applied in science, technology, and computer-generated art. The conceptual roots of fractals can be traced to attempts to measure the size of objects for which traditional definitions based on Euclidean geometry or calculus fail.

The most characteristic property of fractals is that they are generally irregular (not smooth) in shape, and thus are not objects definable by traditional geometry. That means that fractals tend to have significant detail, visible at any arbitrary scale; when there is self-similarity, this can occur because magnification simply shows similar pictures. Such sets are usually defined instead by recursion.

...

For example, a normal Euclidean shape, such as a circle, looks flatter and flatter as it is magnified. At infinite magnification it would be impossible to tell the difference between the circle and a straight line. Fractals do not exhibit this property. The conventional idea of curvature, which represents the reciprocal of the radius of an approximating circle, cannot usefully apply because it scales away. Instead, with a fractal, increasing the magnification reveals more detail that was previously invisible.

My thoughts:

What I like about chaos theory is the idea of how even the smallest event at the beginning of a chain of events can hugely affect the outcome ... without the "actor" in the beginning event having any real control over the outcome in the sense of "knowing" or "planning" the outcome. The role of the butterfly is to flap its wings, not plan hurricanes in the Caribbean or wind storms in California. Translated into my existence, I do not know the effect my life will have on the cosmos. I simply must be who I am. That is enough for my part in the unfolding cosmos.

What I like about fractals is the coherent complexity at all levels. Life is like that. To me it means that the cosmos has an inherent capacity for the complexity of life. So the question is pushed back to,Where did the cosmos come from? or, has it "always" been? I experience existence as coming out of what was and going into what will be. My awareness of the experience of my existence is my realm of being. I existed prior to my awareness of my existence, and my awareness is formed by my existence ... in any case I am aware of a capacity to choose, and in choosing out of all the choices I can imagine, I choose to create an "isness". In choosing what I will make happen (in choosing the "isness" to be), I choose what "ought" to be ... in the grand old religious ideal of "faith without works is dead".

Ah, yes ... the uncertainites of existence ... fractals, really ... no matter how closely we examine them, they are simply as deep and as rich as they are on the surface. And in chaos, the smallest smile or frown accompanying some part of a glance in some direction ... can cause worlds to rise or collapse. Best we ride the waves--the vicissitudes--of life, safe in the knowledge of who we are ... I am that little farm boy from Northern Minnesota, wandering the forests surrounding the family farm, exploring and discovering, living ... fully aware that I AM all that I can be.

On religions:

Yes, I was made aware of religion as a child. First, I believed Heaven was a real place and Moscow was make-believe. (Heaven was their idea, Moscow was mine.) And that Santa was real ... then it began to dawn on me that adults were telling me things for reasons other than simply telling me the truth. I thought for awhile up into my early teen years that there was a higher truth in all this that I had to discover ... and I went in search of it. The search evolved into an exploration of my awareness of my existence ... with lots of dead ends. I didn't give up, because I believed the search, the personal exploration of my own life through my own awareness of living it, was worth it. Out of which I have accepted a label as a transcendental existentialist (for whenever I am asked if I have one).

Until I took off for Alaska in September of 1995, I was never sure I would be satisfied, that I would be able to live the life that satisfied me, and be able to keep it going. Now, I am sure and I have already done it to the point that if my life ended at this moment I would know--literally know--that I have lived my complete life.

My only concern is that something would happen to me that would cause me to lose my ability to choose, and yet I know that, too, would be part of life ... so I am not "afraid" of that happening.