The blog of a North Country Swede!

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Catching the sunlight ...

My first YouTube video clip ...

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Life has purpose

From dictionary.com we learn the definition of "purpose":
n 1: an anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides your planned actions;
purpose. (n.d.). WordNet® 2.0. Retrieved November 18, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/purpose

If we plant a carrot seed we anticipate getting a carrot if we nuture its growth.

But we cannot say that life is "the" or even "a" purpose of the cosmos. There is no reason to believe that life developed other than because it was the possible outcome that occurred. Life didn't "have" to happen. It "did" happen.

But once it happened and the functionality—the ongoing capability—of life to replicate biochemical events persisted long enough for the existence of life to produce the awareness of existence then human life took on purpose and meaning:

meaning n 2: the end, purpose, or significance of something: What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of this intrusion?

meaning. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1). Retrieved November 18, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/meaning
Existence preceeds awareness and awareness preceeds purpose ... for having a purpose is the anticipation of an outcome of which one must be aware—even if it is imaginary.

To extrapolate the reverse sequence of purpose producing awareness producing existence as in the mind of God ... is what has gotten the human race into trouble ... because it can be clearly seen that we attribute OUR purposes to our Gods. We imbue our Gods with our purposes ... and therein lies the crux of our error.

For as the existentialist says, it matters not whether God exists or doesn't exist, for we are aware of our existence and not of God.

It's like the foxhole prayer ... everyone prays it (or most everyone). Those who survive gives thanks to God. Those who don't survive, we don't hear from.

More to come.

Existence preceeds awareness ...

Existence preceeds awareness ... so what?

So that is the defining understanding of our experience ... and why I call myself an existentialist.

There was no "awareness" that "produced/created" existence. Existence produced awareness. Awareness "arose" out of the consistent replication of biochemical events.

This not so hard to fathom now that we know that simple states of "on" and "off" or "1" and "0" can produce in their complex combinations and recombining of combinations into new combinations, the computer program (software) as separate from yet dependent upon the actual computer equipment (hardware).

And it is the consistent functioning of the underlying operating system (Mac OS, Windows XP, DOS, Unix ... ) that allows the building of higher levels of integrated software.

Some thoughts ...

There has to be more than one state of energy/matter ... because with only one state, we would have uniformity throughout the universe/cosmos.

What "is" comes out of what "was". Which also means that what is going on now is the seeded ground from which the future arises. Even if there was a "beginning" preceeded by "nothing", that beginning arose out of that nothing ... and that is why I am a transcendalist ... or a transcendental existentialist.

What we have learned form chaos theory is that even the smallest act can have a huge effect on future events ... like the pebble at the top of mountain diverting the bloulder as it starts to roll down the mountainside and changing where it will wind up at the bottom; therefore everything I do—and everyone of us—is important.

Note: I use "universe" to denote the known and "cosmos" to denote everything, the known and the unknown.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Notes on the journey ... Friday, November 17, 2006

I'm back in New Jersey. I flew in from Alaska on the evening of November 7 in time to vote.

I'm chronicling my trip to Interior Alaska—which started when I left for Florida on Friday, September 8—over on my Steese Review blog.

Here I want to restart my musings about cultural/economic/political/social stuff affecting my corner of the world ... for which, by the way, there was an excellent post by Jeff Madrick over on The Huffington Post titled "Milton Friedman: Not A Man For All Seasons". I recommend reading it ... plus Tim Sanders' post "Bury Friedman's Concept Of A Good Company", and David Goldstein's "On Milton Friedman, Comment Spam, and the Amorality of the Market", both also on The Huffington Post.

That election was something else, wasn't it? Wow! And then James Carville has the audacity to criticize Howard Dean's leadership of the Democratic National Committee. Carville has clearly lost it, whatever it was that he had. Read the straight scoop about Dean's leadership in the Kansas City Star.

Now we get to see what happens ... and it still may come to invoking Jack Cafferty's (of CNN) solution and impose term limits on everyone in Congress who was there prior to this last election.

Bush? Rove? They're totally exposed as carnival shills or clowns ... depending on your point of view.

But like I said, I'll watch how it unfolds ... see what happens when the new Congress convenes in January ... that's not too long for me, though it sure as hell is an ungodly long time for those in the military fighting and dying and getting wounded for what is now pretty much acknowledged as a lie and a mistake.

In the interim I'm going to spend some time letting my emerging understanding of the cosmos take shape here.