The State of Flux

Aristotle believed that the only Truth (by Truth, we’re talking about something pure, immutable, absolute) that existed was God, the Unmoved Mover, the external force that initiated existence. He also believed that everything in the universe is moving through an innate process toward actualizing toward its fullest potential. All creatures, all objects, all people just move toward their greatest possibilities. They don’t have to think about it, they just do it. Life makes it happen.

Perhaps, and I think this is what Aristotle meant by the idea, the Unmoved Mover is also in the process of actualizing Its greatest potential. In fact, Its potential—the greatest potential that It always and forever more strives to attain, is Change. That’s all, simply Change itself.

In continuously striving to be something else, It is always in the process of recreating Itself, and it always succeeds. Meanwhile it is also concurrently fulfilling greatest potential. In this way, God and the Universe are perfect. God is always in the being of becoming. The Universe is always in the state of Change.

That’s the purpose. That’s the point. That’s what it’s all about.

Meanwhile, this Aristotelian God is floating out there somewhere in the ether, behind the Great Veil, completely absorbed in self-contemplation, detached from all events on Earth, accepting all that is and all that ever will be.

A Different Perspective on the Natural World

I’d like to share this with you. It’s about animals, but could be extended to plant life and the entire natural world:

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living through complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their inicompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

—Henry Benston, The Outermost House

Why You Should Clear Your Mind Before Traveling (Or Before Getting Out of Bed)

Uploaded by SmrocketAly3 at photobucket.com

The mind is a clamorous, vociferous, vehement critter. Leaving the mind to the whims of fancy is like walking around with an alarm sounding over your shoulder. Here are a few reasons to quiet the resounding, the nagging, the hounding, grumbling, badgering, the tormenting, the criticizing, analyzing , the one and only, mind.

For Appreciation

When your mind is running like clockwork, you can’t see what’s really before you. You might think you’re seeing the Great Wall or the Grand Canyon before you, but you’re not. You’re closer to your thoughts than to your physical senses. You’re thinking about that swank new car you want, or the cutie you saw at the gas station, or your checkbook, or whether you left the oven on,  or how hungry you are, and on and on and on. Your attention leaves you and goes somewhere else. Instead, try appreciating your surroundings without concerning yourself with something that is not present.

That’s not to say that your mind should be inactive. If you’re in a daze, numb, unfeeling, your mind isn’t really clear either. It’s fogged, perhaps even in a daydream, which is like unconscious thinking (an even deeper state of oblivion). Clarity allows for activity of the mind—healthy, productive activity, similar to how your body might feel after a good run. You’re not exhausted, but rather energized and invigorated. And because of this, you can experience the things before you and fully appreciate them.

To Expand Awareness

If you do much people watching, you’ve probably noticed how many people are concerned with their own lives in their daily activities. We fix our hair, checking out our reflections as we pass by a pane of glass. Much of the time, weust’re so unaware of their own distractions that they let their thoughts carry them about from the time they get out of bed to the time they return. These are broad generalizations, and no one particular person falls into this state of zombiedom, but as a whole, humanity seems to follow these patterns, with a few exceptions. You can break the mold by clearing your mind and expanding your own awareness. See the world around you. Pay attention to the colors in the room. Take note of the eye color of the next person you come into contact with. Do you even name the exact eye color of your closest friends? Detect the faintest sounds that your ear can muster. Taste your coffee. How is the bean and the brew different from your last cup? If you’re still drinking the same old coffee day after day, mix it up! Try something new.

Humans fail to appreciate their surroundings if they become too familiar. Familiarity breeds regularity, and regularity breeds oblivion. If you’ve worked in the same office, or lived in the same room so long that you don’t even really see it anymore, change it. Renew your perspective and flex your power of awareness.

To Remove Judgment and Prejudice

The plague of prejudice is among the greatest causes of ignorance. So easy is it to conclude that we know that something is such and such, and this leads us to overlook possibilities for new discovery. Things rarely prove to be exactly as they seem. Even something as simple as the grass can bear a new secret [link to grass article]. Clearing the mind can reveal the world for “what it really is,” as I’ve heard the Buddhist and other philosophies insist. To chime another cliché, remember to empty your cup if you are to gain anything new.

Uploaded by barrowrules at photobucket.com

A busy mind is like a cluttered desk. They can be fun to explore, but in the end, the mind possesses little actual wisdom. It’s loud and entertaining, but in its professing of knowledge, it makes itself a fool. Most of the time, the stuff gets in the way and you just can’t find anything useful.

A clear mind is a focused mind. It has direction and functions like a well oiled machine, or rather, a new computer. Do you remember when you turned on your computer for the first time and it ran like a dream? After clogging up the space with all your stuff, the memory gets bogged down, and runs slower, just like your mind. Your distractions keep you from staying on target, even if your target is simply to enjoy a quiet walk in the park.

What Next?

By now you might be asking, how do I keep my mind quiet? Practice, practice, practice. If you’re not used to it, you might find that clearing your mind is a difficult task. Thoughts chime in, jingles play in your head. Even the meditative and serene can find it challenging in certain times and places, but the benefits are well worth the efforts. Persevere, and look for future posts for tips on how myself and others have achieved clarity.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health. I think this is really cool, and it’s all thanks to you:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has 296 steps to reach the top. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2010. If those were steps, it would have climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa 4 times

In 2010, there were 14 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 23 posts. There were 3 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 10mb.

The busiest day of the year was June 19th with 33 views. The most popular post that day was Call Me a Pessimist, but….

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, linkedin.com, slashingtongue.com, android-vs-ipad.co.cc, and twitter.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for the cosmological principle definition, ed benes artwork, cosmological principle definition, cosmological principle no center, and cosmological meaning of life.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Call Me a Pessimist, but… June 2010
1 comment

2

About Me December 2009

3

BP Oil Spill Reaches 100K Barrels May 2010

4

Oneness and You (The Meaning of Life, Part 2) May 2010
1 comment

5

Welcome December 2009

The Art of Living: Solitary Refinement

Uploaded to Flickr by thorinside on June 30, 2007

I’ve been on another sabbatical from the blog and I’m surprised at how many of you have frequently returned to check on updates. For that I thank you, and I appologize for my absence, but the blog benefits from my periodical recession. I’ve come to realize that each time I leave the blog for a time, I return with a fresh perspective on how I would like to redesign its content and subject matter. Each time it becomes more refined.  Each time it evolves into something better.

I was writing with a friend over coffee recently when I came across an article titled something like “50 Rules for Writers”.

I scoffed. 50 rules? Seemed a bit much. But I read anyway. Rule #4: Specialize. This sent me into a stir. How can I specialize into a single field? Which field would I ever choose: Poetry? Fiction? Nonfiction? What about genres: Fantasy? Nature? Philosophy? Academia? The formats even can be specialized: Blog? Novel? Article? I’ve always been a generalist, and it took two years to even settle on a major in college.

As always, my friend helped calm me down. He later approached me in my backyard during one of my nature stints. I was crawling around on all fours with my head in the grass.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked.

“Tracking my own footsteps.”

“Listen,” he said, “Maybe you shouldn’t take this ’50 Rules’ thing so seriously. Don’t worry about specializing. They like to put you in a box so they know whom to call whenever they need a ‘such-and-such’ article written. You don’t have to set out saying ‘I’m going to write only ‘these kinds’ of articles.’ Just write what you write and you’ll refine yourself along the way.” He paused for a moment, “So what I’m saying then is to focus yourself without pigeon-holing yourself.”

I pulled my head out of the grass. He was right. “You’re right,” I told him. “There’s a difference between proclaiming yourself a specialized writer on the outset and writing whatever it is that calls to you, and then slowly refining yourself into a unique shape.”

It’s like carving down a tree. You can process it in the lumber yard, cutting through with a buzz saw on a  conveyor belt to reach its desired shape and size to look like all the others. Or you can slowly carve the tree down by hand with a series of hand tools. The latter requires much more effort, but the remaining shape will be uniquely yours, and in the end, that is your craft. The shavings that remain on the floor signify each step toward a finer, more complete you.

In order to focus without specializing, I’ve learned to look, not toward a particular subject to focus on, but toward the common denominator in all of my writings. I have discovered this: that nature is my home and my sanctuary, that when I’m not writing, I am philosophizing or tracking or learning plants or ancient fire building techniques. It’s survival. I’m a nature writer. And the Cosmological Principle—this is my nature blog.

My Tutoring Blog

I’m now a tutor—independently as well as a contractor for WyzAnt.com—and I’m starting a blog on that website. Other tutors and prospective tutees will find the information from the slew of blogs valuable. I don’t plan on posting there as regularly as I have been with this blog; only as I am blessed with tutoring insights. If you like, you may follow that blog HERE, and I will link those posts on this site of course.

Success!

In case you didn’t hear, I’m a published freelancer now! You can check out my first paid publication here.

A Few Effects of Nuclear Catastrophe

In these recent years and months of natural and unnatural disaster (with the gulf oil spill, groundbreaking earthquakes, city-leveling hurricanes, and beach crashing tsunamis), we’ve all come to realize that the improbable is much more possible than we thought.

In the growing advent of natural disaster around the world, I saw a program on The National Geographic Channel concerning the life processes on Earth after the eradication of humans. The program mentioned nuclear power plants, another very possible disaster that we might like to keep our eyes on as we cautiously creep into the future in these times of increasing catastrophe.

The short-term and long-term effects of neglecting the power plant are inconceivable. Just ten days without maintenance, an unmanned nuclear power plant would result in a nuclear explosion 500 times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, leaving a wasteland the size of the state of Alabama. The program explained that plutonium would to last for 250,000 years and spread radioactive waste across the land while carried on the winds, contaminating everything in its path. The radiation would damage the chlorophyl in all plant life that it came into contact with.

If you slept through your biology class and smeared your notes with drool, I’ll remind you that chlorophyl is a key component for photosynthesis and results in the green coloration in plant life. With the chlorophyl radioactively damaged, all tainted plants would turn a malevolent crimson red. Combine that with the ash and debris that settled and the radioactivity, and you’ve got tainted badlands.

I made a quick Google search and I found that much of the continental United States harbors nuclear power plants, especially in the East, but with toxic plutonium carried on the winds safety may not even be possible in the continental US or even this part of the world. Who knows? The “safe” states are as follows: Montana, North Dakota, western South Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and West Texas.

Photo original and manipulated version uploaded by Ryan Hochstatter. Retains all rights.

You Really Should Call Your Mother

Happy Earth Day (April 22), originally uploaded by John ‘K’.

Many of us fear what will happen in the coming months and years with the current state of the world. I think we fear because we care. It is for the very reason of caring that we fear things. This is because we can discern value. Some of us value planet Earth. Some of us even refer to it as our Mother.

We’ve seen animals display fear. They fight or flee. They guard their young against threats. They care. But how far does the emotion go? Do bugs fear? Can cells fear? My body reacts when a sharp blade lacerates the skin. The blood coagulates and the cells go to work to repair the organ and protect from further infection. But do cells fear? Do little sperm value their existence as they lay dying wrapped in a tissue at the bottom of a wastebasket? I don’t know.

I laid thinking about this and the processes of life one night while trying to sleep; the dichotomy between male and female, between egg and sperm. Then I had a vision, the egg as Mother Earth, and the sperm invading it as civilization. Mother Earth—feminine. Civilization—masculine.

Maybe, just maybe, this is the reason that men dominate the working world. And maybe, just maybe, as long as we live in civilization, will men supposedly rule the world (though some say otherwise). In order to return to the world of women, we would have to live in the wild, close to the Earth Mother. So the vision goes anyway.

Will we ever see our Mother again?” you might ask.

I say, “Do you ever return to your mother?” The answer—only on holidays.

Consider this: aside from the two holidays dedicated to the planet—Earth Day and Arbor Day, both in April—there don’t appear to be any days in which we really appreciate the Earth. But if you trace the history of the holidays back far enough, you’ll find their origins to be pagan; a tribute to Mother Earth. So we only visit our Mother on holidays. Too bad. We should call more often.

The Cleanup Crew

Artwork for the cover of Justice League of America vol. 2, #25 (Sep. 2008). Art by Ed Benes.

I’m watching Congress grill Tony Hayward, CEO of BP. I don’t understand why this guy is still calling the shots. A number of investigations are in progress: an investigation by BP itself, a governmental investigation, and a military investigation. They’re still holding Hayward responsible for leading the initiative. Others blame Obama for not jumping in feet first. I ask, why haven’t our super-geniuses not formed a league of Super Friends yet?

The answer? I’m looking at our congested bureaucracy. When the traffic of paperwork and stamps of approval entangle the cessation of a potentially global disaster, the urgency and the sluggish initiative reveals our greatest weakness as a nation. We are not equipped to handle a continuous emergency. 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina were great disasters that we eventually ceased destruction, and once the air was clear, responded to. But the oil spill is ongoing. It’s not stopping. And it probably won’t. We need a league of heroes to cut through the bureaucratic bull-shit. Now!

I noticed weeks ago that Obama was putting together a team of geniuses to brainstorm solutions. I was really excited because somebody already thought of this Super Friends idea. But then I realized that the council was composed mostly of physicists. The strength of the Super Friends was in their diversity, not in their numbers. A league of heroes composed of a dozen Aquamen would be very limited indeed.

So I propose a better committee. Each position would be filled by the chief minds in their field of study.

• Geologist
• Marine Biologist
• Meteorologist
• Chemist
• Mathematician
• Physicist
• Computer, Electrical, Technological, & Mechanical Engineers
• Petrochemical Engineer
• Professor of Communication (to mediate the discussion and keep things moving without stymied in one more bureaucracy)
• A team of Diplomats (to garner international resources and support)
• Finally, a Philosopher (to judge the ethics of the actions of the Super Team)
• Note: no businessmen allowed