Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
Archive for the ‘knowledge’ Category
knowledge
Thursday, January 12th, 2012
manifesting the non-existent: the notion of overpopulation
Monday, August 15th, 2011I love to travel. I don’t have the opportunity to go many places, but I get around to some degree. Me and my road partner drive everywhere. We have driven from the Poconos in Pennsylvania to Indianapolis, Indiana–ten hours drive. We’ve driven from Indianapolis to Grovetown, Georgia, just a few minutes outside of Augusta–eleven hours drive. We’ve driven from the Poconos to Florida–sixteen hours. And from Grovetown to Florida–about seven hours drive. We’ve also driven from the Poconos into Manhattan in New York as well as from Indianapolis to Elkhart, Indiana–three hours give or take. We plan to take a road trip out west to see what the other mid-western states are like. Our ultimate destination, California. We plan to stop off to see a number of places, including the Grand Canyon. During our drives, we’ve experienced many interesting things, but none more interesting than the vast landscape that always begins in less than an hour outside the city limits.
Driving has given us time to think deeply about our planet. One of the notions that is central in much of our conversations is overpopulation. Each time we drive through a state, we are amazed at the amount of land available, some of which sits unused and covered with grass. As I write this, we are passing through yet another large tract of land, seemingly well over one hundred acres as far as the eyes can see. Many things have come to mind from our conversations and observations.
Take a moment to grab an empty glass. Imagine the glass is earth. It is empty, void of anything. Now, begin to fill that glass with water. Imagine each drop of water represents a human being. As the water enters the glass, the level begins to rise. Remember, the glass is earth and the drops of water are people. Continue to fill the glass and watch the water rise to the rim. What happens if you continue to let the water run into the glass? The glass obviously becomes full and will then begin to flow over. That is because the glass is overpopulated and you are now seeing and experiencing the visual manifestation of the overpopulated glass. The water will run onto the floor and eventually wet all of your kitchen. Soon, if you continue to let the water run, your kitchen, now representing the planet, will become overpopulated with water. If there is no outlet, the water will rise, filling the kitchen. You will need to remove yourself from the kitchen because you and the water cannot reside in the same space without the obvious problems arising. The water will begin to displace all air space and you will be forced to leave your home. In essence, the water has overpopulated your home, leaving you with no where to live. If you remain in the house, you will eventually drown in the water that continues to rise.
Let’s look at another scenario. You are in a school that contains one hundred rooms. Each room holds twenty students comfortably, with room for at least another thirty students semi-comfortably, but still with space enough for everyone to move around. At times, the teachers will place forty students in one room, leaving a room empty. There have even been times when this has happened rather frequently, and as much as fifty rooms are left empty. One day, the teachers decide they want to pack the students into about ten rooms, all squeezed in with no room to walk around or even turn. If the teachers were to do this and the students were left to uncomfortably live in only ten rooms, would that mean the school as a whole, with ninety empty rooms, is overcrowded? Or simply the ten rooms the students are in?
In life as in science, anything that is overcrowded shows visual manifestation of such. If a glass is overcrowded with water, it begins to run over and wet the area outside of the glass. If a classroom is overcrowded, one can visually see how uncomfortable the living arrangements are for the students. If a school is overcrowded, the same manifestation will occur. If a bowl of marbles is continually filled with more marbles, all additional marbles will eventually roll out of the bowl. So what is the evident conclusion one would come to?
If a planet is overcrowded, as many claim is the case for Earth, then it would be physically impossible for us to drive the thousands of miles that we’ve driven and see thousands of acres of land stretching across hundreds of miles between cities without seeing a single human being. People would be spilling over onto the roads, there would be no room to move. You could not drive, walk or fly anywhere without seeing people shoulder to shoulder, bumping into each other, squeezing past each other and having no where to go that is empty and void of large groups of people.
Those in power bank on the populace not using any critical thinking skills to ascertain the truth of our existence. They tell us what they want us to believe and we should merely believe it without thinking. We no longer use our eyes to see what is right before us. We no longer use our ears to hear what is there for us to hear. We no longer use our minds to contemplate anything outside of what we are told to contemplate. We therefore never realize, unless triggered, that we are being tricked, bamboozled, hoodwinked into believing fantasy rather than recognizing reality.
Leave the city you live in. Drive to another state. Take a long road trip. Drive across the mid-west even. You will find that the only places on the planet that are crowded are cities–like being packed into a single room in a school containing one hundred rooms. The single classroom is your city. Look around you, there are many empty rooms for you to explore. All those rooms are empty. You’ve been tricked into believing that it is alright for a single person or monarchy to own ten thousand acres of land, or that it is alright for the government or oligarchy to own a hundred thousand acres of land or more. And now when this “ownership” is announced and at gun point you are forced to stay off certain areas of your plush, rich planet, ripe for planting, growing and living, you are then told, with a straight face and authority, that the planet is hereby overcrowded.
The laws that govern land distribution and ownership are not in alignment with natural laws. Yet some translate this imbalance into the planet being overpopulated. The lack of willingness of those in power (those with the biggest guns and most propensity for violence) to equitably allow for everyone to live on the planet as rightful owners of land, tax free, does not magically create an overpopulated planet. What is created is the illusion of overpopulation by virtue of denial. The fact of the matter is that people are being denied their basic human right to live freely. Those denying the populace the right to live on land freely were not and are not the keepers of the land, yet they have dubbed themselves owners of what does not belong to them and what they did not and could not create. They cannot see that land is not meant to be owned, but lived on. The bullies now run the playground yard.
Look around you. Travel outside the comforts of your city, which is at this very moment clouding your ability to see truth. Travel to other countries, leave their cities as well. Go see their countrysides. Visit the Serengeti, see and experience the vastness and how empty it is of humans. Visit the Amazon, the Sahara Desert, the Congo. Go see the Canyons of China. Visit the hillsides of Ireland or the flatlands of Australia. If like droplets of water filling a glass you do not see droplets of people filling the land and spilling over into the oceans, valleys, mountains and hillsides, then you have come to the realization that your planet is not overcrowded and someone has just played a grand joke on you. Now, the only question you have left to ask is, why?
monkey see…
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011Start with a cage containing five monkeys.
Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it.
Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.
As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.
After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result-
All the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.
Pretty soon, when a monkey tries to climb the stairs,
The other monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now, put away the cold water.
Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.
The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs.
To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.
After another attempt and attack,
He knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.
The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked.
The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm!
Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.
Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.
Most of the monkeys that are beating him
Have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs
Or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing all of the original monkeys,
None of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water.
Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.
Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done!
THE END
Ponder this deeply friends. Think about what you believe in life to be the truth. Think about your daily actions. Are you acting based on what you’ve chosen? Don’t react. Think on it.
on discourse
Thursday, March 31st, 2011Through discourse comes understanding. The synthesis of a paradigm comes from first a thesis; then its diametrically opposing antithesis scrub out all the garbage and you have the birth of an idea whose truth still must then stand the test of time… We should disagree vigorously and then learn from our conversations… That’s how we should build the muscles of the intellect so we can be mentally strong enough to fight off any onslaught from those who would seek to devour us…Â – James Landeau
hooked fish vs. free fish
Monday, March 7th, 2011“When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him. In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.” - Karl Menninger
on truth
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011This is from a section of a book that I find very interesting. It speaks to how I view the notion of truth seeking.
“In Elementary Orthopathy, Lesson No. 1, the student is asked whether he is searching for Truth. All students invariably answer in the affirmative.
“People think they are searching for Truth. But experience proves that this is wrong. Experience proves that most people are searching for evidence to confirm what they already believe. They reject with scorn that which fails to harmonize with their belief, and yet their belief is inherited from their ancestors, who based their belief on traditions, handed down from father to son during the ages.
“There have been martyrs among the religious of all countries, but their zeal and confidence was no evidence that their religious opinions and beliefs were rational, or in any way corresponding with the deeper laws of the universe. A person may be ever so sincere in his belief, but that sincerity is no evidence of intelligence on his part, much less is it proof of the truth of his belief.”
from The Secret of Regeneration by Hilton Hotema
belief & our existence
Sunday, February 27th, 2011Things are unraveling faster each day. The universe is shifting, changing, evolving into something new and unrecognizable. As I sit here writing this, I wonder what it’s all about. Everyone is fighting over things that are merely belief. We know so little about our existence, yet we fight…often tooth and nail, to preserve that which is elusive. We fight over a belief in God. We fight over a belief in religion. We fight over a belief in money. We fight over a belief in land ownership. Over all things created by our minds. We fight over so called science. We will even fight over the belief in time and the idea of eternity or mortality. Yet, in the end analysis all these things are merely our beliefs. So many lean on the notion of faith as a convenient excuse to continue believing in that which has no solid foundation, that which is not provable, not sure. Faith allows them to continue in their violence, to continue believing that which causes harm to everything around us. Faith allows us to keep on “believing” without having to explain our beliefs, and even more, without having to be held accountable for the fact that each one of us believes different, and with equal fervor and passion. So who is right? The one with the strongest “faith” or the bigger gun?
In the end, we all become converts–turned into believers rather than thinkers. Turned into faith chasers rather than truth seekers. Turned into consumers rather than creators. Followers rather than critical thinkers. We are the converted, those who would fight for what we don’t know, rather than live in peace and admitting that we don’t know. It has become painful to be unsure of our destiny. It is so subconsciously painful that we’d rather be at odds with our fellow human, trying desperately to force them into believing what we believe, so we can be comforted. You see, misery loves company. And one’s beliefs become unstable and unsure if you’re the only one believing–so we think. So the conversion begins. Some call it, mind colonization. Some call it teaching. In the end, we are converted. The conversion manifests itself in the constant battle we wage against each other. All of us fighting over what we believe to be true–what we believe to be right. But no one willing to say, â€you know what, i might be wrong. what am i fighting for? let’s learn and grow together.’
Anything true and right does not require battle and it certainly does not require anxiety and the need to convince anyone. The minute we pick up the sword (figuratively or physically), we show our beliefs to be untrue or lacking any viable substance. We show that we are filled with anxiety more than true knowledge or thoughtful premise. We show that we are disbelievers in the thing we claim to believe are truths. We show that all we want is everyone to believe what we believe, so that we can be right; sleep comfortably in the belief that the world’s mysteries have been solved–all is well–nothing is unknowable–so we can be assured that life is as we view it–as we’d like it to be. But making people believe what we believe will never transform our views into truths. They merely transform people into little lemmings all walking off a cliff–patterned creatures with no random, unique thoughts. They transform our beliefs into things to be fought, things to be slain, rather than things to be considered as merely possible, not the final truth of the cosmos.
My thoughts and beliefs need not be fought or slain, because I do not hold them up as swords before the masses–threatening the life of other ideas. My ideas are not the fire breathing dragons of our intellectual discourse, they will not burn down the cosmos, they are a part of the cosmos. I do not claim them as the end all. Opposing beliefs do not make me uncomfortable or threatened. Why should I be threatened by ideas in a universe of infinite possibilities? Why should I be threatened by that which is unsure? Why should I defend my beliefs as though they are mysteries solved that now require no questioning? There is no need. I embrace all ideas, the viable and seemingly not viable. I allow all to enlighten me…to give me knowledge of new ways of seeing.
It is time that we humble ourselves and recognize that we know nothing.
Ever since I’ve stopped using salt, I find that my taste buds are healing. The flavors in fruits and vegetables are coming alive in ways I never imagined. A simple orange or yellow bell pepper bursts with flavor in my mouth. It is an amazing rush. I am now able to create much simpler meals.
