BORG Are The Future

The BORG, as depicted in Star Trek: TNG, are the future of humanity, as presently intentioned by the majority of the resources of the present civilization.  I suggest that, although this wasn’t directly depicted in Star Trek, it is clear to me that, not content with total control of every individual and every environment at some point in the distant future, the BORG returned to the roots of their civilization, their intention to re-engineer earlier generations of themselves so that they could control not only their present, but their past, thus leading to an ever-increasing control over their future.  This is the ultimate logical extension of their vision… and, it is, effectively, the logical extension of the dominant vision of humanity at this time.

Current trends in society, especially in military science, and in the expanding efforts of trans-national corporations to dominate the resources of both the earth and its people, betray the seeds of the BORG.  The individuals that unwittingly contribute to that effort don’t realize it, but they are headed for a BORG future along with everyone else.  That is the logical extension of the efforts being undertaken.  The sooner it is admitted, the sooner a better path can be undertaken.  The path with heart, even if it means going back to an agrarian lifestyle, is worth way more than the life currently being built every day by the vast resources applied through government and these corporations in their efforts to increase domination and control for purely upwardly serving objectives.  The “upwardly served” are simply those who keep on top of the heap, or who command the construction and maintenance of the present Tower of Babel.  What they don’t realize is that death comes to all, and those who die, return.  But when returning, what is the likelihood that you will again get to be “on top of the heap?”

Confusing Effect for Cause

“[our] sense of adventure is located within the ventral striatum [of the brain]” — summary of a conclusion of experiments done by Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) this week as given in Harper’s Magazine (http://harpers.org/archive/2008/07/WeeklyReview2008-07-01).

I wouldn’t doubt that the original study offers considerably more granularity than the above “conclusion” implies, but the quote is an example of how scientific studies influence the culture and indicates a significant problem as to how those studies are interpreted by the larger society, but also by scientists themselves.  In essence, it points to how frequently we confuse effect for cause.  And maybe how easily we throw up critical thinking and just accept the most convenient analysis that lays to hand.

Does the above conclusion mean that when I die my sense of adventure will cease?  Even scientists seem all too hasty these days to conclude that there is a direct causal relationship between co-existing phenomena, a mistake first-year philosophy students are rigorously trained to avoid.  Studies (especially dietary and health-related ones) often look at what occurs when something else occurs, and too easily conclude there is a unmediated causal relationship between the action itself and the observed effects.  One year “Coffee is good for the heart;” the next, “Coffee causes heart disease.”  Or some such.

But, all that aside, wouldn’t an equally plausible hypothesis (which is a temporary assertion, pending evidence) be that that region of the brain might be a location that helps the soul or trans-physical mind (i.e. the part of the individual that’s not merely an effect of the body system itself, but transcending that organism) negotiate new experiences harmoniously by integrating the various biological systems of the body around a chosen response?

Imagination Training for Students of Physics

Maybe every first year physics student should spend the entire year reading and discussing science fiction novels with classmates and professors, along with the chronicles of so-called perpetual motion machine inventors, and the mystical experiments of those who relied on Sacred Geometry to improve agriculture, health, and well-being (one example might be the Ansazi in Chaco Canyon). I was a physics student (at Purdue, then IU) for a couple of years, and having been absorbed with SciFi for years prior to that, and believing that with the Tesla coil I built there might be a way for me to teleport myself to another planet or dimension, I found a wild imagination to be invigorating and motivating. On second thought, it was my fecund imagination that ultimately caused me to seek fulfillment outside the field of physics, in Philosophy, and then to leave all that behind for adventures in self-discovery still under way! I’m not sure whether it strengthens or weakens my point, but that’s all another story.

Students of physics might approach a first year of intensive studies in the imaginary and the “extra-scientific” from the point of view that “We’re going to debunk all that stuff.” Or, they might approach it with an open mind and let the imagination enjoy itself. In either event, having a good imagination and being able to accept what initially seems preposterous is essential to real advancement in any endeavor, especially in the fields of science.

Every great advancement in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
- John Dewey

Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity.- Charles Baudelaire

I have never looked for dream in reality or reality in dream. I have allowed my imagination free play, and I have not been led astray by it. – Gustave Moreau

We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination. – David Lynch

We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination. – Daniel J. Boorstin

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge… - Robert Fulghum

We say God and the imagination are one… -Wallace Stevens

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. – Albert Einstein

Is Technology for Profit the Best Use of Science?

That is the question.  Comments?

Geometry Determines Events in Space-Time

I read a ScienceDaily article this morning about creating an invisible tunnel in space-time using nano-scale materials geometries. This, with other things going on in nano-scale science, is more evidence for something that has seemed true to me for some time: geometry determines the course of events in space-time. I believe this was the real basis for “sacred geometry,” as well as explaining the impact of various geometries, like the positions of planets and constellations and the bending of space-time by a massive body. Shapes have resonance, thus channeling existing energies and events in specific ways. John Wheeler also once said, pg. 130 in Gravitation, published by Freeman in 1973, “geometry tells matter how to move, matter tells geometry how to curve” (not in connection with so-called metaphysical phenomena, as far as I know).  I’ve read elsewhere that by “geometry” he may have meant “space.”  And in that context, he was talking about curved space telling matter how to move, and matter telling space how to curve.  Anyone have any thoughts on this? I think it’s a profound and potentially powerful topic.

Consciousness from Nothing?

Here’s an interesting post on the NewScientist site today:

Spooks in space
17 August 2007
* Mason Inman
* Magazine issue 2617POP.

What are the chances that an everyday object – a rock, a chair, you name it – could suddenly appear out of thin air? Not zero, surprisingly. In fact, given enough space and time, it is conceivable that a conscious being could arise, even if only for a microsecond.

OK, such an event would be incredibly unlikely, but not impossible – at least in theory. Physicists have dubbed such hypothetical beings “Boltzmann brains”, after the 19th-century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, a pioneer in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Boltzmann posed the question of whether the universe could have arisen from a thermal fluctuation; his work presaged the idea that a fluctuation could also give rise to a conscious entity that sees the universe. In this regard Boltzmann brains are not necessarily actual brains, but rather are a metaphor for observers of the universe that might appear spontaneously.

This is indeed interesting and fun as an idea. For me it is both encouraging and a little disappointing. Consciousness may arise in a form that is produced out of the “random” froth of quantum (Plank) space, but not because consciousness itself is a random phenomenon. It would be because the vehicle which consciousness occupies may arise from these bizarre behaviors of the quantum reaches of micro-cosmic space. That vehicle, then, somehow “draws” a consciousness into it. Consciousness itself is way beyond the simple cause-and-effect principles of space-time. Heraclitus referred to the Logos, the fundamental principle of creation. This principle determines all events, even these seemingly random events. This principle is itself Consciousness.

A Definition for Life?

There’s a fascinating article over on space.com (
Hot Gas in Space Mimics Life) describing the life-like behavior of interstellar gases. What caught my interest is the effort to define this behavior as either living or non-living, and the almost desperate sense that there’s no real definition for what life is.

I think the difficulty with finding a definition is the hidden assumption that some things are alive and some things are not. Why not recognize that the beauty and purposefulness (order) of existence is itself a living reality? While interstellar gas does not speak the human language or pro-create in the same manner as a human being or other biological organisms, why should that imply that inorganic matter, or space itself for that matter, is dead or non-living? Let it all be alive until we truly know differently. It’s far more fun that way and opens one up much more to the wonder of the living cosmos.

Rainbow Mysteries

The physics of a rainbow mean that each and every person viewing one is seeing his or her own private rainbow (the images of the rainbow are distributed, in the same way the image of the sun can be seen from every point of the sun-ward surface of earth — where you stand and look at the sun is a unique view, however minutely different it may be). Each rainbow is coming from the same source, the sun, but each rainbow is uniquely projected to the individual viewing it. Each is equally beautiful, yet each experience is personal and private and no one else can have it, even though each and every one emanates identically from the common source.

Transcending the Mutual Reality Accord

“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” -Arther C. Clark

I was driving to work through traffic and, feeling a little ill, began to apply a healing modality known as “body talk.” This involves, in this particular instance, tapping the head and heart to “synchronize” the operations of the brain with those of the rest of the body (the theory derives from the claim that the brain and heart come from the same cell mass during embryonic development, and that they must “work together” in order for health to exist). At any rate, of course I thought about how strange that must look to other drivers, me tapping my head and chest while driving along. Then again, not much stranger than people appearing to chat blithely away into thin air when in fact they are conversing on their cell phones! We’ve gotten used to the “cell phone monologue,” to some degree, and are no longer surprised by it. But Body Talk is another matter, like so much that goes beyond the consensus reality.

This got me to thinking about how marvelous and creative life is. It operates way beyond our comprehension and far outside that which we consider our comfortable cosmology. What we accept is primarily what we can symbolize with the common language. Things that move beyond that are frequently labeled superstition. Even many things (perhaps like this blog posting) that attempt to speak of things outside the common reality, even if they speak of real experience, verified with confidence, are still not accepted due to their apparent dissonance with the “Mutual Reality Accord.” But that is well and good, because it is another “unalienable right” that one may accept or deny what one chooses (of course, one must also pay the price either in being wrong, or, sometimes, in being right).

Back to Body Talk and other “mysterious phenomena.” Energy and Information determine the course of events in the universe. Information provides the form energy takes and the rule by which energy flows. Energy “enlivens” the form. Information is, then, the geometry of the physical reality, while energy enlivens that geometry. With the purposeful “tapping” of Body Talk (similar in fact to the Chinese medical modality known as Do In), we have both energy and information. Who’s to say that that energy and information do not enter a causal web that extends beyond the scope of the current understandings of science? Any real scientist must admit that history is filled with perceived false relations that turned out to be real. Where you have both energy and information, and especially verification (even if personal in nature), there are reasonable grounds to accept, even if only provisionally, that a causal relationship is at play.

As for myself, it isn’t important that anyone believe me, or even accept that there is a greater reality beyond current “knowledge.” I’ve lived long enough and experimented sufficiently with life to have confidence in my own experience. That is the basis for living and it isn’t necessary that others agree in order to go on enjoying the fullness of life. If one keeps integrity with one’s self, then certainly one’s choices will justify themselves. Even the ones that turn out to be a mistake, if taken sincerely in a context of conscious discovery, become a blessing and justify the quest for an ever greater understanding and awareness.

42 — A Question

In Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the answer given by an immense computer to the question “What is the meaning of life?” It suddenly struck me to ponder in what base was 42 displayed. Suppose it was hexadecimal. In that case, 42 (hex) would be 66 (dec) (not far from the “number of the beast”). 42 (hex) written in Octal, is written 111 (a trinity of unities or of the first 3 powers of 8, eight being the “Master number” in numerology). And if 42 were displaying as an octal representation of a number, 42 (octal) would be 22 (hexidecimal) . 42 if displayed as a decimal representation would be 101010  binary. When viewed in binary, 42 (dec) is a trinity of dualities — i.e. 3 pairs of on-off (or yes-no, or light-dark, or true-false, or any other dichotomy, including the dichotomy of dichotomies, which is that we can talk about true and false, but there is a reality beyond true and false that both excludes and includes them). What if it is meant to be seen in all bases greater than or equal to base 5 (5 being the number of fingers on the human hand)?