The Alliance for Positive Thought

The Alliance for Positive Thought http://positivethought.org/index.php Copyright 2008, Guanshi Edyo Guanshi Edyo en-US SPHPBLOG 0.5.1 Calm Your Body http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080821-145224 Breathing in, I calm my body.

Breathing out, I smile.

Dwelling in the present moment,

I know this is a wonderful moment!

My meditation teacher used the first four lines of this Buddhist poem as a meditation exercise for his beginning students. To do the meditation, become conscious of your body. Begin to breathe in and out slowly and think about each breath. On the first inhale, recite the first line to yourself. On the first exhale, recite the second line. As you breathe again, recite the third and fourth lines, and repeat this process for a solid few minutes.

Meditation has nothing to do with the supernatural. It is a common practice associated with religions that preach the supernatural as part of their worldview, but the practice itself is firmly grounded in science.

Like other positive thinking methods, meditation works by using thoughts to influence emotions. In this case, the thought of calmness causes an emotion of calmness. When we see, hear, or think about calm things, that perceptual activity has an effect on our emotional state. Our brains are responding to stimuli by activating the centers of our neurological system associated with feelings.

Those stimuli may be external or internal -- we might see a peaceful beach in front of us, or we may simply imagine a peaceful beach. Either way, our brain activates the mechanism associated with a feeling of serenity.

We don't need to be beholden to narratives and categories that don't fit with a rational worldview in order to experience the joy that these time-tested methods offer. I think many of us would love to calm our bodies by calming our minds without accepting any new-age or age-old mumbo jumbo about Gods or spirits.

Let us take the exercise for what it is -- an incredibly effective cognitive behavioral therapy, that will make us happier, and not dilute its power, or our ability to seek truth in the universe by shackling our practice to a mythology.]]> Positive Thought http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080821-145224 Guanshi Edyo Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:52:24 GMT http://positivethought.org/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080821-145224 Humans -- Just Super-ants? http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080820-190939

Researchers studied Florida harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex badius) to investigate what factors decide a particular ant's social caste.

"Basically what we found is that things are more complicated than previously thought," said researcher Christopher R. Smith, a former graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and now a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University. "Our study shows that there is a large genetic component to caste determination, but that there is also a very strong environmental component."

The social caste of ants is determined by genetic factors environmental factors, including diet.

Other studies have found that meerkats conduct classes teaching their young how to disable scorpions, that ants teach each other to find food using tandem running, and that apes imitate rationally.

Humans and other animals possess the ability to transfer learned knowledge that is not passed through the genome or “instinct.” What distinguishes humans from animals is our ability to master skills like intergenerational transfer of information, and a host of other capabilities that we share in kind, if not in degree. The power that grants us a high level of proficency in all skills is toolmaking.

Birds and monkeys chatter, express jealousy, love, hatred, sympathy, fear, and so do humans. But we humans can also write about it with our nifty charcoal sticks, and mats of paper, and computers, preserving it in precise form, to refer to later. Our ability to engineer tools enables us to enshrine our thoughts exactly.

That precision of ideas enables further discourse, epicycles upon epicycles of discourse, that can be tracked and measured. Tools allow us to think further ahead in the game of life because they enable us to record the moves.

But despite our phenomenal ability to assist ourselves by building tools, we are still composed of genetic material we largely share with other animals, and our behavior shows our kinship with them.

Like ants, our life patterns are determined by our genetic material and our environment. Ants teach their children what they believe to be the right things. They have a hierarchical society, job specialization, and school. We don't think they are intelligent because they lack the tools to inscribe their language and thoughts, and build on what we would consider basic perceptions and cognitions.

Our kinship with the rest of life is not a reason to feel marginalized on Earth. We are clearly the dominant organism, and because we have the ability to make tools, we are the only creature likely to be able to build an escape pod from Earth. If our ultimate destiny is survival, then we, as a species, are the chosen ones.

Having the ability to make tools is like being the superhero who has all the powers because he or she can imitate. We have the ability to imitate, and in real life, that makes us giants amongst the other living things on Earth.

As the superhero species, we have the responsibility to safeguard the rest of life, and make sure it survives whatever apocalypse arrives first. With great power comes great responsibility, and in our technological rebirth, we belched forth carbon dioxide and other pollutants that have the potential to destroy our society.

With our mighty toolmaking ability, we should be able to clean up our own droppings. Heat is just energy – we know how to manipulate that stuff, right? So if we devote resources to it, we will no doubt scoop the poop.

We can create, we can destroy – come on, humans, it's getting old! Let's just decide what we need to do, buckle down and do it. That means taking out the garbage and fixing the Earth before it's too late.

That also means eliminating or reducing the nuclear threat. While life would no doubt survive a nuclear explosion, it might not redevelop in time to harness its technological prowess to escape the end of Earth. So we would not only be destroying ourselves, we would be destroying our mission – to preserve life.

Why should we do all these things? Why should we care whether the world lives or dies after we go?

No one wants to be alone, because we are evolutionarily programmed to have sympathy for each other. It's the only way we can survive. You might argue that surely it is possible to imagine that the lack of concern for future generations might exist. If one were to feel that way, what reason would one have to fell obligated otherwise?

The answer is that concern for future generations will impact which of our offspring survive, and so is a characteristic of those who are destined to win the evolutionary battle. There is no particular reason to use discourse as an attempt to reprogram those who are unconcerned.

Logically and empirically, desiring survival of one's offspring will result in increased survival of one's offspring who will share many of your traits due to both your biology and the training you give them. This is a longstanding trend of evolution, because as long as a parent has the ability to process information and to act to preserve his or her offspring, this desire is evolutionarily preferred. As evolution progresses, over time, unless traits are imperfectly preserved, all creatures that procreate and could be said to have “desire” would hope for their offspring's success..

Therefore, it is logically and empirically impossible that the majority of my intended audience (living, social beings on Earth) does not have the characteristic that they prefer the survival of their immediate descendants. But isn't it possible to be apathic about the survival of some successor species billions of years distant?

When we understand ourselves to be not much different than the other creatures, we also understand our immense debt to the fabric of life. We understand that billions of creatures lived and struggled, and that we are the ultimate synthesis of those billions of years of effort. Our lives are comparatively short. We are a mere flash in the terrestrial pan. But we are the brightest flash.

If we are at a crucial moment in history, we might have the potential to ensure or deny future Earth life survival. This brief moment, our paradise, our chance to be the eye looking out for a nanosecond in the universe's day, is not to be taken lightly. This is heaven, but in real life heaven is short and the rest of existence is death. So we should love it like a child. We should raise our lives, play with them, teach with them, work with them, build them into something, before we die and the things we have touched move on without us.

So we are like the ants because we can't escape our biological destiny. But we are different because we are blessed with the ultimate biological destiny – guardianship of the future. No one gave us our ever increasing skill at crafting tools, except maybe the one-celled organisms. They gave it to their descendents who then had us. We didn't choose our destiny, but it wasn't commanded unto us. We follow it because it is us. It is that which makes us us.]]> http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080820-190939 Guanshi Edyo Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:09:39 GMT http://positivethought.org/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080820-190939 GPA story -- Positive Thought Bridges Gap http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080819-181739 Livescience says:

If you want to boost your teenager's grade point average, take the kid to church. Or, a new study suggests, find some similar social activity to involve them in.

Researchers found that church attendance has as much effect on a teen's GPA as whether the parents earned a college degree. Students in grades 7 to 12 who went to church weekly also had lower dropout rates and felt more a part of their schools.

On average, students whose parents received a four-year college degree average a GPA .12 higher than those whose parents completed high school only. Students who attend religious services weekly average a GPA .144 higher than those who never attend services, said Jennifer Glanville, a sociologist at the University of Iowa.

The study does not suggest God is smiling on the students, per se. Rather, it identifies several reasons the students do better:

* They have regular contact with adults from various generations who serve as role models.
* Their parents are more likely to communicate with their friends' parents.
* They develop friendships with peers who have similar norms and values.
* They're more likely to participate in extracurricular activities.

Those factors account for only half the predicted effect, Glanville and colleagues say.

As the article goes on to mention, "Other studies have shown that regular church-goers breathe easier and live longer." GPA is just one benefit derived from religious practice, benefits which are derived due to the above factors as well as the practice of positive thought.

None of the cited reasons has anything to do with belief or existence of supernatural beings. Besides belief, positive thought is that which otherwise seems to be the common thread between the world's religions.

Many social groups and phenomena exist which foster bonds across generations -- school, sporting events, dance, chess, music, a neighborhood pool, gathering to eat, working together, shopping, sailing, bars, barbeques, parties, associations.

Religion certainly doesn't win because it causes people to engage in "extracurricular activities." Some debate, play football, and sew; some have poker, drinking, and sex. None of these is particularly compatible with or dependent on religion, and all of them would probably count as "extracurricular activities."

And we don't need religion in order to pick people that have things in common with us -- we all have that bias. You don't have to be a prejudiced person to want to seek like-minded individuals. Many activities require groups, and who doesn't like hearing her or his preconceptions validated?

Religion fosters bonds, facilitates recreational activities, and does these things very well, encouraging the happiness and well-being of people. But so do many other things in society. And notice that the measure that is associated with the GPA boost is church attendance, not belief. Other destinations might be equally, or more productive, like the library.

So why is religion uniquely suited for heightening humanity's well-being? Because it comes with the practice of positive thought, and it is the only societal forum in which massive doses of cognitive behavioral therapy are applied to the public.

Whenever these studies are done, it never matters what church it is, only that religious practice of one kind or another causes well-being. Buddhists have mantras, Christians have prayers, and some prayers sound like mantras and some mantras sound like prayers. It's hard to tell the difference because they are the same thing -- a repeated, disciplined positive thought.

The placebo effect is real, and dogs every scientific study, and while doctors wonder how to harness it, religion has already done it. That power can be harnessed outside the fog of superstition. It only has to be found and named.

]]> Positive Thought http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080819-181739 Guanshi Edyo Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:17:39 GMT http://positivethought.org/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080819-181739 How Big is God? http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080818-113605
When we talk about quantum mechanics, we accept that there is a different physics on small scales. We call the physics that we observe in our day to day lives, the gravity that holds us down, and the mechanics of objects that we can observe “macro level” or “Newtonian” physics. Suppose we imagine that there is something on larger distance scales than what we can observe. Let’s call this the “supermacroscopic” level.

When I talk about supermacroscopic physics, I am talking about huge things, bigger than galaxies, and obviously, we don’t know what exists on those scales, if anything. I can just imagine hypothetical supermacroscopic beings laughing at our feeble attempts to pretend we understand something about them. Of course, I don’t believe that there are Gods laughing at me – this imaginary entity I have created in my brain is a metaphor for the lack of knowledge that I have.

What do we know about the supermacroscopic? Almost nothing. It is easier to list what we do know, because that is a very short list. We know that there is some physics operating there that we don’t understand, because we can measure the influence of dark energy.

When scientists talk about dark energy and dark matter, they are really just talking about certain unknowns in physics. Astrophysicists believe that galaxies are held together by gravity. Judging by the number of stars and nebulae that are visible, and including objects such as black holes which are invisible but can be measured, there still is a large deficit of matter. If the only gravity doing the heavy lifting of keeping all the stars together in a galaxy is the gravity of the stuff we can know is out there, there just isn’t enough gravity. Galaxies should just fall apart. But they don’t.

And scientists don’t know why. Maybe the laws of gravity change at larger distances, or maybe some undiscovered geometric property of space time is responsible, or maybe there really is some hidden matter. So the shorthand for this problem is “dark matter.”

“Dark energy,” on the other hand, refers to the fact that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. As far as scientists can tell, if something expands at an ever increasing rate, there must be something pulling it. They call this unknown force “dark energy.” But just like dark matter, dark energy could actually be a manifestation of some unknown property of gravity, or of the geometry of the universe, or of something completely unknown.

So what do we know about the supermacroscopic? We know that forces exist which we cannot understand yet, or maybe ever. That’s it – that’s all we know.

There are a lot of possible “theories of everything” – and if we found the right one, it might tell us more about what we might expect on supermacroscopic scales. String theory is one of those that gets most of the play in science journalism. But it’s easy to come up with theories that are wrong, when there isn’t much information. String theory is based on the idea that there is some underlying symmetry to the universe. Which may well be the case. But that symmetry might be nearby or far away.

What do I mean by “nearby” symmetry? What I mean is that it might be just a little bit bigger than us or it might be a whole lot bigger than us. Let me explain this idea by way of analogy. Imagine that you are a little ant crawling around on a huge piece of paper, which to you is your universe. Now imagine that the paper is just a flat triangle. Well if you are a very intelligent and enterprising ant, you might realize that you live on a symmetric universe, and that the symmetry is that of a triangle.

Now suppose that you are that same ant living on that same triangle, but this time, the triangle is part of a pyramid. Maybe you could figure that out, maybe not. But the symmetry of the pyramid would be further away from you –the symmetry of the ant’s universe would be bigger than the symmetry of the triangle.

Imagine that our universe is part of the 11-dimensioned bulk imagined by the most widely discussed version of string theory. Imagining it is all you can do – since we lack the ability to measure or detect what else might exist in this fantasy landscape. We might see the symmetry of stars, galaxies, clusters, voids and filaments, and lack the ability to perceive the symmetry of objects beyond 4-dimensional space-time, or how our universe looked from the perspective of an 11-dimensional observer.

String theory remains just a guess, because it is untestable. But the reason I mention it is simply to point to the levels of the unknown that may exist at greater and greater distance scales. String theorists assume that the symmetry of the universe, while unobservable, is just further away than the furthest thing we can see. Which of course, is the furthest any theory we can develop can reach. But the universe may be a whole lot bigger than that.

The smallest thing known to human beings that actually has a size that can be identified is a proton at approximately 3x10^-15 meters. Of course, we also know about quarks and leptons, and imagine the existence of strings, which are so small, size no longer has meaning. The largest thing known to humans is the Sloan Great Wall, a giant formation of galaxies stretching 1.37 billion light years, which is equal to 1.3x10^25 meters. This giant collection of galaxies is impossibly huge, and yet, it exists in four space/time dimensions and follows the laws of physics as we understand them.

We have no idea how far away the ultimate symmetry of existence lies. The Sloan Great Wall could be some piece of a larger order that we have yet to understand. After all, it seems bizarre that this giant thing could just be randomly floating in the universe and have no connection to anything. (Of course, just because in some vague intuitive sense it seems bizarre means nothing other than that we are speculating.)

Astrophysicists refer to a phenomenon known as “the end of greatness,” which basically means that at a certain point of bigness, everything just sort of seems homogenous. There is no more order to be found because everything is a just a big soup – everything in the universe is smoothly distributed.

But we can’t say for sure that there is no more order, all we can say is that anything bigger is too big for us to see. As we move from distance scale to distance scale, at certain levels, homogeneity seems apparent. When we move from the chaos of the subatomic level to the surface of an atom, it seems we are looking at a smooth surface with no trace of perturbation. When we move from the chaos of nuclear fusion to the surface of the sun, all we see is heat and light in every direction.

If we could, we might scroll back from the end of greatness to see that the homogeneity that we observe is the surface of some four-dimensional object floating in the multiverse. If string theorists are correct, the "end of greatness" is only the beginning of a whole new order in the multiverse.

We have established that we have no information about the supermacroscopic and strong reasons to suspect that there is more anisotropy at larger distance scales. But all we can come with up about its particular characteristics is speculation. So let’s do some speculating.

Let us suppose that there are entities with some analog of perceptual ability in the supermacroscopic universe. Why am I making this supposition? Well, if we are going to think about higher intelligences, the logical place to look is in these larger scale structures.

Whatever they are, they have to be bigger than 3x10^27 meters, which is the size of the observable universe. Let’s make a conservative guess, and say that, dimensionality aside, these beings are ten times bigger than that. If our universe is a particle in some larger branefield, this is conservative because the entity would only be made up of 10 particles!

Now, we can discern distances that are 3x10^-15 meters smaller than us, which is the size of a proton. If these entities can discern distances that are an equal number of orders of magnitude smaller than they are, they could make out distances of 3x10^13 meters. That is smaller than a light year and greater than the distance traveled by Voyager 1, the probe launched in 1977, that has traveled to the outskirts of the solar system. Which means that such beings could dimly make out the sun, but would not be able to perceive planets. The sun would be one of billions upon billions of particles that appeared to them so hazy that they would not be able to make out specific differences.

Because of the “end of greatness” phenomenon, we know that an external observer viewing it from afar would see our universe as homogenous. It is very difficult to create a complicated structure from homogenous particles – it takes a whole lot of them. Imagine that our universe is a basic particle in someone else’s multiverse.

The human body has approximately 7x10^27 atoms, which are our universe’s basic particles. Suppose the larger entity is composed of 7x10^27 basic particles, each weighing in at close to the order of magnitude of our universe. Then if these entities were a billion trillion times (1x10^21) better than us at seeing down into orders of magnitude, then they could see galaxies and star clusters but not individual stars, let alone people.

As I noted, these numbers are pure speculation. Such beings may be able to perceive many more orders of magnitude than we are, or many fewer.

Now, this whole discussion of distance scales leaves out the very important piece – the “gap” in physics. What I mean by a “gap” is that when you reach a certain size, the laws of physics are completely different.

When we observe the quantum level, we see that there is a change in fundamental laws of physics – electrons can be in two places at once, causality no longer seems to apply, a particle can be wave, and more. If I were a photon and managed to glimpse the macro-scale world, I would observe that the physics that governed my universe had broken down and had been replaced with something else. (Yes, I know that perception as we understand is probably impossible in the quantum world, but this remains a useful analogy). Waves and particles would no longer be one, every reaction would have an equal and opposite reaction, and so forth.

Likewise, the physics of a multi-dimensional brane-world is highly likely to be radically different than ours. We can only guess at what it is like, but we know certain ways it cannot be. For example, in our universe, intelligent beings use electromagnetic signals to carry information throughout their brains and to communicate with others. In the supermacroscopic world, electromagnetic signals will be far too slow if they exist at all. No being so large could rely on information that moves at the speed of light, unless it moves at a pace where thoughts take longer to process than the age of our universe (which also seems possible).

Of course, if there is no superluminal information transfer apparatus, then the subjective perception of the passage of time would be so slow that such an entity would be unable to perceive our existence, because we would already be long dead by the time it received the relevant information.

However, the speed limit on information transfer in our universe is relative to the time dimension, and in 11 dimensions, some dimension might share characteristics with the dimension we perceive as time, and allow supermacro beings to take action or communicate along its axis while no time passes in our temporal dimension.

But regardless of how the “gap” manifests itself, it is likely to be a barrier to perception. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, we cannot measure both the position in space-time and the velocity of a quantum particle. While this is considered a fundamental property of quantum physics, we might imagine that the act of perception might be a little easier if we existed on the quantum level (and if perception were possible by a quantum particle).

The analogy is loose, but the basic idea is that gaps in physical laws have the potential to make any perception or communication between worlds difficult.

The bottom line in all of this is that even though we don’t know what’s out there at the supermacro level, it will have no resemblance to the Gods of religion, spirituality, myth or legend. It is not likely to know or care about us, and it is much more likely to be made of us that to have made us. The supermacro being may exist, but it is not what we know as God, and it is beyond our ability to imagine.
]]> Wonder http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080818-113605 Guanshi Edyo Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:36:05 GMT http://positivethought.org/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080818-113605 Perpetual Progress - Humanity Version 2.0 http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080607-003301
But even in the best-case scenario we will not survive the eventual death of our galaxy. Astronomers believe that our local group will end its life as an orphan in the universe, beyond sight or reach of any other object.

One day, the exponential curve of progress will stop. I wake each morning alive, and yet I know someday I will die. Am I a Cassandra because I recognize my mortality?

Ray Kurzweil, a futurist who believe that we are close to reaching a "technological singularity," is optimistic not because he believes in exponential progress, but because he believes that humankind will be preserved in the process. We'll just have to accept being replaced by the next model, because life will continue to evolve whether we like or not.

We can't selfishly say that the only legacy of life is the legacy of homo sapiens. We're just the ape that happens to be the best (by far) at making tools. But we are little more than one step in a great chain of accelerating change stretching back to the Cambrian. Just like industrious little bacteria-like creatures that banded together to form the first multi-cellular organism, we apes are on the verge of engineering the next great transition in the evolution of life.

All of this progress, however, requires that we avoid an accidental nuke-fest and promptly clean up the environment. And there's always the possibility that we could get hit by a cosmic bus.

We know our curve will end someday. But as long as we can manage to keep rolling, chances are, it won't be today, or any day soon.]]> Space Travel http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080607-003301 Guanshi Edyo Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:33:01 GMT http://positivethought.org/comments.php?y=08&m=06&entry=entry080607-003301 Science vs. Religion http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080519-184923
It is true that science is embedded in its social context, and that all truth-seekers carry inescapable biases, but those who take a scientific approach hope to remove their colored lenses and see the world as it truly is. A scientist is one who acknowledges that she doesn't know all there is to know, and that there will always be more to learn, and more to learn about the methods of learning.

Stephen Jay Gould argued that science and religion are “non-overlapping magisteria,” and scientific inquiry lacks the ability to undermine religious faith. But religious theories could not possibly be unfazed if it turns out that life originated in a pool of amino acids or from a comet born from a faraway star system. Truth-seeking is truth-seeking, and if one theory is correct, another one bites the dust.

Either life is guided or it is not. If a deterministic process originating from a cause in a long-past eon resulted in the human creative endeavor and technological progress that we see today, then life is not guided, in the sense understood by religion. As science has marched along, God's ground has grown smaller. We no longer need a 7-day creation story, or a cosmic egg, or the blood and guts of the Gods, because we have evolution. We no longer need Thor's hammer, because we have electricity. We no longer need to be people of the Book, because the people have the means to write a better book.

The philosophers of our age who have argued that religion and science are compatible seek refuge in a tiny corner of the map of possible Godly incarnations. The rational thinkers who advocate God's existence today all acknowledge that if God exists, she must be distant and limited by scientific principles. No serious scholar will argue for the biblical God of vengeance, they can only muster the will to advocate the existence of the miniscule God of a non-arbitrary first cause.

Why do we cling to this miniscule God? Why can't we see the ground shrinking before our feet and simply give up?

One way to cling to science and religion at the same time, like a child who wraps his legs around his mother while clinging to the door with his hands, is by redefining the very word “God.” This was Albert Einstein's tactic – he held fast to the notion of God as an metaphorical incarnation of a feeling of wonder. Privately, he acknowledged that religion was silly, but spoke publicly in slogans about a God who would not play dice.

This linguistic trick gets us no closer to the truth, and confuses the layperson who still understands God to mean Jehovah with a beard and robe. Why not simply call this thing “wonder” or “awe” or “the numinous” -- or even “the unknown”?

We can all experience ecstasy in the wonder of existence while limiting our factual allegations to those that have been earnestly examined, flawed though our efforts may be. The practice of science may seem dry and incapable of granting ecstasy, but we simply lack a widespread venue for ecstatic expression that is non-supernatural.

There is no better way to experience awe at the wonder of the universe and joy at our luck at being born on this extremely hospitable rock than by the practice of the science of astronomy. Music, meditation, and positive thinking are all practices informed by science and mathematics that have the power to grant ecstasy, and are in fact the tools utilized by religion to create the illusion of a divine gift of joy.]]> Origin of Life, Wonder http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080519-184923 Guanshi Edyo Tue, 20 May 2008 01:49:23 GMT http://positivethought.org/comments.php?y=08&m=05&entry=entry080519-184923 Eye Looking Out! http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080331-173657

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
-- Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

So when Einstein uttered the famous words “God does not play at dice with the Universe,” he was not talking about the God of Christianity, or any supernatural entity; he was talking about his profound sense of wonder at the universe's mysterious order. Religious people do not mean what Einstein meant when they talk about God.

I, and most atheists, share Einstein's respect for the numinous. I feel an overwhelming, almost ecstatic, sense of wonder when I contemplate my incredible luck at being a collection of atoms that happens to have the gift of awareness. Most atoms are not nearly so lucky.

Religious thinkers wish for an almighty eye looking in on our little Earth, some cosmic and (more) wonderful force that sees and knows us. Somehow, they believe that only if we are being observed can we have meaning in our lives.

But we are the observers, not the observed. Doesn't this make life all the more wonderful? Wouldn't you rather be the watchmaker than the watch?

There is nothing else in the universe that can look, in or out, or anywhere (that we know of). We are the eyes that have popped into being in a flux of matter and energy, and that is the true wonder of life.

We are the eyes that can look out at the universe, and see it, and know it. Need proof? Just grab a telescope! You lucky son of a bitch, you can look out and observe the many-splendored landscape of stars. Just think, of all the wonder and order and beauty of galaxies and stars and nebula, you are the only one that gets to see it all. You hold the privileged place in the cosmos, because you are the eye looking out.

You read my words, you hear me speak, so you know that you know, and there can be no doubt of your experience. You think, therefore you are, and the thought that you experience is the most overwhelmingly fantastic thing that anyone has ever seen anywhere in the universe.

I, and many others like me, have no need for a paternal figure guiding my hand, in order for me to value what I do with my hands. Our hands and our bodies and our minds are amazing and transcendent; there is no need to imagine cosmic fingers mucking about with our lives.

Yes, the universe is daunting. But this, right here, this life, is paradise, and we have the ability to be dumbfounded by our joy at being part of it. We do not need to look for a cosmic eye – for it is us.

]]> Wonder http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080331-173657 Guanshi Edyo Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:36:57 GMT http://positivethought.org/comments.php?y=08&m=03&entry=entry080331-173657 The Universe Is Daunting. Get Over It. http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080207-110106
This is incredibly depressing. How easy and comfortable it would be, by comparison, to just give in to peer pressure, and to relax into the feeling of the salvation offered by Jesus Christ (or whatever). And yet I cannot bring myself to do so. The truth, while daunting, to me is irresistible. I cannot take Pascal’s wager because I just don’t have the ability to choose belief. Maybe other people do, and if so, I have no trouble at all understanding their decision. But I do have trouble understanding how they have the ability to decide to alter their own perception.

Sure, I deceive myself, as I am sure we all do. I want to believe that my flaws don’t exist, and that I will live forever, and I make these denials with a sort of offhanded triviality. When I deny my impending death, it makes it easier to live day by day, but I still know that I will die. When I think about it, it bogs me down, but I cannot let go of my belief in my own death, as comforting as it might be to do so. The question of meaning in my life is not trivial; it is an all-consuming question. And so I cannot lightly relax and let go of my knowledge that I will die, because it clings to me like a child. My knowledge is precious to me. It defines me because it defines which actions I will take.

It is so easy to proselytize salvation – religion is compelling because it is easy and safe. Telling people they are loved and cared for and will live forever is fun because people like hearing those things. Telling people that they are alone and must struggle desperately to avoid their near certain doom provokes horror, which needless to say, people don’t like.

Why, you might ask, do I even want others to accept these depressing facts, making them unhappy and resentful? I don’t have anything against people. In fact the very reason I am so desperate to spread my message is because I believe in the value of human life and I want it to continue – I love people. My hope is that, with some help, people can be happy despite the daunting nature of the truth.

A giant spider’s web might be comforting and safe – webs certainly look silky and smooth. But if I saw my brother sound asleep in a giant spider’s web, of course I would rouse him and alert him to the danger. I would feel sadness if he fought me and wanted to go back to sleep, but I wouldn’t feel terrible about my desire to rouse him. I fervently want him to survive, and maybe that desire is selfish in some way, because maybe he would be happier sleeping comfortably until his death. But I think you and I would both save our brother from the web.

You might say this is a false analogy because there is no immediate danger in continuing to accept religion. The giant spider is not coming back anytime soon, so why bother leaving the web? But if we believe that our souls will survive no matter what happens to our planet, there is no reason to try to spread life to the stars, or to safeguard our planet from environmental and nuclear dangers. The end of human life on Earth will come sooner or later, and we need to know that our fate is solely in our own hands, not in the hands of God. If you make your home in the nest, eventually the spider will come, whether for you or for your descendants.

My hope is that knowing about our deaths will motivate us to do something productive with our lives – I believe I should take action against the giant spider. If I slumbered blissfully, I would be a different person, a person my current self would not respect.

Life’s ability to spread and survive Earth’s apocalypse is contingent on actions we take now. Our technological ability is unprecedented and may very well be short lived. We need to make the work we do towards terrestrial sustainability and interplanetary expansion our top priority. We have to wake up, rub the sleep out of our eyes, and untangle ourselves from this giant web.

I know what I say is a hard sell. It is an impossibly difficult task to build a religious analogue on the premise that death is inevitable and final, and on the premise that the only hope is for us tiny humans to take on the inky blackness of everything else in the universe. But it just happens to be true that survival is a struggle, and struggle is daunting,. However, we are programmed to struggle, we are good at surviving, and the only chance we have to survive is to arm ourselves with the knowledge of the magnitude of the task before us.
]]> Space Travel http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080207-110106 Guanshi Edyo Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:01:06 GMT http://positivethought.org/comments.php?y=08&m=02&entry=entry080207-110106 Dialogue: Can We Really Choose Happiness? http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080106-161127 Kinderlieb: Do you really think for most people being happy comes down to a choice?

Guanshi Edyo: It may not be choice that we are aware of, but we make many choices that impact our happiness.

Kinderlieb: Such as?

Guanshi Edyo: We make choices every day about our attitude towards the world, the people around us, and the circumstances of our lives. Negative thoughts cause negative emotion, so if we look at the
world and expect negative things will be unhappy.

Kinderlieb: Yes, but research shows that temperament is inborn, and within ten minutes of life, doctors can determine temperament, which correlates with measures of personality taken years later. So could some people be predisposed to unhappiness through a biological flaw?

Guanshi Edyo: Temperament only indicates an inclination - we can choose many of our individual thoughts, even if we genetically trend a particular way. I can choose to smile, which will trigger a happy mood in the moment that I smile; I can choose to repeat a positive mantra to myself, which will lead to positive emotions. I may have greater obstacles to overcome in achieving lasting happiness if my temperament tends to push me towards negativity, but that's the same as saying that genetically obese people have more to overcome in becoming physically fit, or that people with addictive personalities have more to overcome if they run into problems with substance abuse.

Kinderlieb: I feel like the idea of happiness being a choice conflicts with the idea of no free will - because people struggle to be happy. As you say, it takes work.

Guanshi Edyo: When I say there is no free will what I mean is that all physical objects are subject to cause and effect. Human beings are composed of physical objects, so they are subject to the laws of cause and effect. What that means is that everything we do is caused, and so in that sense we have no free will. We could not have done other than that which we did - but that doesn't mean we don't choose things. We might choose water over wine, and the cause might be that we don't want to drive home drunk. That "want" was composed of neural firings, and was the result of things that we had been told in school, or experiences that we had, which were all physical neuron-firings in our brain - chemical exchanges subject to the laws of cause and effect. We still chose what we chose - we still went through the process of deciding to choose water, even though there is no other possible way it could have turned out. The chain of cause and effect could not have gone any other way. We can make the choice to think a certain way, and that choice might the result of certain causes - like your having read what I wrote.

Hopefully, your reading these words that I am writing will be another piece of the deterministic puzzle that will lead you to try to think positively in your life. That choice would not have been free in the sense that we typically understand when we talk about "free will," but for all intents and purposes, the lack of free will doesn't change anything about our decision making process and how we live our lives. However, it is important, because I think it says something about how we hold people accountable and how we try to achieve social change.

Kinderlieb: Ok. I had a different perception of free will, but now I see what you meant. Why are there so many unhappy people?

Guanshi Edyo: I think our system of how to make people happy is broken. Not enough people know about where true happiness comes from, and people rely on religion, which doesn't work on educated people. We need something new - some new kind of organization that helps us with happiness, but that does not preach phony baloney stories.]]> Positive Thought http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080106-161127 Guanshi Edyo Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:11:27 GMT http://positivethought.org/comments.php?y=08&m=01&entry=entry080106-161127 This Is Your Brain on Positive Thought http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080102-145237 Recent articles have reported on a study showing that the brain turns to positive thoughts when confronted with death. It’s no surprise that the brain has the ability to normalize its own emotional state. What is a surprise is that the way it does this is not by releasing dopamine or some other natural mood-enhancing chemical, but by initiating a particular cognitive pattern – positive thought.

It seems fairly clear that every person has an equilibrium state of happiness to which he or she returns, no matter what fortunate or unfortunate events might strike. The above mentioned study is one in a series of many studies showing that the brain automatically returns to this neutral level of emotion. For example, lottery winners are no happier than the rest of the population, on average, despite an initial euphoria. One might expect that if positive events have the power to make us happy, winning the lottery would provide lasting joy for unhappy people. After all, money provides many of the comforts we associate with bliss. But science tells us that the opposite is true – lottery winners report subjective measures of happiness that are no better than those of the average Joe.

Likewise, those who experience a great tragedy in life report a very normal level of contentment. Contrary to the popular perception, people don’t usually become depressed and stay depressed because of the loss of a loved one, or loss of a job, severe injury, or some other traumatic event. Most people are able to pick themselves up and move on, and their natural neurochemistry helps them to do so.

To put it mildly, death is a stressful proposition. When faced with this very taxing situation, the brain has a natural coping mechanism that kicks in, just as it does in every other difficult situation. Researchers have found that in this case the particular coping method is positive thinking. In other words, despite the arsenal of chemical mood enhancers that the brain has at its disposal, the best way it knows how to help you cope with the thought of death is to initiate positive thoughts.

You might argue that this neurological mechanism eliminates our ability to take action that might affect our level of happiness. After all, if I am going to return to an equilibrium state no matter what, why should I bother trying to practice positive thinking? The answer is that just because it is our natural tendency to return to equilibrium does not mean that we should stop seeking nirvana. Everyone knows that happiness is difficult to achieve – these studies simply tell us a little bit more about why it is so difficult. Having this knowledge is helpful, because it lets us know what the possibilities are, and what the potential pitfalls are. One thing the study tells us for sure is that positive thinking is an effective tool to improve mood. It is up to us to decide whether to use that fact to help us try to climb above the so-so-ness that is our biological tendency.
]]> Positive Thought http://positivethought.org/index.php?entry=entry080102-145237 Guanshi Edyo Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:52:37 GMT http://positivethought.org/comments.php?y=08&m=01&entry=entry080102-145237