Of big questions, the now and random rambling of a sceptic’s mind pt.2

It hasn’t been 10 minutes after I had posted the previous post that I have started to write this one. I wondered, if I was too harsh, too fascistic in my views of how animalistic we actually are. I got afraid some people might understand this the wrong way. That I endorse animal behaviour in humans, support the idea of everyone for himself and regret the moment people started meddling with evolutionary principles.  I do not endorse any of it. It seems like I do, but that is solely due to the inability to distinguish the natural order of things from moral order of things. The first is factual, the latter agreed upon.

In the previous post I stated that we, conscious mammal potato bags, have set up rules of engagement. We made up these little conventions of how we should be, even though the basic moral ways of conduct are pretty much humanly inert. Nevertheless, we have decided that we need to write them down, and add some more, just in case one would want to think otherwise. That was possible in the time of ignorance, where gods were responsible for everything we couldn’t explain and everything, even our thoughts, was made solely to serve their will. Times have changed since and yet, somehow, we are still stuck in those views even though they have been disputed and their ignorance explained many times. As if there is no trust in humanity, that after it will drive itself to near extinction, a better world will emerge. (oh, I get it now!). It seems like those “spiritual” men (yes, men are fault for this mess! Go girls!) fear that after society will face the absolute simplicity of existence, they will go mad. They will lose their sense of moral behaviour and kill each other, steal, break, terrorise, manipulate, abuse, rape (wait, where am I going with this again?), treating everything as given, taking no responsibility for their actions, disregarding the future, their personal as well as the one of generations to come.

Wait! Seriously, didn’t I just describe everything we actually do to each other? With more than 80% religious people in the world we seem to pretty much suck at sharing love and peace. And don’t go on saying there are only 1% of believers that are causing all the troubles. No war or terrorist attack has ever been made in the name of science or atheism, although, saying for myself, we are losing our nerve. Dawkins (the man of my dreams) calls it militant atheism.

You might not like it, but this is how universe and nature are. This is how they work. And even if they find something to be true that we now think of as supernatural, there will be an explanation following that will clearly show that the laws and the way nature works cannot be broken. And it won’t be super anymore, simply natural.

But I am off track here. I will surely say something more about this in posts to come; now I am still elaborating on purposefulness. This time, it is time. It is about time, literally.

Have you ever stumbled upon this page? It is not only funny, because it generates random, supposedly wise quotes using words that seem to have a deeper meaning, solely because they are hard to get and syntax prevents you from getting a clear meaning (f*ck that kind of wisdom, remember?) It is funny because when scientist underwent a study, they found out that people actually believe this bullshit. Or is it sad? No, it is funny, because they found a direct correlation with lower intelligence, hence I must be pretty smart. These random quotes that use terms of real science to generate pseudo scientific based nonsense are the first step into admitting new-age hippy dippy era is coming to an end (although lately extreme left started to sound like them too. And do not go all offended and say I am a right wing member; they are lost in their own ”the only right god” delusion. What happened to simple rational thinking? Is not agreeing stating I oppose? Grow up!). Why would something that profits from selling bullshit to people go to the extremes to incorporate as much science as possible into that nonsense, if not for the reason that people are getting smarter and science (still) represents a threat. You can discard science as much as you want, in the moment you are using scientific facts and reasoning to prove your mumbo jumbo, you admit its importance.

Naturalists, of course, separated themselves from religious treatment. They say they are smarter. They use science, and science does not lie. True. But your deductions do.

There are few words that any life wisdom provider uses, when asked about meaning of life, the reason of existence or how we should treat each other. Write them down: ego, now and universe. (Remind me if there are more. These are those I recall from my age of ignorance  - there goes my intelligence!) With “ego” they address cognitive psychology, with “now” physics and with “universe” astronomy and evolution. I like those words and what they represent, which is all that is true about this existence - we are here, now. I will not delve into “ego” – still not ready for that subject - but I will touch “universe” and “now”.

So we replaced God with a safer word that is open to personal interpretation – Universe. We write it with capital U out of fearful respect, that we like to mistake for love and care according to previous beliefs.  We are wired to (or taught to) fear that, which has created us. It is aware of our existence and takes everything personally, even our own bodily fluids. And in this case this actually makes some sense. You know the saying - we are all made of stars? We actually are. Made of them. All the matter in the universe is created in the processes that take place deep inside star’s fusion reactor as they slowly run out of hydrogen.  In that sense universe did create us. Well only in a sense.  A verb “to create” demands a voluntary act and would imply that universe can think. That is simply human ego-tripping again. We were not created. We happened. Through countless series of coincidences that led to this moment, and yes, the matter we consist of is from stars. That is all the magic there is to it.

Carl Sagan said in his famous Cosmos series “we are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff.”  See how he used personification addressing how we are the way for Universe to know itself. This is where mumbo jumbo justification gets it totally wrong. We, as for now the only known form of conscious existence, are by default a part of this universe (as shown above), hence we are the universe. By simply understanding universe and ourselves we can say that universe knows itself. That is all. No separation between it and us. We are incorporated, intertwined into very fabric of cosmos. And to say that universe takes care of us, like Coelho & co. are trying to convince you, would be implying that we take care of each other and everything that goes on in the universe. That is not what we do. So naturally we have to be bad and Universe has to be good and separated from us. If we lose universe as the next intelligence, there is nothing left to believe in that gave reason to our existence anymore.

Universe does not try to tell you anything. I have once tried here to explain destiny and intuition to myself by slicing the time space continuum loaf into slices of separate moments where only single thing changes. I have argued that by considering every momentum of every particle in that moment, one could potentially predict the next step. So future could be predicted and intuition explained as being in tune with the momentum of the universe. I am not saying I am wrong, but I am also not claiming it is possible for our mind to connect to that kind of knowledge. Our brains did not develop that way. They are a consequence of coincidental improvements that proved useful for survival of the brain carrier. They do not see and work in quantum world. Well they do, but they are not aware of it, since the world we live in is of small velocities. If knowing the current position of all particles in this world would prove essential for our survival, and somewhere along the line genetic mutations would enable some brain carrier to develop that kind of perception, we would now be seeing a totally different world. Believe me. F*cking Schroedingers world.

Universe also does not try to help you find your destiny. Quite the opposite is true. Universe tries to kill you on every step of the way. Great Intelligence defenders (should I call them “Star troopers”? You know, since they are shooting fiercely without ever hitting anything. Nerdalert!) see in the fact that whole universe seems to be perfectly made for life the reason there must be great intelligence present or greater purpose to our existence. Like whole universe strived for us to come to be. We call this anthropic principle. It says that universe, as we know it, would not come to be had only one thing been slightly different. Everything seems to be perfectly in tune with everything else. Well of course.  Had it been different, we as we are, would not come to be to ask ourselves the question and wondered at how everything is just perfect. It is the other way around. Again with the separation between it and us. Why are they doing this?

But we do not need to go into this philosophical discussion. Look outside. Water, air, animals, weather, earthquakes, diseases, viruses, bacteria, freezing temperatures, etc. all of it is trying to kill us. We are fragile, we are breakable, perishable and pathetically insignificant to grand scale universe.

You must be really selfish and fearful to see in this a reason for panic. This seemingly nihilistic point of view (which is the convention we decided, just because it pisses on what we think of our role in this universe) is the reason we have to work together, we have to be kind and we have to try to survive and assure others to survive too. For each other’s sake, the universe does not care. We are all there is. This life is all there is (that is a subject for some other time). There is no reward after this. You died? You had your chance; too bad if you wasted your potential on going to war for somebody else’s interests.

What about the people born in parts of the world where they have no choice? Well, there is always a choice, just a hard one to make and seemingly impossible to do. But I do not want to sound without compassion. Surely it is sad that on some parts of the world human life is still treated as a rental service. It should not be like that. Not in this era of this much knowledge and wealth we produce. But at the same time, this is a process. Slowly but surely truth will prevail. Acceptance will overcome the fear from death. Appreciation will take over anticipation. All we can do is try to spread knowledge and show people they have a chance and no given purpose to live. But we cannot ask this to be done in an instant. It takes time. And this is where I turn to now.

Time is a bitch, isn’t it? Suddenly you turn 35 and look back on your life, realising you are probably over the half of yours. Is this why these questions now? Probably. But, you see, time does not exist. Surely I can trace first lines on my face, surely I have accumulated knowledge and definitely I have been to places and gather lifelong experiences. My presence in this world is measurable; we made sure we would never forget how time passes by. We wear watches or check the time on phones. They are so handy, aren’t they? My boyfriend is really smart. He wears a watch that does not work. (so proud of him)

I lied. Time does exist, only not the way we think it does. If you revisit my previous blogs where I explained how time is actually only the next dimension of time space continuum, you will get a clearer picture of what I am about to say. Time is defined by change - any change in positions of particles. As long as there are differences between slices of time space continuum, there is growth in entropy. When everything comes to a halt, when entropy reaches the maximum distribution, there wont be any change, there would not be time anymore. Or so the Heat Death scenario of fate of universe predicts. (Well, there are some more issues I got really paraphrased, but that is the essentially the idea) The time we speak of, the one that connects to the purposeful life is man made. That is the cause of all the psychoses we face.

We feel like we are running out of it. All the time. And that is true, knowing that we can’t go on living forever. We will die, that was sure in the moment we were conceived. In a way, your mother and father sentenced you to death. However, let’s not forget, they gave you a gift of life before the inevitable end. But until then, remember this, we live. And life is precious.

Here comes the mumbo jumbo. Hippy dippy people say you have to be in the now. Present in this very moment. That is actually a good advice. If you focus on what you are doing now, if you are completely aware of what is going on in your surroundings, then you can get the filling of a fulfilment. You always know where you are and what you are doing. Time still passes by at the same amount as it passes for others (yeah yeah, relativity…physically true, but for our reality of slow velocities relativity is unnoticeable. As long as we are not approaching Gargantua from Interstellar, it is safe to say it like that) But you remember living, because change has taken place while you did. Try recalling lazy days activities and details, if you can. And now try remembering a summer where you were active and present. The difference is quite remarkable.

I could go on arguing that our perception of what is “now” is actually what has happened just milliseconds ago. That is also true. We are constantly behind what is going on. It takes time for visual operators to process things. The now is ever-elusive moment that we are trying to catch. Like a dog chasing a bone, that is suspended form a stick tied to his body. He is condemned to forever-hellish existence of always longing, never getting. But that is not important. What we perceive as now is what is the “now” hippy dippy is talking about. Our perception is the way it is, because it proved useful for our survival.

We then go on talking about not worrying about the future. Thinking about future has become like a big no-no in this society. People, who ask, where is this relationship going, will not get an answer. They will probably be discarded as drama queens or put into place with words like: “Lets just enjoy what we are having. Who knows what tomorrow brings (a patronising smile and a tap on the shoulder). Oh the bullshit. This is what “being in now” has been perverted into. Taking no responsibility. (I sure have given that speech, I am sorry)

It is true; we are sliding through the past into the future, passing through immeasurably small moments of existence that we are unable to perceive in time as they happen. Therefore there is no “now” that we could live in as we are aware of it. The only thing we are aware of is the stream of thoughts. This is where “now” gets its value - for the same reason as in previous post. We can always stop what we are thinking, if we are not content with what we are thinking. If we recognise something as counterproductive, negative, pointless, we can stop. Surely then the wisdom of knowing when it is the bravest thing to do to run away could be useful (what a nice reference to my previous entry). That be the case, if we do not want to simply live in denial. But it does not matter. The feeling of contentment will be present, even if all you do in your life is to run away from issues. If that makes you happy, do it. Just do not expect from others to be the same or support you. You’ll get lonely.

There is nothing wrong with thinking about the future. It gets trickier when we live in it (or the past, for that matter). I am not talking physically. We do live in both of them simultaneously (that, too, is a fact). I am talking about expectations and memories - good to imagine and not so good to (re) live.

Yeah, lets just enjoy what we are having. Fun. Simplicity. No responsibility, total tolerance. Hedonism. We do not know, when we will die. Maybe tomorrow bus will hit me. That is a way to react to these facts, too. But you see, there is where you are wrong. If you stay home, do nothing, lay down and stop thinking, life will go on, celestial bodies will keep on rotating, particles will change their positions, molecules will decay and as long as there is some heat in Universe, time will pass. Our actions are not needed for universe to go onwards. Not even for a society to move on. We are replaceable. We are insignificant from Life’s point of view. However the question remains, are you content with being a non-active participant of your life? Are you happy with solely reacting to what is going on in this world? If the answer is yes, than congratulations, you have fulfilled your life to the maximum. Most of people aren’t.

Future will come don’t worry. The question is, would you feel ok with life that was not made by you, but for you? Will you be content? Damn that question.

Maybe the real question is, do I need to feel content and why? Oh the abyss.

Next time. And there’s that.