A Light of the Present

The idea that since light has a finite speed the star light we see
originated actually at some time in the past, maybe billions of years
ago, has lost its ability to amaze, though perhaps not irremediably.
Few focus on the reality that the fact the light we see from a candle
must actually also originate in the past and thereby must give us, a
picture of ---- the past, not the current reality we suppose.
And who can imagine that words are like candles. As our OWN words,
even, leave our lips, they are already in the past of any spinal cord
reality. They do not reflect our current thoughts, intentions,
necessarily.
Yet like the Mayan ball games where the loser was a blood sacrifice,
our verbal interplay -- the mass of words, a token, a ball in play,
becomes the entire universe, for modern man. And as in any game,
there are rules, arbitrary rules, which all must accept. And the
rules, say the game is ----not a game, but reality.
There is a way to silently step back and verify for oneself, the game,
it's limitations, it's pretensions. There is a way, but surely it
would be inappropriate to speak of that WAY, to those who trifle with
--- important things, and weight heavily, the irrelevant. And those
who, to use the terminology of Jan Cox, do not even suspect the
importance of an aim.
So yeah, maybe there is such a thing as a light of the present, but how could that be what this post is about?

Impossibility for breakfast

An Italian court has been in the news because a judge there reduced a
murderers sentence (originally nine years) after presented with
evidence the guy had a gene for aggression.

Quoting New Scientist:
"Last week, Nature reported that Pier Valerio Reinotti, an appeal
court judge in Trieste, Italy, cut Bayout's sentence by a year after
finding out he has gene variants linked to aggression."

The science community sputtered about how individual responsibility
was not different for someone with such a gene, and other stuff. The
facts pointed out by Jan Cox, the 20th century empiricist of
mysticism, is that genetics determines everything. Everything, those
nice ladies who would die rather than spill tea while filling
someone's cup, are just as helpless as some bonking conker.

The mechanical mind cannot remember the above and also keep in mind
that man cannot, should not, relinquish a hold on his belief that
individual responsibility is possible. The entire progress of human
history depends partly on persons maintaining such a conviction. So
scientists and more often, commentators will talk on about
environmental versus genetic influences and free will, without ever
noticing such discussions shred comprehensibilty, and this is not
noticed because people HAVE to believe in individual responsibility.
They cannot notice that to talk of genetic influences makes no sense
unless you can draw a line between what is genetically determined and
what is not.

To try though and grasp these contradictory things can be a start
toward appreciating the nature of the human intellect, an organ with a
function different from that imagined by public intellectuals. To
appreciate the impossibility of a task, like personal change in a
universe completely determined, is a necessary step for persons with
a certain aim.

The Reality of Paganism

It is odd that the world has given up paganism as a serious theology,
which it was once. Now not a trace is left, of any explanations. Yet
paganism was unsurpassed in explaining the world in one respect. In
this paganism has never been surpassed. Paganism communicates how
genetics determines everything. Modern science every few years comes
up with research results indicating the power of genetics to explain
behavior, and after a nervous giggle, the western mind forgets the
entire event. Completely. But a couple of millenia ago, there was no
reason to deny that man was not an autonomous creature. Having your
life determined by a drunk deity, a cranky blacksmith, a jealous
woman----explained the observed world in a quite competent manner.
Paganism was empirical. The gods were like your crazy neighbor only
the god had real power to control events, not jsut, like your
neighbor, chatter. What else could one conclude?

And we gave up a workable view of human events, for......monotheism?
What is that about?
How could we have gone from a theory that explains the evidence, for
one that expects man to improve himself, a hopeless waste of energy in
most cases. Well yes, there is a reason that monotheism works----it
provides a mechanism to accomplish a certain kind of progress, but not
the progress that religion describes, rather, on a large scale, the
progress of religion is the efficiency of change on a large scale. But
what a hard sell, if anyone looked at the facts. And yet monotheism
did prevail in the west. Perhaps the reason for the triumph of
monotheism is that the intellect of man reached a certain stage of
progress in a human economy. Not the stage of effective control of
human behavior, the intellect of man cannot claim that, but---the
intellect of man can claim the goal of rational behavior is a workable
goal. It is the ability of the human mind to tout the advantages of
rationalism, that explains the triumph of monotheism. For the god of
the monotheists, is, possibly, just that human intellect, which claims
to be able to understand, ---everything. The triumph of a sole god is
the triumph, of a world transparent to human understanding. Maybe.

Sampling Ordinary

Here's a quote from an online mag called seedmagazine.com. I present
this as a nice example of ordinary thought. Let's get this straight:
we love ordinary. Ordinary is what keeps our world safe from, like mad
maxine types, and lets geezers walk in the park without worrying about
someone snatching their camera. That does not mean that for a few
there are not alternatives to ordinary and so I present this sample of
what a few could get beyond.

A Writing Revolution
Analysis / by Denis G. Pelli & Charles Bigelow / October 20, 2009
Nearly universal literacy is a defining characteristic of today's
modern civilization; nearly universal authorship will shape
tomorrow's.
Nearly everyone reads. Soon, nearly everyone will publish. Before
1455, books were handwritten, and it took a scribe a year to produce a
Bible. Today, it takes only a minute to send a tweet or update a blog.
Rates of authorship are increasing by historic orders of magnitude.
Nearly universal authorship, like universal literacy before it, stands
to reshape society by hastening the flow of information and making
individuals more influential.

End of quote. Reshape society, perhaps. But make individuals more
influential? eeh. What we are looking at with what this author is
calling universal authorship is -----more chat. More chatter is
necessary, because humanity, all the folks on the planet, is getting
bigger, and for this unit to continue to function while it is getting
larger, man's cerebral functions need to increase, so an individual
becomes more sensitive to the needs of the whole, (yes, less
influential as an individual, not more...) An individual as a cog in
something larger must be fine-tuned to function more efficiently,
transfer energy more efficiently. Increasing the cerebral dimension
is one way this could happen, increasing the proportion of yellow
circuit to red and blue (to use the terminology of a temporary map Jan
Cox once made up.) This map assumes the reader has some appreciation
of the mechanical quality of the ordinary human intellect.

Do I know what I just wrote above is accurate? No. Anyway it would be
the tiniest glancing sliver of a larger complexity. Let me guess
though, that someone glimpsing certain bedrock realities, and
wondering about escape routes, might do well to treat superficial
(widely agreed upon opinions) appearances as questionable and that
understanding might be a hard, but unique, path to --- a startling
vista.

Edgicating

What a delight is a sprinkle of rain on a desert extent. What sweetness in the unexpected shift in humidity, but here you could say shift in altitude, shift in melody, shift in perspective... because the point here is a picture of one's first intimations of a world that before now, existed for one merely in literature. This world existed in literature but the thinness of this plane does not explain how appealing the accounts, how persuasive for some the pictures drawn in the literary accounts of mysticism.
This literature is typically by someone who before was -- parched -- and who,  after having this sprinkle, was changed merely in that he had something new to chat about. And chat they do, bulging library shelf after bulging shelf, on and on with a drier and drier tongue.
These accounts have the appeal of an account of foreign travel, with this exception. Most accounts are by those who never got that this glimpse, was merely a peek through a portal, not a certificate of some accomplishment.  This glimpse could for those thirsty to learn give a clue, but who fits this category.  Who can suspect that what happened to them was not of their own doing.  Who understands this artifact (memory) found out of its setting, means the start of a barefoot trek through a harsh landscape.
Or we could say, for some, but not most, this sprinkling weather event, is a hint that one must invent irrigation.

The convenience of convenience

Jan Cox once said that the reason convenience stores were popular is that they were convenient. I am not suggesting I have figured out what he meant yet, but that thought came to my mind when I watched two people walk toward a small shop of this kind.  And it occurred to me that it was convenient for them, because it did not have a lot of stuff they could not afford. I guess I don't yet really understand what Jan meant, only that he never wasted his words.

A Bigger Picture

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=29405

The url above is to a press release from NASA which talks about the results from a satellite that has returned information about the boundary area between our solar system and the galaxy of we are a part. 
These results allow:

"The first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy. The new view will change the way researchers view and study the interaction between our galaxy and sun."

The lack of such a map was not part of my mechanical mental furniture, and yet how wonderful to now hear about something like this: I cannot even comprehend the mathematics that are critical here, and surely my grasp of these words could not be adequate to the reality that the scientists are thrilled about.
The only way for me to evaluate my picture of all this is to go beyond my picture of say, the solar system.
And even then, as one lets new pictures percolate, as this article allows, the fun is the fun of the edge, the fun of the new. The fun of the dimly comprehended which is yet plausible.

Perhaps my sentiments here are an example of what older theological systems called: faith.  Not--- hearing about some clumsy puppet figure and saying well that makes no sense but I will try hard to think it's real.

Perhaps faith is --- just what it was once described as
"the evidence of things unseen."

Perhaps the "evidence of things unseen," is this thrill of a border, a border from which things are just glimpsed, but not outlined in great detail (then it would not be a border.)

I can imagine some NASA person reading the above and thinking, nice lady, she reads our press releases and will probably encourage her congressman to vote more money for science.

No, they missed it.  The scientists are in the same boat I am, different edges, but the same boat.