Has Civilization Been Destroyed By Climate Change Before?

May 19, 2011 · Posted in Social · 4 Comments 152 views

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

The written history of humans generally goes back six or seven thousand years, depending on who you ask. It’s a solid record of how cultures, knowledge, science and religions developed. But scientists tell us that homo-sapiens reached its modern evolutionary state approximately 50,000 years ago. If that’s correct, then humans fifty thousand years ago had the same brain capabilities as humans today. So then, what were humans doing for 40,000+ years? Did it really take modern man that long to develop any sort of language or technology? Just look at what we’ve accomplished in the past five thousand years. We have gone from tribes to computers and space travel. Imagine where we will be in just a short 10,000 years.

Tags: Here we go again

Shopping Trip

May 12, 2011 · Posted in Tao · Comment 3 views

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Tags: Video Tao

Being Different

May 12, 2011 · Posted in Self Improvement · Comment 102 views

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Many people spend a great deal of effort trying to express their “individuality”. I think it’s a strong Western cultural theme: “Don’t be a sheep. Stand out from the norm. Be unique.” Obviously some go so far to be different that they purposely avoid things they may enjoy or deny themselves experiences they too want to feel simply because they perceive too many others act and feel the same way and they want to be different.

What does trying to be different really do for you? Isolate you? Make you feel resentment towards others for being “sheep”? Make you resent yourself for being on the “outside”?

It’s ok to be like others. In most ways, you can’t avoid it. No matter how hard you try, you still have to breathe air. You still have to eat food and drink water. You still have to sleep. Just like everyone else. You are human (yes, even you who fantasize about being mythical or supernatural beings like vampires, etc) and as such you are very much part of the herd. A sheep will be a sheep and even if it’s sheared and stands by itself away from the others, it’s still a sheep. It’s ok to like the same things others like. It’s ok to do something you might have fun doing even if everyone else is doing it as well.

Being a non-conformist does not mean you can’t do what others are doing. It means you can’t do what others are doing because they are doing it. This may be an often overlooked concept. In fact, if you change your actions or views based on the actions or views of someone else, that is the epitome of conformity. So in essence, dressing a certain way because nobody else is dressing that way is allowing your motive be based on other people’s actions.

You can be an individual and still be part of the crowd. Being an individual means doing what you want. If it happens to be what others want too, so be it. If you try too hard to be different, you end up being controlled by others as much as if you tried really hard to be the same.

Live how you want. Experience what you want. Feel what you want. Not because it’s what other people like and not because it’s what they don’t.

Tags: confomity, individuality

Order and Chaos?

April 30, 2011 · Posted in Tao · 1 Comment 94 views

Rating: +2 (from 2 votes)

A well known Daoist view is that generally when we define something, it comes with an opposite: light and dark, up and down, good and evil, happy and sad. Chapter 2 of the Daodejing states, “When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly.” (Mitchell). So to be able to recognize order we must have chaos.

However I believe that chaos does not exist except as marker for our limits of understanding. We see chaos as disarray, following no predictable course. There is no order in chaos, right?

But really, can anything truly be chaotic? Are there things that are not subject to the laws of physics? When a star goes supernova, every single particle involved in that massive, seemingly chaotic explosion moves and reacts within a system rules and, knowing all the variables affecting any of the particles, we could say, “Yes, this is how we expect that to move”. But when we do not fully know all the variables and conditions, we cannot predict something with unerring accuracy.

What we think is chaos is simply things acting the way they will act, without us having a full understanding of everything involved.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of a chaotic system (ok, well the second thing after the image of Jeff Goldblum in that dinosaur movie) is the weather. Despite all our fancy equipment and science, we cannot predict when and where a tornado will hit far enough in advance to always be prepared for them. But is the weather chaotic? No, it follows all the same laws of physics as everything else. The problem is that the Earth’s weather is a massive, dynamic system. There are more conditions than we have the capability to measure and track. Satellites and radar can tell us what’s happening, and we can tell the speed and general direction. We can even tell how heavy the rain within a storm. But all of this gives us only basic forecasting.

Yet the storm is most assuredly moving within the rules and parameters of physics. Rules we didn’t create and are still discovering. Order exists everywhere at all times. It’s not even order. Order only exists because we don’t fully understand it and have thus labelled those parts we don’t understand as chaos.

To me, this is Tao. The way things are. The way things flow. It’s the order we understand, and the order we don’t.

Tags: chaos, order

Desire and Contentment

April 30, 2011 · Posted in Self Improvement · 1 Comment 109 views

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

There is no greater mistake than following desire;
There is no greater disaster than forgetting contentment;
There is no greater sickness than seeking attainment

- Daodejing, Chapter 46, Merel Translation

A common process for finding contentment might go something like this:

Step 1: Desire something (a possession, wealth, a relationship, a job, etc.)
Step 2: Work to attain/obtain that which you desire.
Step 3: Experience satisfaction and/or contentment.

Tags: ambition, desire, success

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