Back Into the Machine

One of the common tenets of monotheism is the love of God for his people. Setting aside questions of existence for the moment, I nevertheless have to wonder about this. After all, the assumption is never really explained. What makes us so sure God loves us? In fact, what makes us so sure God can love at all?

It is, of course, futile to try to understand the mind of God. His perceptions would be so far beyond and different from the merely human that even the words "beyond" and "different" imply too much of a connection and similarity to really have any meaning. Nevertheless, There are two things that we know for certain about God, two things which are contained in the definition of such a deity: omniscience and omnipotence.

Now, those are easy words to say, but hard to understand. What does that mean, exactly, if we try to break it down into pieces a human can understand? What is it like to know everything?

God can never know doubt. He must always and forever be convinced, with absolute certainty, of his rightness. In fact, rightness isn't even a concept that applies to God - existence supercedes morality.
God can never feel sorrow. He has no regrets, and not in the same way that people say they have no regrets, which is a sign of either arrogance or duplicity. God actually has no regrets, has never, in the entire history of his existence, done something wrong.
God can never question existence. If God believes he exists, he does. If God believes you exist, you do.
God can never suffer loss. Nothing can ever be out of his reach, nothing can ever be withheld from his grasp.
God can never be betrayed. Stories of Lucifer aside, omniscience precludes betrayal. Omnipotence makes enmity irrelevant. To be the enemy of God is more absurd and worthless than being the enemy of the colour blue. (More impossible than hating pie?)
God can never have respect for another.

Can you love someone who you cannot lose? Can you love someone who you know with certainty to exist? I don't think so. I don't think you can have love without the fear of loss, without the tiniest of doubts that it can be real. Love is one of many attempts by we, the lost, to hold back the darkness - and for God, there is no darkness. For God, there is no fear. God can never lose anyone, and so no one is worthy of his love.

I would say it seems lonely, such an existence, but of course that, too, is ridiculous. God can never be lonely, because perfection is self-contained. God has no needs or desires - in fact, is incapable of desiring anything.

But, if God has no desires, no need for anything outside of himself, must he not be deterministic? Operating according to a set of rules, layed down by himself, for all eternity? There is no room for randomness or chance or free will in a system of perfection. There is no room for humanity to intrude into Godhood. God has no need of love, because love is built on a foundation of poverty. Love is the wish for something you do not have, the desire to keep and hold that which you do, the need to raise up something else above yourself and make it greater than you could ever hope to be. None of this is possible for God.

Is God, then, nothing more than a great world-machine, a series of concentric crystal spheres, spinning in place from the beginning to the end of time - and after? Deus Machina, with nothing to disrupt the perfect, inevitable operation of its flawless mechanism?

Not nothing more, I think. Nothing less.

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

One of my favorite short stories is "The Ultimate Melody" by Arthur C. Clarke, which can be found in Tales of the White Hart, if you go looking for it - which I highly recommend.

The premise is simple: There are some songs which stick in your mind, so insidiously and completely that you find yourself humming them for weeks, or even months. I myself have been known to sing Greensleeves or Girl in the shower, over and over again, because something about the songs sticks in my head in such a way that I can't get them out.

What is frightening about this, though, is that the song will, for a time, drive from your head all thoughts other than the song - it will make concentration impossible, it will leave you unable to carry on conversations or do work without being distracted. We've all experienced this, of course - when a song gets stuck so thoroughly in your head that it's all you can think of.

So why does this happen? Well, the premise espoused in the story is that the music we find compelling is just a reflection of the Ultimate Melody, a song which resonates perfectly with the human brain. Weird, maybe, but an interesting idea - and one that starts to seem more possible when you think about how songs break out, catch people's minds seemingly simultaneously and completely, and then die away again.

So what would happen if we could synthesize such a thing? All it would take is a computer running through lists of possible sounds, selecting for the combinations and melodies which humanity finds most catchy - and, given some time, the ultimate melody is within your grasp.

But of course, as ever, when reaching for the very top, mankind's hubris turns on us, and the scientist who creates the melody becomes an empty shell, his mind totally taken over by the strands and chords of the song to end all songs. After all, even a simple toon or ditty can erase thought from one's mind - the ultimate melody must have power vastly beyond such a thing.

But my question is - what would that be like? To hear the ultimate melody, and never to turn back; to give your mind over to the music of the heavens? It wouldn't be like death, exactly. More like transcendance.

And the answer? Yep. It would be worth it. I would do that.

Sexy Times

Though I hate to tread on the toes of the good doctor Hood, it is a movie that led me to this post.

You see, I saw Milk the other day - the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician in America - and it was excellent. Though it was undoubtedly an overly rose-coloured portrayal of the gay rights movement, it accomplishes what it sets out to do admirably. The story is compelling, and compellingly told, the acting is of extremely high quality (and believe me, I never say that about movies), and all in all, I would highly recommend it.

For one thing, it made me think.

I don't often talk or, for that matter, think, about sexual orientation or sexual freedom. Sure, I'll spend a lot of time on the nature of love, and the importance of sex personally and in society, but honestly, who it is you're having sex with and how many of them there are simply isn't terribly important to me, at least on a philosophical or political level. I have many militant-for-gay-and-polyamorous-rights friends, not to mention several friends who are themselves not of a purely vanilla sexual orientation, and, though it seems a little strange to say this, I've pretty much left the thinking and talking about such things to them.

This is also an awkward discussion to have for me, as one's perspective in the matter is so attendant on one's own sexual desires. Being male, straight, monogamous by strong preference, and without, insofar as I am aware, any interesting fetishes or sexual quirks - though my understanding is that you don't discover that you have these until you've tried them, so I suppose the possibility must always exist - I've always felt, in a way, that my perspective wasn't terribly useful to such a debate.

Then I realized that that was ridiculous. What was I thinking? There is no such thing as a useless perspective.

So I suppose that my opinion on the whole issue of sexual freedom and limitations on sexual desire is simply one of profound puzzlement. If someone enjoys different books than I do I might try to understand why their tastes differ from my own, I might even make fun of them, but I wouldn't try to prevent them from reading it. What possible reason would I have for doing that? Where, to put it bluntly, is the advantage to me?

Now, sex is a little trickier than novels, to be sure. It can be exploitative, violent, dangerous, and cruel. And those kinds of sex should obviously be prevented through law or social norms - but what you're preventing is not the sex, but the exploitation, the violence, the danger, and the cruelty. We have a vested interest in seeing people not hurt one another - it's against any kind of morality, and, on a more self-interested level, it's bad for society. Where is the interest in seeing people not fuck each other? As long as it doesn't infringe on others' ability to function in society, why the hell do we care?

If it does, that's another matter, naturally. I can understand why a church would not want to be forced by legislation to recognize gay marriage. After all, that's an internal matter of religion. I wouldn't ask them to recognize Buddha as their overlord, either. But in the vast, vast majority of cases, people's sexual orientation has nothing to do with anyone else.

Most people would say that gay rights are an issue because the gays have made it one - brought it into the public sphere. Some people would say this with anger, some with admiration, some with pride. But they're wrong. The people who made it an issue are the people who are trying to prevent others from doing what they want.

There are so many things worth caring about, worth fighting for, worth bleeding and hating and dying over. This really isn't one of them. I don't want to have to care about what someone likes in sex, or whether they like sex at all. Really, it's just not worth it. People just want to live their lives. Why should they have to fight for that?

Mangling Defenseless Objects

Psychology is the study of human thought on an individual level. Sociology: thought on a cultural level. Philosophy: thought on a cosmic level.

The so-called "social sciences" begin and end with the study of human thought, in each situation and of each consideration to which it can be applied.

Sometimes, though, I think we have it wrong, we philosophers, we pretentious liberal-arts majors studying the Fundamental Truths of the Universe According to Dead Racists. Sometimes, I think the best way to examine human thought is with a math problem.

Here's an interesting one, which some of you may have encountered before. It's called the Mutilated Chessboard problem, which makes it both educational and hilarious.

Imagine a chessboard with two squares, each in an opposite corner, removed. Now, take 31 dominoes, each of which covers exactly two squares. Place them on the chessboard such that the dominoes cover all 62 squares, or explain why this is impossible.

Take a moment to try to come up with the answer before I tell it to you. It's an interesting little problem, and actually much harder than it looks.

....until you figure out the trick.

What is the fundamental property of a chessboard? 64 squares, alternating black and white, so that no two adjacent squares are of the same colour. Thus, the two squares removed when the chessboard was mutilated (ideally in some kind of horror-movie sequence involving a psychopathic grand master) must have been the same colour. However, any given domino must cover two differently-coloured squares, which means that the problem is impossible.

But that's not how most people would go about solving that problem, is it? I would guess that the vast majority of people, on being handed a chessboard, a knife, and 31 dominoes, would start by putting dominoes on the board and trying to see if some sort of pattern emerged. Humans are programmed to be experiential, rather than logical - in most cases, we prefer to touch, rather than think, to do, rather than see.

Maybe that's why people so freqently make obviously bad decisions. Sure, if you thought about it the right way, you'd know that the Xtreme stunt/questionable relationship decision/substance abuse isn't really the cleverest of ideas - not the optimal solution to the problem - but sometimes, you just have to spend an hour playing with dominoes before you figure it out.

Going to Class

So, here's the story.

I sat down about an hour ago to write a post, because I felt like I should write something. So as I usually do, I began brainstorming ideas for topics. My thought processes when I do this generally run something like this:

"Hmmm.... blog post. Blog post, blog post, blog post.... 'blog' is such a stupid word. It doesn't even mean anything. You know what else doesn't mean anything? Election promises. Those wacky politicians, am I right? Maybe I should write about them, and their election promises, and how McCain's campaign has been going completely batshit insane.

Oh, right. Then I would be pretty much the mainstream media. Only without money or credibility.

Friggin' media. Seriously, what'd they ever do for us, anyways? It's just commercials and exploitation and capitalism and sadism and decadence. There's no real content or intelligent debate or examination of actual issues anywhere in the whole dreary nihilistic morass of it.

Hehehe. Boobies.

Okay, so maybe I could write about feminism and stuff, because the media is basically why modern feminism sucks, but I keep doing that. Then again, isn't that basically the point? You gotta keep saying stuff, gotta let the message free, because if you don't say it loudly and often, how will anyone ever take notice? Do you really expect to change the world by being silent?

Do I really expect to change the world at all?"

It was at this point that I made a realization. I do expect to change the world. I do, against all reason, against all better judgment and all prior experience, expect to be important. Expect to mean something.

So I asked myself the obvious question: why? What possible reason could I have for this ridiculous assumption?

And the answer quickly came to me: it's a class thing.

You see, as long as there have been civilizations, there has been a certain kind of person who knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they will be important, that the world balances on the tips of their fingers. Kings, aristocrats, oil barons, priests: all of these people have known, many for as long as they have been alive, just how important they are.

But I am none of these things. Though I live a life of shocking and frequently appalling privelege compared to the vast majority of human beings on this terrifying planet, I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, upper class. I have no power, nor any particular prospect of power. And yet, I believe in it anyways.

Witness, my friends, the triumph of the modern world. Call it the American Dream, if you like, call it the historical dialectic and the principle of Communism, call it the triumph of rationalism and man transcendant... call it what you will, we are achieving it. For the first time in history, ordinary people can legitimately believe themselves to be special. Important. Valuable. Everyone can believe themselves to be the kind of person who is destined for greatness. And belief is the first step on the road to truth.

It won't happen tomorrow, and it may not happen for hundreds or thousands of years - it may not happen at all; after all, far too often we seem to slide backwards, to lose the progress we have made. But on the whole, the road we are travelling is a good one. Someday, I think, we will be free.

Etarran Gets Back on the Lovewagon

(A note on the following post: This is a Philosophic Work in Progress - an idea that is half-formed in my mind, and which I would greatly appreciate help in developing. Particularly, in this case, from female readers - after all, this is essentially my take on modern feminism, and the perspective of actual females would no doubt help immensely.)

Yes, yes, I know it has been some two months since I last even attempted to post on this blog. Well, that isn't strictly true - I have a lovely topical piece on the Beijing Olympics half-finished somewhere, but I think I will spare you all from having to suffer through that one.

And so, what I really need is a suitable topic for my return to the mighty blogosphere. And somehow while writing this preamble, I think I have come up with it. Let's talk about love, shall we?

See, love - romantic love, in particular - is my favorite emotion, because no one knows what it is. Ask anyone to give a proper definition of love, and they will almost invariably say something along the lines of "Oh, you know it when you see it." The irony that something into which we invest enormous amounts of effort is something that we don't even properly understand or even attempt to really understand in any meaningful way is both staggering and hilarious.

So, what do we know about it? Well, probably the first thing that someone would say if asked about love is that it can be life-changing: romantic, erotic relationships are considered one of the most, if not the most, important things that can happen in someone's life.

But the interesting thing about this is that that has not always been the case. The idea that romantic love is a core, defining principle of someone's existence and personality is relatively new - originating as recently as 800 years ago. Before then, the important relationships, the ones considered worthy of song and story, were the ones with your fellow-soldiers; the relationship between a man and his shield-mate (Which modern readers often characterize as "Totally ghey LOL") was by far deeper and more meaningful than relationships between people, who, when you really get right down to it, have no reason to be together other than to make babies.

So even that supposedly core fact about love - that it is deeply meaningful and important - is subject to a certain amount of speculation. And we're still no closer to anything like a working definition. Which is unfortunate, really; how can one know if they are in love if they don't even know what it is?

The problem, as I see it, is that modern western culture is trapped between different ideals of the romantic - we cannot really reconcile chivalry with equality, objectification with respect, subjection with overmastery. We have managed, in our commercialization and modernization, to become stuck between Galahad's ideal of love and Labatt Blue's.

How, after all, is one supposed to go about romance in the modern world? A silly question, you might think ("Hurr Hurr, Etarran's post title from three posts ago was totally a lie!"), but it is nevertheless valid: every Western culture for the last thousand years, except ours, has had strictly codified rules on the subject. Certainly, romance was as frustrating to them as it is to us - one need merely read Shakespeare or Malory or Coleridge to have that amply demonstrated - but there were nevertheless codified rules and standards of behaviour which we lack.

A perfect example, I believe, is the word "fair." To a feudal lord, "fair" as applied to a lady would have had a very specific meaning, which is difficult to translate into modern terms. It certainly included physical attractiveness, but it also had other qualities associated with it. Education, nobility, grace and poise and a sense of loveliness - things which don't really enter into modern conceptions of romance, being either too quaint or too misogynistic. I think the closest we come to being able to express what they were talking about is the word "pretty," but of course that falls desperately short. There are no rules for love, no codification, and so the terms in which to express it are dying or have died.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Chivalric love, although it makes wonderful stories, cannot really exist in a society of equals. Inherent to the idea of chivalry is the idea of love as a kind of religious ecstasy: women were to be worshiped, obeyed, bowed down before. Obviously, this is anathema to modern sensibilities, and no doubt rightly so. But nevertheless, the bizarre shadow-land, the strange in-between place to which we have restrained ourselves, cannot continue much longer.

Between chivalry and equality we find exploitation, objectification, and degradation. Between chivalry and equality we find self-hate, harassment, and abuse. Between chivalry and equality we find pornography and beer commercials. Congratulations, my friends - we broke love. That, right there, is why we are a culture of excess and corruption. This, I would contend, is why the world hates us - and why they may well be right to do so.

So, if chivalry is dead, and the strange bastardization we have created cannot last, that leaves us with only one real direction to go: towards equality. And perhaps I am merely too much of a romantic of the old school, perhaps I err too heavily towards viewing love as something somehow holy, but I think we can manage it. I think we can fix love, if we give it a try. I think we can perfect it. A ridiculous utopian vision, perhaps. But how far-fetched is it, really, to love as equals?

We preach incessantly about how we are a society of freedom and equality, and those goals are wonderful and admirable. But if we can't uphold them in the most important thing we will ever do... well, when can we? And ask yourselves: would it even be worth trying?

Chapter Three: Wherein Our Hero Does Discover the Universe, and All That It Contaims Within, There Being Sore Temptations and Terrible Perils Faced

I wrote this short piece of fiction a while back, on a whim, and have been told variously that it is "the best thing anyone has ever written, ever," that it is "confusing and poorly worded," and that it is "kinda funny, I guess." I'm still working on the decision of whether or not to include creative writing (As opposed to my normal lack of originality, I suppose) in the entries of this blog - so consider this to be a test, of sorts. Tell me what you think.

Divine Plan

I have heard that a belief in evolution used to be practically synonymous with atheism. To me, this seems unthinkable. Now that the first galactic survey has been completed, it is precisely the opposite: the world no longer has to choose between God and reality. We understand - I have always understood - that the two are inseparable.

When the first of the survey ships pulled itself away from the ring of satellites and factories endlessly turning in the upper reaches of Earth's orbit, we had no idea what we would find. We hoped for life, of course: some cousins among the stars to share our triumphs and our failures. But as I and the other pilots landed on world after world after world, what we would find became all too clear.

In our galaxy there are seven hundred and sixteen thousand, eight hundred and ninety-two planets capable of supporting life, and every last one of them does. A shocking discovery, of course, but not an eventuality we were unprepared to face. It was the manner of life they supported that took us by surprise.

Darwin's theory of evolution was originally posited to explain diversity, or so I have been told. But now, we have a much better understanding of the universe than poor Darwin, and we know that diversity - true diversity - is a myth. Seven hundred thousand worlds, and each and every one of them is indistinguishable from Earth - or at least, from Earth in the rough era of the late Cretacious.

At first, the dinosaurs were exhilarating. After all, many children choose early in their lives between careers in space travel or paleontology. Just because I am doing one doesn't mean I don't have a soft spot for the other. Or at least had. You see, after a while, the monotony of worlds inhabited only by thunder lizards became almost too much to bear.

Those with less experience than I of the endless dinosaur worlds - or perhaps merely those whose faith is stronger than my own - have called this irrefutable evidence of God's divine plan for humanity. Why else, they ask, would ours be the only world to be different? The only world to be struck by that disaster, that blessing, that allowed intelligent life to arise?

My Lord - or no longer my Lord - if what I am about to say is false, forgive me. But while my belief in You is unchanged, my faith is sorely troubled.

Seven hundred thousand worlds, and only one of them is different. Seven hundred thousand worlds, and only one of them was changed, by a disaster, an accident of space and time. I see no evidence of God's divine plan for humanity in this.

After all, I've walked on those worlds. I've stared Creation in the mouth. Stared God in the mouth.

It was full of teeth.

These Were Our Triumphs

I've been given some flak recently about my facetious response to my own question as to what the single greatest moment in human history was. (Although, to be honest, I'd prefer it if y'all made comments on my posts in the comments section of the post, so that I can reference the comment if I want to make a reply.) Apparently, something that hasn't happened yet is not a valid choice for the greatest of mankind's triumphs (Although I'll note that everyone else who answered this question cheated as well.)

I think the lack of real answers to this question is indicative of the disaffection of our culture. Especially among the liberal and the young, there is nothing more chic than being down on the West, and on humanity in general. And, to be fair, we have screwed a lot up. But still, I think we spend too much time focusing on what we've done wrong, and not enough time focusing on the things we got right. There are two reasons to study history: to avoid the tragedies of the past, and to emulate their triumphs. Though we often accomplish neither, maybe if we thought about each more often, we could manage both.

Regardless, I thought to redress my flippancy, and so here I will share with you the ten pieces of human history that I consider to be the greatest things we have ever accomplished.

The War to End the World

The Cold War opens the festivities.

"What?" You are saying. "How can that possibly be a triumph?" Well, you're here to ask that question, is the thing. Somehow, reason and rationality prevailed over the hatred and terror of the time, and the incredible destructive power at our disposal was not unleashed. Well, yet, at least.

The Dwarf Wheat

In The Population Bomb, in 1968, Paul Ehrlich said "The battle to feed all of humanity is over.... In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.... India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."* And he was right. Only, not completely right. We still have famine, we still have massive, widespread hunger, but thanks to one strain of wheat, a billion people are alive today who would be dead.

The Printing Press

I chose the printing press over the invention of written language for a single reason: power. No other invention in human history has done so much to put power in the hands of the masses rather than the few who ruled them. Free flow of information, as I am so fond of quoting, is the only safeguard against tyranny.**

Viricide

It may come as something of a surprise that the most deadly disease known to man is not AIDS or Malaria or Anthrax, but something that no longer troubles us. In 1980, The WHO issued a resolution which began with the following sentence: "[The World Health Organization] declares solemnly that the world and its peoples have won freedom from smallpox, which was a most devastating disease sweeping in epidemic form through many countries since earliest time, leaving death, blindness and disfigurement in its wake, and which only a decade ago was rampant in Africa, Asia, and South America."*** The eradication of smallpox has been called the single greatest undertaking of the human race, and the hundreds of millions of lives saved from death or ruination are testament to our triumph over the disease.

And All the Beasts of the Land Shall Serve Him

The domestication of animals, whether for food or labour, is one of the greatest steps forward we have ever made. Humans are not personally well-adapted for many tasks, but there is one thing we excel at, and that is finding the right tool for the job at hand. Harnessing the strength of animals has paved the way for all the rest of human progress.

And All the Plants of the Earth Shall Be His Right

Endless history classes will go over again and again how the development of agriculture was a turning point for human civilization. Many of them will even mention that, without it, human civilization could not exist at all. Agriculture means surpluses, and surpluses mean specialization. Without farming, there could be no cities (As those obnoxious stickers will happily point out to you), no rulers, no religion, no science, no industry. Nothing at all, in fact.

Not to Live in the Cradle Forever

(Rejected subtitle: "The World is Not Enough")

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into Earth's Orbit. The 22 days of Sputnik One's radio transmission was the first time humanity was able to touch the world outside the world, and begin to truly learn some of the secrets of the universe we find ourselves in. Perhaps no other event has unlocked so many fields of exploration and endeavour - If only we made use of them.

The Spider 'Cross the World

Ah, the internet. Cesspool of hatred, intolerance, and stupidity, and yet the last remaining bastion of true freedom and unfettered thought. Nearly the complete sum total of human knowledge available at the tap of a few keys, and a thousand times its weight in ignorance ready to rush out of your screen. The internet is the logical conclusion of the process begun a thousand years ago by Chinese leadsmiths whose names are lost to history: information in the hands of the people, to do with as they will. That mostly what they do with it is ejaculate is a fault of humanity, not of the monument to human ingenuity that makes it all possible.

Awakened By A Dream of Equals

This one is sort of cheating, because I'm wrapping into it all the great revolutions of equality that the world has seen in the last three or four hundred years. The Women's Rights movement, the end of Apartheid, the desegregation of our schools, the Emancipation Proclamation, the destruction of the rotten burroughs, all the leaps and bounds towards human peace and equality that have been taken by people finally brave enough to stand up and say "No." We have a long, long way to go, to be sure. But we're winning. And, slowly but surely, hatred is losing.

Forcibly to Bind a Brother God

For the last one, I'm going to have to agree with Isabella, and speak out for the harnessing of fire. Not only for the potential for discovery and greatness, nor for the unfettered reign of power it gives us over the world, nor even for the symbolic and psychological grip it holds on our culture, but for this simple fact, as proposed by Arthur C. Clarke: If the termites had invented fire, who would be Earth's masters then?

The most surprising thing to me while writing this list (I had decided on maybe three entries before I began) was how many of the events are from the last hundred years. Partly that is historical perspective - after all, I'm more likely to think of something if it is ingrained in our collective consciousness - but partly it is due to the rapidly increasing rate of technological and scientific discovery. What gives us the power to work immense, terrible acts of evil also allows us to perform profound and wonderful acts of greatness. Perhaps the tragedies of the twentieth century outweigh its triumphs, but those triumphs are certainly there, and are no less incredible for all the failures of our species.

So, that's my take on human history. What do you think?

*See Wikipedia: "Norman Borlaug"
** Full quote from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: "'As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.' - Commissioner Previn Lal, "UN Declaration of Rights.""
***See Wikipedia: "Smallpox"

In Thunder, Lightning, and Terrible Trumpet Sound

While driving through the downtown core of the nation's capital this afternoon, a message scribbled on the glass plate of a newspaper stand caught my eye. It said, simply: "Our parents have failed us. Anarchist meeting July 15."

Now, while I think anarchy is usually pretty silly, and not practiced by people who seriously believe in it (if, indeed, such people do exist), their premise was an interesting one. As the newest generation, beginning to ready ourselves to take our place as the driving force of the world, that is a question we should probably know the answer to. Have our parents failed us?

A lot of history seems to point to yes. Our grandparents and great-grandparents gave us the end of the world, and put the trigger in our hands. Our parents are trying to drown us in black gold. Can we really overcome their failures?

In their favour, on the other hand, is that, for the first time in human history, we have some understanding of what we are doing wrong. We know the world is dying. We know we're the ones killing it. Maybe that knowledge is enough to save it?

I don't have an answer for this one. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. And, maybe, do what we can to tilt the balance in our parents' favour. After all, they held the trigger on Armageddon too.

This begs a further question, though. What will be our legacy? When our children scrawl our failure on the streets, what will they lament? Will we at last fall off the delicate razor of ecological disruption, catapulting the earth and its people into storms, extinction, and a slow, cancerous degeneration? Or perhaps it will be the reckless transhumanism of cybernetics and genetic engineering that will throw our culture into the brutal worlds of Wintermute and Raven? Or perhaps it will be the nihilistic self-obsession of the computerized world that will render human life meaningless and obsolete?

Or maybe we just won't take our antibiotics, and smallpox will do it for us.

More likely, though, we will continue to just skirt the boundary of disaster, as indeed humanity has always done throughout its existence. Much as it might sometimes seem like it, I don't really believe the end of the world is coming. Surely there can be a Norman Borlaug for oil as well as wheat? We may be monumentally stupid in some ways, but humans are pretty good at surviving, on the whole. We'll figure something out.

I'd love to know what, though.

Politics, Philosophy, or Philolotics?

One of the most common (and most baffling) phenomena of the internet is the constant stream of polls and surveys we are subjected to. The amount of time people spend reading them and filling them out is simply staggering.

So, naturally, I had to get in on the action.

I've written a list of questions which may be slightly different from the usual fare of the internet quiz. Not all of them really have answers, but hopefully most of them make you do a double take, or at least think about the answers for a moment.

So, too, I have tried to steer away from the obvious and well-worn philosophical questions and instead present you with a list which I imagine is much more characteristic of my own branch of philosophical and political thought.

In no particular order:

1. How much would you pay to see a dragon?
2. How much would you pay to eat dragon meat?
3. Would you switch genders for a day?
4. If offered the chance, would you become a vampire?
------- b. How about a werewolf?
------- c. A merfolk?
------- d. A selkie?
------- e. Are there other mythical creatures you would be willing to become?
5. If God offered to trade places with you, would you do it?
6. If you were given the chance to be one of the colonists on humanity's first extraplanetary colony - knowing that it would mean never seeing Earth again - would you accept?
7. If a magical, religious, or technological artifact of immeasurable power was discovered - for example, the Holy Grail, the One Ring, or the Monolith of the Watcher - should we try to harness that power, or is it best to leave such things alone?
8. If the dinosaur-cloning pseudoscience from Jurassic Park would work, should we do it?
9. Do you believe in the existence of sentient alien life forms?
------- b. Is your answer a good thing?
10. If you could have robotic limbs that were indistinguishable from the real thing in all ways - including feeling - except stronger, more resilient, more precise, and faster, would you be signing up for the replacement?
11. If you had to point to a single act or moment of history, and say "This is, absolutely, the worst thing humanity as a species has ever done," what act or moment would you choose?
12. If you had to point to a single act or moment of history, and say "This is, absolutely, the best thing humanity as a species has ever done," what act or moment would you choose?
13. Is there a limit to knowledge? Is there a finite amount of stuff that can be known?
------- b. If so, how long will it take us to get there?
------- c. If not, is acquiring new knowledge a fruitless endeavour?
14. What are you actually doing right now?
15. Did you answer all the questions truthfully?
------- b. Is it possible to answer a question truthfully?

So, I hope those questions were interesting, bizarre, and thought-provoking, and I look forward to seeing what you all have to say by way of answers.

Also, if you haven't already, have a look at the comments on the previous post. I'm not sure how happy I am with the post itself, to be honest, but oh man, am I ever happy with the comments.

Too Much Metaphysics

A week ago, when I underwent surgery, I was given a choice between a general, full anesthetic and a spinal anesthetic, which would paralyze me and remove all feeling from the waist down. Now, my initial inclination was that the full anesthetic would be greatly preferable: I didn't want to be awake for surgery, which I think is a reasonable thing to want to avoid. However, the anesthetist strongly recommended the spinal, adding that, as I would be on morphine, throughout the operation, I would not remember any of the procedure. In the end, I went with her recommendation: after all, a medical professional I am not.

Now, this story is mostly background for what I want to talk about, but I think it's useful in seeing where these speculations come from.

For two and a half hours, I was awake, aware, and remember nothing. This is a fact with shocking implications: if the memories of my life are not contiguous, can it really be said to be me who underwent those experiences? Certainly my physical body did: I have medical staples and a nicely healing scar to prove it. I'm not sure it can. Who we are is in many ways defined by our memories: they are what gives our personality shape and substance, and any point of interaction with the world must inevitably be a structure of memory, not of awareness. While I am sitting here typing these words in some kind of Now, soon it will be simply yet another piece in an ever-growing Then.

And if I don't remember experiencing those things, if I therefore never experienced those things - at least for a reasonable definition of "I" - who did? Some sort of mystical other-me, who existed for those two hours and then disappeared - or died? Or maybe it is the other way around, since after all, his memories were contiguous: everything from my birth to the end of those two hours he remembered, and it is I who have this strange hole in my past. Maybe waking up in the recovery room was when I was born?

But what really bothers me is the choice I made - to experience something unpleasant, but to have no memory of it. If it was not me who underwent that experience, then did I not force someone else to bear my burden? Do I not have the blood and fear of the other-me on my hands?

This is why I hate metaphysics: something interesting always becomes something just a little too disturbing. Of course, I suppose that is rather the point.