In my personal blog: Tomorrow is scary…?
Personal: Tomorrow is scary…?
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Monthly Archives: April 2012
Chaotic reading
Today is for those who have wanted to peep in on my reading. I have to disappoint you though, these books are mostly about religion and not about sex. Not sure which is the most controversial these days though…
You have seen my “chaotic” writing, in the sense that I may write about tentacles one day and saints the next. But you have not seen the books I read, unless you follow my Goodreads page, and even that is pretty terse and doesn’t include rereads. It will perhaps not surprise you that this is pretty chaotic too: Both in the subject matter, but even more in the haphazard way I keep grazing the books.
I am in the habit of reading a large number of books at the same time, some of which I finish and others not. With e-books it has become much easier to get back to where I left, so now there is no limit to the fragmentation. Still, entirely random it is not.
For instance, I have read 83% of The Way of Perfection by St Teresa of Avila (also called Teresa of Jesus, although I like to think all Christian saints could be called “of Jesus”. ^_^) This book is one I read on the commute bus most workdays, in the morning. The books is quite intense in its brightness, and I willingly choose to go through it slowly, so that I can be reminded of it regularly for a long time. Still, we approach the home stretch. This is a book I will probably read again if I live long enough, but not immediately. With my fairly good memory, I need some time before I can actually see the text a second time, rather than simply remember it while skimming.
The last book I completed was The Nine Dimensions: Revealing the Laws of Eternity, by Ryuho Okawa. Despite the name which implies it is a follow-up or companion books to the original Laws of Eternity, it is simply a new translation with some marginal added material. One of the earliest books by Okawa, it is also one of my favorites. In this book there is some mention toward the end of his “new” deity El Cantare (of which he says the historical Buddha was one incarnation), but there is none of the “I am God and your Savior, the greatest of the great” until the more recently added afterword, which has a certain taste of that.
The book teaches that the Spirit World is not a geographical place you travel to, as much as a state of mind. Heaven or Hell are within us, and we in them, already in this life. Various levels of enlightenment correspond to various spiritual planes or dimensions, and we are there now. What happens at death is that we can no longer hide who we are. Our thoughts will manifest instantly, clearly visible. For some, this will be Hell. For others, it will be Heaven. This seems like a wonderful teaching to me, as it will get people involved with what really mattes, rather than rituals and appearances. So if Happy Science remained like that, it would be a worthy contender as a religion, although in my view there is no reason why the same principle could not be applied to Christianity, for example.
The Fullness of God is the book by Frithjof Schuon on Christianity. I wrote about Schuon in late January, when I started on this book. I have come pretty exactly halfway through it. The problem with Schuon is that he is so high, high above me that I cannot really screen him for heresies or even factual mistakes. It would be like a high school student trying to figure out whether Albert Einstein made a mistake in his general theory of relativity. I suppose there may be high schoolers like that, but I am not one of them. Nor am I one of the people who can evaluate Frithjof Schuon. I can admire him, but I am not sure whether I can believe him. Some of what he says I can understand, but some I cannot follow. Since he uses a method of direct intellection rather than logic much of the time, one either sees what he sees, or not. If not, then one either recognizes it with the heart, or not. If not that, one either believes it, or not. It is this latter situation I would rather avoid. If I cannot see it for myself or understand it, I am more inclined to just pass it by without judgment.
In dramatic contrast to the above, we have Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore. In case it was not obvious from the title, this is a parody of a biography of Jesus Christ. That said, while it is horribly irreverent and not family-friendly at all, about a quarter through the book it is quite likable. While the child and teenage Jesus is portrayed as more human than most pious fantasies about this part of his life, he is definitely a good guy. As a teen, the chaste and responsible Joshua (Jesus) is contrasted by his pal Biff who is not exactly evil but is definitely an example of fallen human nature. Not really a religious book and I have no idea whether I am going to complete reading it. It is not impossible though.
Valhalla by Jennifer S Willis is a book I started on, but which failed to pull me along. It is a fiction based on Norse Mythology, reinterpreted into contemporary America. Not a bad concept, but somehow it slid down on my list after only 9%. I think the problem is that I see it only as entertainment, and The Sims 3 is more entertaining than books. A book needs to have something more to compete these days. If I find time for entertainment (and most days I do) it will probably not be a book, unless it is awesome. Books are for learning. (Not that I can’t learn from games too, but I mean more theoretical learning.)
Speaking of non-fiction books again, there’s The world in 2050 published by The Economist magazine. I have referred to that magazine repeatedly over the years. It may sound like some sort of accounting magazine, but actually this British weekly has a wider approach that also includes technology, politics and even culture. Its intelligence and integrity makes me happy to be a subscriber, even when I sometimes don’t agree with them. So also here. The book is respectably sane and humble when faced with the impossible task of charting out the next 38 years of a world where change has become the constant, and where the speed of change itself is speeding up faster and faster. This is a book I will not be ashamed to read at work if there is a slow day. Still, I have only read 14% so far. I guess there are other fun things to do at work most days. ^_^
“Fat-burning zone”
OK, that doesn’t even make any sense. Although there are people who would like to face the fat head-on. This is easier said than done, though.
It is amazing what humans find controversial. I can see religions and unusual sexual practices causing some agitation, especially in combination. But fat burning exercise? Yet, there is a pretty intense debate around a concept called the “fat-burning zone”.
I think I first heard of this after I bought my first pulse watch back in 2005. It is already 7 years ago, around this time of the year. The watch had three zones, one for light exercise, one for medium and one for hard or intensive exercise. The medium zone more or less corresponds to the so-called “fat-burning zone”, which is generally said to be from 60 to 70% of maximum heart speed.
One thing that has made me wonder from time to time is that our muscles get tired even at moderate intensity of exercise, such as a brisk walk or a slow jog. This was at odds with the explanations I read, that we got tired because we accumulated lactic acid in the muscles (this theory is pretty much discarded now, I believe) or that we got tired because we ran out of glycogen. If we kept going in the fat-burning zone, shouldn’t we be able to run 16 hours a day until we ran out of fat?
Actually, there once was a man who could do that, run most of the day every day. His name was Mensen Ernst, and he was of course a Norwegian. (It is typical Norwegian to be good, as a former Prime Minister in Norway once said.) He was born in 1799, unfortunately, long before modern genetic testing. He seems to not have left any children either, so we will probably never know whether he was some sort of mutant, or whether it was some kind of technique (he was said to run in a different manner than other runners, described as a “loping” run). Or perhaps it mostly came down to practice. But probably not only that, for there has never been anyone like him again, and as far as we know there were none before him either.
The rest of us get tired eventually. So I once again looked at the mystery of the fat-burning zone, and found this controversy. So, based on reading various sides of the issue, and my own personal experience, I’ll try to throw some light on this.
***
First, warming up is not a one-step process. For walkers, it is recommended to walk leisurely for 5-10 minutes before speeding up to a brisk pace. (Longer the older you are, children don’t really need to warm up at all.) However, this does not burn off the sugar and start on the fat. Warming up simply increases the blood flow through the muscles, making them more elastic and active so you avoid minor muscle damage and discomfort that you would otherwise have.
Ten minutes of leisurely walking will not budge your blood sugar or make any noticeable impact on your glycogen storage. It takes about half an hour of energetic walking to do that, less with jogging or running. With practice you should be able to feel for yourself when this shift occurs: Heart rate, breathing and body heat shift to a slightly higher level without a corresponding increase in speed or elevation. The difference in pulse is something like 10% in my experience. Not dramatic, but noticeable if you keep track. This is the point where you enter the actual fat-burning zone, no matter what your heart rate monitor may have been telling you for the last half hour. (The exact time varies – for me it was 25 minutes a year ago, but is now up to 35, probably because I store more glycogen in my muscles after almost a year of frequent, long walks.)
So when one article claims that you burn 85% fat in the “fat-burning zone” of moderate exercise, and another claim 50%, you have to ask: How long have you exercised before you start measuring? The higher number may be rather optimistic, but it may well be true if you don’t start measuring until the actual zone shift has happened. If you measure before that, half and half sounds more likely.
However, even if half your calories come from sugar, you don’t burn equal amounts of fat and sugar. Fat contains twice as much energy, so you still burn two grams of carbs for one gram of fat. That means that even should you burn 85% fat, you don’t actually do that in terms of body weight. 85% fat calories would correspond to 59% fat weight. The rest comes mainly from glycogen in your liver, and there is only so much liver in a human.
Luckily at this point you can accept a bottle of cold, fresh Pepsi cola from your attractive friend, and continue exercising. (Imagine TV ad here.) Yeah, that would help you lose weight for sure. ^_^ But seriously, if you are planning to keep walking or jogging for hours, you should add sugar and water from time to time. For a one-hour stretch, it is not necessary. Your liver typically stores enough glycogen for one day or so of normal activity. (Jogging is not normal activity for most of us, so it will deplete faster, but not in an hour or two if you are reasonably healthy.)
***
So to sum it up: The fat-burning zone is real, but it burns only a little more than half fat and the rest sugar or excess protein. Also it only kicks in after around half an hour of brisk walking. Also, if you exercise harder, you will burn just as much fat per minute or more, but also more sugar and you will tire much faster.
If you have plenty of time, you can keep going much longer in the “fat-burning zone” (moderate exercise), but if time is your limit, you will lose more fat by exercising harder. Speak with your doctor before starting an intensive training program, especially long-distance or high-intensity.
A worker and his pay
A worker may be worth his pay, but an abundant harvest is still a blessing. As is the ability to work in the first place, if you ask me.
Yesterday was payday, for me as for hundreds of thousands of other Norwegians. It came a bit suddenly, was what I felt. Suddenly payday again! That is hardly a cause for complain, though. Well, it may be that I am just growing old and time is flying faster than it used to. But I think the reason why I did not notice payday approaching was that payday no longer makes a difference. The things I can do the week before payday are the same that I can do the week after payday. In fact, I paid most of the bills for April before payday. And that is definitely not a cause for complain.
That is not to say that I have enough money to do everything I want. In particular, I want a small house in the countryside, and I can’t afford that. But I have more money than I need, at least for now. And that’s what counts.
I have observed the human mind for many years, and I call it a “desire factory”. It will produce new wants, wishes, longings, attachments etc like some kind of automated assembly line. Normally it will not even wait until the existing wants are fulfilled before throwing up new ones. And you cannot stop it by giving it what it wants for a long time. If you lived for billions of years and ended up having the entire universe except for a single grain of sand, your mind would be sick with longing for that grain of sand. Or in the vivid imagery of the Jewish creation story, our ancestors had a literal paradise with everything they wanted for free – except the fruit of 1 tree. And of course they had to eat of that one tree, even though the Tree of Life stood right beside it and they could have eaten from that instead and lived forever. This is a poetic but quite exact report on the human mind even today.
Knowing this, I largely ignore any inconvenient wants. I am happy to oblige when my body wants yogurt or sleep, but I am in no particular hurry to chase the dream of the small red house in the countryside again. Perhaps in this life, perhaps not. I have food and clothes, and nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. An economic crash will come to Norway as well, unless some greater disaster befalls us. These things go in waves, and there is no wave crest that is not followed by a trough. But even I do not know when, how, and how deep. I know however that unless I suffer untimely death, I will be surrounded by fear and confusion, and I would rather not be in debt to above the chimney at the time.
Since I have the luxury of living and working in Norway, I consider myself blessed as is. In all my years of working, I have never been unionized, and never asked for a pay rise above the general adjustment for inflation. My pay has increased a bit over time, even so, but my coworkers who are all unionized earn quite a bit more even with half the experience I have. They may need it too, since they are either women or living with women, and in many cases have children as well. Women love money in a way that I will probably never be able to understand, having never been one.
When I mentioned to my then best friend (codename Superwoman) that I never asked for pay rises, she reacted with an immediate and probably automatic shock and revulsion, probably not unlike what a man will see if he tells a woman that he has decided to cut his gonads off. The idea of man as Provider is politically leprous, but it is still the unspoken assumption of women even here in Scandinavia. It is part of the “man image”, if you want. We don’t really have gender equality in economic matters, but rather gender balance: Women earn less than men, but spend substantially more. And not just on food and clothes for the family, but on travel, entertainment, clothes and jewelry for themselves etc. There is an unspoken assumption that “his money is our money, my money is my money.” Actions speak louder than words, although the words are quite loud in this matter.
I have a lesbian friend who is not crazy about using as much money as possible though, so it may not be entirely down to the ovaries. And there are certainly many men who are spendthrifts, to the point where they live in constant worry and suffering even though they have a high-income job. Being single does not help at all, because then you have to constantly impress new women. It is even worse than being married. Celibacy is the only safe refuge from economic worries, and I suspect that for most people this is pretty worrying in itself.
But for me, once I left the perpetuation of our family’s superior genes to my brothers, I have found that money here in Norway is plentiful indeed. When I think of the hard work of my grandparents, the small and drafty house they lived in, the simple food they ate and how they hardly ever could travel further than to the next village… My mind may come up with a thousand dreams, but I’ll eat my delicious food with gratitude and enjoyment. Since the days of our first ancestors, there has probably never been a better time and place than here and now. It is written in the Christian bible that “a worker is worth his wages”, but in my case I wonder if that can really be true. I think there may be some grace on top of the justice.
Universal genius
Yozora is not desperate to have friends, because she has books and an invisible friend. Clearly a case of genius! Also note how many thin books there are on the shelf behind her. That’s because they are written in kanji, a much more compact script than ours. Yes, all these things appear in today’s little essay.
“Universal genius” is a literal translation of the Norwegian word “universalgeni”, which is roughly equal to “polymath” in English, but easier to understand. It is actually based on a Latin phrase (“genius universalis”) and is also used in nearby languages.
A related term is “Renaissance man”, as the ideal at the time was a person who was thoroughly familiar with all the arts and sciences. The world had recently emerged from the Middle Ages and retrieved the knowledge of the Classical era of ancient Greece and Rome (with a little help from our Muslim friends, or sometimes enemies). At the same time the printing press had made knowledge easy to spread, and the era of great discoveries had expanded the world greatly. It was a time of opening of the human mind in space and time, leaving the cloistered garden of the previous era. It seemed that nothing would now be impossible. That turned out to be a bit optimistic, of course.
In our modern age, nobody can be an expert in all sciences. In fact, it is probably impossible to be an expert even in one science, such as history or physics or chemistry: They each cover so much ground that you can only have a moderate knowledge of each sub-field, and there will be many, many people who know more than you about the details.
Even so, some of us feel that a broad overview of human knowledge is important. Without it, we cannot easily – if at all – understand our own place in the world. There are those who don’t care: As long as they get paid and preferably enjoy their specialized work, it does not matter to them whether it is meaningful in a broader sense. But not all of us can be satisfied with this. We want to see the world as if from a much higher place, where it becomes obvious how all things are connected. Luckily this is still possible, but perhaps not common.
Universities were founded to give a universal education, as their name implies. I think it is fair to say that things have changed a bit since then, although there is still an element of this expansive role of higher education. Even a century ago, a “liberal education” did not mean being indoctrinated in leftist politics, but rather an education that was free from attachment, a study of knowledge for its own sake or for the sake of the student, rather than associated with a particular career. The original meaning of the “liberal arts” were those that were considered suitable for a free citizen. So universities would teach universal truths with the purpose of setting the student free, to make his own decisions and choose wisely how to contribute to society. (Your university may vary.)
***
Myself, I don’t even have a university education. I have two school years of college-level education, paid by my employer, and it was (unsurprisingly) mainly about economy and law, not philosophy. I have read randomly about the sciences from my early childhood, but did not really think hard about First Principles until middle age. Still, already for many years I have seen the sciences as a vast dome, where there are no lines (much less walls) between each science and its neighbors. For instance, astronomy seamlessly changes into cosmology as the scale of things increases. But cosmology is not the end of the world (except in the most literal sense). It wraps around to quantum physics, which again is fundamental to chemistry, which again cannot be separated from biology and medicine…
I don’t see many people who are even officially interested in seeing the world like this, as an organic unity. It is not something I have striven to achieve, cutting out parts that did not fit in or adding controversial fillers. It is a natural result from grazing all over the place since I was little. My father has a similar attitude, I think, but he grew up in an age where knowledge was hard to come by. So did I, for that matter, but not for as long. Today, the place where I had to dig wells for information is so flooded with it that people are striving not to drown. Information overload.
***
As I said, it is probably not possible to be a universal genius today, but one who still tries is your would-be god and savior from Venus, Ryuho Okawa. Those extraterrestrial and religious aspects may be somewhat creepy, but you can’t go wrong with reading 1000 books a year. Of course, I can’t prove he actually does that, but it certainly looks like he has an extremely wide-ranging knowledge. And it just may be possible in Japan, because Japanese books are mainly written with kanji, signs that represent a basic concept.
There are a bit over 1000 kanji in modern Japanese books and newspapers; most words consist of two kanji, some common words of only one. For grammatical particles and words that lack modern kanji, Japanese use hiragana, a syllabic script (each letter is one syllable rather than one sound). This makes for extremely compact books compared to English, and particularly well suited for speed reading.
When we speed read, we don’t look at the individual letters but use the brain’s amazing pattern matching ability to recognize words or even groups of words by their shape. Expremients have shown that we reogcnize words, epseically long words, mainly by their first and last letter and the length of the word. (Teachers are probably an exception to this as they are conditioned to become very agitated if every letter is not in the right place.)
Japanese, and Chinese even more, skips the whole letter phase and teaches the shapes of the concepts that are the building block of the language. As such, once you know all the signs so well that you don’t have to stop and think, you can read these languages at a ferocious speed. The more you read, the better you get. So 1000 books a year is definitely doable.
For the same reason, I believe that the West will inevitably fall behind in the information age. China, Japan and Korea will dominate the world unless they manage to get themselves into yet another war with each other. It is too late for us to change to a pictographic language now, and we also lack the culture of reverence for learning. We had some of that, but not to the same extent, and it seems to be fading now. Japanese children do as much homework in a day as American children do in a week, according to The Economist. Here in Norway it has been proposed to abolish homework entirely.
To return to what may be the world’s strangest man, Ryuho Okawa, you can (and almost certainly will) be wary of his claims to be a god from outer space and able to summon the spirits of everyone who has ever lived on Earth (and probably Venus as well). But anyone who has written 800 books and reads 1000 books a year is definitely a genius, and probably the closest we come to a “universal genius” these days. Although the words of Aristotle come unbidden to mind: “No great genius has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
It may be that the price of being a universal genius is a touch of universal madness. That would be a high price indeed. Of course, madness may be partly at least in the eye of the beholder. According to the Gospel, Jesus’ family thought he had lost his mind when he was out preaching. I have acquaintances even today who hold the same view on him. And while I am just barely extraordinary myself, I would not be surprised if people are already getting suspicious. Not least after an entry like this. ^_^
Personal: Not quite emergency
On my personal blog. In case someone didn’t know it existed. ^_^
Stupid, ignorant fools!
Don’t get it? Color me unsurprised.
“Stupid, ignorant fools!” Does today’s title sound like someone you know? Perhaps like a good many people you know? It should, for it is the human condition. If I am a little wiser than the average, it is largely in this that I am aware of the foolishness in myself as well as others.
There are the great thinkers of history, of course. I would be a real fool to not admit that they tower above me intellectually. But they were also limited. Aristotle was one of the founders of philosophy as we know it; he thought you could choose to have a boychild or a girlchild by tying off the appropriate testicle. Martin Luther, no matter what you think of the Reformation, was a great scholar, speaker and linguist; he was also a raging anti-semite.
As I have previously quoted C.S. Lewis on, by reading the books of previous ages we realize that each age has its own particular myth-takes which are accepted without question at the time, but not in our time and not even in other ages before and after. And unless we are complete morons, we should begin to suspect that the same is bound to be true about us.
Apart from the collective delusions, there is also the fact that we are born knowing nothing but a few basic instincts, and only live for some decades at best. It is the rare soul that stays lucid for as long as a century. Of those who do, not many have devoted themselves to knowledge and insight. Not saying that this will shorten your life – quite possibly the opposite – but few people are scholars at the best of times, and few people grow old without losing their mind. And even if you do both, there is still simply too short a time to become an expert on more than a couple things, and get a passing acquaintance with some others.
It is not like we have unlimited processing capacity in our brains, either. We learn a little more than we forget for much of our lives, but only a little more. Things we don’t understand deeply tend to fade unless we use them. And to understand things deeply, we often need to know quite a bit already. “Inspiration comes more frequently to those who make effort.”
To once again quote Ryuho Okawa (although this may well be a familiar view in Japan), you should not consider yourself an intellectual until you have read a thousand books. I would assume fluffy entertainment and trashy romance novels don’t count in that number, but a lot of people would not reach it even then. How then can one think himself a scholar on a particular topic without having read at least a hundred books from various sources? I hope I have mentioned this before, but on Google+ I frequently see people who have very strong opinions. And in very nearly all cases it all comes down to the Dunning-Kruger effect: Being too ignorant to realize even that one is ignorant.
I am convinced it is hard to have a strong opinion on, for instance, Islam or Mormonism once you’ve read a couple *dozen* books by insiders, outsiders, friends and enemies of the faith. What I don’t really know is what happens once you have read a couple *hundred* books on the topic. Are you still uncertain? I think perhaps not. But I do not know: There is no single topic I have read hundreds of books on. I tend to flit from one topic to another, so I am at best a jack of a few trades but a master of none. So perhaps you are certain – but something I know, even if you are certain, you deeply understand the views you disagree with. Now that I think about it, Aristotle said the same: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Quick note on that ancient proverb. What you find with the people with the intense opinions is that they have latched on to a thought and accepted it, then either simply not come across an opposing view, or shunning the opposing view. Usually, they are not able to entertain the opposite thought because that would be like accepting it. There is nothing morally wrong with this when used rightly: If you have found a virtue you should not seek a vice. But intellectually speaking, it becomes wrong, because the burden of an intellectual is to see things from many sides. Not necessarily to live many different lives: Life is too short for this, and it may be bad in other ways too. But the price of being an “educated mind” is to be exposed to lies, lots and lots of them. The reward is sometimes knowing them for lies, when you would otherwise not.
Even if you are educated in the most literal sense, having a Ph.D or some such, that actually only tells something about your mastery of one particular field. You probably also have had to sit through some more general classes, of course, but that may be a while ago and their impression on you may not have been all that deep. I see from time to time people who are experts in one field and make bold statements about unrelated fields of which they are clearly ignorant. Having a long education or even having contributed noticeably to the world does not make you a universal genius. And even if you are that, you may still end up saying something stupid. That’s human nature.
We all make mistakes, walking in twilight at best compared to the blinding light of absolute Truth. But we should not stop trying to chase truth and wisdom, even if our progress is like that of the snail. If we do not, then who? And if not truth and wisdom, then what?
The miracle of understanding
If only I could transfer understanding like that! But in this world, understanding is quite unpredictable even if all involved do their best, not to mention when not.
Last spring I wrote in one entry: “Madness is not the only danger in books. There is also the danger that something may be understood that can never be forgotten.” But what is this unique experience of understanding something, that suddenly makes a permanent change, completely different from the normal mode of learning?
It occurred to me recently that if understanding was not already widely accepted as a fact, it would fail the Randi bet. Former “stage magician” (illusionist) James Randi has organized a standing prize of $1 million to whoever can prove supernatural or paranormal powers or events in a controlled test environment. So far nobody has run off with the prize, although some have complained about the conditions. Generally, the supernatural event must be predictable, so that one can ensure that it takes place during the experiment. It must be repeatable, so that it is not just a chance occurrence. And it must be unusual. It is on the last count that understanding (barely?) would be rejected at the outset. But actually it would not fit the other two either.
As I am sure any teacher can testify, there is a big difference between rote learning and understanding. Learning – such as memorizing vocabulary in a foreign language – follows a predictable curve. The amplitude of the curve may vary from person to person, but the shape of the curve is the same for nearly all. In contrast, understanding may or may not occur at all. It is certainly not possible to predict exactly when someone will understand something difficult. It may be today, tomorrow, next year or never. Furthermore, once you have understood it, the event is not repeatable: You cannot un-understand something simply by waiting, the way you can do with French irregular verbs. Once it clicks into place, it takes extreme measures to wipe it out.
If this is the case with scholarly topics such as special relativity, it is even more so with moral and emotional understanding. I have repeatedly mentioned how my life changed in a matter of minutes one day while I was reading a tract by Elias Aslaksen about the way to react. Until then, I had been like almost all children: If you insulted me, I would fly into a rage. My oldest brother had made this a routine amusement, it seems to me. But at that time – I think I was 15, but it may have been the year before – as I was sitting in my grandfather’s rocking chair, my view of life changed completely. I realized with blinding clarity that no one else can lift my hand. (Well, technically they can, but I mean they can’t do so by words or gestures.) I was responsible for how I acted, it did not matter what others had done to me. As long as I was alive and in control of my own body, I was the one who could – and must – decide what it would do.
This did not automatically change my life completely, but pretty drastically. There are certain reactions that are bordering on instinct, but even there a range of different actions exist. This understanding has continued to spread through my life, but its actual creation – or whatever you would call it – happened in a matter of minutes at most. I rose from that chair a different and much freer person than I had been when I sat down. Yet there are people who die at a ripe old age and have never had this experience, never gained that understanding. They continue to believe that their behavior is formed by their genes or their environment or some such that they have no control over. Of course, these things act as input on us. But there is something between the input and the output. There is a space between impulse and action. For some of us.
There are various types of understanding, but it seems to me that they are all to some extent unpredictable and non-repeatable. As such, they fall short of the Randi bet in the same way that healing by prayer or reading thoughts. These things simply don’t happen on command, but sometimes they happen when you don’t expect it at all. And to some, they don’t happen at all. But once they do, they don’t unhappen. You cannot spool life back and play it over.
So if we were to categorize it, I would say that understanding is a miracle. (And understanding between humans even more so, but let us limit ourselves to understanding things this time.) Whether it is supernatural, depends on how super you consider nature itself to be. But it can certainly feel like a magical moment.
Literal, symbolic resurrection
The resurrection of Christ, as imagined in the Japanese animated movie “The Golden Laws”, a story not so much about Jesus as about time traveling teens. Still, I enjoy watching that scene. ^_^
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is and should be the part that sends people running, either away from or toward the religion. It is the central mystery (or madness) of the faith, the impossibility above all others. Various attempts have been made to make it more palatable, not only in the modern age but already a couple centuries after the event: It was to be understood spiritually, or figuratively, not literally, said some. The Church eventually decided to leave it unexplained, for the most part, and that is probably for the best. It seems fair to me if the world thinks Christians stupid if not outright crazy, and worthy of pity: After all, this is how Christians feel about the world as well.
But one interesting detail about the role of the Resurrection has occurred to me only later in my life: The apostle Paul, who is the one who most frequently talks about Christ’s death and resurrection in us, in our lives, as the death of the old life and the breakthrough of a new and heavenly life – this apostle is also the one who most strongly insists that the Resurrection was thoroughly real. If Jesus was not resurrected, then our faith is nothing, says this same man. He refers to several contemporaries who saw Jesus after the Resurrection, as well as an unspecified group of over 500, most of whom were still alive at the time of his writing. This is not a historian, rather Paul wrote about things that happened in public in his own time. And yet, he is the one who keeps going on about “Christ in us” and the inner meaning of His death and resurrection.
You’d think those two viewpoints would appear from two different sources, right? One taking the Resurrection literally, another symbolically. But on the contrary, it is the same person who is most focused on one who also goes on about the other.
Now it may be argued that Paul joined the new religion well after Jesus had left for Heaven, and there is no hint that he ever met the risen Lord except in visions. On the other hand, the Resurrection is clearly the big selling point of the young church in the mouth of Peter as well, who was in the thick of it. You have to be very creative to find any hints that the first Christians did not believe in the literal resurrection of Christ. And yet, most of them don’t mention it as a spiritual process in the life of Christians. It may have been enough for them to know that their martyrdom would be temporary: Jesus would come back and raise them from the dead, so death was not a permanent setback. Any symbolic meaning of the event seems to have been little discussed, if at all. Except for Paul, although John also makes some mention of Christ in us.
Now I am not a preacher, or at least I try not to be. I just wanted to point out the strange connection, that the literal and the symbolic belief seemed to go hand in hand, rather than being opposites as they are seen today.
Life: Short, narrow & shallow
Newtonian worldview?
It is well known that life is short. In all fairness, it was generally shorter before. Life expectancy in the rich world is still increasing by about five hours a day. But even if I lived till I was a thousand years old – which is as unlikely as sprouting wings – I would still feel that my life was short, and wish for it to last longer.
There are those who struggle with suffering – usually of the mind – so severe that they prefer life to end. But I am unfamiliar with this feeling. And even that is not all.
Life is not only short, but also narrow. I have written about this before, saying that there are so many things that are mutually exclusive. You cannot be married and single, atheist and worshiper, or even hold different religions at the same time. (Well, at least it is hard to do, although Huston Smith came pretty close.) And so on. But even of the non-exclusive things we could do, there is not really time to do more than a sample. This is what I say now: Even if I had a thousand bodies, none of them would get bored. There are just so many things to do, so many things to learn, so many thoughts to think, so many words that should be spoken before they are lost forever. There is just so much of everything, that even a thousand bodies for a thousand years would not find time for boredom. That is how I feel.
But there is yet another dimension! Even beyond the length of time, and even with only this one body, this one life, there is so little of that life that “sticks”, so little that is actually taken in, and so little that is actually done. I call this the shallowness of my life. Well, I can’t blame anyone else for that. But I have this thought experiment that I run in various forms. To make it simple this time, let us imagine I had some magic or technology that let me send my mind, with all its memories, one year back in time.
You may have seen the movie “Groundhog Day”. If not, you should at least read up on it. It is pretty good. As a friend of mine said, she could watch it over and over. ^_^ That is basically what it is about, a man living the same day over and over until he learned his lesson. Well, that was what I got out of it. Anyway, my thought experiment is a kind of “groundhog year”. How many times would I want to live the last year over?
A year is long enough to make some different choices, but not to live a completely different life. I would not be able to get a new job, probably, or at least not anything radically different. I would not be able to move very far. I sincerely doubt I could marry even had I wanted to, much less have children. So basically a minor variation of the same life I have lived this past year. Would I do that once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times?
It is hard to say, but my best guess is a few thousand. I mean, if I could take my memories with me. There are so many books I would want to read, so many stories I would like to write and rewrite to see whether they were worth it, so many people I could get to know, so many languages to learn, so many problems to get better at solving in my job… there is so much even in an ordinary year of an ordinary life, that I feel like dart hurtling through time, barely seeing and doing anything.
I don’t think I could do it millions of times though. Not that I would not enjoy it, but at some point I think my mind would run full, so I would forget as much as I learned. Eventually I would read what I thought was a new book, while I actually read it 5000 rounds ago and just forgot it in the meantime… Perhaps. Or perhaps my mind would evolve and expand, to see things from an ever higher perspective, in ever greater depth and richness. There has been a vague, halting tendency in that direction, I think.
(But realistically, I would probably spend some of those years playing Sims 3. -_- Even now that I don’t have unlimited time, I still play either Sims 3 or City of Heroes at least a bit, most days of the week. And even more on the weekend, such as now.)
Anyway, those are the three dimensions of how much larger life is than me. There may be more. Perhaps if I live long enough, I will return with a fourth or even fifth. Actually I can kind of vaguely see at least one more even now, see my mention above about the possibility of seeing things from a radically higher perspective.
How I feel about life is that I am like a bottle with a few drops at the bottom. That is all I have managed to get out of my life so far. Even though it seems to me that my time passes slower than for most, I still feel like it runs through my fingers. Isaac Newton said: “to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” That is the same feeling, I think. Except his ocean was wider and deeper, because he was.
From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the sun
There’s more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There’s far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found…
-Tim Rice, Circle of Life.