Author Archives: itlandm

Exercise, fat or diabetes

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You could also go to a gym, but it costs money and people snicker at you if your clothes are more fancy than your skill.

Now that the ice has left the roads here on the south coast of Norway, I once again make it a habit to take a brisk walk outside when it does not rain too much. I generally burn 700-800 calories for each trip. How much is that? If you take a common drinking glass from the kitchen and fill it to the top with pure white sugar, that’s about 800 calories.

Obviously I don’t celebrate my trip with a glass of pure sugar. But I do get more hungry the more I exercise, and so it will always be for us who are in the normal weight range. (The weight range that is described as “normal” for your height in books and websites is actually what I call the “recommended” range, although it was supposedly normal in the 1970es when smoking was common. Today what’s normal extends some 10% higher.)

Walking and other light exercise, then, is not really a means to lose weight unless you are obese or quite a bit overweight. Some people simply have a constant appetite  or eat for social or emotional reason, and the only alternative to eat less is to exercise more. In fact, for some their appetite will decrease after exercise, because the body’s natural system for regulating appetite will begin to function again. But for us of unremarkable shape, moderate exercise will not make us lose weight permanently. We would have to exercise more and more to do that.

So why walk up and down the hills if not to fit into the clothes of last summer or the summer before that? Well, basically it is to remind the body that it is still inhabited. In an effect known as “hormesis”,  the body reacts to small challenges by starting a repair system that repairs not only the small damage caused, but also some of the accumulated damage from the passing of time. There are a few toxins that are known to have hormetic effect in very low levels, among them ordinary alcohol, but the safest and most efficient hormesis by far is regular exercise. It may be slightly habit-forming, but not to the same degree as alcohol.

For me in particular there is a second reason to keep walking. I am diagnosed with “pre-diabetes” since last year, although I may have had this condition longer than that. You see, this is a purely technical term: There are no symptoms, and the health effects are uncertain. (Pre-diabetes usually appears as part of “metabolic syndrome”, which impairs health in ways not related to blood sugar.) The blood sugar is slightly higher than usual, but not enough to cause damage. The problem with pre-diabetes is that there is around 10% chance each year of progress to actual diabetes, which is bothersome, expensive and potentially deadly.

By exercising regularly, I clear out part of the sugar that is stored in my liver and my muscles. You see, people with pre-diabetes and diabetes II produce enough insulin, but the body starts ignoring it. (Or, for pre-diabetes, not taking it quite as seriously as it should.) Insulin gives an order to three types of cells:  Muscles, liver and fat cells. The order is to grab sugar from the blood and store it. Muscles and liver store it as glycogen, kind of “tightly packed sugar” that can be quickly made into sugar (glucose) again. Fat cells convert the sugar into fat, which can not be made into sugar again but is burned at a slow rate in daily life. Fat can also be burned at a high rate by long bouts of exercise at moderate levels.

I am already around 20 pounds less than I was at my fattest, so I know it is not the fat cells that fail to take action. They have plenty of room. But after 2005 I have not been able to digest much fat, so I live mostly on a diet of carbs. (It is that or not living at all, really, so the choice is pretty easy.)  Because of this there is always plenty of sugar in my blood, and my liver and muscles easily fill their storage space. This leaves the poor fat cells with all the rest, and they are evidently not up to it, thus the pre-diabetes.

So basically if you eat carbs, you need to exercise to clear out the storage in muscles and liver. Otherwise diabetes is likely. If you eat fat instead, you still need to exercise to slow down the aging, but the chance of diabetes is small as long as you stay well below your maximum weight. A high-fat diet also raises the risk of angina and heart infarct. So there really is no “silver bullet”, no cure for all. At least not yet. I am sure scientists all over the world are still looking. Until then, I intend to keep walking.

 

Partly free will

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Rihoko in a towel on the bathroom scales.

Snacks and students. We apologize for any other temptations that may occur, but hopefully this journal entry will help you get a more realistic perspective on it. (Also, I actually watched the anime where this picture comes from, and she did not drop the towel.)

In my previous post, I argued that our will must in principle be free, or there would be no point in doing anything or assigning meaning to things others do. (In fact, we probably do assign too much meaning, especially to some people. But more about that soon.)

Now, saying that our will is free in principle is very different from saying that we always do what we will. That depends on something much more tricky, namely resolving who “we” are. The general notion that the human mind is like a pearl, made of the same stuff all the way through, is not supported by observation. (OK, there are some people whose mind is like a pearl: Small and simple. I don’t think any of these are reading this.)

As I said in passing: We are not alone in our head. You may certainly think so, but that only leaves you with a concept of self that is either at odds with itself or running from one position to the other constantly. All of these are valid viewpoints, and just as good as saying we are not alone in our head, I think. Possibly better, if the other phrase creeps you out. Then again, a little bit of creep may be a good thing. As it is, we tend to have a terribly naive view of what goes on in the human mind. Bitter fruits follow from this.

One concept I have mentioned from time to time is the difference between “hot” and “cold” states of mind. Cold states of mind (I rather consider them lukewarm) are the ordinary relaxed situation where everything is familiar and in control. (OK, that may not be ordinary to all, but I hope it is fairly common.) In this situation, we tend to think we are in control of our own body and mental faculties, as they say.  Memory, imagination, logic and so on.

The “hot” states of mind are those associated with primal emotions, such as fear, anger, lust and (surprisingly) disgust. In these states of mind, we view the world in a completely different light. While we may still be in control of our body, the “we” that is in control is not the usual “we”. Rather it has entirely different priorities and sees things quite differently.

One famous experiment is to ask people whether they are willing to put a live earthworm in their mouth for a reasonable amount of money. Not enough to live happily ever after, but worth a few hours work perhaps. A pretty large number of people will agree to this when the deal is talked about in a relaxed office setting framed by bookshelves etc. But once the worm is actually wriggling in front of you, only approximately 5% of the population can actually overcome their disgust. (These 5% are probably dangerous people, but that is beside the point today.)

Another interesting scenario that is not used in research for obvious reasons is sexual intercourse. Generally speaking, a sexually inexperienced woman has a hard time voluntarily going through with sexual intercourse under most circumstance. This problem is in our culture usually overcome with alcohol. Conversely, a sexually experienced man has a hard time NOT going through with intercourse if he has first started in that direction, and this causes even much more problems. (Also, alcohol does not help for that, except in extreme quantities!)

Anger and fear are states of mind even children are familiar with. And unfortunately, adults often react in much the same way as children in these situations, despite their very sincere promises to the contrary before the situation arose. The sincerity when in a “cold” state of mind is not faked, but it is also not particularly closely related to what you will actually do once you get into a “hot” state of mind.

One study showed that a complete stranger in the corresponding hot state was better able to predict a person’s behavior than the person themselves had been while in the cool state of mind.

And that only covers the sudden, intense challenges. There is also the creeping temptation challenge, the eroding of willpower through a long period of moderate temptation.

Here again test subjects (read: students) are available. For temptations are usually used snacks, such as chocolate.  Before the experiment, the test subjects and the researchers make an agreement that the test subject will not eat the snacks, usually with some reward being offered for fortitude. However, if the student is left with the snack long enough, the probability of snacking gradually rises toward 100%. It never quite reaches it (since starving students is illegal) but it keeps climbing. It is not possible to know in advance when a particular test subject will cave in, but when you run hundreds of them through the test, you get a curve that repeats nicely with the next large batch of volunteers. Even though each individually has free will, in practice we can predict how many of them won’t use it! Just not who.

Of course, in a manner of speaking the snackers do use their free will: They voluntarily choose to eat the snacks rather than get the reward. But their decision at the time is largely independent on their decision before (or after) the deed.

Having more than one temptation at the same time makes it harder to resist each of them. If the students get to play computer games, it is easier for them to abstain from snacks; if they have games around but aren’t allowed to play, it becomes harder to resist the snacks than if there were no games in sight in the first place.

Willpower can be built over time, luckily. Unfortunately, it can also be eroded over time.

But perhaps the most important thing we can do in this regard is to build habits. Habits are cobwebs at first, chains at last, as the saying goes. It is pretty easy to understand that if you are a couch potato, you cannot just get up one day and run a marathon. But in the same way, there lies a lot of work behind a life where people can resist temptations or the strong impulses of fear, anger, lust or disgust. Beginning with what is doable and sustainable is the key, unless you have some kind of divine intervention (or human companions that can keep guard over you at all times). Just like there are thousands of barely used exercise bikes in the basements and sheds of first-world nations, so there are thousands of discarded New Year’s Resolutions. If each of these had been taken in use slowly, gradually, cautiously, they might have had more success.

Of course, I don’t mean to diss divine intervention. I’m all for that. But unless you have a pretty close relationship with the Divine, you should probably have a Plan B as well. Just saying.

 

 

Free will, what else?

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The will is not free in the meaning of “costing nothing”. It is actually quite expensive to use and may be exhausted by sufficient temptation. But it exists as a possibility by necessity – a thing that cannot not be.

I am half amused, half embarrassed on behalf of the people who think hooking the brain up to some kind of scanner can prove or disprove free will. Mostly disprove, it seems. Which is pointless indeed, since free will cannot be disproved. It exists by definition. Just like you cannot disprove the circularity of a circle, you cannot disprove the freedom of will. It is an intrinsic property of will itself, and without it we can no longer talk about will, or about choice, or even about action.

In fact, without free will, we cannot talk at all. After the stage where babies just make sounds randomly, speaking is essentially an expression of will. Even if something is true, we can decide not to say it, and often do. Even if we believe something is false, we can still say it, and this is also quite common. Furthermore, the form of our statement and its tone are also of our choosing. If we then were to say “There is no free will”, this would automatically and by definition expand to “There is no free will and I can’t help saying this”, which – since we have no control over what we say – resolves to “I can’t help making sounds”, which is not a very useful information at all if we already hear you making sounds. Since the sounds we make no longer convey any information about our internal states of mind, except perhaps in the case of screams and moans, we have successfully reverted to the animal stage of communication, and of thinking.

Free will is necessary for a human to be human. In fact, without the possibility of free will, a human would precisely not be human, but rather only human in potential. If the potential for free will was lost, then also humanity. If you cannot even choose what you think, then you don’t actually exist. “I don’t think, therefore I ain’t. I think.”

What we should be looking at instead is how science elucidates the nature of free will. To deny its existence is, as shown above, meaningless and resolves to contradiction in terms, much like the statement “This sentence is a lie.” But what we can disprove, and probably have disproved, is the idea that all choices are enacted by the speech centers of the brain. This is where the “talking consciousness” is located, it would seem. The inner monologue that translates our outer and inner experiences into a narrative, the story of our lives, which is the form in which it is usually stored and remembered in the brain.

It was a peculiar idea in the first place that this specialized brain function should be the origin of our will. I cannot offhand think of any religion or philosophy that has made such a claim. Anyone with more than trivial experience in meditation know how far this is from the truth. Most eastern forms of meditation serve to quiet this narrator function by occupying it with a different task, such as repeating a mantra, counting to ten, or watching closely some sense input like the passage of the breath or the flame of a candle.  As most meditators can attest, this does not suddenly cause the entire mind to come to rest. Rather, there is revealed a frantic activity that is not at all under conscious control, and can only indirectly be influenced.

And you had not really needed to go that far. Even the Christian concept of temptation should ring a bell here. Unless you are following some heretic wild goose and think that temptations come from other people, in plain contradiction to the Biblical claim that we are tempted as we are lured and drawn in by our own desire. What this clearly shows is that the deciding will cannot be alone in the head, otherwise there would not be anyone “else” there to present the desire to the will as an alternative. Likewise when we have the opportunity to do good and decide not to (which is described in the Bible as a sin), clearly there is some fellow occupant of the brain who is presenting the case for doing something, and we reject it.

So whether you’re a westerner or an easterner, unless you are painfully ignorant of the most basic concepts of your surrounding culture, you should be aware that there are processes in your head initiating action before you become aware of them. The later you become aware of them, in fact, the more momentum they tend to have. If a monk becomes aware of a sexual temptation when the compass needle of his mind begins to move away from Heaven, it will be rather easier to resist than if he notices nothing until the “compass needle” of his body has begun moving. By then it is quite a bit harder to stay calm. (Don’t ask me how I know this if you can’t guess.)

In any case, we have free will, but actually exerting our will takes an effort, and will can become tired much like a muscle, and can be trained much like a muscle. There is much to say about the nature of free will and our illusions about it. Oh, so much. But to just write it off as “free will does not exist” is painfully ignorant and shows an intense desire to believe something impossible. If free will did not exist, you could never know it.

My housing karma

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Yeah, it still hurts just a little bit. But what counts now is to learn the lessons so as to not make necessary even more “disasters”. Wish me luck with that.

There is a whiny little post up on my even more personal journal, called “Shouting!” It is basically just whining  dressed up in see-through multicultural clothing. Here in Norway we aren’t racists – we just hold people from elsewhere to much lower standards, primitives that they are. ^_^

In reality, I would not lose big money betting that many Norwegians have Norwegian neighbors that keep them awake at night too. A steadily growing portion of the populace is retired, and a pretty stable but rather large portion is on disability pension; neither of these have any particular reason to sleep at night when there is excellent daylight to sleep in. And of course there are people who actually work at restaurants or cinemas or whatever and come home after midnight, it seems unlikely that they will tiptoe to bed one and all. So if you have neighbors in the same house, it is a significant chance that they will wake you up in the night. Even if they are in another house, the marvel of high-powered stereos makes it quite likely that they will keep you awake at least some nights.

Which is an excellent reason to rent a house for me alone if I can afford it, one should think. But ironically, it was my insistence on doing just that which led me to this situation! Yes indeed. Because I was so eager to have a whole house to myself, I rented a rather more expensive place than I had needed to, and so I didn’t have enough money saved up to rapidly find another place to live when the deal fell through.

But further self-reflection shows that it was more than just a wish to have a house to myself. There was also an attachment, to use the Buddhist term. A kind of infatuation. Now those who have seen pictures of the old red house surrounded by green pastures and right by the river may think it was well worth an infatuation. It was a beautiful place indeed, but looking at myself as from a higher place, I see that I was attached to it also because of memories of my childhood.

While different in some ways, the house was of a similar age as the one I grew up in (or a little older), and even smelled a little similar. And living surrounded by farmland was also for the first time since I left home at the age of 15. So there was a certain sentimentality in my decision, one that is not uncommon in my generation, for many of us grew up in the countryside but moved to more urban environments later. As long as one is aware of this and accepts it without being controlled by it, there need not arise an attachment. But when I acted on feelings that were not understood, seeking to regain something that could not, an attachment arose.

One of the benefits of living closer to the Source is that the time between building karma and paying it back is shortened. Or so I have been told. In that case, I should rejoice, for I am definitely paying my karma debt from the attachment I had to a perishable house. Indeed, it has already perished. But as the Buddha said with his last words: “All things that are made of parts will fall apart. Strive diligently!” (Your translation may vary slightly.) So now the house that I was infatuated with has been utterly demolished, and instead I have shouting foreigners. It is certainly better to have one’s karma disposed of this way rather than building it into one’s soul through the entire life, and then have something far worse happen. Not that this may not still happen with some other part of my life. But we’re working on it.

Nor is this the first case of serious house karma payback:  The disastrous move from the original Chaos Node was even more dramatic. At that point I found an apartment for let that was so located that I would be walking each day past the house where Supergirl and her family had lived (back when she was younger). I had tons of happy memories from there, and this influenced my decision so that I started renting an apartment that was only half the size needed for all my stuff. OK, perhaps 60-70%, but I don’t think so. The Chaos Node had been filled to overflowing, as old pictures will demonstrate. Even though I carried a bag out of the house each workday for more than two months, there still was more than I could cram into the apartment and still have any hope of keeping it clean enough for a civilized human, much less tidy. Discovering this caused my supposed new landlord to have a minor breakdown, although we both escaped unharmed. I then had only a couple days to find a new place to live.

So my ability to learn from life’s lesson is so-so, it seems. A quote by the Norwegian church leader Elias Aslaksen comes to mind: “If a man does not use the opportunity to learn from a disaster, the faithful God will make sure to place him in more disasters.” In view of this, I think I have gotten away fairly cheaply. It is better to be kept awake by asylum seekers than by demons. I will seek to take advantage of this situation to reflect on myself and become free from the kind of attachments that brought me here. Then we shall see whether I can act more wisely next time, and also have the blessing of the Light in my choices.

“Learned men”

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“You are thinking too much!” -I have heard that occasionally. As the saying goes: “I think, therefore I am… single”.  ^_^ And I believe it is possible to think too much, and read to much, and learn to much. But mainly if it is about the wrong things. If ignorance was bliss, we’d live in Utopia.

If I am allowed, I will write some reflections that put together what I wrote yesterday with something I have noticed while reading the amazing St Teresa of Avila, herself a genius as well as a saint.

I have found myself unable to complete reading her autobiography Life and her famous Interior Castle, because of their structure that reveals ever greater depths of holiness and purity, and I just cannot bear looking too far into what I have (so far, at least) failed to enter myself. I get to a certain point (about a third of her autobiography, actually) and then, well, it feels kind of like peeping. Looking at something that is not for me, at least at the present.  Even so, I have gotten my hands on her Way of Perfection. It seems to have a different structure from the others, with no clear progression that catches up with me and passes me by.

One thing that shows up repeatedly in her writing, and again here, is her respect and admiration for “learned men”. In this context is meant theologians, people who have learned much about the Bible and the Church. I find this interesting: There is a tendency among Christians to praise the simple faith and, if not in those words, the simple mind. This tradition goes back to Jesus Christ himself, who praised the children and those who became like children. But from this admiration of the simple has grown a more thorny stem, of disregard and even mockery of learning and thinking. Catholicism has maintained a balance between the childlike devotion and the learned philosophy, seeking to find a place for each in the life of the Church. But in the Protestant tradition, anti-intellectualism has grown to great heights in some places.

In modern society, this anti-intellectualism has played right into the hands of the left (as if this movement has any particular claim to intellect!) trying to portray religion as a remnant from the Dark Ages. There are indeed Christians (particularly in America, it seems to me) who seem eager to support this view.

Now the “learned men” that St Teresa – and modern Catholic philosophers such as James V. Schall – talk about, these are not people who just randomly latch on to whatever zeitgeist (spirit of the times) is prevalent on college campus at their time. Rather they are such as seek out works of timeless wisdom, Holy Scriptures first and then the words of the great thinkers through the ages, whose thoughts have expanded the minds of the generations that followed them.

C. S. Lewis, another “learned man” of sorts, wrote an obvious truth that deserves recognition no matter what you think about Lewis himself and his religion. He wrote that it is necessary to read old books not because they are truer than new books, but because the fallacies of their age were different from ours. We are easily able to see in old books the mistakes that were commonly accepted and not even debated in their age, but which are glaring to our eyes. But what we do not easily understand is that in our own age, we also have a particular zeitgeist (spirit of the times) which makes us agree on many things without a serious debate, things that from another age (past or future) would look like pure madness.

If there was no other reason – if all holy scripture was just pious fantasy, if all philosophers of the past were simply ignorant barbarians – it would still be a pressing need for some to read the works of the past. If for nothing else, then at the very least in order to return to our own time and see it for the first time.

But I for one do not think the benefit is as limited as that. As I have said before, there is in true genius an expansion not first and foremost of knowledge itself, but of the capacity for knowledge and understanding. It is not that reading them fills our cup, but it makes our cup larger! It is not knowledge itself as much as our ability to look at knowledge in new ways. And if this is true for the great thinkers, then far more for religion properly so called. If the human genius makes our “container” of the mind wider, religion should make it deeper. (This, as I mentioned above, certainly does not happen with all people, more’s the pity.)

The best description I have heard of the fruit of this process is this, that we come to look at ourselves and the world from a much higher place. From this height, patterns become obvious that were hidden close up. And things that loomed so large, are seen as the molehills they are, and the people whose opinions weighed so heavily upon us, seem like ants, going about their own things rather than (as we thought) being preoccupied with us. It is rare indeed (except for the lover and the stalker) that anyone in this world is concentrated on us and our small things. When seen from a very great height, we can breathe a sigh of relief, or even laugh at our former delusions.

If this is the fruit of becoming a “learned man”, then I see no harm in it. But there are many petty minds carrying books they have not fully digested. From these I expect little help. But Light send that they have no hand in supporting the spiritual life of the earnest, for they need the other kind, who can watch over them from on high, so to speak.

 

Two types of genius

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Even an idiot will achieve greatness if they just think, and read, and write, and listen, and keep doing this year after year. Of course, getting an idiot to listen in the first place is usually the problem!

I want to write some more about the different between genius and genius, or between intelligence and intelligence, since it is important and I myself did not understand it when I was young. As I would have wished others to do unto me, so I should now do unto others.

I grew up thinking that intelligence was basically the raw processing power of the brain, as measured by modern multi-type IQ tests. There is indeed such a “general intelligence”, as well as a number of more specialized talents that may be called intelligence. And the upper end of the IQ scale is labeled “genius”, an already well known word.

A brain with a powerful processing ability can accomplish much, when assigned to a task suitable for it. (This varies somewhat with talents, but there are many tasks that are suitable for general intelligence.) Our modern “information society” depends to a large degree on the work of smart people, most of them specializing in fairly narrow fields. The more the minds adapt to that particular field, and the field adapts to the people who work there, the more effective they become.

It is really amazing what wonders we are surrounded by today. For instance, I have a computer in my shirt pocket that has higher screen resolution than the computer on which I used to play Daggerfall during the early years of this journal! And it also holds a library of books, all in my shirt pocket, while being able to play any of millions of songs stored elsewhere in the world. The combined might of genius is awe-inspiring. I want you to hear this from me.

Because what I will say next may seem (falsely) to contradict the above. I will talk about a different form of genius, a different form of intelligence. We could call it “cultural intelligence” as opposed to “neural intelligence”. While the neural intelligence becomes stronger by concentrating more and more into detail, the cultural intelligence grows by expanding into an ever broader view. While the first form of intelligence takes us deeper and deeper into matters, the second lifts us up to see ourselves and our world as if from a higher place.

By calling the first and commonly defined intelligence “neural” (not neutral!) I mean that it is defined by its limit which is the brain’s capacity for processing information at a certain speed, which varies from person to person. As the person becomes attuned to his work and the other way around, we come closer and closer to this limit, and the law of diminishing return sets in, never quite grinding to a halt but slowing ever more.

The other form of intelligence, however, presents the exact opposite kind of curve, the exponential curve (known in my generation from the population graph and more recently in the growth of computing power in the world, which rises faster and faster until nearly vertical). The speed at which the “cultural genius” of a person grows may be limited by their neural intelligence among other things, but it just follows the same curve at a more cautious pace from the start. Given enough time it will still reach its rapid climb. The one thing that stops it in the dedicated genius is the natural expiration date of the brain, or other vital organs should they fail first. If such a person lives to old age keeping their wits, there almost seem to be no bounds.

Again, while the neural genius is fed by specialization, the cultural genius is fed by expansion, by taking on ever new knowledge, new experiences, new modes of thinking. For the engineer, learning a new language in the middle of life is a distraction; for the philosopher, it is more like a necessity.

In reality, it is possible to some extent to combine these, to be a philosopher engineer. But this is rare and probably a constant battle. Such a person is extremely powerful (at least potentially), but also extremely rare. I would think the late Steve Jobs, for instance, would fall in this category. A fascinating life but not one free from conflict.

Now as for the ordinary person, we have more or less of the native, neural intelligence. I used to have quite a bit of it, although I am sure it has shrunk some over the last decade or two.  But if you don’t, there is no reason to give up and sit down in front of the TV with a sixpack of beer. The amazing thing is that the second form of intelligence is still available.

You may be a slow reader, and may need to read a book six times to really grasp it, while I usually get by with one. But like in the fable of the hare and the tortoise, steady does it. If you take care of your health and live to a decently old age, the knowledge that builds up inside you will start to gain “compound interest”, as everything you learn will raise the value of everything you already know. Eventually, almost everything will remind you of something else. Like the final phase of a jigsaw puzzle, the things that made no sense suddenly light up and find their place.

Let me stress this again: The path of “cultural intelligence” is open for even the most ordinary, as long as you have the will and the patience to pursue it. Hold on to it and don’t give up, and all you need is time. In ages gone by, these people were called “sages”, or “wise old men” and “wise women”, and highly respected. In our age, the blinding speed of progress driven by neural intelligence may seem to overshadow this. But the truth is that there will always be many who need the help of the sages. And let us not forget that this path is its own reward: The ever growing brightness and the astounding view as your mind rises higher, this is a joy that cannot be bought for gold or praises. Please, consider it.

Night of ignorance

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Most people live their lives in the darkness of ignorance.
A few walk as if by starlight, carefully.
But most grope around blindly in the dark.
When their hand finds someone in front of them,
they rejoice that they are no longer alone.
They follow the other happily,
not considering that they are both in the dark.
The blind leading the blind.
Those who can see a few steps ahead
are known by few, since they avoid colliding.
If they are sensed, they are not understood.
Why are they moving as if with purpose?
In the land of the blind,
the one-eyed is a freak.

Not enough Sims 2!

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When sims have permanent platinum mood – an unshakable mind – growing older is a cause for happiness. They will spend their elder years calmly and eventually pass on without fear.

It would seem a safe bet that people won’t regret on their deathbed that they have played too little The Sims 2. But once again it seems I am the exception to the rule. Although it is a bit early to say, I hope! But I already regret, and repent, not having played The Sims 2 as much as I should.

Well, not the game in general, but a particular project that takes up a large part of my separate Sims game journal. “Micropolis” (not to be confused with the game of the same name, which I heard of quite a bit later) is a simulated neighborhood in which I act as the guardian angel, inspiring my little computer people to achieve their goals and help each other create a Utopia by building their own inner strength and the ties of love and friendship.

Starting in the near future (sometime between now and 2050) six families come to a deserted farming village in the foothills of a mountain chain. All of them have lost loved ones and everything they owned in the great hurricane that destroyed their hometown. Starting from nothing, with a modest amount of borrowed money, they begin to create a new life for themselves and their children. This is the start of the story of Micropolis.

I play with stricter rules than those that are built into the game. The Near Future is seen as a time in which the economy in particular is harsh: It is hard to get any job without college education, which costs quite a bit of money. Houses are expensive and there are no subsidies, interest rates are high, and property taxes are increased fourfold. For people without jobs, without skills and without friends, the challenge seems almost insurmountable.

Over more than 50 years, we follow the small band of refugees through snapshots of their lives and their conversations with their guardian angel. Together they seek to combine their immediate needs and wants with their long-term aspirations and the greater plans for the whole society. They fish their own fish, grow their own vegetables, and gradually acquire useful skills and begin to climb out of debt. They raise children who eventually go to college, sometimes taking childhood friends or high school sweethearts with them. The children come home and get jobs or start shops. The small cluster of tiny homes becomes a village. Later large apartment buildings begin to appear, and the nearest neighborhoods also take part in the growth. They face new challengers: Climate chaos and mutating viruses. But through it all they continue to thrive under the constant guidance of their guardian angel.

More than money, the true wealth of Micropolis is its people, their skills and generosity, their friendships and love, their families and hospitality. It is these that makes Micropolis a small Utopia, a place anyone except the hardcore liberal would love to live.

I wish I had continued to write it, because it expresses my view of life very well and in a manner I think most people can understand if they have the spare time (it is a very long story). But I got distracted by other shiny things. And most of all, my laziness caused me to give it up. Writing the story itself was not so onerous, but due to the length of the story it became necessary to provide background summaries for all the families and eventually all of the sims. Keeping these info pages up to date was quite a bit of work compared to what you see of them, so I got fed up. I regret that now.

Many people these days (and probably in the past as well) do not understand well the concept of guardian and guiding spirits. The independent thoughts from their subconscious torture them, mock them or drive them to do reckless or outright damaging things.  That is not how it should be. I hope that my fiction can illustrate the kind of world I live in, which is basically the exact opposite. Long may it last.

Still here

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I should say something so people know I am still alive.

I have been writing a number of spiritual / religious entries lately. (The difference between the two is less than most people like to pretend these days, and this in fact was the topic of one of them.) But even if the teaching is healthy, as I believe it is, I am still not worthy to teach it. And there is also the whole “iceberg” thing, the proportion between what is above and below the surface. That is already pretty bad as is.

I wish someone else would write all those things in a way that is easy to understand, so I could just link to them. You may know that one motto for this blog is “We must say all the words that should be spoken, before they are lost forever.” But I really wish someone else would do it on topics such as these.

The other things in my life seem almost (or even not almost) embarrassing in comparison. I’ll see what I can do, though. After all, I do spend my time on all kinds of things, not mainly spiritual books and prayer (and definitely not fasting)!