Human Nature , and Logic

 The other morning while doing some 'deep thinking', I imagined someone asking me the question, "Why do some people just not 'get along' with you?

Perhaps -  my voice sounds condescending to others? I do not mean it to sound that way, and I do not feel it, but our voice never sounds the same to others as it does in our own head, so I thought maybe that is what is at the 'root' of the problem.

Upon deeper thinking however, I think fundamentally the problem lies in how we tend to jump on certain 'thought trains' and are not willing to jump off regardless of evidence to the contrary.

If I simply think that someone is being condescending to me then everything that he/she says will match that belief and validate my assumption.

Even more interesting that when multiple people get the same 'impression' from what another person 'says' or 'does' it seems to 'validate' the thinking. ie: if 4 people experienced me talking, and 3 of them found it condescending, then it MUST BE TRUE.

Looking back I think this is a problem that has plagued me my whole life.  I have a lot of thoughts and ideas that do not seem to match with 'mainstream' thinking. Things that when a lot of people hear me say they think I'm "weird". If 10 other people think I am an A**hole, this is not what makes it true. I believe it is my heart, my actions, and my choices, that determine who I am, not the collective opinions of others.

It has always been difficult for me to have more than one friend 'at a time'. I guess one person when talking to me can push aside / ignore my 'quirkiness', but in groups of 2 or more, where they can each share thoughts within one another on my quirks with others, this somehow 'validates' them and I become the 'odd one out'

But I don't try to change, I don't try to become different then who I am, who I feel inside, I don't see anything 'wrong' with me that needs changing. In fact, I think I stand out as a lesson to society. People talk about multi-cultism, about ending racism, and treating people fairly (if not equally), but in the end I am not sure such a world is even inherent in our nature.

We (humans) seem hell bent on focusing on what makes us different, using ridicule or social pressures to hide ourselves, to only interact and express commonality to those around us.

We buy on emotion, and later justify with 'reasoning', we 'like' posts not necessarily because they reflect our inner selves but because we say others like it too, we have an inner need to be accepted by the groups around us, to conform..and not all of us are 'good' at doing this, not everyone 'wants' to do this.. and these people who are 'different' are considered hard to 'get along with'. 

What do you think? - Please leave your ideas in the comments below. Thanks

Only Mechanics should drive cars?

From the novel to the mainstream...

 

 

 Do you have your license to drive ? - Do you drive on a regular basis?

If you answered yes...do you recall what motivated you to learn to drive?

I have a bit of a pet peeve..whenever, I hear someone use the excuse, "oh I don't know how to use "x" technology - I'm not a computer person / geek / tech nerd, etc.

I am a software developer/programmer, I write (and fix code)..somewhat like your mechanic fixes your car when it breaks down.

When the first cars came on the market (horseless carriages), I imagine there were some initial people who "wanted nothing to do with those strange contraptions" .. And the early adopters well they were just plain 'wierdos',

In fact, perhaps the first horseless carriages were driven by the creators of this new technology, and with a few simple instructions they taught others how to drive them.

Today, millions of people know how to drive cars, and very few of them can tell you the least about how an 'internal combustion engine works', and that's fine, because you do not need to understand how a car works in order to drive one.

Now-a-days. If you want to learn to drive a car, you can be taught by a friend, a relative, or even the education system "driving school". The people teaching you to drive, have no need to understand 'how the car works'

No one - goes around saying "I can't drive one of those - I'm not a mechanic".. it sounds ridiculous. 

You have the ability to learn anything you want to. The only limitation in inside you. You may not WANT to learn a specific computer skill, or how to dance, or even how to fix a car, and that is your choice. You may not be an early adopter either. You may choose to wait until 'technology x' is mainstream..but don't fool yourself or tell yourself excuses, be proud of who you are. It's okay to take things slow and easy, to learn at your own pace, it is not okay to blame others and suggest that only mechanics can drive cars !

Dreams - Lava Lamp and Sleep Walking

 

For my birthday this year, I received this cool blue lava lamp. The lamp is placed at the top of my bed, and during the night gives this almost 'pre-daylight glow'.

Ever since the lava lamp being placed there, I have been having the most vivid recall of my dreams.

Last night's dream in particular was an entire documentary on an invention made in the 1800's that allowed people to better associate areas of latitude and longitude on the earth surface as related in maps. The device that was invented was this sort of half round globe, that extended onto a table, you could overlay it on any map and then define where the areas of latitude and longitude should be drawn relative to the area you were trying to define.

At first I thought that perhaps the TV was on while I was sleeping, it is not uncommon for a real documentary to have bits and pieces intertwined in my sleep, however in this case, there was no TV on, and I have no idea how this dream came into being. So far as I know no such 'device' exists, but it seemed pretty real in the dream and looked something like this.

The closest I can figure, before going to bed I watched an episode of legends of tomorrow. In it John Constantine finds this odd alien map, which  he aligns to world map to determine a location. Perhaps this someone created the whole documentary in my dream - who knows?

A second dream I had that same night - I was 'sleep walking', now I wasn't actually sleep walking, I was having a dream that I was sleep walking. In the dream I walked into the bathroom and looked at my own reflection, and this is how I knew I was dreaming, because the creepy image that looked back at me did not have any eyes open and a weird empty black whole where my mouth should have been.

Seeing this reflection, I immediately realized that something was 'wrong' and that I must be asleep, possibly sleep walking.

Odd right?

Evolution - Nature - and Racism

 So I recently came across a Facebook post that linked to an interesting article. "Woooly mammoth cells brought back to life". The post was new though the article written in 2019. What surprised me was the number of comments that suggested people shouldn't be "messing with nature"

 

 I first heard about the woolly mammoth DNA recovery from an episode of Expedition Unknown  which aired in 2016 and postulated the idea of cloning the mammoth and bringing it back to life.

 

Which got me thinking, aren't humans part of nature? and if so, can we do something that is 'against nature'?

This becomes a very slippery slope line of thinking.

At what point did humans evolve 'beyond' nature? 

We think that because we can make decisions, that we can foresee the potential consequences of our actions that we are somehow 'better' then those lesser animals. They can be 'forgiven' for killing their own species or making an entire species extinct, because "they don't know better"

Nature is not some 'magical' thing that keeps the world in balance.  Take for example bunnies and foxes.  When the fox population increases, the bunny population decreases. Eventually the foxes eat too many bunnies, their food source is depleted and the foxes die of starvation. Without a lot of foxes the bunnies can thrive once again and grow in large numbers..and the cycle continues.

The human race is not much different. We continue to over consume the resources of the world, we foolishly  once believed that there was enough fish to sustain us until the end of time 

 At some point I suppose we 'evolved' to recognize the error of our ways? Throughout history we discriminated against those that were different, in gender, culture,religious beliefs, color of our skin. Human beings believed they were 'better' then other 'human beings'. We enslaved those that we we didn't believe were "as good" as us. Was that nature?

When you look into the past it is easy to condemn the actions of our ancestors. In their day the attitudes, sentiments and actions were considered "normal", except for a few that disagreed. Perhaps - the human race was less 'evolved'? Now we know better.

And this is the problem isn't it? - For if we were 'less evolved' - can our ancestors be blamed for our mistakes any more then the fox that kills the rabbit?. Sure today we can be blamed for the action, but what about our ancestors? It was those that fought against the racism and the prejudice that brought us (continues to bring us) into the light every day..and yet through all of this we still remain a part of nature.

We have not evolved past it, nature moves with us. We can no longer more ourselves 'better then nature' then we can consider ourselves 'better then another race or belief system'

Suppose the technology that brings back the Woolly mammoth  can solve problems of world hunger, can erase at least some of the mistakes of our ancestors - is it worth it? What will future generations think of us when they look back at our actions at our cloning? - Will those performing such research be looked at heroes or villains? - only time will tell

 

Related:

My campaign to bring Josh Gates to Oak Island