Two different, not too different!

More Collective Journaling. Thank you, Peter Limberger!

Quotes of the Day:  "Write beautifully what people don't want to hear."  ~ Frederick Seidel

Prompt: What topic or theme that’s controversial or polarizing would you like to see expressed (or write yourself) in beautiful words that open minds and hearts to a more holistic way of seeing things?

Or: write about what’s alive for you now.
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Too often I want to change your opinion, as if by some magic my opinion was right and yours was wrong. And too often I have learned that my opinion was not right and yours had values I did not appreciate. Yet if I don’t talk about controversial or polarizing topics my opinions hear only my inner dialogue, one dominated by my ego and desire to be right.

I need the crucible of conflict to break through my biases, my stories, my way of seeing the world. Without your perspective I will be limited to my own. This is the power of the scientific method. Imagination and beliefs are shared, tested, and reinforced or challenged by the perspectives of others.

In science, the level of confidence required is very high. For imagination and belief to be accepted by science, the ideas must be reproducible, regardless of the unique perspective of the individual. We even believe that there is some science that is “universal”. This science, often called “hard” science, where “hard” means immutable across vast amounts of time and space, exists beyond my perception, beyond humanity, beyond life as we know it on this planet.

But what of my other stories? Those that are local to my own existence? Those that live in my head for only the brief moment of my lifetime? How do I “test” these ideas? My imagination overflows with beliefs, often driven by my need to feel in control of my life. My ego rewards me for believing I am right, driven by some evolutionary advantage of self-righteousness. But what if I want to know more? Be aware of more? What if I realize my perceptions are limited and the world is not?

If any of this rings true with you, then I commit to listen, to understand your point of view, so long as you commit to do the same with me. We will never have the same perspective. We cannot. And thank goodness! That is our power, our survival advantage! We are two different windows on the world. And I would like to see more than my pinpoint view allows.

And so it begins...

I'm thinking, not sleeping!

Another 8am Collective Journaling morning... Thank you, Peter Limberger!

Quote of the Day:  "If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read - if you wait for the time, you will never do it. ‘Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week."
~ Harry Crews

Prompt: The “world don’t want you to do that.” Sometimes you have to just force the issue. What’s yours to do, big or small, that presently has no external encouragement?”

Or: write about what’s alive for you now.
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“World don’t want you to do that…”

I read a comment about the lifetime of an electron. You know, those tiny fireflies that zip around at near-light speed, always busy, orbiting the sedentary nucleus. Electrons are what I call “morning people”: those who are blessed/cursed with energy, awake at the crack of dawn, ready to go. My mother was a “morning person”. I am not.

The comment about electrons referred to a paper published in 2015. (You see, it took me 11 years just to find out about the paper!). The paper [ https://borex.lngs.infn.it/papers/articles/a-test-of-electric-charge-conservation-with-borexino/ ], done by scientists at the Borexino liquid scintillation detector (I want one of those!) tried to estimate how long an electron existed. They got tired of waiting, and said that the lower limit, the estimated lifetime of an electron was at least some five quintillion years times the life of our universe (τ ≥ 6.6×1028 years at 90% C.L.).

Now, I don’t know how long our universe is expected to live, nor how folks go about even guessing such a time, and I have to look up what a quintillion is (it’s a billion billion, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000). I get tired just looking at all those zeros! But that’s a long, long, long time!

And all that time that electron is zipping around…

I like philosophers. They spend more time sitting around. Or as a poster from the 1960’s so aptly reminded me: Buddha says, “Don’t just DO something, SIT there!”

OMG! Where am I going with this? So many distracting lines of thought…

Oh yeah, time…

I was sitting around, thinking about the difference between these busy, beyond eternal, electrons, and me. I was trying to imagine what an electron might be thinking (or more precisely, do electrons have “choice”). You know, it comes from that long-discussed philosophical topic, “does choice exist”? Or is the world determined to be determined?

So, there I am, sitting, looking out my window, a wall of trees, oaks and maples and sourwoods, rhododendrons and mountain laurel… a typical window in the Blue Ridge Mountains at the edge of the southern Appalachia Mountains of North America… and I was wondering, what is it like to be a tree? A rock? An atom? An electron? Would I have “choice”? Would I be able to look into the future, see two options, and choose between them in a way that wasn’t determined by all the electrons flying around in my brain?

Buddha realized the advantages of NOT having choice, of just being in the moment. There is no suffering.

So there I am, a rock, maybe on the edge of the creek bed, the creek that is less than a 100 yards from my window, yet invisible, unheard, because there is such a wall of plants. I’m a rock, perched on the edge of the slowly eroding creek bed… Should I go for a swim? Roll down the hill and plop into the creek? Maybe go surfing (though, I am pretty heavy, and might just sink to the bottom). Shall I go? What shall I do?

And it occurred to me that the rock, an atom, an electron, doesn’t “think” like that, isn’t conscious (even in a panpsycho way). To be able to have “choice”, there must be memory (recording the past), and imagination (recording the future). Choice adds two dimensions to the universe: the past and the future. We humans tend to call these two dimensions “time”. But “time” doesn’t exist, really. Time is just a side-effect of observing the difference between “now” and “then”. Time doesn’t exist if there is no memory, no recording of “then”. And the future only exists in my mind, in my imagination. The future is only a virtual reality.

I’m starting to wake up… Just a few more moments in bed, Mom, please, I’m not sleeping… I’m thinking...

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I still haven’t read Philip Goff's Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (2019). Maybe tomorrow, when I have the time...

Let Your Fingers Do The Thinking

Another morning beginning with Peter Limberger's Collective Journaling Zoom Call...

Quote of the Day:  "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." - Isaac Asimov

Prompt: Free write today and let your fingertips do the thinking.
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I read an article last week, about the possible origin of fingers. I never really wondered, though I have wondered why we have 10 (or 8 and 2 thumbs). And then there are the toes…

“Fish Buttholes May Be The Reason We Now Have Fingers, Study Finds”
[ https://www.sciencealert.com/fish-buttholes-may-be-the-reason-we-now-have-fingers-study-finds ]

Sometimes, editors have too much fun coming up with catchy headlines. And in today’s “fake news” environment, I double-checked the source, a Nature article.

“Co-option of an ancestral cloacal regulatory landscape during digit evolution”
[ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09548-0 ]

It’s science at work, that investigative process of finding that which resists bias (can be confirmed by all). Now, I love science. I love the idea that, as a species, we share knowledge, especially knowledge that helps me survive. But aside from how this knowledge will help ME, I was disturbed by a line in the abstract of the Nature article:

“We genetically evaluated the function of the zebrafish Hoxd regulatory landscapes by comparatively assessing the effects of their full deletions. We show that, unlike in mice, deletion of these regions in fish does not disrupt hoxd gene transcription during distal fin development. By contrast, we found that this deficiency leads to the loss of expression within the cloaca…”

Full deletions? Loss of expression within the cloaca? I think this means that these scientists genetically altered zebrafish so they didn’t have buttholes. NOT COOL!

 

 

When I was 12, I had a fish tank. Zebrafish were a favorite, along with angelfish. I loved my fish. They were always happy to see me. I’d read about "Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys(1)" in comic books, so I enjoyed training my fish to swim to the top of the tank whenever I waved my yellow-brown plastic containter of “TetraMin” over the surface. I never got the fish to follow a flashlight, but they sure loved that yellow-brown TetraMin container. The food in the container was flaky, flat wafers of flattened flies? Later in my life I would notice that nori, the thin, flat, rolled sheets of dried seaweed used to wrap rice for sushi, felt and smelled a lot like my TetraMin. I never tried eating TetraMin. Kept thinking about those smooshed flies…

My fish tank needed to be cleaned regularly, a discipline I was not happy about. If I didn’t clean my fish tank, the glass would gradually turn green with algae. I was told this was bad for the fish, but in my mind, it was part of the ecology (I planted trees during the first “Earth Day” in April, 1970). But my mother had a ways of convincing me (aka my father), so I religiously cleaned my fish tank when it took on a green tinge.

Just an aside about fish and fish tanks, when I cleaned the tank, I had to replace all the water. I took great care to make sure the new water was at room temperature before putting the fish back in. I knew what it was like getting into a cold bath!

And what a happy day when I found a sucker fish, Otocinclus catfish, that would eat the algae off the glass! I still had to clean the fish tank, though, when it started to smell too much like fish.

My point is, getting back to this experiment, that I loved my fish. The idea of genetically altering a zebrafish so it had no butthole seems cruel and unusual. I know I’m different than zebrafish, but I wouldn’t want some alien species to come to Earth and decide to genetically alter me! Does the golden rule (or platimum or silver for that matter) not apply to other species?

I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 19, partly because of the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man", where aliens come to Earth offering peace and advanced technology. The aliens invite humans to join them on their further journey, and leave a book on Earth for the other humans. Initially, the title of the book is translated: "To Serve Man", but it is later discovered that the book is a cookbook!

Well, enough s!*% out of these fingers for today! Love always!





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(1) Here is what Gemini AI had to say about Sea-Monkeys:

The comic book advertisement you are referring to is for 
Sea-Monkeys. The ads, which ran heavily in comic books during the 1960s and 70s, promised "Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys" that could be trained and would follow a flashlight beam. 

Key details about the advertisements and the creatures themselves:

• The real animals: Sea-Monkeys are actually a specialized breed of brine shrimp (scientific name Artemia NYOS).

• The marketing hype: The comic book advertisements, often illustrated by artist Joe Orlando, featured highly personified, cartoonish characters with crowns and smiling human-like faces. The ads promised "a bowlful of happiness".

• The flashlight trick: While the ads claimed you could train them, the shrimp's habit of swimming toward a light source is not a learned trick but a natural biological reflex called phototaxis.

• The inventor: The product was invented by Harold von Braunhut, who also created other novelties like X-Ray Spex and Invisible Goldfish.

• The reality: Many customers were disappointed to discover the creatures were tiny, translucent brine shrimp that looked nothing like the illustrations and often died quickly.

My Discovery of Self-Discipline

Another blog post inspired by Peter Limberger's Collective Journaling!

Quote of the Day:  “Indeed, discipline means nothing other than this, whether it is of the priestly‑ascetic kind directed toward abnegation or of the warlike‑heroic kind directed toward hardening oneself like steel. In both cases, it is a matter of maintaining complete control over life, so that at any hour of the day it can serve a higher calling."- Jünger

Prompt: Enkrateia: meaning a state of self-control and self-mastery, especially over one’s passions. In modern parlance: discipline. Xenophon referred to it as “the foundation of all virtues.” We might call it the “first victory,” since all spiritual traditions view something like it as a prerequisite for advanced practice. Modern men, depending on their worldview, flex enkrateia in the spectacle in their own ways.

Is enkrateia a worthy aim or misjudged? And what might be gained by having more of it?

As a child, I was “disciplined”. And as a father, I “disciplined” my own children. It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I began to consider “discipline” as something that might be important, even necessary, for me to demand of myself.

That's not to say that I hadn't practiced many disciplines in my life. My life was not undisciplined. Instead, I thought of disciplines as demanded of me, enforced by others. In high school I joined the football team and was given the discipline of cutting off my hair, surviving the verbal abuse of my coaches. After my best friend broke my arm in football practice, I switched to cross-country and learned the discipline of running even when I felt I was going to vomit. And all through my life I was taught the discipline of waking, getting ready, going, to arrive at some location by a specific time. I hated THAT discipline most of all… being on time.

I was smarter than the average bear, so I didn’t have to be very disciplined  about homework or studying. And my father was a university professor, so the discipline of learning was bred into me. School was easy (except the “on time” part). College was easy, too, since I had no discipline around getting good grades, just around learning. By the time I got a full-time job, I’d learned I could handle it without too much struggle, as long as I got up, got dressed, caught the bus, and arrived on time.

I got married, had a child, got a better job, had another child, got fired, started my own company, had a third child, got a divorce…

It was my divorce that disturbed me. I began to question my understanding of the world around me. But it wasn’t until a second woman left me that I finally broke down. What was I doing wrong? Why did the women I loved leave me?

I found an answer in the most unusual place: an EST-based weekend for men about relationships. Here, in the late hours of shared sleep-deprivation, I heard about the value of self-discipline.

I joined a men’s team (not to be confused with a "be-kind-and-nice" men’s "group"). Our commitment to each other was to poke and prod, dig and delve, to kick each other’s butts to force clarity about who we were – who I was – versus who I wanted to be. The men would not leave me alone until they felt I was being honest, and that I was committed to “being the man I always wanted to be”.

It was during those late-night, three-hour, weekly outdoor meetings, 8-14 men, circled around an open fire, that I discovered the value of self-discipline. It was a hard lesson to learn.

“Do you want to be a man who keeps his word?”
“Yes!”
“Then why don’t you practice that discipline?”
“I do.”
“Did you give your word to be here on time?”
“Yes.”
“And you were late!”
“Not by much…”
“Were you here by the time you said you would be here?”
“Well…”
“You were late! Late is not being here on time!”

Oh, the pain of self-discipline! I HATED to HAVE to do ANYTHING! Yet, here was a man, in my face, about being late to a meeting. I continued my self-defiant behavior… and was late more times than I wish to remember.

“You are not a man who keeps his word!”
“Well, I keep my word for the important stuff.”
“You are NOT a man who keeps his WORD!”

How many times did I just want to say “F-U!” to those “A-holes”!

But I didn’t. Deep inside me I knew that I had something to learn.

“You’re late, again!”
“I’ll do 20.”

My team also practiced the discipline of forgiveness. I could get back my honor by doing some push-ups. I’d gotten very good at doing push-ups.

“No. That’s not helping you. Instead, this week, ask everyone you know if you are someone who keeps his word.”
“Okay.”

He heard my distrust, the hesitation in my voice.

“Will you give me your word.”

His eyes bore into mine. I refused to look away, met him eye-to-eye.

“Yes,” I said, “I give you my word,” and it felt different.

That week, I asked people I knew if I kept my word, if they could depend on me. Everybody said, “Yes.” Then I asked my children (aged 13, 10, and 6).

“Do I keep my word with you? Do I do what I say I’m going to do?”

My oldest said, “Yes.” My two youngest said, “No.”

And it pierced my heart. Not the word, but the way they said it. Not angry, not condemning, not spiteful. Just straight up child honest.

“What do you mean?” I answered, my face incredulous.
“You’re always late picking us up at school.”

There it was. Late. Again. And this time it was my own children that knew me better than I was letting me know myself.

At the next men’s team meeting, NOT late, I asked for some time.

“I want to be a father my children can trust, a man who keeps his word.”

The concept of self-discipline was growing inside me. A man offered his advice.

“This week, keep a journal of all the times you say you will do something. Keep track of what you said and when you would do it by. Add a column that says when you actually did what you said you would do. Bring the journal to next week’s meeting.”

The next day I began my journal.

It was awkward, and embarrassing, but every time I told someone I would do something, I took out my journal and wrote it down, including the delivery date and time.

“What’s that?”
“It’s my commitment journal. I’m keeping track of my commitments.”

When the person didn’t say anything, but seemed pleased, I offered why I was doing this.

“I want to be someone who keeps his word.”

I was surprised at the supporting reaction I got, whether a smile, a nod, or a verbal, “Good idea!”

That week I discovered, to my horror, that I had NOT done what I said I would do for some 30% of my commitments. THIRTY PERCENT! If I had an employee who did that, I’d have put them on notice. If I had a car that did that, I’d have junked it!

For three weeks I kept my commitment journal, until I reached the 100% success rate. To achieve this, I also had to learn the discipline of saying, “No.” I had to choose between being nice or being honest, being accepted or risking rejection, satisfying my ego or my discipline.

I learned that self-discipline is about doing something that might hurt in the short run (being on time, for instance) for something I value in the long run (my word). I learned that giving my word wasn’t really about me. My commitment to my word was for my community, so they could depend on me. I learned that it wasn’t up to me to choose which commitments I keep. I had to keep them all, even the tiniest, even being on time. I had to accept that I didn’t know how important my commitment was to the other person, and by NOT keeping my commitment, I was disrespecting the value THEY got from me keeping my commitment.

In the end, discipline is all about being a good member of my community. If I am trusted, others can rely on me. If I hold commitments as being critical to my community, and others in my community do the same, I know my community will be more likely to survive, more likely to thrive.

I also learned that there is great power in keeping my commitments! And I don’t mean my sense of self (though my ego is pleased), nor do I mean a sense of power in my community (though my community did come to rely on me, giving me more responsibility). What I’m talking about is the power I gained by making commitments I thought I COULDN’T achieve, commitments that scared me, commitments that seemed beyond my reach. I learned that my commitment to do what seemed impossible, which gave me the power of "no-ifs-ands-or-buts", was often all I needed to succeed. As my team told me, "You'll never know the shots you can't make if you never try to make them!" But that is another story...

Google's NotebookLM analysis of this blog

I am having too much fun! I put all the blog posts from this blog into Google's NotebookLM [ https://notebooklm.google.com/ ]. Here is what NotbookLM gave as a  summary:

"James C. March explores a wide range of philosophical and practical topics, arguing that non-violence involves creating options for others and that creativity is a form of responsible non-violence. The author questions the prevailing economic focus on efficiency and profit, particularly in industries like pharmaceuticals, suggesting it often disregards human well-being and democratic values. A central theme is the evolution and propagation of "memes" (ideas and culture) versus "genes" (biological survival), positing that human focus is increasingly on memetic survival through shared knowledge and collective understanding, facilitated by communication technologies like the internet and practices such as the scientific method for evaluating perspectives. The text also reflects on personal experiences, the nature of emotions, the challenge of learning, and the search for a universal philosophy of life grounded in the fundamental principle of survival." 

Not too bad for a summary of 20+ years of blog entries.

I used NotebookLM to create an "Audio Overview", which I published on Spotify [ https://open.spotify.com/episode/43mE3cJ5iYyRDFSBB79yaL ].

I've been trying slightly different versions of the input document, and getting some unexpected results in the corresponding "Audio Overview":

1. The order of the blog entries makes a difference.

I first submitted a document with the blog entries in reverse date entry, most recent blog post first. The audio overview focused too heavily on the recent posts. I reversed the order, putting the posts in date order. This seemed to give a more equal weighting to the posts. Note: The audio overview I published on Spotify is based on the date order posts.

2. How I referenced the blog entries matters.

A few versions ago, I submitted my blog posts without proper reference to each blog post. I didn't label each as written by me, or that all the posts came from the same blog. The resulting audio overview was strangely boring, and it wasn't just because the audio never mentioned my name (referring to the blog posts as "your sources"). In particular, the audio overview never knew the posts were all from the same person. There wasn't as much effort to try and tie the posts together. In retrospect, this makes sense, but it still surprised me.

3. WARNING! The exported XML from Blogger will include drafts of unpublished blog posts. I had to edit these drafts out after they showed up in a podcast, much to my surprise!

Overall, I'm blown away, by the two manufactured voices, and the summarizing of so many diverse blog posts over the past 20 years! Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would see such powerful artificial intelligence in my lifetime!

Ten Disciplines Towards a Shared Reality

When it comes to being human, one of our most successful survival strategies has been to share our experiences, among each other, and over time. Like the game "Civilization" and its cohorts, the history of the human species is shaped by our ability to pass on "memes" from one person to another, from one generation to the next. It is the development of language and other communication technologies (books, radio/television, internet), which has permitted us to see the world from perspectives across individuals over time. This "shared reality" moved us from individual subjective experience to a collective, shared objective experience, and gave us some insight into how to avoid dangers once thought of as beyond our control.

Just like genetic evolution, new ideas must be introduced and tested, and the successful trials must be remembered, embedded into the system, so that they are available in the future. In the genetic world, new ideas are introduced as variations in the DNA of a species. Changes occur frequently, though most do not contribute to higher survival rates, and so may be lost. In the genetic world, the rate of change and adaptation tends to be measured in hundreds of thousands of years, with species (tests that survived), lasting hundreds of millions of years.

By contrast, memetic evolution tends to introduce and test ideas on a much shorter timeline. A new idea (fire, for example) might spread quickly, as quickly as another person might show and another person might learn. In the past 30,000 years, humans have become more and more adept at sharing ideas, from word-of-mouth to writing to radio/television to the internet. We have also become more adept at testing new ideas, moving ideas of an individual into a more generic category of ideas that might be shared and useful to many. The scientific method is one tool we've developed to parse ideas. The economy (choosing with money) and politics (choosing with votes/guns) are two others. Social media "up/down votes" is yet another.

I make my genetic choices through my decision to have children or not, and my choice of partner. There are many sources of advice on the discipline of having children. And we have long recognized our genetic programming to procreate.

Disciplines around memetic propagation are less-well understood and practiced. Here are some disciplines I practice. I hope some day they will become habits, part of my way of being:

1. I do not repeat anything I am told without first being aware of the harm I may be doing.

Passing on memes without awareness robs me of my power to choose, my power to bring my best self into play, my power to define who I am, what I stand for, what I care about.

Yes, that meme may have made me laugh, but at whose expense? Yes, that meme may be very clever, but does it represent the world I want to live in? Yes, that meme may support my anger, my fear, but do I want to stand for anger? For fear?

2. I learn most from memes I don't believe or understand.

What I know is that I don't know everything. That means that learning is the process of figuring out, littered with mistakes. With each new piece of knowledge, there is the pain of being wrong. If I listened to my ego, avoided the pain of being wrong, I would limit my learning. This means I must constantly challenge myself with "wrong" ideas, in a quest to identify and compensate for my ego's need to be right. Collaboration is the agreement that we each are partly right, partly wrong, and our collaboration might lead to both of us learning something.

3. Logic provides consistency, but lacks inter-subjective reality.

As much as I might want to live in my bubble, my reality, I am limited to internal consistency. This means I will be denied reality. I have to communicate with others, share what I think I know, be open and learn what I don't know. Logic is a valuable tool, but it has its own limitations. Perhaps it is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

4. Correlation does not imply causation.

This is so fundamental to understanding the world that it is remarkable that I still see so many people believing in correlation. Unfortunately, others see the belief in correlation as a way to exploit and mislead people. Given enough data (and we have lots of data these days) almost anything can be shown to be correlated with something else. If I smell correlation in an argument, without support for causation, I immediately suspect the intention of the source of the meme.

5. It is my responsibility to make the best choices I can.

Although I am just one person, whose views may be wrong (since I don't know everything), it is still my responsibility to make the best choices I can. One of those choices should always be, talk with someone who might be more knowledgeable than me. I don't have to agree or choose their recommendation. But I should listen and consider their point of view. The world I want, the world I will fight for, demands that each human has a role to play, a contribution, and this is manifested in each individual's choices.

6. It is my responsibility to test the authenticity of any meme. What are its intentions? What were the intentions of the source of the meme?

For example: I don't trust advertising. Someone who has the intention of making money from my purchase may be biased. This demonstrates the power of independent sources. It is also why I don't trust reviews on the internet. How do I know what motivated the person to give that review? Were they paid by the producer? By the competition? Did they actually use the product? Unfortunately, there is more money to be made in writing misleading reviews than there is in writing honest ones. This leads to the economic solution of making reviews untrustworthy. I will ignore reviews (like I ignore advertising) until I find a way to trust the intentions of the reviewer. In some respects, this is the role of the "influencer", who is trusted enough by enough people that their opinion carries weight.

7. Sharing a discussion about a meme helps me evaluate the meme. A second opinion never hurts.

As I've said before, I am biased, my perceptions are biased, and so my conception of reality is biased. First, there is the bias of my particular life experiences, which are unique, valuable, and limited. Second, there is the bias of my ego, my conception of myself, which further processes my experience in such a way as to make me feel good. There is nothing so humbling as me having a discussion with someone else whose ego is as big as mine. 

8. I must be vigilant against memes that support my views. My ego will overestimate (bias) the value of these memes.

This is another way of warning against the feel-good my ego generates from the self-validation I get from agreement. 

9. I don't pass on memes without putting my perspective into the mix. That means no cut and paste. If the meme is worth repeating, it's worth seeing from my point of view.

Making me stop and think when I'm about to cut and paste is always a good thing. But more importantly is my self worth, the value of my experience, my opinion. Humility (the result of interacting with others and finding out I was wrong) drives me to reduce my voice, reduce my confidence in my own experience. Putting the effort into writing something in my own words, based on my own experience, helps me believe my point of view has merit. Of course, I have to watch out for my ego, too :-) 

10. I encourage others to be more disciplined about accepting and passing on memes. This takes effort, diplomacy, and compassion. 

Finally, any discipline worth practicing is worth sharing. Disciplines are memes, too. If they are not shared, they will die out (or have to be rediscovered).

Disciplines are hard. If I already did these things automatically, I wouldn't have to learn them. Disciplines tend to be in response to unwanted automatic (often genetic) responses. Whether the discipline is in reaction to a learned habit or a genetic response, the discipline will be hard work, at first. Fortunately, repeated practice turns most disciplines into a habits.

I practice these ten disciplines as my commitment to our shared reality, a world where we collaborate, share ideas, and work together to overcome challenges to our survival. These are good things. It's a big part of what has gotten us here, today. We haven't gotten here without making mistakes. We'll make more. It's how we learn. But the alternative is a world where mystery dominates.

May your disciplines become habits! And may your subjective reality be augmented to include memes from other people's realities, for your survival, for the survival of the human species, and the planet.

Consumers Unite!

Tired of being the guinea pig of targeted marketing? Is your digital feed being overrun with advertisements? Are you worried about your privacy, and what the cloud knows about you? [I just read about the Apple Siri settlement.] Now YOU can do something about it! First, a little background...

Advertising is not new. It's been around at least as long as recorded history [for a history of advertising, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising ]. But with the growing consumer market of the late 1800's, and the widespread use of printed matter for communication, advertising became a way to reach consumers on a mass marketing scale at a relatively low price. Mass media moved to radio, then television, and now internet. Advertising moved with it.

Now, in the age of connection, advertising is at the bleeding edge of research and development that targets consumers based on their behavior through the internet. Is this a good thing? I wrestle with several concerns.

1. Do I feel comfortable with the idea that someone/something is watching me, evaluating me, with the intent to sell me something based on who they/it thinks I am?

2. Should I be concerned about all the data that is being collected about me, building a file on me, that I don't even know about and cannot view or contest?

3. How do I feel about having a model, like AI, deciding what sort of person I am and selling that information to the highest bidder?

As for the first concern, I have to remind myself that I have lived my entire life in the shadow of various people watching me, beginning with my parents, then teachers, then employers and neighbors and acquaintances. In fact, my social behavior is watched by all those around me, and people draw conclusions about who I am. In some ways, social behavior supports trust, which allows me to live in relative peace and harmony with my neighbors and fellow human beings. To that extent, I accept that being observed helps build trust. But what about using that information with the intent to sell me something?

This leads me to a concern, in general, about AI. What if models (including AI) are more complicated than I can understand? How will I ever be able to tell if the intent of the model aligns with my preferred choices, whether those choices are economic, political, or social? How do I support what I believe in, and refuse support for that which I don't?

This is not a new dilemma, just a more complicated one. For example, I often question the intent of reduced choices suggested by institutions like family, government, education, economy, and religion.

My second concern (collecting data, building a file, which is perhaps unknown and unavailable for view and/or challenge) is also not new. For example, people are always building opinions of me through their observations of my behaviors. I don't have access to their brains, nor do I have the right to view and/or contest their content. Knowing this does not help me, though it does give me pause and question my concern. How would I prefer information about me be kept? And isn't it my responsibility to disclose my beliefs through my actions, thereby offering to others their trust in me? If I don't behave predictably, if I don't disclose my beliefs, why would anyone trust me?

My third concern (having a model, like AI, deciding what sort of person I am and selling that information to the highest bidder) is probably no different than my discussions about my first and second concerns, except that the observer is no longer a member of the human species. I have similar qualms about being observed by aliens from another planet, I guess. My gut tells me my concern is more based on a fear of the unknown than particular reasoning.

All this thinking about my concerns has reduced my concern about marketing, but not removed it. And I HATE advertisements!

So, here is something I can play with, if achieving nothing other than confounding the marketing and confusing the advertisers: behave in a way that misleads the database into thinking I am someone I am not!

I've already been testing this out on Facebook. Over time, my Facebook feed has been increasing the number of "unsolicited" posts (posts by entities I don't follow). About a year ago, it got so bad that nearly 80% of all posts on my feed were NOT from people I follow (i.e. - "advertisements"). I saw a post from my "friends" for every five posts from non-friends. I almost quit Facebook.

But then I remembered that my feed was an algorithm based on my previous Facebook behavior. So I changed my behavior. In particular, I quit Facebook every time my feed showed me three unsolicited (unfollowed) posts in a row. I used "back" "back" "back" to exit so that it was clear I was choosing to exit and not just distracted by something else. I figured even a relatively unsophisticated algorithm would be able to hear THAT message. Sure enough, my feed started showing fewer and fewer unfollowed posts. I've been doing this for a few months and, to my delight, I see almost all the posts from my followed "friends" with never more than two unfollowed posts for every followed post. That puts the unsolicited posts down to 66% from 80%. My next experiment is to exit Facebook when there are two unsolicited posts in a row in my feed.

I'm going to do another couple experiments...

- Asking Alexa questions that might lead to Amazon ads that have nothing to do with me, but end up charging advertisers I don't like the finder's fee (I would be generating "fake" leads).

- Using Google to search for things I don't want, again costing advertisers "fake" leads.

If I were really mad, I could target advertisers just like they target me. I could lead a consumer revolution where we'd all target a chosen, strategic advertiser, and generate so many fake leads that the advertiser pulled out!

But first, I better check on Reddit. Might already be a thing. Hope none of the advertising bots are watching or they'll mark me as a "fake" ;-)

Chatbot Consiousness

A recent opinion piece in Scientific American by Susan Schneider ("If a chatbot tells you it is conscious, should you believe it?" scientificamerican.com) annoyed me. I haven't figured out why, yet...

First, the observation that chatbots are claiming to be conscious, would be no test for consciousness. Almost anyone can write a computer program to answer, "Are you conscious?" with "Yes".

IF INPUT = "ARE YOU CONSCIOUS?" THEN OUTPUT = "YES"

Of course, this is a simplified example, but it demonstrates how there are many computer programs that might answer "yes" to any number of inquiries as to consciousness. Asking a thing if it is conscious may be necessary, but it is not sufficient. In this same vein, I would disagree with Pascal's statement, "I think, therefor I am."(1)

I would argue that consciousness cannot be self-referential. In fact, I would argue that consciousness, by definition, is one thing observing another. Self-consciousness is one part of the brain watching another part of itself.

The attempt to define consciousness is similar to the attempts to define intelligence. As each test is developed, we become aware of other definitions that exist that are NOT in the test. In many ways, the attempt to define intelligence through tests is similar to designing and testing scientific models in physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Each model may get us closer, but there always seems to be something beyond, something not captured by the model. This is particularly true in large scale complex models (like weather forecasting), and even more problematic when the models include members that change their behavior based on observations (like models with intelligent learning agents). Such complex systems may exceed the model's information content, allowing us to only model approximations.

Perhaps a better way of considering consciousness, as we generally experience it, is as a collection of models of various descriptions. Like intelligence, consciousness might best be represented as multi-dimensional.

As  Schneider points out, "AI chatbots have been trained on massive amounts of human data". But what she does not point out is that one could (and does) design chatbots on weighted sets of data. The most obvious example of this is the censoring of pornography and erotica from the chatbots, even though pornography permeates the web. If a chatbot was built from the actual data on the web, chatbots would be as obsessed with sex as humans. Instead, folks building the chatbots excluded these inputs from the learning data.

"Biases" in the chatbot models are many and large. For example, since the chatbot is built based on a weighted version of the web, bias is built in. Another bias is based on the content used to train the chatbot. More importantly, there is a lot of data that is NOT in digital form and cannot be fed into the learning algorithms of the chatbots. For example, life experiences that aren't in digital form. Approximations might be included, if someone has written about the experience.

Another challenge comes from the bias of Western thought, since there are countless cultures with little or no representation in digital form.  I ran into this bias recently when asking for sources about eight statements I gave the chatbot, including, "I will die someday" and "I cannot change the past". At first, the chatbot gave only western culture works. When I pointed out the bias, the chatbot acknowledged the bias and redid the list, which now included many works from the far east, as well as one source from Africa.(2)

Attempts to remove other "biases" have required more weighting schemes, giving some statements more influence than others. But who decides? And what biases are so pervasive that we are blind to them? Like the bias resulting from learning everything from what is written, rather than experienced? What does a chatbot know of the smell of a flower, the taste of an apple, the sound of a baby crying, the touch of a loved one, beyond what someone wrote? Until chatbots can incorporate all the experiences of a human being, they will be limited to approximating human beings, biased towards written (and visual) data.

As a statistician, I view bias as inevitable. No view is unbiased. My reality is not your reality. But we can share our perspectives and come to some agreement to reduce individual bias. For example, a good example of an algorithm we use to reduce bias of human observation is the scientific method.

Schneider is right to point out that "conscious" does not mean "responsible". In a similar way, we consider minors to be conscious, but do not hold them to the level of responsibility that we hold adults.

But I don't think it will benefit us to try and define chatbot consciousness in terms of human consciousness. Better to define and test for the traits we can observe and measure, tests which relate to the usefulness of the chatbots. In any case, consciousness should never be defined within a system. Consciousness only exists as an observation from outside the system looking in.

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(1) For more discussion on "I think, therefor I am" see my blog entry on "Thinking about thinking".
(2) https://thoughtsideaswanderings.blogspot.com/2025/04/having-fun-on-sunday-afternoon-with.html

History of the financial services trademark "Early Warning"

In my never-ending search for ego gratification, I ask the AI's this question every six months:

Who is James C. March?

Most recently, I've noticed an improvement (though there is always that "James G. March" problem). Here are the results of a conversation I had with ChatGPT today (May 5, 2025)(1).

You said:

Who is James C. March?

ChatGPT said:

James Gardner March (January 15, 1928 – September 27, 2018) was a renowned...(1)

[Note: I omitted this dreaded "I can't find myself on the internet" problem. My father, James G. March, is searched for on the web much more than me. In fact, the likelihood of someone actually interested in "James C. March" is less than the chances of someone mistyping "James G. March" :-( Ouch! That just hurts!]

You said:

Not James G. March, James C. March

ChatGPT said:

I apologize for any confusion in my previous responses. Despite thorough research, I was unable to locate information on an individual named James C. March in the public domain. It's possible that this person is a private individual or not widely recognized in publicly available sources. If you can provide more context or details about James C. March—such as their profession, notable works, or the field they're associated with—I would be more than happy to assist you further.

You said:

Inventor of AI fraud detection system for banking industry called Early Warning

ChatGPT said:

I couldn't find any credible information linking a person named James C. March to the invention of an AI fraud detection system called "Early Warning" in the banking industry.

Early Warning Services, LLC is a well-established financial technology company that has been providing fraud prevention and payment solutions for over 35 years. They are known for products like Zelle® and PazeSM, and they partner with more than 2,500 financial institutions to enhance security and efficiency in financial transactions.

If you have more specific information or context about James C. March's involvement in this field, please provide additional details, and I'll be glad to assist further.

You said:

Founder of WJM Technologies and inventor of Early Warning

ChatGPT said:

James C. March is recognized as a co-founder of WJM Technologies, a company that developed an early warning product designed for screening new bank accounts to detect potential fraud. This innovation played a pivotal role in enhancing fraud prevention strategies within the banking sector.

In the early 2000s, WJM Technologies' early warning system garnered attention for its effectiveness in identifying fraudulent activities during the account opening process. Recognizing the value of this technology, Primary Payment Systems (PPS) entered into negotiations to acquire WJM Technologies. The acquisition was completed with initial funding from Concord, leading to a merger that combined the strengths of both companies. As a result, PPS became a combination of the original PPS and WJM Technologies, further solidifying its position in the financial technology landscape. Green Sheet

James C. March's contributions through WJM Technologies have had a lasting impact on the development of fraud detection systems in banking, particularly in the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to proactively identify and mitigate fraudulent activities.

Now, the interesting part of this conversation is that ChatGPT DID finally find something about me! And when I looked at the "sources", I found one that was very interesting:

 

In a podcast by Early Warning (yes, it's a company, now, not just a product), I was told the history of Early Warning. The podcast is called, "Nickel and Crime". The episode is "Season 3, Bonus Episode: Early Days - The Origin Story of Early Warning".

 

"Fun fact number two, Early Warning was actually the name of one of our products at the time. So that's where that comes from." (starting at 05:48 in the podcast)

 

Yes, Early Warning, the company, got its name from Early Warning, the product. But if you're interested in some real history, where did the product name, "Early Warning", come from? First, a little background about the creators of Early Warning back in 1989, Wally Industries, dba WJM Technologies...

 

In 1988, Wayne M. Johnson and James C. March started a company in California called Wally Industries, Inc. We had wanted to incorporate as WJM Technologies, but found that the State of California needed the approval of a welding consulting company, WJM Technologies, in southern California. They refused. So we incorporated as Wally Industries and filed a "doing business as" (dba) with Sonoma County. We officially became Wally Industries, Inc., dba WJM Technologies.

I bet you can figure out where the name WJM came from,  but what you don't know is, Wayne had some left over, very nice, "Hersey chocolate" brochure covers. They were beautiful, very expensive, gold leaf lettering, and left over from his previous business.

 

 

WJM Early Warning Brochure

 

"I'll donate these and the logo to the company," Wayne offered. "We can use them for WJM Technologies."

 

As we built the first prototypes of a fraud detection AI system, we had to come up with a catchy name. We all liked "Early Warning", and a trademark search found several "Early Warning" trademark filings, but none in the financial services industry. We grabbed it, filed, and got the trademark in 1993.(2)

 

Another year goes by and we hear a company, Primary Payment Systems, is coming out with their own "Early Warning" product. We had our attorney send a copy of our trademark filing and a "cease and desist" letter.

 

Later, after PPS had bought us, President Larry Spooner talked about how frustrated he had been, learning the name "Early Warning" was already taken. It put the pebble in his shoe. He later told me how happy he was to finally get the name "Early Warning"!

 

 ____________________
(1) Here is a link to the actual conversation on ChatGPT.com: James C. March Overview.
(2) Early Warning Trademark Filing Case Number 74312772.

 

 

 

 

 

Thinking about thinking

Thinking about thinking? I don’t think so!
I think, therefore I am? Don’t believe it!
Is thought an illusion? Perhaps.

I prefer to start with something more universal, something that is true throughout the universe, shared by all. I prefer to start with survival.

To survive means to persist, from one moment to another. Usually, these moments are connected together in something I experience as “time”. I am the result of a long string of time, the survival of a way of being, which I know of as DNA. I am also the result of my own experience, which I will call my perspective. My DNA has survived through a process of trial and error, the adventures of a particular collection of atoms over many trials, many errors. I am a result of this process. My DNA has built-in connections to other moments, successful trials. These “instincts” guide me towards survival. But to allow me the flexibility to respond to my environment more immediately, more contemporaneously, my DNA has also given me consciousness, the ability to be aware of myself and my surroundings, at least in some limited form. And my DNA has given me memory, a way to organize my awareness across different moments. My experience, which builds my perspective, contributes to a system of memory, recording trials of cause and effect perceived during my lifetime. Insofar as my perspective contributes to my survival, some piece of my perspective may survive beyond my lifetime, through my recombined DNA.

But there is a more powerful way my DNA has contributed to my survival. I have been given the ability to communicate with other instances of DNA. This is done by sharing my lifetime experiences, communicating them to another, via my thoughts. This is the sharing of memes, ideas, thoughts, experiences.

The biological process of two-sex reproduction is shared by many other non-human forms of DNA. However, the sharing of experiences, the trials and errors during my lifetime, is not used by many forms of DNA. Humans have developed complex language to share their experiences. With language, I am able to share my experiences with others, who may pass them on, sharing my experiences beyond my lifetime. I can tell a child, “don’t touch the stove, or you might burn yourself”. If they understand me, and believe me, my experience can be passed on to another generation, potentially saving them from burning themself.

Even more powerfully, humans have developed technologies beyond language (books, PDF’s, and now AI) that allow life experiences to be shared over many moments in time and across great distances in space. If my thinking is persuasive, if I am able to communicate in such a way that people believe me, my thoughts might be passed through these powerful technologies to many humans, now and in the future.

The question then becomes one of “Whose thoughts should I listen to? If two people disagree, how shall I choose between them in a way that helps me survive?” Humans have developed a technology for this, too. We call it the scientific method, a process of comparing experiences across time and space, to come to a shared belief in experiences. Science focuses on that which can be reproduced, that which is potentially experienced by all humans. The scientific method helps us build models of our world based on observations that we all can experience. The models allow us to easily, efficiently, communicate our understanding of the world.

And we’re good at building models.

Of course, we went after the easiest models, first, including ones that could be mapped into simple mathematical equations. These models had few variables, with limited interactions. But that meant the harder models, equally important, with lots of variables and lots of interactions, were not developed or understood. Ecological systems, social interactions, weather systems are just a few of the models that we are now only beginning to understand and develop.

“I think, therefore I am?” Perhaps not. Perhaps it is more like, “We think, to discover who we are.”
____________________
(1) This was today's prompt from Collective Journaling led by Peter Limberg, which I was offered through the Internet Real Life sessions from The Dark Forest Collective on Metalabel:

Welcome to Collective Journaling, a place where we write in silence, together… with music :)

Song of the day: Money https://open.spotify.com/track/7hUuYv8NT8feTPZMG4RS5R?si=2c69928ee9094aa5

Quote of the day: "Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night." - William Blake

Prompt of the day: When is thinking bad? When is it good? What makes it so? Is there such a thing as good or bad non-thinking? And what makes that so? (Or just write about whatever is alive or bothersome for you today.)

I have to do this(1)

Some things I do for “me”. Other things I do for “not me”. Of course, it’s all for me, one way or the other, if I believe in choice.

Growing up during the Vietnam War, I had a choice put in front of me every day. As I edged towards 18, the day I would be required to register for the draft, I asked myself, “Will I go?” Patriotic duty, civic duty, would I offer to give my life? Was I willing to die for what America was doing in Vietnam?

Even before I had to make my choice, I would watch the news every night with my family. Walter Cronkite was the man back then. He was the anchor for CBS. Reminded me of Captain Kangaroo. A face I could trust. Live footage of the fighting(2) with body counts, like a football score, left me feeling angry. How could a life be reduced to a number? I began studying non-violence and participating in war protests.

By the time I was 18, in August of 1972, I was campaigning for Senator George McGovern. He was the anti-war Democratic candidate running against President Nixon. It was the first election where 18-year-olds were given the right to vote. When I turned 18, I registered to vote. I also registered for the draft, even though I knew I would refuse to serve. My choice would be to move to Canada or go to prison.

Nixon won by a landslide. The Paris peace talks, on and off since 1968, were finally signed in January 1973. On March 8th, my draft lottery number was chosen: 181. But by then, it was unlikely anyone would be called up. The choice was made for me. I would not serve.

I went off to college in late summer of 1973, committed to serving my community in non-violent ways. I became a lacto-ovo vegetarian (which I am still to this day). As fate would have it, my college roommate had the same passion for service as I did. For the past 50 years we have supported each other to follow our dreams of making the world a better place.

This year I turn 71, and I still get value from knowing, at least for some things, “I have to do this”.
____________________
(1) This was today's prompt from Collective Journaling led by Peter Limberg, which I was offered through the Internet Real Life sessions from The Dark Forest Collective on Metalabel:

Welcome to Collective Journaling, a place where we write in silence, together… with music :)

Song of the day: Prisencolinensinainciusol https://open.spotify.com/track/0HQf0bd3oSZei450iKuUFR?si=88ab6e157a564a93

Quote of the day: "There are no strangers here, just friends who haven't met," Ray Oldenburg, Celebrating the Third Place

Prompt of the day: If we define an “existential project” as a project that produces real-world results (personal skill-building, goal accomplishment, etc.), is important to your (and others’) existence, and feels heavy—something easy to avoid but accompanied by an internal whisper that says, “You have to do this”—then what would your existential project be? (Or just write about whatever is alive or bothersome for you today.)

 (2) WARNING! It is hard to watch this newscast of U.S. soldiers burning houses in Vietnam as reported by Morely Safer, and aired by Walter Cronkite, in 1965: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0AmOw06lA0 .

What lies at the heart of an adventure?(1)

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
    -- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan.

My friends and family worry about me because I talk about my death.

“You’re not dead, yet!” “Are you going to die?” “You’re alive today.”

And, I must admit, I hesitate to write about the subject because of the reaction. But I find the discussion brings clarity to my life. Some day, I will die, I will cease to exist. Perhaps, I will take another form, move on, go somewhere.

As a teenager, I imagined that everyone would go exactly where they thought they would when they died. So, if you thought you were going to live in the clouds with lots of harps, you’d go to live in the clouds with lots of harps. If you thought you were going to burn for your sins, then you would burn for your sins. If you thought you were coming back as an ant, you would come back as an ant. I preferred to believe that when I died I would become a star, a large ball of thermonuclear hydrogen and helium, light for the universe.

Did I ever tell you the insight I got one morning, in bed, before awake, but after sleep? I was pondering energy use, and global warming…

I was raised by parents who were children during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. My mother was notoriously thrifty. She taught me about saving, and recycling. One of my chores as a child was to clean the used plastic bags. I especially remember the colorful Wonder Bread bags. I would wash them, turn them inside out, shake them to get most of the water off, and stand them in the dish rack to dry with the dishes. Once dry, they went into a drawer for use later, perhaps to store food in the freezer (bought on sale, of course). My mother recycled and reused everything she could. “I was raised in the Depression. You never knew when you might wish you hadn’t thrown something away.” After my mother passed away, we found drawers full of old plastic bags, cleaned and inside out.

Needless to say, I was imprinted with conservation. This was fine, until I got married. My wife was very organized, and so threw things away that weren’t used right away. “You’re a hoarder,” she’d say of my drawers full of bags.

This led me to great moments of despair. Global warming was the result of throwing away my plastic bags!

Then I thought about stars, being a star, shining, heating, all that energy being spewed into the universe, all the stars in the universe, burning, throwing off energy, and most of it, nearly all of it, radioactive, and going into space, polluting, being wasted.

That’s when I heard Tom Bodett’s folksy voice saying, “We’ll leave the light on for you!”

For over 30 years Tom Bodett has been the advertising voice of Motel 6, a chain of once-upon-a-time $6/night motels built for the burgeoning “road trip” market along the early freeway system of the United States. He’d end each ad with the friendly, considerate, “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

That’s when it hit me. Stars are God’s way of leaving the light on for us! That was my insight. Stars shine bright, advertising places to stay in the universe, planets to be visited, homes away from home along the universal road trip. God’s left the light on for us!

Okay, I know, what’s that got to do with global warming? And cleaning plastic bags? And the adventure of becoming a star when I die?

Hey, like I said, it was before I was awake! Give me a break!
____________________
(1) This was today's prompt from Collective Journaling led by Peter Limberg, which I was offered through the Internet Real Life sessions from The Dark Forest Collective on Metalabel:

Welcome to Collective Journaling, a place where we write in silence, together… with music :)

Song of the day: Stayin’ Alive https://open.spotify.com/track/5cP52DlDN9yryuZVQDg3iq?si=717aa99e2c6f4c7d

Quote of the day:  "In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.” - Miguel de Cervantes

Prompt of the day: What adventures does the rest of the spring and upcoming summer hold for you? What lies at the heart of an adventure? Why is living adventurously important — or is it not? (Or just write about whatever is alive or bothersome for you today.)

What does your way of living look like?(1)

I listen to the drops as they splash upon the welcoming leaves, diamonds on emeralds, that joyous sound of millions applauding. I listen, and am thankful, to have this chance to hear, to be, to share in these mysteries.

I was born two billion years, two billion years ago, two billion years, too long ago for me to imagine. Yet still I can remember, if I try. Impossibly unlikely, and infinitely small, I do my part, pay it forward, cherish that which has been passed to me.

How can I ignore my origins, diverse and wondrous, the careful record of what works? I have learned so much. And still it is only a thimble of knowledge, enough to wet my tongue, and leave me thirsty. How many raindrops make an ocean? How many grains of sand make a beach? How many stars, how many galaxies, how many universes? Impossible to count, impossible to know, impossible to ignore. The stars light the way, lead us, call us to follow the infinite path. I am a step in the journey, and will never know its end.

To be a drop in the ocean, a grain of sand on the beach, a leaf in the forest… These are the ways of my nature, my path to fulfillment. I am infinitely small, and infinitely important. I am Zeno’s paradox. Life is the calculus that yields an answer. Will it be zero? Infinity? Or some mysterious middle ground? Will I be content with my tiny bit? That is up to me, though I struggle with these concepts, beyond my understanding, beyond, perhaps, even my imagination.
____________________
(1) This was today's prompt from Collective Journaling led by Peter Limberg, which I was offered through the Internet Real Life sessions from The Dark Forest Collective on Metalabel.

Why internet?(1)

To know the thoughts of others gives me the courage to know my own…

I knew an old man, many years ago. Of course, that was before he was old, before his face sagged, before his hair fell out. He smiled more often, as if the world were magical, and he were dipped in life’s wondrous mystery. It was before he had discovered coffee, and Cabernet, but after caramel apples.

He had a camera, a box that winked memories with a click, scrolled onto a spool with the turn of a knob by his index finger and his thumb. In those days, as sometimes happens, memories would overlap, leaving a collage of meaning. And as he got older, and more clever, he would not scroll at all, packing the memories, one on top of the other, in the hopes of creating something never seen before, a kind of virtual memory, in time lapse.

There were only 12 memories to each scroll. Each memory was frozen, did not move, a kind of inverse blink. All memories were grayscale, leaving colors to the imagination. Back then there was little confusion about reality. The box could not lie, or be made to lie, at least, for the little boy, except for the overlaps, which were obvious.

In those days, before the Lessons of Roblox, children wandered alone. Before the Fear of Trauma, before iVictim, the child was free to explore the wild.  “Don’t come home until dinner time.” And so he went forth, with his box, in search of blinks to immortalize.

He was not alone.

He would congregate with other children, left to wander alone in the wild. Here were the people in his neighborhood, clustered by age and sex and friendship.

“I have a box!”

And they were fascinated.

“Pick me! Pick me!”

And so he did.

“Let’s play Combat!”

And so they did.

And after 12 clicks, too soon, the scroll would turn no more. The box was put away, the scroll rewound, removed, and sent to be reworked, decoded, inverted.

Sixty years later, the click box long gone, the old man found the blinks. Slowly, gently, he let the memories thaw, soften, and return him to a time of wondrous mystery.

{include the pictures here when I get back} 

____________________

(1) This was today's prompt from Collective Journaling led by Peter Limberg, which I was offered through the Internet Real Life sessions from The Dark Forest Collective on Metalabel.

What’s the most beautiful and/or stylish aspect of the internet?(1)

Is beauty static? I mean, is beauty something that is “out there”, like a painting, or a movie? I grew up with the meme, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. But I always thought that meant that beauty was a subjective, individual thing. Now, when I read it, I hear the emphasis on “in the eye”, like "in my mind". Beauty is all in my mind. Is it? Is beauty real? Or imaginary? Or does beauty inhabit the realm between real and imaginary?

Too often I hear, “they’re beautiful”, or, more often, “they’re ugly”. Judgement. As if my eye was better than theirs. As if I understood beauty, could manifest beauty, better than they could. Is beauty the barrier I build to keep them at bay?

And then there are the hippies. “Everyone is beautiful, in their own way(2)”. As if beauty is defined by the beholder, by the ego. “I am beautiful!”

Is the internet beautiful? Does the internet think of itself as beautiful?

My eye, my beholder, celebrates diversity. The internet is certainly diverse! The internet is whatever I want it to be, a window into myself, my beholder, my eye. By looking out, into the internet, I see in.

I think I’m built that way, to see the outside world as a reflection of what’s in my head. It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I learned about projection, the psychological phenomenon of tending to see in others the emotions I was experiencing. And when did I start to believe the neuroscience of, and theory that, my brain is making best-guesses about the world around me, leading me to perceive the world through “my-experience” glasses?(3)

Suddenly, Buddhism makes neurological sense!

What Buddhists called “attachments” were the learned pre-cognition pathways, triggered by an efficient neurological decision-making mechanism, that simplified reality in favor of a best-guess matching algorithm. But the cost of making guesses is I don't see reality. In order to “see” what really is, I must first “unsee”, train my brain to stop making connections, stop pre-imagining what I see.

My brain is like a gambler, betting on the most likely outcome, in hopes of winning. More often than not, if I know my odds, I will guess correctly. But not always. The “here and now”, the “present” of Buddhist meditation, doesn’t play the odds. Instead, nirvana is just what is. And one can experience reality, as if for the first time, without judgement or expectation, without “attachment”.

So what is beauty to a Buddhist? If I let beauty be something that isn’t about me, about the way I see, the way my brain is betting on the world, what is beauty?

Is beauty what others tell me? Advertising is the science of projection, projecting wants and needs. It connects my wants and needs, to their products. If I spend enough time watching, or hear an advertisement enough times, my brain automatically makes the connection. If I’m not careful, the advertisement becomes my projected reality.

So, what is beauty?

In my 20’s, in college, I read Gombrich’s Art and Illusion(4). I thought the lesson was, “there are many definitions of beauty across many cultures”. But now, rereading the book, I hear a deeper message, the one about illusion. “The world is an illusion.” But that doesn’t mean the world doesn’t exist, just that my perception of the world is biased. (Did I disclose that I am a statistician by training?)

So many different ways of looking at things swirl in my head, becoming a vortex, a “synchronicity”. I hear Vonnegut: “so it goes”, “chrono-synclastic infundibula”.

Perhaps I would be happier with a definition of beauty that didn’t depend on my way of thinking, on my perspective. Perhaps a more satisfying definition of beauty would be that beauty is all around me. It is my job to become aware of it, to find and see the beauty.

Love is beautiful!

But I’m just a wanna-be hippie of the ‘60’s, projecting love into all I see, a survivor of the Age of Aquarius.
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(1) This was today's prompt from Collective Journaling led by Peter Limberg, which I was offered through the Internet Real Life sessions from The Dark Forest Collective on Metalabel.
(2) Ray Stevens, "Everything Is Beautiful" (1970) [ https://youtu.be/0a45z_HG3WU?t=48 ].
(3) “Top-down predictions in the cognitive brain” by Kveraga, Ghuman, and Bar  [ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2099308/ ].
(4) Gombrich, E. H. (1960). Art and illusion. London: Phaidon.