Generations

Every people, every age has its moments of inner inspiration, of life full of hope, beauty, explosive creativity, connections that life make tantalizingly sweet. In the time of my youth, a youth that was mindless, with no concept of time, we, in former Yugoslavia, and each one of us too had our moments of beauty, with a story that happened and helped spread itself without knowing. Such is a story of "Selma," a young woman in 1945 Sarajevo that inspired a poet, a bohemian to write about his youthful feelings of enchantment and create "Selma," a song that, I believe there is no person from my homeland does not know. Here's a story from a more recent time that keeps the feeling going.

"Zeljko Bebek nakon 38 godina ponovo pjeva Selmi"

Sam Harris - Death and the Present Moment

Just heard an interesting (YT clip of the) presentation by Sam Harris titled "Death and the Present Moment" and posted two comments.

"A questioner at around 51:00  mentioned "a right to live." I do not believe there is such a thing outside of human-made picture of life. So, if that is true, if the right to live is a human construct, than it is not a fact, but an unprovable proposition that some accept as the truth and some don't. It may be of some use in certain circumstances, but the "nature" does not honor it."

"Mourning someone's death is really feeling the loss of something we really do not have -- that someone's future impact on our lives. The fallacy hidden in this state of mind is the expectation that the future moment will be the same as some past moment that we enjoyed. It never is and never will be. Everything always changes. That is the wonder of life. Expectations are crutches that our mind sets up. They many times help us along in our daily lives and many other times make us feel miserable. If we accept that the next moment, and all that it may or may not contain, is not guaranteed and accept that if it comes it will not be completely the way we expect it to be and are consequently ready to accept the consequences, we are free of the burden of needing the expectation to come true as the basis for happiness or fulfillment of some sort or actually of the existence itself."

Those sorts of presentations, regardless of the degree to which I concur with their premisses, analyses, and conclusions, always inspire me to study more. Douglass Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, and Bach" did that for me many years ago when I first read it. I might look YT Hofstadter's clips next.

This delicate life

Very few of us, I believe, think about or are even aware of how delicately balanced our life is physiologically. There are enumerable dangerous events that could happen at any time, even without a warning and/or our ability to control, ending our life individually, or as a species or in totality--all life on Earth.

Why would this be of any interest? It is of interest to me, the fact of vulnerability of life, as I think about life's purpose. Most of those whom I know and/or whose thoughts I learn about, propose some sort of ongoing concern, as in "we live today so that there may be life tomorrow." I have always had a problem with that position for the simple reason that the life can be ended as mentioned above. Moreover, I assert that life in general, that of which we are a part, will end some day.

Given that conclusion, purpose of life can not be some future life. The purpose must be contained within the current life. What could it be?

Adding to what I wrote in an earlier blog entry, my purpose is to fully experience life itself.

Rights an such

Here is a hypothetical:

Your next door neighbor tells you that he works night shifts and usually sleeps from 8am till about 2pm. He asks you to help him by not making too much noise during those hours. What would you do if on one morning you wash your car in your driveway close to your neighbor's house and just really want to listen to the car radio while doing this, knowing that the resulting noise would make it difficult for your neighbor to sleep? Would you assert your right to do as you please as long as it is legal, or would you, out of consideration for your neighbor, forgo your rights and not make the noise?

You know why I am asking this, right? Is it really necessary, just in order to assert your free speech rights (to publicly mock Prophet Mohamed, for example), to be offensive to others (some if not all in the Muslim world, in this case)? I think not! Relationships are more important than individual rights, especially so since those rights are not given as absolutes but are negotiated among men at certain time and place and should be subject to renegotiation at any time.

J. Edgar, the movie

I just finished watching "J. Edgar," a movie about J Edgar Hoover, a masterpiece, produced and directed by Clint Eastwood:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1616195/

Great movie. Made me almost like the guy, as portrayed so masterfully by DiCaprio, for his fortitude, for his single mindedness, and in spite of his flaws. There was a man who lived his beliefs to the fullest, well almost, except for his private life. I have no idea how truthful this movie is to the real Edgar Hoover, though. Here's one description of J. Edgar Hoover.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover

Done with Facebook

Since a few years ago until a week or so ago I had been using Facebook as one of the ways to keep in touch with the world out there. I was able and willing to wade through a lot of FB junk to get what I wanted and to say a few words of my own as well. However, the fact that I did use FB has negatively impacted my private life in ways I do not wish to share. So, I decided to quit Facebook -- and I do not miss it.

I am convinced that I will be able to keep in touch with my true friends (not 650+ FB friends) in other, more direct ways. And I will limit my Internet writing to my weblogs. Life is more peaceful this way.

Redistribution of Income

I was watching a clip on YT (Bill O'reily Gets Owned by Cornel West & Tavis Smiley) in which a very popular catch phrase "redistribution of income" was being thrown at the interviewee in order to discredit him as promoting socialism (small "s" is intentional here).

Now, I am thinking, I should ask how that income that is targeted for "redistribution" is acquired in the first place. If it is acquired by exploitation, cheating, steeling, and other illegal or immoral means, sure enough, it should be redistributed. The question, of course, is what is "illegal" or "immoral."

Both illegality and immorality are human created notions (illegality other than in the sense of being against natural laws, laws of physics) As such they necessarily vary both in time and in space.

Among non-human animals, taking advantage of whatever circumstances one finds in order to better oneself is a perfectly normal, natural reaction to those circumstances and no one goes to jail. Among humans, that can be problematic. If I can take advantage of my physical strength and take away resources from another human by force, that is not acceptable in most human societies. How come? Because it is illegal and/or immoral.

This thing called morality is causing all sorts of problems for us humans as we can not universally agree on what is or isn't moral. And we are doomed to disagree forever on it, or at least for a foreseeable future. As a result, we still use natural means to prevail in serving our self-interests -- except we now label it exploitation or such. Or we enact laws and establish moral norms that make those means legal or moral.

The trick is that those laws and moral norms come into being not by consensus but by force of some sort. So, we are really no better off than non-human animals and I find myself back at square one in this thought exercise.