Neuron-Stretching Time

Gene Genie

2009-07-12T04:13:00.000-07:00

I've been reading about mankind's great African exodus of 100,000 years ago. (Chris Stringer & Robin McKie : Amazon Link here ) Apparently at one point we as a species numbered around 10,000. Because of my outlook on life, I cannot help but wonder if it is this somewhat shallow gene pool that is the cause of such an escalation of mental and physical illnesses as we have progressed. Certainly our minds are finding new uses for all the raw emotional conditioning we gathered in the Rift Valley, but I cannot help but wonder whether because there were so few of us post-exodus, whether we ought to marry back into ancient African genes in order to get back any of the diversity we could truly realise. Genetically, Africa has the most diverse range of variation because of the amount of time mankind has spent there. I wonder how much depression there is on that continent amongst the indigenous peoples in comparison with the rest of the world?

Allowing the chemical to be outbid...

2009-03-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

My fellow worldians: In order to preserve our way of life, a process such as thought, and denial of thought is integral to what we understand as standard practice on this blue green rock of ours.
Thought is controlled by a special mass of grey that sits beneath our hairlines and is moderated by many chemicals and electricity. We are the computers that never, with few exceptions, need a restart to keep going normally. (Microsoft, are you hearing this?)
Now, these few exceptions, amongst which I count myself, are the imbalance or the curiosity that nature has thrown up due to our limited human gene pool. We, the unregulated, the legacy of DNA intermingling, are flung into the world aware that not all that glitters is gold, and that each and every silver lining has a cloud. Oh happy we are to know that this knowledge is ours.
It has taken me over 30 years to understand that whilst inheritance, the tree of circumstance that roots us to pre-disposition and possibility, may exist to determine the map of us, it is not the sun and moon to our futures, any more than the colour of the pack of cards may determine who wins the hand of poker.
Individual choices of which voice to listen to point us left or right, the only challenge is to train ourselves to listen to them.
And if that doesn't sound like a line from a martial arts film, I don't know what does.
Thing is, cliches have to start somewhere.

An Antidote

2009-02-04T02:23:00.000-08:00

Watching the world selling itself to death,
I wonder at the blueness of the sky today
The price of owning hurts the hoping
And yet I breathe for free today

As giants tumble with baskets laden
I run smiling amongst the valley streams
When so much is offered and so little taken
My laughter's new, or so it seems

As I see cold numbers snatching beauty
And computer worthless tickets sold
The grass grows longer without duty
All birds sing on despite the cold

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Perspective. You can't eat money...

Watching as the world sells itself to death...

2009-01-29T02:39:00.000-08:00

The above title was a thought that fell out of my fingers on another site, and it's kinda stuck in my cranium. ("and he saw that it was good etc etc")
Thing is, it seems to be a nutshell phrase. Value, as I've burbled about previously, is in the eye of the seller. When posting items sold on eBay (oooh a product placement issue!) the nice lady in the Post Office (and another!) asks me the value of the item I'm posting.
In response, I give her the amount that the customer paid for it, as, to them, that is its value. It then strikes me that to me it is worth less, as that is why it's being sold.
Some garlicky descrepancy then lurks within this kiev of transaction. I have no doubt that disturbingly clever people with beards and calculators (and that's just the women) could tell me how much every item I've sold cost to produce, so that would be one value.
But that someone else out there can re-value it according to what they're willing to pay, means that all intrinsic value is entirely arbitary, and it becomes a wonderful meld of philosophy and finance.
Which sounds less and less wonderful as I contemplate it, I must admit.
Is all money an existential question now? Beyond the physical existence of the spare change I have rattling in my pocket, how much tangible currency is there?
The proof of value is now in the minds of others, yours and mine. It is an etherial construct of desire and microchip, one keystroke whim from ascension or destruction.
It is a suspicion of mine that the current economic crisis is the result of this ghastly realisation hitting home.

2009-01-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

As a form of uneffective protest or maybe just boredom, I have been searching for an alternative way. Actually, that should be Way with a capital wuh, as we're talking philosophy and religion now, and as I sit here I imagine the droves that log off at the mere thought of my burbling on about one of the two things one should never discuss at parties or with hairdressers.
Well, I don't mean any harm by this, nor am I about to order the Extremist's Handbook onTotal World Domination or How To Convert Your Friends With Only A Little Social Discomfort (check on Amazon, there's bound to be something there...)
No, I'm just curious. The world that I have always known is western (yee-haw) and capitalist in nature, so I want to know more. To this end, I've been looking into Taoism. Took me a while to home in on this one, but there was something about the sheer inpenetrability that drew me.
Or possibly a BBC programme on it that interested me. Not sure now, but here I am.
The main thing that leapt out at me was this excerpt:

Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.

Now, if desire and the need to get more and more and more of what little we imagine is going to make us happy has brought us to this sorry economic time, then there's definitely a lesson here.
I shall read more and let y'all know.
If you fancy finding out more, check this out:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/tao/index.htm

The Complexities of Simplicity

2008-12-08T05:59:00.000-08:00

Ah yes so this would be bureaucracy, so good they put the French word for "desk" in it...
I have a feeling that if the end of the world did occur, we probably wouldn't hear about it until a few months later, due to errors in the lines of communication. Or someone forgot to click on "OK."
"Doing" it seems, is out of fashion. So much simpler to think, process and evaluate than "do." An idea? There ought to be a committee to discuss its feasibility.
How many more times (answers on a e-postcard - if it's delivered and not filtered out as spam) will we have to hear that the latest very good idea/technological advance/life-saving drug is ready and waiting to improve the lot of the planet's inhabitants, only we can't use it because it's too expensive to pop out the foil tablet holders?
The decision of monetary value, about how many numbers to put after the pound or dollar sign in your local chemist is determined by - what? who?
Nothing tangible, as the processes that create are given a value by the raw material's/time's value which is determined by, yep, the same process, so...
...is it all a big circle of "i dunno, what do you think?"
If one stockbroker's anxiety can be fed off by the hordes around the world who enter numbers into the computer system that they designed, and add value to that anxiety as a tangible number that then influences everything from health to wealth, then how is this sustainable?
Eventually, there will be a point where nothing can truly be made out of nothing, and value will implode into itself, hopefully forcing a re-think.

Bring it on...

2008-11-25T04:27:00.000-08:00

Not quite without an imagined or feigned nonchalence, I found myself thinking recently that what this world needs, as the Joker so rightly pointed out, is an enema.
I'm not sure what form of philosophy this raids, but I have long felt that a good solid crisis is what the globe's population requires in order to really get its priorities right. After all, when it's all said and done, and we're wiping the atomic dust from our shelter-issue goggles, you can't eat money. Our bank statements may, at a pinch and a lot of balsamic vinegar, provide limited sustenance, but that's about it. The true value of things is only really determined when the collection of nervy knee-jerk reactions that control the amount of money we have to spend on living finally give up twitching for us.
The questions we can't really answer any more are: What's a loaf of bread worth? What am I worth? If you take away the money system, what do you really own?
It strikes me at this time in our society's history that we have finally and inexorably realised that you cannot get an infinite amount of something from a finite amount of nothing.
Something's gotta give, and if it produces a species that finally works out the true value of being able to survive, then I say bring it on...

A beginning. Ensure your mind is in the upright position.

2008-11-21T15:15:00.000-08:00

And so I start typing. The world, bless it, continues to revolve in an unbelievable resolute fashion, and we all seem to keep on breathing.
Nuts.
I have, after a short inner turmoil concluded that the groundstate for mankind is abject insanity, and as such needs no help from me.
Nonetheless, here I am, adding a veneer of comment to a thick varnished table upon which sit the mundanities of this world. Oh horror. Oh Joy. That I have lived this long, etc etc
Cynicism? Oh, certainly. My brain, full of its well-earnt lessons, would never allow otherwise.
I guess it is the actions of breathing in and out that allow us the feeble excuse to believe we are eminently qualified to comment upon this world, this life and its beautiful complexities.
With such arrogance perched upon my sullied cranium, I set out to type what my fingers reliably inform me are my mind's thoughts, filtered as they are by two arms and all my experiences.
If that's not a journey's beginning, I don't know what is.