9 Philosophy
We must surely all ponder the meaning of life in the odd spare moment. Here are my own ponderings:
OF ALIENS
If the hypothesis nothing can travel faster than light is true:
Given the immense distances between planets, the existence of massive radiation belts and the gravity-devoid environment of space that is hostile to our carbon-based biological lifeform, if we are indeed visited by aliens, it seems far more likely they will be machines immune to these hazards.
This confounds the idea the US has found aliens in a crashed UFO, particularly those portrayed with two eyes that look just like humans slightly modified for Sci-Fi movies.
I have no doubt aliens exist, but I doubt they would survive the journey to our planet and even if they did, I doubt it would be in a timeframe that would warrant its inception.
In fact the only thing to support their presence on Earth would be their colonisation of bodies within our own solar system although I suspect they're unlikely to be Lunarians or Martians.
OF THE BIG BANG
The big bang is a plausible explanation for the expansion of our known universe but given the acceptance of infinite space, it cannot be declared as the only instance. Nor can we predict this expansion started from nothing; to have such a large explosion it is far more logical to argue there must have been something to explode in the first place. See 'OF PRESCENCE'.
We are very limited in our ability to view anything beyond what we conceive to be the edge of our own big bang and there is no reason to oppose 'Big Bangs' occurring all over the place in space.
Recent disturbed observations [2023] that some extremely distant objects appear to be expanding slower than anticipated could in fact be their own big bang appearing in our viewframe out of coincidence.
OF CLIMATE CHANGE & POLLUTION)
If the EU gave a damn about climate change they wouldn't still be embracing the central theme of transporting goods hundreds of miles between manufacturers across multiple countries, often repeatedly for a single large component like a jet wing (itself a violating industry), blasting out huge plumes of pollution in the process.
If the world cared a jot about climate change it would not be hell bent on releasing vast amounts of pollutants into the air from the manufacture and discharge of countless weapons.
If anybody really cared about pollution, we'd have stopped using plastic two decades ago when the issue was first raised.
Nor would we continue to over-populate the planet (instances where this is in reverse are unrelated), which is the REAL cause of both pollution and climate change.
And while I'm at it, it's a known fact in that in 2024 in the UK at least, only 9% of plastic is recycled. Most plastic is recycled mechanically, reducing it to small fragments that can only be recycled ONCE. our county buroughs proudly offer recycling collection but fail to reveal the rest is typically incinerated or most often, left in landfill. WASTE SHOULD NEVER EVER BE PUT INTO LANDFILL. Guess what? It's the cheapest solution, and MONEY still is the only factor making the world go round.
OF DIET
In 2024 everyone is extolling the benefits of a human vegetarian diet as a saviour for the planet, often promoting as fact our primate ancestors over the last 30 million years had a fruit based vegetarian diet with only the occasional insect or animal. If it's so good, explain why we never evolved from our requirement for Vitamin B12, proven deficient in a vegetaran diet, that causes such significant physiological problems in humans it renders such a diet impractical.
OF GOD
Did Star Wars actually get it right with God the collective minds of all living creatures on the planet?
Or the often touted suggestion we are just a computer program? UFOs glitches in the code? No different to artefacts in the 'Upload' TV series?
Perhaps like Douglas Adams' HGTTG Earth, we are an organic computer's subroutines; children, a part of it; in essence a Borg collective?
Ties in very neatly with virgin births, miracles, resurrection, 'a father and his children'.
So too is the possibility we were created 'in the likeness' of a race of aliens and they are our God;
ancient people would not grasp the irony, prefering instead to think of such power as proof of gods. Perhaps the dinosaurs were a previous experiment the creators deliberately ended by sending a large meteorite down to Earth in order to propagate us instead?
OTOH the 'his' in 'God' makes it far more likely just a big lie to get the populace to survive in an hostile environment; too stupid at that time to comprehend the reality, blindly following the word from a bunch of bright males in control and wishing to strengthen that control. Stupidity breeds perpetuity of faith, amplified by a declared punishment of banishment to a hellish eternity. What's not to believe?
(Yiddish twist intentional)
OF MATHs
When I ask my calculator to divide 1 by 0 I get 'infinity' yet dividing anything by nothing leaves it wholely intact. 'Nothing' is a finite state; it isn't infinitesimally small. The calculator is clearly WRONG, as were its original programmers. It may be convenient for our maths, but this only means our maths is also wrong!
OF PRAYER
Is The Matrix closer to reality than fiction?
Death merely an exit from the program to a different level in the game?
God simply the machine core; praying a means of invoking an interrupt to the core?
Things do happen too often after thoughts that could be otherwise likened to prayers, but even cursory thoughts, with no great effort.
Too many coincidences for them to be random.
How to determine criteria to effect reward?
OF PRAYERS ANSWERED & GUARDIAN ANGELS
(Gory whacky stuff - but no worse than religion)
The brain does not die the moment the heart stops (or after the horror of decapitation); medical research indicates the brain continues to function for some time after, even for hours. This is reasonable, considering the brain is an electro-chemical computer that does not have to be completely sustained by pumped blood. Brain tissue will undoubtedly die without it but until decomposition sets in, it seems reasonable it could continue to function to a degree (in the case of decapitation, it is reasonable to assume the victim both sees its headless body and feels the associated physical and emotional pain).
Beyond the 'hardware', what if, like Star Wars, following death, consciousness joins a pool of other consciescousnesses previously released, and remains in an ethereal state that is open to receiving communicated thoughts from the living?
What if, like Avatar, all living things have a conciousness that can be shared, and can be sensed by certain living individuals?
OF PRESENCE
There is nothing too small or too big so space must be as infinite as dimension.
Given all biological forms we know, it is all too easy to think everything is finite (we live, we die).
Yet we have proven energy never ceases, instead changing form: there is no loss. What was lost remains present in a different form. Ergo it must always have been: timeless presence.
OF SELF-AWARENESS
All herd animals and birds that flock must by definition be self-aware, or they would not be able to recognise they are part of a herd or flock.
OF STAR SIGNS
Star signs are simply the position of the Earth relative to the stars, recorded at birth. I have observed there are more instances of traits accurately represented by star signs according to date of birth for there not to be a connection. This is not to say everyone can be represented, just the number that are, defies the odds. Stars seem too far away to physically influence humans but the gravitational pull of the moon causes our ocean tides, and the Sun's energies affect the Earth. Thus it seems likely there is a connection and the Earth, Moon and Sun are the source of this interaction: a small portion of the Sun's magnetic field affects the Earth, affected too by the Moon. Our blood haemoglobin contains
iron which may be affected by magnetic fields? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemoglobinelds and
OF TELEPORTS
The teleport of sci-fi fame is a mechanism that manipulates the atoms that constitute matter, rather than a carriage to move matter. Such a machine will never be built because it would have to be able to manipulate objects smaller than the smallest object in order to collect and transport all of it.
The counter-argument we shed cells every time we move does not remove this reality: at which point do we declare that as well as physical form, we have also captured consciousness for transmission? At what physical limit does consciousness begin or cease to exist?
The very nature of a machine that manipulates atoms rather than physically moving them is completely at odds with the definition of movement: as has often been voiced, how exactly would a machine move matter or consciouseness so it doesn't become a second copy, forcing violent disposal of the original?
OF TIME
Time is largely regarded as an entity that can be altered.
I posit time is a measure, not an entity. One may well age less the further out into space one goes, but I propose it isn't time being altered, it's everything else: just because a clock runs slower does not mean time has changed.
It seems far more likely the physical properties of the substances of which the clock is constructed have changed. The same applies to the astronaut. The intensity of Earth's gravity diminishes the further out you go. Much more likely the consistency of materials alters as a result. The structure of the clock, be it mechanical or a computer frequency source (which is an oscillator), changes. Time does not change because time is just a description we have given to describe the interval between events. Thus there can be no time machine.
Should nothing move, by our definition time will cease to exist even if matter still exists, which it will, given matter cannot be destroyed (why should matter wholly consist of energised sub atomic particles?).
A case in point is the 2024 request by NASA that the Moon should have its own time zone:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68722032
What's wrong with that, you ask? Nothing, but here is a direct acknowledgement from experts that time we measure is inconsistent due to the mechanism with which we chose to measure it:
'The gravity on the Moon is slightly weaker and the clocks run differently. Time is currently measured on Earth by hundreds of atomic clocks stationed around our planet which measure the changing energy state of atoms to record time to the nanosecond. If they were placed on the Moon, over 50 years they would be running one second faster. An atomic clock on the Moon will tick at a different rate than a clock on Earth'.
OF TIME MACHINES
Following on from my assertion that time does not exist but instead is simply a measurment system invented by humans, time travel is a nonsense concept. If you don't believe this, explain how one could physically manipulate time to travel backwards. Fictional 'worm holes' is not an acceptable answer.
Indeed, if someone had invented a time machine this means the world must have survived long enough to achieve this, which means we stopped killing each other and we all become 'good'. However given our nature thus far, the likelihood of civilisation lasting long enough to do this is dashed by the very thing keeping us alive - instinct. Fermi paradox et al: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
Furthermore, if in the future (because let's face it, no-one has the knowledge to build one now) we did build a time machine, don't you think we would have learned this lesson and gone back and changed time so the suffering we have all lived through and continue to live through, can never happen? All the unnecessary painful deaths stopped? All the evil trounced? Maybe a big weapon built to win a particular war? A bomb exploded over the planet as in the original Star Trek episode 'Assignment: Earth', to act as a warning strong enough to stop war?
Remember, there is all the time in the world to build a time machine yet there is no evidence whatsoever that anyone from the future has changed a single thing, thus no machine that can go back in time has ever been built, nor will this ever happen.
There actually is no such thing as time, only 'The Present'.
To wit, the Amazonian Amondawa tribe have no words for talking abstractly about time:
https://rosettaproject.org/blog/02011/may/27/telling-time-in-amondawa/
OF LIFE
(Our chosen) Life (path) is a Ponzi scheme.
The purpose of all life on our planet is perpetuity.
To achieve this we have financed our civilisation from the resources of the planet with scant regard for the consequences. It worked well at the beginning because what we took far exceeded who we were and we could not see the whole picture. Now satellites orbit the planet informing us of change yet we close our eyes, ears and mouths to the obvious solution. There are so many of us, the reward diminishes as each day passes.
I long wondered why alien races see us but do nothing to help, until I realised we cannot be saved. The Inca civilisation was a harbinger. In the 21st century where those given resources are running out, harvesting the arctic, antarctic, deep ocean and the moon are all kicking the can down the road. No-one has a vision beyond their own perpetuity (greed) and until that happens we will all continue to live and die like bacteria. Unfortunately that means WW IV is not long off (Ukraine is WW III).
OF TEXT
Nothing to see here.