Sunday, April 7, 2013
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Outside Looking In
How far away do we need to go before we disappear? How grounded are we in the context of our own viewpoints? Being stuck in a small space it is easy to forget our special place. With larger and larger contexts we gain the viewpoints that allow us to understand ourselves better.
Our Dwellings
Our eyes are mostly focused on what is only a few meters in front of us. Very rarely do we look farther away. Most of our lives are spent looking on the plane of the earth's surface.
Even going up a few hundred meters changes our perspective on where we are.
It's oddness and rarity challenge our contextual view.
From this viewpoint, it is fairly easy to discern much about what goes on. Cars on roads, the shape and size of houses, trees positioned for effect, and little tubes sticking up from roofs for heating all give clues to the lives visible here.
Humans have seen views from mountains and hills that gave them this perspective for millennia. Our cultures developed allowing us to see this view of ourselves.
Our minds can easily make this context shift as it remains within our daily understanding of our existence.
Our Communities
Moving upward to a thousand meters gives us a broader perspective on human existence. The context of our lives becomes more apparent. We can see the places where we work and play.
The infrastructure that supports our lives, the highways we travel upon, the shopping centers we accumulate from, and the parks we play in are easily understood.
Our individuality begins to disappear at this level. The community that was here before us and will be after us begins to become dominate.
While we can see the structure our lives exist in, our self identity is merged into thousands of others. Persons become peoples.
It is easy to pick out the markers around us that give us our identity at this elevation. The groups of people we classify ourselves with can be determined. My neighborhood, their neighborhood, that 'other' neighborhood can be divided in our brains.
This perspective of human lives became possible with development of balloons. We have had this view of ourselves for only a few generations, a couple of lifespans at most.
Our Areas
Going farther upward we begin to lose sight of lives as individuals at all. Our communities are still apparent, but hard to tell apart.
Our eyes are attracted to the changes in color and straight lines. Roads allow us to differentiate between things, even our governmental structures are still apparent looking down from here.
Where our food is grown, where our water comes from, and the transportation network we use to move our goods about show us how our society is organized.
Those things we identify with closely are hard to delimit. Which high school sports team we root for, our daily commutes, even the places we were born or go after death are merged until we can not perceive them at all.
Viewing our areas of habitation from this altitude began with airplanes. My grandparents knew a time when such a perspective was a new idea.
Our Regions
Going higher yet, our communities disappear, merging into a blur of geographic features.
With some attention to detail we can still tell that organized beings exist in these places. Large plantings by farmers, dams on rivers, even bigger towns can be noted.
It would be easy to deduce that life and even intelligent life existed on the surface far below. The effects of their actions can be determined; the level of technological progress even estimated.
Looking down upon a region became possible with the Space Race. When I was a child, mankind first became able to envision an entire region in a single glance.
Our Nations
Moving farther up again national borders vanish. Our training from maps may allow us to pick out where one nation begins and another ends, but to an alien visitor, these divisions of land would not exist.
It is still possible to make out that intelligent beings thrive on the surface of this planet, farming, pollution, and other large scale environmental effects of humans can be made out.
A technological civilization is clear in the light spectrum during night time still.
Concentrations of energy use show how the beings on the planet gather in centers and along coast lines.
A visitor could figure out that these beings use water and land both.
Some kind of organizational structure must exist for the creatures inhabiting this place in order for such massive use of energy.
Before we even reach a hundred kilometers in the sky, our nation states disappear from view.
Our Planet
When we move up far enough to take in the whole planet, it is still possible to see that our human species exists. The lights of civilization burn bright in some spectra at night.
Individuals, communities, cities, and nations all fuse together. Any sense of identity beyond 'humanity' has no real meaning from this distance.
The weather patterns of the globe are much more dominate visually. Vast expanses of mountain, desert and ocean divide the planet's surface.
The first images of the entire planet came to us in startling rush. As the Apollo astronauts rocketed towards the moon, a large chunk of the humanity watched these initial views of our shared globe on their televisions together.
Our Earth/Moon
As space craft move away from earth and moon to distant planets in the solar system, we saw images giving us a context of our largest familiar identity.
Land masses, oceans and feint weather patterns are all that can be seen.
The lights of our cities fade from view at this distance. It is no longer possible to tell if intelligent life exists on the little balls floating in space.
Individuals and nations seem to have no meaning from this height. The most important things in our daily lives do not register even faintly.
Our Solar System
As the Cassini spacecraft orbits Saturn, we see the earth and moon as a single, remote dot.
The very existence of the planet comes to our awareness only if we observe keenly.
If we were to listen to the radio waves, only faint traces of human activity can be heard.
At this height, all that we ever were and all that we are barely registers in the universe.
Voyager Beyond
Our most remote spacecraft is Voyager 1, launched in the late 1970's. It sent this image of earth from the very edge of the solar system.
From six billion kilometers away, the earth is not even visible anymore. Two magnifications are embedded into the photograph. One is of the region of Venus. The other is of the region of earth. Neither planet is visible even when zoomed into to the highest amount possible.
Our light giving and life sustaining star, the sun, appears tiny, its features indistinguishable.
Unique, Special and Valuable
As far as we know, there is no other intelligent life in the universe. Even if there are beings who are like us, such beings are very, very rare.
I often close my eyes and try to imagine this greater context. Stepping up and away from that which is immediately visible allows a sense of humility to fill me. The awesome uniqueness of my existence makes it more precious than I am able to imagine. My frustrations and even my joys dissipate at the wonder of it all.
Our Dwellings
 |
| My house from a couple of hundred meters up |
Our eyes are mostly focused on what is only a few meters in front of us. Very rarely do we look farther away. Most of our lives are spent looking on the plane of the earth's surface.
Even going up a few hundred meters changes our perspective on where we are.
It's oddness and rarity challenge our contextual view.
From this viewpoint, it is fairly easy to discern much about what goes on. Cars on roads, the shape and size of houses, trees positioned for effect, and little tubes sticking up from roofs for heating all give clues to the lives visible here.
Humans have seen views from mountains and hills that gave them this perspective for millennia. Our cultures developed allowing us to see this view of ourselves.
Our minds can easily make this context shift as it remains within our daily understanding of our existence.
Our Communities
Moving upward to a thousand meters gives us a broader perspective on human existence. The context of our lives becomes more apparent. We can see the places where we work and play.
 |
| My town from a couple kilometers up |
Our individuality begins to disappear at this level. The community that was here before us and will be after us begins to become dominate.
While we can see the structure our lives exist in, our self identity is merged into thousands of others. Persons become peoples.
It is easy to pick out the markers around us that give us our identity at this elevation. The groups of people we classify ourselves with can be determined. My neighborhood, their neighborhood, that 'other' neighborhood can be divided in our brains.
This perspective of human lives became possible with development of balloons. We have had this view of ourselves for only a few generations, a couple of lifespans at most.
Our Areas
Going farther upward we begin to lose sight of lives as individuals at all. Our communities are still apparent, but hard to tell apart.
 |
| My area from a dozen of kilometers up |
Where our food is grown, where our water comes from, and the transportation network we use to move our goods about show us how our society is organized.
Those things we identify with closely are hard to delimit. Which high school sports team we root for, our daily commutes, even the places we were born or go after death are merged until we can not perceive them at all.
Viewing our areas of habitation from this altitude began with airplanes. My grandparents knew a time when such a perspective was a new idea.
 |
| My region from around 20 kilometers up |
Going higher yet, our communities disappear, merging into a blur of geographic features.
With some attention to detail we can still tell that organized beings exist in these places. Large plantings by farmers, dams on rivers, even bigger towns can be noted.
It would be easy to deduce that life and even intelligent life existed on the surface far below. The effects of their actions can be determined; the level of technological progress even estimated.
Looking down upon a region became possible with the Space Race. When I was a child, mankind first became able to envision an entire region in a single glance.
 |
| Europe from 50 kilometers up |
Moving farther up again national borders vanish. Our training from maps may allow us to pick out where one nation begins and another ends, but to an alien visitor, these divisions of land would not exist.
It is still possible to make out that intelligent beings thrive on the surface of this planet, farming, pollution, and other large scale environmental effects of humans can be made out.
 |
| Europe at night |
Concentrations of energy use show how the beings on the planet gather in centers and along coast lines.
A visitor could figure out that these beings use water and land both.
Some kind of organizational structure must exist for the creatures inhabiting this place in order for such massive use of energy.
Before we even reach a hundred kilometers in the sky, our nation states disappear from view.
 |
| Our planet by day and night |
Our Planet
When we move up far enough to take in the whole planet, it is still possible to see that our human species exists. The lights of civilization burn bright in some spectra at night.
Individuals, communities, cities, and nations all fuse together. Any sense of identity beyond 'humanity' has no real meaning from this distance.
The weather patterns of the globe are much more dominate visually. Vast expanses of mountain, desert and ocean divide the planet's surface.
The first images of the entire planet came to us in startling rush. As the Apollo astronauts rocketed towards the moon, a large chunk of the humanity watched these initial views of our shared globe on their televisions together.
 |
| Earth and moon in a single image |
As space craft move away from earth and moon to distant planets in the solar system, we saw images giving us a context of our largest familiar identity.
Land masses, oceans and feint weather patterns are all that can be seen.
The lights of our cities fade from view at this distance. It is no longer possible to tell if intelligent life exists on the little balls floating in space.
Individuals and nations seem to have no meaning from this height. The most important things in our daily lives do not register even faintly.
 |
| Earth seen from Saturn |
As the Cassini spacecraft orbits Saturn, we see the earth and moon as a single, remote dot.
The very existence of the planet comes to our awareness only if we observe keenly.
If we were to listen to the radio waves, only faint traces of human activity can be heard.
At this height, all that we ever were and all that we are barely registers in the universe.
Our most remote spacecraft is Voyager 1, launched in the late 1970's. It sent this image of earth from the very edge of the solar system.
From six billion kilometers away, the earth is not even visible anymore. Two magnifications are embedded into the photograph. One is of the region of Venus. The other is of the region of earth. Neither planet is visible even when zoomed into to the highest amount possible.
Our light giving and life sustaining star, the sun, appears tiny, its features indistinguishable.
Unique, Special and Valuable
As far as we know, there is no other intelligent life in the universe. Even if there are beings who are like us, such beings are very, very rare.
"Up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perception awaits us. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic, religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars." --Carl SaganThe struggles in our lives seem so puny and insignificant in the context of just our own solar system. Our focus on toys, teams, treats, tests, and those other things we occupy our minds with are truly trivial.
I often close my eyes and try to imagine this greater context. Stepping up and away from that which is immediately visible allows a sense of humility to fill me. The awesome uniqueness of my existence makes it more precious than I am able to imagine. My frustrations and even my joys dissipate at the wonder of it all.
Monday, March 25, 2013
I Got My Freedom, Bugger Off!
We claim to believe in ideals that transcend nations. Freedom, equality, liberty, kindness, and
cleanliness are values we hold dear.
There are many details that divide us. The proper role of government, the degree to
which freedom should be allowed, and the amount of kindness our relationships
require are all values up for debate.
The core values remain.
We speak of them with pride. We
claim to be willing to defend them with our actions and even our lives.
Ideals Un-extended
Yet, we exclude those who are not in our nation states from
these very values. We do not act as if
we believe that all humans, in all places deserve these ideals.
 |
| Where are our values here? |
When a crazed shooter kills our children in a school we
react with shock and horror. When our
drones kill as many children in a foreign land we look the other way.
We hold elections and expect them to be fair and open. When those in other lands elections are
corrupted and the will of the people there subverted we look the other way.
Before the United States
was attacked at Pearl Harbor , millions died
around the world in a struggle against tyranny.
Most of us thought we should not get involved in their conflict and
passed Neutrality
Acts believing that isolationism was good for us. Largely Republican, conservatives claimed we
should take care of our own and let the others die or live of their own
doing. As late as March of 1941, we made
illegal the selling of arms to the British.
 |
| What obligation do we have here? |
Over a
billion human beings live in poverty and destitution around the world. Lacking food, water, sanitation, clothing,
shelter and education, they have no chance at obtaining the freedoms we find so
precious. The modern industrial
democracies do little to aid them unless ‘national interests’ are threatened.
The evidence is clear, we at best pay lip-service for
extending our ideals beyond our own national borders. Not just the United States ,
but virtually all modern nation states.
The world of the haves looks away from the have-nots.
That others do not have freedom, equality,
liberty, kindness and cleanliness is not our problem. Our deeds tell the world "I got my freedom. Bugger off."
Spare No Cost
In our ‘War on Terror’ we have invaded other countries, sent
out assassination squads, tortured human beings and engaged in other inhumane
acts in order to defend our freedoms. As
George
W. Bush said in his 2002 State of the Union address, “We are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom.”
He continued “They hate our freedoms: our
freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and
disagree with each other.”
We have succeeded in defeating al Qaeda. No repeat attacks have occurred on our
soil. The mafia like organization that
attacked us essentially exists no more.
Our
tactics and methods have taken over 10 years
and cost over a $1,400,000,000,000 ($1.4
trillion) dollars to achieve this end.
We have spared no cost in finding and stopping the people who brutally
killed a few thousand citizens.
Of course we should have found and brought those who did
such heinous acts to justice. That is
clearly a necessary course of action.
Safety and justice require we find and hold accountable those who commit
acts of great evil. Often evil acts are
required in order to overcome other, greater evils.
In the same time frame, we have spent less than $150,000,000,000
($150 billion) on all our foreign aid, military and economic, to all other
needs in the world. If you subtract the
economic aid to Afghanistan
and Iraq
where the damage of war and nation building are occurring based on our War on
Terror, only $112,000,000,000 ($112 billion) was spent.
Isolationism
Suggesting that we only
invest in our own security flies in the face of our stated ideals. We become more secure as other nations
prosper. Spreading our ideals is the
best defense against aggression.
 |
| Seeking what we have |
If Latin America had more
freedom, less corruption, more liberty, and the other things we cherish, we
would not have an immigration problem.
Only because there is such a huge imbalance in the values we hold so
precious is the United
States worth moving to illegally.
The United
States is not the only country that has an
immigration problem. Europe
and other developed nations also experience this migration rush from lands
where freedoms are not allowed to lands where they are precious.
Many are advocating
that we cannot afford to help others now.
Claiming we are borrowing on our future, they wish to cut what little
aid we do provide. This is a short sighted
view of our own best interest.
By not engaging in spreading our values to the world we risk
our future more. The consequences of not
making investments that spread our values are dire. Without our assistance less free cultures will
allow things we do not want to thrive and grow.
Hate, lack of opportunity, dependence, and restrictions flourish in
places where we do not engage.
The cost of doing nothing is always higher than the cost of spreading our values.
Putting our Money
Where Our Mouth Is
If we truly believe in our freedoms and ideals, we should be helping the rest of humanity to achieve them.
There are many non-violent means of spreading our values. Teaching people to read, job skills, and hygiene seem great places to start. Helping to build infrastructure like roads, wells, and power stations seems positive also.
As we debate where to cut spending in this time of economic contraction, spreading our values is one place we cannot cut.
The developed nations of the planet have a moral obligation to do more. It is not sufficient to think we are safe because we have these values.
The developed nations of the planet have a moral obligation to do more. It is not sufficient to think we are safe because we have these values.
To turn away is hypocritical. To suggest that only the wealthy deserve
freedom, equality, liberty, kindness, and cleanliness is to live a lie.
It is in our own best interest to help lift all humans into
those things we claim to hold dear.
Note: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights might be a good place to start. It was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 as a result of the world's experiences from the Second World War.
Note: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights might be a good place to start. It was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 as a result of the world's experiences from the Second World War.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Light & Learning Limit Liberty
Do you believe in liberty and free will? Perhaps you think everything is pre-determined to a plan? Maybe you think there is a mixture of the two? No matter your views, we have limits to our actions, chosen or fated. If we CAN choose, then liberty demands we choose well.
One way to think about time is as a line. We are on a point on the line in the time we call Now. Our now is constantly moving toward the Future and away from the Past. This kind of describes our everyday of experience of time.
The distance between things is space. We can collapse space into a map of east/west and north/south and put it on the time line as our shared experience of Space Now.
With this imagined view, space looks like a map moving through time.
Some argue that the future and past are is fixed and we move from the past into the future with no choices.
A determined existence suggests that time and free will are but illusions experienced as we move down the line of time.
Many accept that there is free will; that we have some ability to make choices. We can say we have the liberty of our choices.
Free will means that of all the possible pasts, our choices collapsed into the now that we have.
A cone is used to represent our collective choices that bring us to this moment.
Each choice made by each individual limits the possible now we can experience.
Once the now moves on from the past, we are unable to go back and change it.Our experience past is gone. The choices that collapsed into the now are no longer available to us.
Free will also implies we have a range of possible futures.
Each choice we make in the now limits the possibilities of the future.
This would make the free will time line and its possibilities look more like two cones, one of past and one of future, connected to the now.
Our past collapses into the now limiting the potential of our futures.
Nothing has ever been detected that moves faster than the speed of light.
The best we know the speed of light places hard and fast limits on what we can do.
Light speed places a plausible limit onto the future we can choose.
There are still choices we can make that take us to the limits of the possible, but they may not lead to the future we prefer.
When we fail to make choices about our actions in the now, we limit ourselves as if there is no choice at all. Without choices being made in the now, the future is limited to the probable.
Setting goals, imagining possible futures, and acting in the now, we can move from the probable to the preferable.
This is harder to do and often takes repeated changes as there is a tendency to return to the probable rather than the preferable.
Knowledge Limits Liberty
Our knowledge also places a plausible limit on what we can become. The more we as a species know, the great the range of opportunities we have for our future.
When we decide not to learn, we decide to limit our possible futures. Each choice we make limits what is learn-able by us as individuals and as a group.
There are something’s we will never know. Our brains are small and the universe so large.
Choose Learning
The choices made by our ancestors have brought us to where we are now.
If we believe in liberty, then there is an awesome responsibility on our shoulders.
The more we learn, the greater our potential futures can be.
When we fail to learn, we limit our children’s possibilities. We even limit all future generation’s possibilities.
There are some potential futures we can already never realize.
Within our ability we should stretch for the edges of the possible to find a preferable future for our species.
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