Happiness is like a tree

When I think back, my life was confusing. It is pretty strange even now, and there are still some mind parasites impacting my life negatively. But compared to the swirling fog that seems to shroud most people's thoughts, I guess I am seeing fairly clearly. Of course, who really knows the mind of another? It is hard enough to know one's own. But there are things I did not know, or at least not clearly, when I was young. I offer these now, free, in the hope of sparing others from needless suffering, and to increase their happiness.

In my previous post I wrote that pleasure was rationed, as indeed it is. You can have a lot of pleasure in a short time, or you can have a decent amount of pleasure now and then, but you can't have a lot of pleasure a lot of the time. You will burn out if you try, and fall into a depression-like state of listless suffering. So while fun is fun, it is not a source of constant happiness. On the other hand, you CAN grow more happy over time. In fact, the word "grow" is the key. (Another good word is "build".)

Happiness is like a tree, in that it needs time to grow. You can't just sit down one day and decide to be really happy, and then you go out in the world and are really happy. You can summon up some degree of cheer that way, yes, but it tends to evaporate, and it tends not to be waterproof. When even a small unpleasantness comes, the cheer bursts like a bubble and small stinging worms come out and feast on the soul. Anger, resentment, envy, hate and bitter cynicism cause blight on the soul. And because we don't know better, we are convinced that someone else destroyed our precious happiness. But that was just cheer, not happiness. Happiness is a slow-growing thing, but far more durable than mere joy.


Actually, let us look at pleasure, joy, cheer and happiness. They all represent what we could call surplus energy. They manifest in different realms or domains, though, and have different time spans.

Pleasure shows up in the domain of the body or senses. The source of pleasure does not need to be the body, though that is certainly common. But if you look at a dog, you can see the pleasure of being praised is very similar to the pleasure of being fed. There is an influx of energy, one bodily and one social, and they both manifest as pleasure. So even with us, and we can also derive pleasure from art or from spiritual experience. In fact, the highest pleasure seems to be the Samadhi or religious ecstasy, which is highly sought after by some Hindu mystics as the peak religious experience. This pleasure is as intense as that of orgasm (for those old enough to have experienced that) but lasts far longer. In fact, if one prolongs the Samadhi for long enough it will cause the end of life in the body, so-called Mahasamadhi (great ecstasy) which is the preferred way for certain eastern mystics to end their life. (This is not to say that the religious ecstacy is less in other religions, just that they don't have the tradition for reveling in it. Certainly Christianity doesn't.)

Joy is the mental manifestation of surplus energy. If you feel the urge to break into song or dance, it is joy. The joyful person moves more quickly and with more certainty, while the joyless tend to shuffle or drag their feet. But the main thrust of joy is in the mind, a feeling of surging power that is not limited to (or even anchored in) the senses. Joy is often associated with the arts: Song, music, dance can be both sources and expressions of joy, and also the slower arts like painting or sculpture, though the link is not so immediate there. There are many sources of joy, including other people. Sometimes we simply don't know, it just seems to surge or swell from wherever it hides when not in use. Joy tend to be less sharply limited than pleasure, it ebbs rather than being cut off.

Cheer is manifested strongly in the social realm. It takes the form of goodwill, an increased ability to tolerate and sympathize with others, and attempts to spread itself by cheering up those who are less energetic. The source does not need to be social, but it can be, and putting cheerful people together tend to escalate the cheer, much as putting burning pieces of wood next to each other cause them all to burn more brightly.

Happiness is manifested in the human spirit. It is longer lasting than the others, though it also will ebb and flow. We can say that the other forms ride on the back on happiness. If your underlying happiness is high, it takes little for it to flow into the shorter-lived forms. Also if your happiness is high, the opposites make less impact on you. You won't loose your cheer just because the weather is not as nice as you expected, and you don't feel suffering just because you're a little bit hungry or your joints ache just a tad. It takes more to break your stride.

People can be more or less familiar with this interior science, the observation of life qualities by looking inward. Those who are inexperienced or easily distracted tend to not see the difference between the short and long term manifestations of surplus energy. It may be better to say that happiness is an increased CAPACITY for taking in what is good. Its deep waters run stiller, but are not easily drained. Happiness is like a lake: The babbling brook that has not passed a lake will quickly rise from nothing to a boisterous river on a rainy day, and in its sudden energy it dislodges stones and runs brown with soil. But if there is a lake in its course, it will buffer the sudden swell and pass on a more steady stream of water, which does not dry out the next day when the sun returns.

The water in the brook and the water in the lake are identical, but there is great depth in the lake, and so also with happiness. There must be depth, or there is no happiness. If there is no depth, then the slightest disappointment can send one plummeting from heaven to hell, as you will see in a toddler. The toddler squeals and jumps with unrestrained joy, but some small thing happens and the toddler screams in unbearable pain. This changes when we grow up, but not equally in all of us.

There still has to be an influx of happy content, of course, and certain sources are more reliable than others. But there could be books written about that, and in fact already are. I may or may not revisit it, as the weirdness takes me. Have this for today!

Pleasure rations

I know I've written about this occasionally in the past, but it's been a while now. It is fairly simple, but understanding it could change the world. Your world first, and the shared world if more people "get" it.

There is no known limit to happiness, but pleasure is strictly rationed.

Let us focus on the simple part here. Pleasure is rationed. There is an upper limit to how much pleasure a person can experience over a set amount of time. This is biochemical and follows from the way the brain operates. It is also perfectly reasonable. Another case of intelligent design, whether or not you think intelligent design happens by accident... you simply would want it to be that way if you want your sentient species to survive. It is not a flaw, it is a necessary limitation.

In our more or less natural state, pleasure is used by our instincts to reward us for doing our best to keep the genes alive. If we are hungry, eating brings us pleasure. In fact, it does even if we are not especially hungry, but then only certain foods. Likewise if we are thirsty, drinking brings pleasure; but if we are full, plain water is just icky. And sexual pleasure is a reward for bringing our genes onward to a new generation (although it certainly has many other functions these days). Again, each coitus is more pleasurable if you haven't just had one, and for women there is generally more pleasure around estrus (ovulation), all other things being equal (and sometimes even if not). There are many other pleasures, some of them less obvious, like the joy of dancing or simply listening to music. I am not sure what the evolutionary psychologists explain music with, actually. I think I have already made my point though.

If we were rewarded for everything we did, we would be rewarded for nothing. For this reason, pleasure MUST be rationed. Otherwise we would simply establish pleasure as the baseline, and any lack of pleasure would be considered suffering. In fact, most of the suffering in Europe and America would be considered pleasure by people in the least developed countries, where hunger is the norm and clean water only exists briefly when it occasionally falls down from the sky.

You cannot save up your "pleasure ration" indefinitely; it leaks away over time, but quite a bit of time. This applies both generally and specifically. I once read an otherwise OK novel in which the male protagonist had sexual intercourse for the first times in several years. Let me assure you, it does not build up like that. A couple months is probably the maximum, possibly less for most people. But the misunderstanding is easy to explain: For the opposite is true. If we eat our pleasure ration immediately, it doesn't renew immediately. The more intense our pleasures, and the more of them we have in a row, the less our capacity for new pleasure for a while.

The most extreme case of this is pleasure drugs. These are designed to directly stimulate the brain to enhance pleasure, and they work. (Not saying this from personal experience of course, in case the law enforcement is reading.) But these drugs "burn out" their users, so that life feels like hell when the high wears off. This is not just in comparison with the pleasure. No, everyday life really feels less than blah, it feels like suffering. The brain experiences everyday life as a horrible mixture of pain, fear and boredom. Ordinary pleasures are tame, bland and lifeless. The pleasure account is drained, there is nothing left. The physical pleasures are there, but they do not cause the pleasure reaction. It has been used already.

Other pleasures do not have the same raw power to burn out all your pleasure in on glorious bonfire, but the effect is the same only to a lesser degree. If you chase pleasures, boredom will chase you in turn.

Conversely, if you don't use your pleasure ration, your capacity for pleasure will increase for a while. It seems to follow the same curves as market saturation in economics: The rise is steep at first, then gradually tapers off to reach a plateau. Since each person has their own "thermostat" for pleasure, it makes sense that the timescale may also vary. But this is why someone like me can experience ecstatic pleasure from simple Japanese pop songs, where the dedicated pleasure seeker needs bungee jumping and unprotected sex with strangers for the same intensity.
Actually it is not quite that simple, since each of us also have an optimal stimulation level. Some people need noise while others need quiet, the first need risk while the second need safety. But the thing is, people of the quiet type do not get cheated on their pleasure. They just derive it from less spectacular things. Again, changing your basic mental constitution requires divine intervention or decades of meditation (which may well be a subset of divine intervention). You can temporarily change by taking the right drugs, as people do with depression, but you better know what you do.

If you are depressed for entirely clinical reasons, brain does not work as described in the instruction manual, then by all means take drugs to get it running normally. But if you have simply used up your pleasure ration, then no, that won't work, and will quite possibly make things worse. There is no potion of Restore Magic in real life. You need to go on with your life quietly until your magic bar is restored enough to cast the spell of pleasure again.
Because I am all alone and can't praise or blame others for my feelings, I have observed myself for years and take all this for granted. But most people don't know it yet. They are surrounded by others and naturally think their pleasure or suffering comes from others. They often keep seeking for the one person that can make everything right and ensure that they live pleasurably ever after. This won't work.

Now that you know, you can choose to keep lying to yourself, but this will only make you stupid, not happy. It is also very expensive, both in money, time, and your soul which is rotting from lack of attention. For while pleasure is rationed, happiness is mostly lying fallow. Few are those who look for it, and fewer the guides that can help them find it.

Kindly note that if you take this test and copy and paste the HTML code provided, it contains a link to a money scam site. Edit this out before posting your results. It is unsure at this time whether Criticsrant.com is the actual spammer or has been hacked, but there is more than one such activity linked to Criticsrant.com, so most likely it is either their scam or they are running a social experiment.

Only one

I think there is really only one spiritual practice: To take life seriously. The rest is details and will be revealed as necessary.

(By "serious" I don't mean joyless. More like sincere, earnest, honest, real. Living as if it matters.)

I can't think of anyone who has taken life seriously and remained shallow.

I aspire to be a river?

Sometimes, I have visuals that seem to play inside my eyes, although of course it is in the brain. If I close my eyes, I can focus on the activity that plays there: It is always movement. And this nearly always happens when I have been acquiring a new skill. In my younger years, after I started volleyball training, I would see balls flying back and forth in the typical volleyball trajectories. While learning touch typing, I would see the movements of the typewriter. (This was before the age of personal computers.) And so on... when acquiring a new skill, the signature movements of that activity would play out on the back of my eyes, as it seemed. Even with my eyes open I would be able to watch it, as if by shifting my focus, but more clearly with my eyes closed.

It very much fits the description of "intrusive memories" but was not trauma related. Though the experience itself was kinda disturbing. I am glad I was not driving while these things happened. Evidently this is the brain's way of acquiring a new skill at accelerated speed, by studying it even while it is not happening. So far, so good.

However, I get the same experience after seeing water move sand and pebbles. Since childhood, probably, certainly in my teens, I would go to the large stream on our farm when the weather was right, and disturb the water. I might place a stone in the stream, diverting the force of the water. Then I would just stand and watch the water shape its new course, moving sand and pebbles, undermining stones and moving them out of the way. It fascinated me. It still does, in my 40es. On a rainy day I watched an impromptu stream work its way through a sandy slope, moving the sand in its chaotic and yet strangely purposeful way. Afterwards, the image kept playing on my retina for hours. That's when it struck me that this was the same way my mind reacted when learning a skill. Does this mean that I was learning the skill of moving sand? Perhaps I secretly aspire to being a river?

Primitive peoples sometimes considered rivers to be small gods. I wouldn't go that far, but I can see them being similar to us on a very abstract level. Like us, the river is both a process and an object. It is continually in motion and yet tightly bound to its form. It needs to be replenished continually. It grows as it moves, and no matter the length of its course, it always comes to an end. It is obvious that we humans live on the very borderline between order and chaos. But so does the river. Perhaps my subconscious noticed these similarities before I did?

I invented the RPG

I believe the year was 1964, when I was 5 years old. This was 10 years before the first commercially available fantasy Role Playing Game, Dungeons and Dragons, was published. Furthermore I lived on a remote and isolated farm, with no TV and only the socialist state-controlled national broadcasting on the FM radio. I had just barely learned to read and write, and not begun perusing our large home library of classic literature; the local newspaper mainly contained local political debate and ads for groceries and agricultural tools, and the ever popular obituaries. In short, I had no other inspiration for this than the Norwegian fairy tales, frequently including huge trolls and creative ways to dispose of them. And of course the voices in my head...

While playing outside one day, I was gripped by a very vivid daydream. In this, I was fighting trolls. But unlike the fairy tales, where this is a once-in-a-lifetime event and quickly rewarded with princesses and such, my troll hunting was an ongoing event. And most curiously, I seemed to absorb the strength of the trolls I slew: Certainly I did grow stronger over time, and took on progressively larger and stronger trolls (with more heads... I think I was up to 9 at the end). The daydream was rather long and ended only when my mother called me to meal. At this point I started crying, because I realized that I had grown so much that I would never again be able to enter my family's house.

All this came to pass, of course, albeit in a different realm than the physical.

Only today did I learn that the role playing game as we know it was not yet invented at the time. Did my revelation radiate outward to the rest of the world, causing D&D and the rest? Or did the planet pass through a telepathic ray between two older, more mature civilizations where this concept was discussed, and psychics around the world just picked it up? Was it a memory from my future? Or could it be that every child knows, deep down, that growing by slaying monsters is what life is about?

Diminishing returns?

In our material needs, the law of diminishing return is everywhere. If you are starving and have no food at hand, the value of food is almost infinite. But if you are fat and just have eaten a large dinner, the value of more food is zero or negative. Likewise, if you don't have enough clothes to protect your body from the cold or from roving eyes, clothes have a high value. But when you can't close the wardrobe door even when pushing hard, the value of more clothes is low.

And yet, because we (or even our ancestors) have experienced lack, we continue to believe that more is better, even when it defies all logic and decency. But not only instincts and general culture is at work here. Advertising relentlessly fans the flame of desire for material things. And it does so by linking the objects to other needs, not directly material. Social needs, which are often gaping holes, despite all the stuff. So advertisers try to imply (never tell outright) that chewing gum and drinking soda will make you popular; that shampoo will make people love you; that detergents will improve your family relations. And so on and on. There are no commercials telling you that listening before talking will make people respect you, and very few telling you that the best gift you can give a child is time.

Ego & the pre / trans fallacy

Still using the metaphor of the Human Operating System, we could say that the Ego is an artifact of version 2. It did not exist in version 1, and will not exist in version3 (except perhaps as legacy code). Let me explain that a bit more, because I see a lot of confusion on this.

The lack of ego in HOS v.1 is not selflessness, but simply a lack of self-awareness. A baby is an unabashed parasite, but innocent because it has no ego yet. If an adult woke you up by screaming in the middle of the night, you would not be so tolerant, I wager. Anyway, the ego is an iffy thing well into version 2.1 (the tribal level), where people don't really think for themselves. They follow tradition, they follow the chieftain / gang leader, they follow more or less subtle cues from their fellow tribesmen. There is no sense of personal responsibility, but not really of personal glory either. Even in the civilized west, many people hover around this level for life. It is no wonder that skeptics, when hearing about "ego death", suspect that this will be the result. It is, in cults.

We could say that the first "non-ego" is on the OUTSIDE of the ego. The eyes are turned away from oneself, toward the outer world and the things one can find there, much like an animal. In contrast, the mystic "non-ego" is on the INSIDE of the ego. The eyes are turned inward, toward other treasures. As of today at least, it can not be reached without passing THROUGH the ego from the outside inward. I believe that when v.3 is fully realized, children may be able to pass either directly or very quickly from non-ego to non-ego.

You could say that the ego stands between the world (on the outside) and consciousness (on the inside). The v.1 does not see itself as separate from the world. The v.3 does not see itself as separate from consciousness. (I will not get into whether the world is separate from consciousness. Perhaps it will be important in some other context, but not here.)

In more traditional Christian terms, we could say that on the inside we find spirit. As of version 2, the flesh (outside) battles against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. They are opposed to each other, so we cannot do what we want. (What we want, by nature, is probably to have the flesh in this life and the spirit in the next. This is unlikely to happen, though, because the thing that should have entered into the world of spirit did never grow ready to be born, and may even be dead.)

This is kinda disturbing to read even to me who write it. I wonder which will happen to me in the end. What I know is that there is no return to the innocence of before the ego.

Beta-testing a new soul?

One Cosmos had another interesting article yesterday again. Using the metaphor of a hole in time, it implies that the future "Kingdom of God" is at the same time influencing backward in time and being created by that influence. This may sound like a time travel paradox out of science fiction. But a more practical comparison may be beta-testing of software, which I am sure some of us have taken part in. I sure have.

During the alpha test, the software is tested internally by the creators. But in beta, it is customary to let volunteers among prospective users download the software and try it for themselves. Their feedback then goes into the finished product, while at the same time the users get accustomed to the software, so there is a certain mass of experience already at launch date.

Obviously this comparison falters if we believe that the next stop is eternity, the complete perfection. I admit that this is a common view and the Bible can certainly be read that way. I will be honest and admit that I don't think perfection is quite that easily attained. Rather I expect the next major step in human evolution, mankind version 3.0. The next perfection will be visible first when we get to verson 3. (Cfr the apostle John: "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known." If it was not made known to John, I sure won't pretend to know it.)

Mankind v. 1 was the software running on the brains of our ancestors 100 000 years ago. Even though they were indistinguishable from modern humans, they still acted much like the Neanderthals and even earlier hominids. Their life seems to have revolved around the simple flint hand axe: If you could not use a hand axe on it, it was probably not worth attempting. It is unclear whether they had any language beyond the usual grunts and gestures of large apes, but if they had, by all signs they did not have much to talk about.

Mankind v. 2.0 seems to have been in beta from 75 000 years ago, possibly 90 000 years, from scattered artifacts in south and east Africa. But by and large life went on as before until around 60 000 years ago, when almost overnight the new version of man overtook the old. There is some uncertainty about the time - until recently it was assumed to be merely 40 000 years ago, while some now think 75 000, which seems to be when modern humans first left Africa. If it happened later, the wildfire of culture must have overtaken the emigrants, because there is not a soul left of the old. Literally: The human soul, as we know it, came to exist with this major upgrade of the brain's operating system. No longer a mere animal, we had access to a new dimension within. For the first time, we rose above fate.

I propose that a similar leap is about to happen. It must, because we have reached the end of the road. Each decade we stay i v.2 is a risk to our species and the entire world. But it has also been foretold by mystics around the world from the dawn of civilization, probably before. These people, I claim, were beta-testing the new version. This is not a casual thing to do with the very software of your brain. You could go insane, but not least, even if you are completely sane no one would know, as they run the older version and you are not compatible. In days of old, it was not uncommon to simply kill such troublemakers who made people think. They are still not all that popular.

The words of the first mystics are often distorted before they reached us, and besides they had to talk to people far more primitive than us. Their culture lacked the concepts and the detail to express their vision, even more than today. So when they talk about the upcoming big change, it is only natural that they seem to describe the end of the world. I a very real sense it is: Although the planet remains, humans like us (version 2) will be wiped out, like the Neanderthals before us. Their world literally ended, and so will ours. This can not be avoided. And yet, strangely, all the ancient sources seem to agree that a better world awaits after the end. Also that a remnant will be saved, although as if through fire. (The old Norse myths of my ancestors, for instance, foretold the burning of the world, but a couple humans would be sheltered in the branches of the World Tree to see a new, green world rise from the sea.)

A fascinating trait of humankind version 3 is the wireless connectivity - or should we say, wordless connectivity. Scattered across continents and millennia, they have clearly downloaded the same new Operating System from the same Source. There is no way they could know of each other until quite recently, and yet it is as if each had access to those who had gone before - and even, in a sense, those who were yet to come!

Now that we approach the time, this content is more than ever spilling out into our v.2 world. A feeling of fear and foreboding and extinction runs parallel with a feeling of immense opportunity. Global warming will cook us all to death! We will terraform Mars and Venus! We will run out of oil and metals! Economic growth will be explosive for the foreseeable future! Overpopulation! Underpopulation! A world of idiots! A world of geniuses! Global dictatorship! Unprecedented freedom! The robots will replace us! We will become as gods! The singularity is coming! The singularity is coming!

The singularity is indeed coming, and is already at hand. "Behold, I am making all things new." "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." This is NOT magic. This is NOT accomplished by a fire-and-forget ritual. It is about downloading module after module of the new operating system for our brain, and replacing our old favorite brain software. And no one can achieve this - even though the download is free and support is always waiting for our call - no one can arrive at this without hating the v.2 software of his father and mother and even his own life. And who is capable of this? Don't ask me, I just work here.

About the "wereporcupine" thing...

Some years ago, I visited my best friends and while sleeping over there, I had several vivid dreams.

In one of them, I was a child in a highly advanced, peaceful culture that faced total annihilation from a disaster of diluvian dimensions. I did not understand much of it, of course, being (in the dream) only a child. We children - dozens of us - were led to a large metal ship. We were told that there was a secret we would only learn after we were inside the ship and the doors were closed. We were sent through time, and during the fairly long trip we learned our secret. Each of us was given the ability to transform into an animal, chosen for us after our personality. This would make it possible for us to scout the land after we arrived, and find out about the new world we would live in, without being known by the locals.
The ship landed and we scattered in what seemed to be the present time. But when I tried to change into my animal form, which was a porcupine, something went wrong. I got stuck in a halfway form, a human shape with long, protruding spines.

I woke up and I felt that this dream was telling me something important about myself.


(More Frequently Unasked Questions as you continue to not ask...)

Genius without filter

In his blog post yesterday, Robert "Gagdad Bob" Godwin touches on the strange phenomenon of genius. This made me remember something I read in December 2005 about a phenomenon named "Latent Inhibition". I have a hard time remembering that name, because I think of it as "mind filter". Basically, normal people simply don't experience most of what they perceive. Most impulses are stopped at the very doors of perception and never make a memory -- seemingly not even short-term memories. For all intents and purposes, it is as if the perception wasn't even there.

This inattention to detail is not caused by a lack of processing power: Even highly intelligent people suffer from this "detailed blindness". Or rather, they don't suffer at all, except perhaps from boredom. They live their ordinary lives knowing nothing else. And if they are exceptionally intelligent, they excel at the ordinary things. They may have a genius IQ, but they are not geniuses. They are highly intelligent ordinary people. Latent inhibition is a trait that is inherited separately from intelligence.

It is a good thing that most people have this mental filter, because most who lack it go insane. On the other hand, those who don't go insane become geniuses. In other words, the geniuses and the insane have more in common with each other than with ordinary people... even highly intelligent ordinary people. But it seems that an ordinary intelligence is not able to cope with the flurry of information.

One condition that has been specifically linked to this is schizophrenia. This surprises me slightly, because I have also read that patients with schizophrenia have reduced brains, with the fluid-filled hollows (ventricles) in the brain taking up more of the space in their brain case than normal. Perhaps there are many more people walking around with reduced brains, but thanks to the mental filter, nobody notices. By sheer synchronicity, this article (in Norwegian, but with English picture) shows the almost completely fluid-filled brain of a French state employee. I don't think this condition is typical of French state employees, but the French may well disagree. The point is, you don't need all of a human brain if you aren't too perceptive.

I suspect a low latent inhibition makes for a rocky start of your education. I mean, the teacher is talking about Minnesota and a fly briefly lands on your desk. It has six legs in addition to wings. If that's possible, why don't cats and dogs have six legs and wings? What would life be if all animals had six legs and wings? Would people have four arms or four legs? You may end up as a great biologist one day, or more likely just another science fiction writer. But you won't learn much about Minnesota that way.

Playing tag with raccoons

This is not something porcupines usually do, mainly out of laziness but officially out of consideration. But being tagged by the thoughtful and artistic Robin of Motel Zero, I'll play along for a bit.

1. Let others know who tagged you.
2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

1) I already told you: Robin Starfish of Motel Zero. Go there, find haiku.

2.1) I have never been in love, never been homesick, never truly missed somebody. There is simply not a human-shaped hole in my soul for anyone to fill. This tends to creep people out. Trust me, it would have been mutual if I had not been used to your ways from an early age. Generally it looks to me like people have been unsuccessfully weaned.

2.2) I can look into people's eyes for any length of time, barring only the need to blink from physical dryness of the eyes. It causes me no pleasure or displeasure.

2.3) I have not been bored since sometime in my teens, except briefly during illness and similar confinement of mind and body both at once. I like to think that I changed on that day when I realized that life does not happen to me - I happen to it. But it could be that my brain simply would have grown out of boredom around that age anyway. I don't know with scientific certainty.

2.4) I am not shy, but I hate to bother people. To the casual observer, these may look the same, since I don't talk to people around me. Because I always have something interesting going on inside my head, I naturally assume that others have too, even when they are not actively doing anything. Yet I don't mind talking to people, alone or in groups, or even speak to crowds, if it is my job to do so.

2.5) My right hand and arm is permanently damaged from typing and mousing too much. It has recovered somewhat over the last few years, but I will likely need to be cautious for the rest of my life. One tool that has helped me is the speech recognition software "Dragon NaturallySpeaking" from Nuance (formerly Scansoft). Ironically, I can only use it for some minutes at a time, because my voice has fallen in disuse after decades of living alone. (At work I only talk briefly, and I can still do this at home too. 5-10 minutes an hour or so.)

2.6) I am not a vegetarian, but I have a natural distaste for eating dead animals. I occasionally do, in small quantities, but most of the time I just find it disgusting. I have been like this since childhood, but it has if anything increased now in my "middle age". I do however consume large quantities of milk. If I believed in reincarnation, I'd think that I was a reincarnated Hindu...

2.7) During my childhood on the farm we had two dogs, one after the other. I do not have pets now, but generally I prefer cats.

2.8) At age 15, I left home to go to high school in another part of Norway. Somewhat on a whim I applied for the language studies rather than maths and science. I never had reason to regret this, because the language study had mostly female students and the other mostly male. My quality of life skyrocketed. As a side effect, I learned English, which I now use more than my mother tongue. And that's how I met you!

3) Already wrote it all.

4) No. See 2.4, "I hate to bother people." Besides, the meme passed this way like 4 days ago. (I am not the fastest snail in the salad, I'm afraid.) So the taggables are already tagged.

That's all folks!

Does spirit exist?

This may seem the silliest question, because either you know that it exists, or you know that it doesn't. The answer is, of course, that it does not exist in the same way that a stone exists, or electricity. It cannot be measured in any of those ways, even though it can and should be experienced inside each of us.

To the materialist, believing in something that cannot be measured is superstition. But to us mystics, it is superstition to believe that mere matter can write a symphony, a screenplay or even HuffingtonPost. Our bodies consist almost entirely of a few familiar types of atoms. Where in those atoms is the symphony encoded? Is it in the electrons or the protons? No, the atoms are exactly the same whether they make up piece of bog or the brain of a genius. To explain the mystery that these simple atoms can cause all that we see and do, the scientist evokes the phrase "emergent behavior", which means that if you have enough of something in the right form, it changes its nature. A pile of sand behaves differently from a grain of sand, to take the simplest example. Likewise molecules behave differently from atoms, cells behave differently from molecules, and bodies differently from cells. Yes, it is all true. But making up a new word for it does not explain it.

So when life is different from the exact same amount of dead matter, it is not because of the spirit of life, but because of the emergent behavior of life. Yeah. And when humans have culture , it is not because of the human spirit but the human emergent behavior. Yeah. That explains so much more... As one scientist says to the other in the cartoon: "Thank God we're not religious!"

Theory and practice

I have noticed how different describing a theory is from describing a practice. A theory is true only until proven false. It needs to be proved and defended. But when people write about what they practice, what they live, they can tell it very simply and yet it increases the amount of truth in the world slightly. It need not even be literally true - the sun does not literally rise and set, after all - but a direct observation always has a ring of truth that logical theories can never quite match.

A little knowledge is a good thing

From what I glean in Scientific American, a favorite of mine, the universe consists of 95% or more Dark Matter and Dark Energy, neither of which we really have any good idea what is. Furthermore the entire universe will at some future time explode to the point where not just the atoms are scattered, but the atoms themselves and their component parts will utterly unravel and matter as we know it will cease to exist, as will presumably energy, time and space.

I'm glad God did not tell the ancient Hebrews this. If He told them that pi was 3, that's fine by me. It is a good start for engaging with the world.

The Buddha actually did tell his followers: "All composite things are subject to unraveling." And then he added: "Strive diligently!" and died. I am not sure they have yet managed to make sense of those two sentences, though they have tried for about 2500 years.