BLOGSERVATIONS

The background noise of our personal, inevitable doom, is the undercurrent in our lives, always tugging at our subconscious, reminding us that we can’t escape it. We can’t live forever. Unless of course you expect that Ray Kurzweil is correct and at some point in the next 40 to 50 years surviving humans will be able to live on inevitably, aided by assorted pills designed for specific tasks, genetically remodeling ourselves to slow or even reverse aging, and fending off disease and disorder in our bodies.

It is dubbed “The Singularity.”¹ A proposed time, in the not so distant future, when, it is said, artificial intelligence will exceed human intelligence. The Singularity is based on, and compounds, an exponentially increasing growth of technology and medicine, expanding the arena of Moore’s Law², which refers to the exponential increase in computer technology. And if you think about it, it doesn’t seem too hard to comprehend.

By then, or maybe because of then, nanotechnology will have developed to the point that armies of microscopic robots will be sweeping our arteries clean, and patrolling our inner workings for viral and bacterial evildoers. Our personal soldiers will take no prisoners, and spare no mercy. I welcome it. My own reserve arsenal to assist my natural immune system? Bring it on!

Our immune system, incredible as it is, and naturally evolved, identifies and reacts to a threat, then it remembers that threat for future reference. But the process is a crash course. The immune system has no real “heads up,” except for vaccinations, a wonderful scientific advancement that has proven immensely beneficial to humanity yet, sadly, are now sometimes avoided by ignorant parents who listen to the likes of Jenny McCarthy.

Ignorance, on some level, may endanger us all, but just imagine what could be possible with scientific advancements like nanotechnology. Our immune systems could have a backup militia to help in the fight against disease. We could be healthier. But that’s not all, we’d have new medicines at our disposal to stop aging, or reverse it. Scientists at Harvard Medical School have successfully reversed aging in laboratory mice.³ Our physical health could be managed, and in that future world, many of us could thwart death inevitably, maybe live forever. Of course, getting hit by a car is another story.

But for now here we are, “each of us,” to quote Neil Peart of Rush, “a cell of awareness, imperfect, and incomplete,” living our lives with the awareness that one day, in our future, we will stop living. That’s a tough thing to consider, and many of us do a great job of not considering it at all. But I think we rob ourselves by not pondering our own death.

Singularity aside, we’re all looking down the barrel of the same gun. And, not that it has equal potential of The Singularity, let’s put any notion of an afterlife aside as well. This world is the only one we will ever know, and our individual life is the only one we’ll ever experience. Doesn’t knowing that life is not forever make it that much more valuable? All we see and hear, all of the people we love, are ever more precious because our experience with them is limited. For now…

Wonderful food for thought. I highly recommend you watch this short video, the Unconsidered Life featuring AC Grayling. It is presented by the Richard Dawkins Foundation YouTube channel. Many fine points to ponder, if you’d like tune yourself more into life.

Click Here to watch The Unconsidered Life at YouTube.

We knew nothing before we were born, and we’ll know nothing after we die. That is why it is important that we appreciate as much about life as we can while we are here. Life is limited, but our enjoyment of it doesn’t have to be.

The phrase “Live and learn” has generally come to mean: we make mistakes as we blunder through life and we learn from those mistakes.

It’s true, but we can look at that phrase another way: literally. And we can turn it around, to “Learn and Live!”

Living is more than existing, it’s being a part of the world, realizing our connections with other species and life forms here on earth. To me, living is about seeking to understand how we came to be, in reality.

Throughout history, scientific discoveries have lead us inevitably to this conclusion: Earth has been here for a very, very long time, and it has been inhabited by life for a very, very long time. It’s wonderful to consider this reality. It’s liberating, and uplifting to welcome this truth.

We’re products of evolution, physically. But as we move through our lives we can evolve through learning, and we can enjoy who we are, and the world we’re a part of, by living!

We should feel compelled to learn more about the world, it’s history, and evolution. And the science that enables us to understand more and more about life, and ourselves.

Time to really LEARN, and LIVE.

Through talking about various feelings we learn, “hey, I’m not the only one who gets that feeling sometimes,” and it allows us to feel better about ourselves, since our struggles and issues aren’t always unique to us.

We’re not outcasts, we’re all quite the same, as far as feelings and thoughts are concerned. For the most part. Many of us are afraid to talk to others about things we feel, and so, we never really learn that others have the same thoughts or feelings. Therefore we limit ourselves, and are destined in a sense, to feeling alone or different, or maybe strange, compared to others. You know, not “normal.”

But what is normal? We’re all just evolved animals struggling with haphazardly wired, imperfect brains. We think we’re supposed to be perfect, and that if we aren’t there must be something wrong with us. Well that’s not true. We’re all screwed up to a certain degree. It’s learning, understanding and coping that helps us tweak that wiring and improve what we have.

It’s an uphill battle, and we need to step out of our comfort zone sometimes, but it is well worth it.

Like Stephen Hawking says in the song, Keep Talking, from Pink Floyd, “all we need to do, is make sure we keep talking.”

Recommended reading:
Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind

If there ever was a need for a book burning it would be to erradicate the nonsense spouting from the likes of Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. I understand that it’s not right to censor, and instead educate and inform, but this mockery makes me so angry I really do feel like burning one. Maybe I’ll buy a copy and just tear out Ray Comfort’s preface to build a fire with. That might help me feel a little better. I’ll burn photos of Cameron and Comfort while I’m at it to satisfy my psychotic bent as well. Just kidding. Well, maybe…

What book am I talking about? Seems “Bannana Man” Ray Comfort — famous for his claim that its comfortable shape, non-slip grip peel, convenient opening tab, and ripeness color-indicator are proof that the bannana was designed by God. There are 5 year old children with better logic — has taken it upon himself to publish a version of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” and include a preface of his own design which attempts to discredit Darwin’s theory, which is now fully established and accepted.

Kirk Camoron (I know that’s not the way he spells it) has been making the rounds at college campuses to promote the new publication, which comes about on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s original groundbreaking work. Luckily many students have been giving far-right fundamentalist Christian Cameron a run for his money in the intellectual department.

Watch this Youtube video of college students debating with Cameron on evolution vs. creation. They had answers, and pleasantly stated them. Cameron had nothing to offer that could not be refuted with scientific evidence. Sound quality is poor, and ignore the trumpet.

Fundamental Christian television host Bill O’Reilly also steps into the picture. He had Kirk Cameron on to talk about Comfort’s added preface to Darwin’s work, and asked what Cameron would say to atheists in an effort to convert them. Cameron took the challenge and presented the tired argument about irreversible complexity, comparing the camera lens and the eye. Another Youtube video shows us the O’Reilly/Cameron farce and presents the evidence for evolution of the eye, and how it is not actually perfect. If it was designed by a perfect God, why would so many of us need glasses? And why would bats have to rely so heavily on radar to catch their dinner?

Simple arguments, like the convenience of a bannana and the irreversible complexity of the human eye, are the cornerstone for fundamental belief in a supreme being, a creator of all things, who knows all, sees all, and can answer prayers. A quest for knowledge, a desire for understanding, and a wonder of science and the natural world can chip away the cracked facade of blind faith, shining a welcome light into the dim recesses of self delusion and ignorance.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: one great place to start is Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

Give it a read. You’ll be amazed at what you’ve been missing.

By the way, bannanas are a product of evolution, just like humans. But they’ve been “selected” to be the way they are now, ever since humans started farming them. That’s not to say that we wanted them to have a convenient open tab, or non-slip grip. Just worked out that way. Monkeys don’t necessarily use the tab. Guess God didn’t clue them in to how handy he made it.