h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*waves back*

how goes it Abbi?


zdt

Even if I had, I wouldn't hint about it or say it. I'm too good a speaker for the hidden in plain sight to ever do that.


I was, of course, referring to that other and remarkably pretend Yoda who his words often backwards speaking does in a language far, far away and many years from now.

I would never deign to speak of your most remarkable companions since we haven't been introduced yet, and I have excellent manners.

B.

Have to share; http://www.howstrange.com/wallpaper/image10.html

That is a wonderful weird thingee, just NOT on my wall

I wonder if yoda would look like that shaved?

*wondering if I ever "officially introduced" myself to Barton*

Kinda ho hum.
Better than no hum!

Abbi,

I'm assuming that you aren't a cat. Cats are very finicky about manners and their rule book still hasn't been updated to allow for the steamship, let alone the internet. (What was good enough for Uncle Anubis, is good enough for me.)

People are much more flexible and infinitely more forgiving.

If I offended you, I apologize deeply but I still have to wonder why you're posting on a board as public and permanent as this one hopes to be.

How dya do! My name is Barton Lynn Rolsky of the Kansas City, Indianapolis, Chicago Rolskys. If I am not being too forward, may I ask for the pleasure of this carriage return?

Barton

Officially hello!
I am in Denver ,came here from Indy 500 country 25 years ago. I cannot seem to leave this semi-arrid land of plenty to go back to the midwest. Only I do, for visits to loved ones. If all goes well I'm headed that way soon.
*likes to raz*

Barton did you happen to check the suggestions thread?
Have any ideas? Have an opinion on the last topic brought up~ Posting the forum in It is advertizing basically,makes us more visible. Depends if all of us want to be more visible

Your thoughts needed & appreciated.

Posted

B.

headed there now

Hello Barton! Good to see you here.

'All Life is Suffering' ...

Pain attends the processes of life. To be alive is to be able to feel pain. Pain is supposed to always be functional. It is brought on to alert us to something. That is not bad if we can do something about the something that the pain is alerting us to.

It gets real bad if we can do *nothing* about whatever it is that is bringing on the pain.



I love nature. I love real nature more than I love wildlife documentaries. Wildlife documentaries often show animals hunting and killing each other. Whereas in nature that rarely happens. In all my days of going out into wild places I've not yet seen many instances of animals killing each other. Certainly every lion alive, and every other predatory animal, needs to have eaten some other animals just in order to be there. But there are very many more herbivores than carnivores. The vast majority of herbivores reach adulthood and live for some time without ever being killed or even hurt by a carnivore. And those that *are* caught and eaten ... I've become aware of something. A sort of 'resignation'. The herbivore fights for dear life for however long it is necessary ... sometimes this helps and the herbivore escapes. But sometimes it doesn't help, and the herbivore at some point resigns itself to what is going to happen next. It gives up the fight. It accepts its fate with a sort of peace. It seems as if it graciously surrenders to the lion or whatever other animal it is that it is going to become a part of next.

I've seen this several times, and in some cases it I could almost feel and taste the way the animal gave up its spirit.

There are these two things ... firstly, the fighting-to-the-very-last-shreds-of-its-being to remain alive ... and then, the giving up of its life when the fight finally reaches the point of no return.

That's really the way it seems to me to work in nature. When the animal resigns itself, it suddenly seems to cease to suffer. There seems to have come an agreement, a truce, between the prey and the predator. 'OK, you win this time. Go ahead and eat me.'

I've struggled long and hard in my life to come to understand animals and their experiences - in particular, the way they deal with traumatic events. These events needn't just be like the above, where a predator kills and eats *you* ... it could also be a sickness, an injury ... or loss of a mate, or loss of young, or loss of a parent, or being ostracised from a herd or pride or whatever ... or extreme hunger or heat or cold ... at any rate in Nature you have these particular kinds of trauma that happens to creatures, and it really seems to me that all kinds of wild creature have some kind of way of instinctively handling these things. They seem to be internally spiritually equipped to deal, in some way, with everything that can go wrong ... at least, in Nature, for say 99.9% of the time. Their responses are often very 'stereotyped' ... sometimes not, but most of the times, yes.

To me it says something extremely profound about the nature of life, about the nature of the mind, that *animals* appear to be equipped with some way of *dealing* with the realisation that they're about to be killed and eaten.

The curse of being human is that our lives are so complex that we *cannot* come into the world with inbuilt ready-made stereotypical responses for every kind of trauma that we might face.

Willem,

Without meaning to attack your observations or you outlook on life, which I always find inteesting, though typically not in keeping with mine, you have clearly considered that the fight of the animal in the jaws of the predator lasts only up to the point where is becomes clear that no escape is possible, but that is where I think that you and I part company.

For you, there is a sense of recognition on the part of the prey animal. For me, there is a sense where the pain and effort must numb the creature and the animal ceases to struggle, not because of acceptance or recognition, but because the ability to perceive has been overpowered by the sensations of destruction.

The animal in people has no sense of futility. It is only through massive shock that the ability to perceive is dulled and turned off. I think of this as a kind of safety fuse that detaches us from the pain that our system generates in a blind effort to make us stop whatever it is we are doing that is causing us damage.

When you see an animal cease to struggle, you see a sense of recognition of and acquiescence to the inevitable. When I see an animal cease to struggle, I see an animal that has been turned off, burnt out, or used up. In both cases, I, at least, can get a sense of design and mercy in the essence of creation.

The failure for me, is that people always know when they have surrendered while I suspect that other animals simply do it without that sort of self-recognition.

The true horror is that after having had someone surrender, people have discovered that it is not necessary to complete the kill. What is left after the surrender is sometimes no longer human. At other times, and this is the true horror for me, it sometimes still is.

I have known people who have suffered each in hir own way to a depth far greater than most of us can appreciate, I suspect. (But then how could I dare to make such a comparison? I don't know, but it is clear that I do and that, to some extent, we all do.) Ultimately, I suppose, that each of us, as humans, are capable of making tiny acts of submission in hopes that we have not given up too much, merely for the sake of less pain. Very few other animals are capable of such niceties and even then, unless they are bred to captivity so that they know no other way, they cannot be said to have truly been conquered or to have surrendered.

I am tempted to suggest that we are willing to surrender some portion of our freedom rather than face extinction whereas animals cannot conceive of a distinction between them. The only thing wrong with that is that it makes surrender sound voluntary which is not necessarily or, even, often so.

But, on another level, there is always a sense of self-blame for having succumbed short of death. Or, am I just reading my own guilt into the world around me?

Barton

Well, I don't intend to force the point ... I still feel that it's that way, but of course it's impossible to prove it conclusively while we still can't actually read animals' thoughts and feelings. But anyways, I still feel animals have more built-in, stereotyped responses than humans have, and that a big part of our problem is that we face a very large variety of kinds of trauma that we don't come equipped to deal with.

As for what you say about 'surrendering' ... and about freedom and existence ... well, I don't know if I'd fight to the death just for my 'freedom' ... I wouldn't really say I understand the concept 'freedom' in fact ...

"Freedom" 1. the illusion that one's choices have some bearing on the events of life. 2. the faith that one has choices and must hold hirself responsible for the outcome of those choices. 3. the belief that one's actions are the result of hir personal value system and that restriction of those actions, except where willingly ceeded, is the most heinous of crimes. 4. (obsolete) the ability to take freely from Nature in order to assure one's survival and security with or without the aid of any other person according to personal choice. 5. (political) the legally constituted right to do whatever is not specifically mandated against by government. 6. (common) the ability to have and do whatever a person wants unless or until caught and punished. 7 (religion) by implication, "Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you," or "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," or "An it cause no one harm, do what you will is the whole of the law." See 'blame,' 'guilt,' and 'heresy.'

See also: 'truth','reality', and 'honesty' (Oh right, those aren't on line any more. My fault. Sorry! I'll see if I can find an old copy and paste it in my journal.)

If one does not believe in freedom than one cannot surrender it. To surrender freedom is to give up some portion of the control of your life. To abandon freedom, without abandoning the faith that it once was available, is to give up one's right to care.

So long as someone is capable of saying, "I give up!" they are still reserving faith that they can keep their freedom. No effort at programming is complete without achieving some sort of true surrender. Those who have surrendered can never truly believe that they have recovered the freedom they lost. Those who have no belief in freedom are incapable of surrendering.

Part of OUR problem is that we must constantly test our new found freedoms, often misusing them out of a misunderstanding of what they are. We are constantly reaching out to brace ourselves against bars that no longer exist. Those bars were known, definite parts of our universe. Of course, we loose our balance and stumble, a lot. Some of us recreate those bars simply to fend off the frightening lack of restriction which also was a kind of security and well being.

Barton

OBTW: Of course, you "still feel it's that way." Why should you not? You spoke your heart as you always do. I spoke mine, as I always try to do. Neither of us can prove our arguments right or wrong.

My point is and was that, starting from our individual postulates, we have different views of the world. This is simply one of those places where I can see that mine clearly differ from yours. We are both right, both wrong, both speaking out of our as ... erm ,,, hats and hoping we make sense.

Barton

" capable of saying, "I give up!" they are still reserving faith that they can keep their freedom. No effort at programming is complete without achieving some sort of true surrender."

A Sweet surrender is possible

I think all life is programed to survive.
Humans at their best have a desire and belief it's possible to thrive.
Surrenders are always involved somewhere on the road to thriving.

IMO the mind can protect us in many ways. Once the mind has had enough with no where else to turn, it can shut down to an extent- going into a more dormant (denial) survival mode for a time.(thinking of the dying animal body and the human spirit)

"We are constantly reaching out to brace ourselves against bars that no longer exist. Those bars were known, definite parts of our universe. Of course, we loose our balance and stumble, a lot. Some of us recreate those bars simply to fend off the frightening lack of restriction which also was a kind of security and well being."

However much we may fight for our freedom, in whatever ways we may need to, I think it a tragic irony that there is no possible way to be truly free, and remain alive.

Take for instance the 'free' thinkers at the FFFF. However much they (rightly) espouse free speech and rail against fundamentalist dogma, they are still having to do so within the h2g2 house rules, in English, subject to the rules of grammar and so on, perhaps some of them refusing to boldly split infinitives, even though that particular rule has no particular importance in English, and is a hangover from Latin. Also they do it on a Qwerty keyboard, in front of a rule-bound operating system, subject to the laws and statues of proper internet usage in whatever part of the world they're in, the rules implicit in what interests them ('true' Star Wars fans 'must' for instance, hate the prequels) bound by the laws of gravity, physics, and all the other restrictions on their being.

Freedom is slavery, and slavery freedom - be it freedom from responsibility, or freedom from quantum discombobulation. However much any of us wishes and fights for freedom, there is always some element of 'imprisonment' which survival requires us to accept.

'Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose' - Janis J

As a survivor I continue to find happiness and many forms of freedom within the constraints of universal and (most )human laws. When I eventually run out of juice, and either go to some Other Place or cease to exist in any form other than memory, that will be a further freedom, that from the 'prison' of sentience and one's own memory, but even then you can be restricted, albeit by the ideas you've left behind, and what gets done with them.

Till then find your freedoms where you can and be grateful for lacking the restrictions others have, and some accept. People will always be offering ways to *feel* free, which I think is the truest freedom.

I concur.

Freedom is perceptual. But, (there's always a 'but') what is it that is perceived? I imagine (NOT) that it will come as a great shock to you when I say that what is perceived as freedom is always relative (there's that word again) to the perceived choices available to the individual.

Obviously, if there is no freedom, there can be no guilt (in law or religion).

The concept of freedom is relative to the percieved degree of supervision. The ultimate minimum of freedom is when absolutely no supervision is required because no freedom of choice exists in the individual. The ultimate maximum of freedom is when absolutely no supervision is required because the individual's 'choices' are always 'correct'.

The question of freedom in science is simply the measure of the number of possible different actions and the probablility of their occurence.

When we consider human freedom the outcome is not so significant as the minimum of influence on the nature of our choices. Thus in the case of minimum and maximum freedom it doesn't matter so much that the outcome of the individual's action might be identical under both circumstances but rather that the outcome was as much the choice and responsibility of the individual hirself so as to preserve hir significance as an individual.

In the US, freedom is often spoken of as being exercised through the vote. The more often the vote of all is tabulated and acted upon, the more that we are said to be free and the governement, responsive. In a country actually ruled by an absolute monarch, whether hereditary or not, freedom is defined by the uninvolvement of the government in one's day to day life; whereas the government of such a country is often criticized for it's lack of such involvment.

Currently, there is a furor here over the Supreme Court having stricken down a Texas law which made homosexual sexual intercourse illegal. Both sides claim that the law either supported or restricted their freedom. That is the homosexuals claimed that they should be free to have sex and the Texas government and, seemingly, their constituencies maintain that they should be free from such 'perversities.'

This is not the first time that I have felt the need to quote Mark Twain (He wasn't *really* Samuel Clemens, he was AKA Samuel Clemens) when he pointed out (approximately) that, "No one ever passed a law to stop hirself from doing something."

Here is the fundamental basis of the problems facing us. There is an essential distinction between the 'freedom to' and the 'freedom from'. 'Freedom to' is based in the individual and has to do with possibilities, hopefully leading to more complete realization of self. 'Freedom from' is based in the society and has to do with restrictions on possibilities, hopefully leading to greater security.

From this it should be clear that civilization is always a juggling act between self-realization and maximum security. Greater security is naturally antipathetic to individual freedom. There can be no other reason for a society to exist except to promote security. There can be no other reason for freedom to exist except to promote individual self-realization. Yet there cannot be a society without people and, it seems, there are not likely to be people without society.

It seems clear, to me at least, that less freedom there is, the less that we can be people and the less society there is, the less we can be human. That is, people are defined by their individuality and humans are defined by their ability to live together harmoniously. Yet, at both ends of the scale we are most animal-like, predators on one side and mindless herbivores on the other.

That which makes us most admirable lies in the concept of intelligent and compassionate moderation. Thus we must cross the previous scale with one that seemingly pits intelligence against compassion.

At the same time, we seem to believe that there is something equally terrible in living at dead center, it being as mechanistic as living at any of the extremes.

Thus, it seems, that the world's greatest skill should be juggling. Why isn't it the most admired?

In fact, we often condemn someone for 'sitting on the fence', 'failing to take a stand', or being 'wishy washy.'

Thus I am forced to cross these two axes with another that has to do with herd behavior. On one end is the will to work alone and on the other is the desire for comformance and support by others.

Think about these three axes and see if you can come up with other scales that must cross them or if all behaviors can be explained by plotting them in this space. I feel that these three are inadequate, but right now I need to go back to my sewing machine.

Tomorrow is the first day of the Bristol Renaissance Faire and event I have been more involved in waiting for than preparing for.

Don't expect to hear from me before Monday.

Barton