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

Hello fellow researhers and editors. My name is Dogan Tekben. The name is Turkish. The man associated with the name was born in Poughkeepsie NY. I earn my bread by working to improve the Air Traffic Control System in the U.S. I have a degree in aeronautical science as well as a pilot license. I play the guitar, love to cook, travel, read (a lot), perform stand up comedy, get bored (easily), get excited (easily), design computer games, daydream, and am in awe of the world we live in. I am married with a child on the way. My wife is an electrical engineer. I have come to the guide looking for new ideas, and, hopefully, to offer some of my own. I am curious about many topics. Urban Planning, artificial intelligence, conflict resolution, evolution, invention and design, stand up comedy, astronomy, ecology, philosophy, history, the list goes on. I was guided to the guide by a refernce in the just published "The Salmon of Doubt". I hope to develop the discipline to write in this journal daily..the operative word is hope. (in fact that just may be the operative word of operative words) I look forward to reading the words of, and interacting with, other researchers.

hello zorba, you seem brilliant. i'm just new here myself but i as no-one else seems to have greeted you i might suggest that a better place for this introduction might be in your user page itself. for all i know you are already in the middle of writing this but that seems to be the convention and i'm not sure to what extent people read long journel entries written by people they don't yet know. welcome to the guide anywho. i hope you enjoy your stay

Thank you Mr. Estoteric Epigram. I will post a message to my user page as soon as possible (I hate the acronym). How long have you been with h2g2. What's your story?

well, i've only been here about a week but it seems fairly fantastic. do you hate all acronyms or just that one in particular? my story is a dark one of love and betrayal. or did you mean who am i? its miss actually and i'm not sure yet as to exactly how much of my personal details i want to divulge here, its not a question of fear or discretion, i just like the annonymity of the internet.

Your story, your anonimity, your preference for the things you prefer are yours to divulge at your leisure..as for dark love and betrayal, that just about sums up another typical day on this planet I call The Stupendously Insignificant Rock or SIR if you prefer the acronym (Yes I hate acronyms, but I do not discount their usefulness). If there is one fact that the creatures that inhabit this planet should be reminded of at every opportunity is the indisputable fact that as far as this universe is concerned we amount to nothing. Not a new sentiment I know, but a classic one none the less. Take my opinion for what it is worth (see previous statement). Now before you start to think that I must be some morose hermit living on the slopes of Mt Doom let me say that I find insignificance to be a very liberating condition, and a great foundation for any philosophy of life. Since no actual significance can be attributed to our life on this planet, we become the arbitrators of significance...that doesn't mean much to the cosmos, but in the realm that we do control (our five senses our bodies, our minds) we are the masters..we create the world, we destroy the world, we imagine love, perpetuate hate, create Gods both malevolent and evil. It's like being given an endless supply of magic clay, and legos to do with as we please.
I figure that most people are afraid of this power so they delegate it to an imagined God or maybe some secular authority, so as to construct an exixtence with no responsibility....which begets society and culture not bad things really, but it also leads to some bizarre and inconsistent rules. Killing is wrong, except....(you fill in the blanks). Well I'm running out of steam, and I am heading home for the weekend..So I'll pick this up latter...Write back about any thing Bye

Zorba

hmmm, anothere way of looking at it would be to say that since we are so insignificant it really doesn't matter if we mess our lives up. i allways feel comforted when i look up into a starry night, like i'm part of something so big that it will probably never notice me.

That's true, you have the choice to mess up your life, to mess up mine, to kick the stray dog, to take him in, or to ignore him. Each action will create a different path (by the way I don't believe that the path is predetermined (destiny) I see it more like tunneling thru a mountain). The key is to recognize that insignificance provides us a kind of freedom. Now, the question is are we really free, or do some of us simply have a longer leash? I think the leash. Cutting that leash is the stuff of heroes and madmen (please note that when I use the word man, I mean humankind). As Nikos Kazantzakis author of Zorba the Greek said..."We all need a little folly". Yes, my favorite author, my favorite book, hence my h2g2 nickname. Feel free to reply, change the subject, keep the subject, anything you want, I am enjoying your company.

each person makes choices but there are many things against our control. to quote one of my favourite books, 'sometimes we choose our path, sometimes our paths are chosen for us and sometimes there is no choice at all'.
is that an original greek text? impressive. i am enjoying your company too.

Yes, I agree that most things are out of our control. Chaos reigns supreme. That being said, Chaos is not the arbitrator. Arbitration is an act of reason, an act of choice, the act of a concious mind. I may be sitting here at my desk typing away and somewhere on the floors above me the largest and heaviest pipe organ on the planet has just been delivered to a CEO with much too much money, and time on his hands. The laws of physics take over, the supporting structure of the floor creaks, moans, and then with a sound that sounds suprising like the phrase Oh Crap!, gives way. It hits the water cooler on the floor below. Quite a shock to the newly ordained minister, who was in the process of blessing it prior to shipment (The company on that floor makes holy water coolers). It plummets thru each successive floor and has attained terminal velocity moments before squashing me with a resounding C major chord. A random event in a random universe which I have no control over? Yes, but I am now dead and and it no longer matters to me one way or the other. I think what I am trying to say is that the only event I can think of that you don't not have a choice about, how you deal with it is death. If you think about it, however, that's no big deal because, you are beyond caring, in fact you're beyond anything, actually not even beyond, but just, not..you are officially, not a person.
All the other random events that are inflicted upon us good or bad require us to make a decision about how we will react to them. It is within that decision that our power lies. This of course applys to nonrandom events too of course. For example I may be mugged as I walk out of my shower, an inept mugger to say the least, since there is not much of value, retail or wholesale on a naked human body, but my point is that the event may seem random to the cops and to me but it was quite intentional to the mugger. I can react to the mugging in all kinds of ways which I won't get into, but that moment when I do is where our power is. Before I wrap it up, I want to say that I'm not advocating that "when life gives you lemons make lemonade" pop psychology drivel. Hell, if life gave me lemons I'd probably hurl them at cop cars. In fact darkness and depression are as important a part of the human experience as running around laughing and screaming like an idiot because somebody pointed a camera at you. Of course, and this happens to me all the time, I could be wrong...I think I hear something in the ceiling...
Let's keep saying hello, it's fun. If you have anyhting else you want to talk about let me know. Later Esoteric Epigram.


Zorba