This thought just came to me as I was watching a YouTube video.  Pay attention to what you watch and listen to because it is as if it preloads your thoughts.  I am talking to myself here.  

I think it is amazing how I get dragged down the rabbit hole as I watch YouTube videos.  I think, I really enjoy watching most of the videos that I do but I sometimes just get dragged down into a topic that I really don’t want to watch.  It is as if I am compelled to click on it.

I don’t want to waste time talking about the algorithms of YouTube.  I think it is a given that they are successful in getting people to watch for hours at a time.  What I want to talk about instead is that I need to pay more attention to the things that I watch and listen to.  Videos that I watch cause me to have different expectations about the world I live in.  

I am pretty optimistic by nature and I find that when I go down some of the rabbit holes that I go down on YouTube it causes me to become more suspicious of people.  I become more judgmental and am less likely to engage others in conversation.  Sometimes because I think that they might be hostile or dislike me because of how I look or the color of my skin.  

Thankfully most of the time my nature wins out and I do engage people in conversation and am  broken out of the bias that was created by watching the videos that I watched.

I am right back where I was when I started this post:  Pay very close attention to what you watch and listen to because the videos that you are watching as mindless entertainment are working to change your bias.  If nothing else just be cognizant of this.

Think about it!

Oden the all father, Thor the thunder god, Mars the god of war, Eros the god of love. These are all gods that had worshippers thousands of years ago.
The worshippers of these gods were sure that their gods were real. They dreamed of being picked up by the valkyries upon there death on the battlefield and being taken to Valhalla. I love to read these stories and think what it was like for the people that loved these gods.

Today the collected stories of the gods of the past are taught in classes in college and elsewhere as mythology. In these classes you learn about the many creation myths of where the earth came from. You read about all of the different ideas about what happens when we die. Going to the underworld taken by the ferryman across the river of Styx. So many great stories.

The old pantheons contained male and female gods and by reading their stories we can learn about social interaction. Sometimes between gods and humans or gods and other gods. Sometimes gods are conquering other gods. We read it, and we enjoy it. We can learn many valuable lessons from these interactions. The Greek and Roman gods also had offspring with humans.

Norse mythology has Oden and Freya, a man and wife, and as far as I can tell they are different but equal. Norse, Greek and Roman mythology had gods that were very human. These gods were emotional and did things wrong and were corrected by other gods.

Mythology is alive today in many of the words that we use. The names of the days of the week. Wednesday is from Oden. Oden’s day. Friday is Freya’s day. March is Mars month and Thursday is Thor’s day. In psychology mythology is everywhere. Narcissists and named for Narcissus who was so enamored with his reflection that the gods made him a flower.

Mythology was so good at describing interactions between the characters and the personalities to the characters (gods) that psychology uses the names of the characters to describe human personality traits, mental diseases and syndromes.

When I learned about mythology as a child, I could see the similarities between the creation myths that I was being taught and the ones that I was told were real in our modern religion. I used to think of the followers of the ancient religions being in the hell that I was being taught about. Their sin being, living before the god that I was being told was real, was created.

Recently I learned about just how much overlap there is between the celebrations of the ancient religions and the modern religion. Our modern religions took the old calendars and overwrote them with new celebrations that in many cases did not differ from the pagan celebrations that took place at the same time of year.

As I think about all that I have written here I wonder: What will it be like 500 years from now? Will the religions of today be the mythologies of the future? Think about it….

I have heard many smart people talk about this and it seems to be a place that the theists among us have a strong case.  Does our (humans) idea of right and wrong come from a god or gods and if not where does it come from?

I am just going to state my case and then talk about where it comes from.  My case starts from a question or maybe several questions.  Why are humans so successful on this planet?  Are they the strongest animal on the planet?  Are they the fastest animal on the planet?  I would say that if you place a naked human in a cage with any hungry large predator on the planet (tigers, lions, bears, etc) the human will be a meal for the predator.  This being the case how is it that these large predators don’t just make meals of humans and we have nothing to say about it?

I think that the power of the human species is in our groups and in our cooperation.  We can conquer anything together.  When it is a tiger versus our tribe and our technology then the tiger dies.  I want to repeat that, our strength and success on this planet is because we help each other.  Said in another way, when humans work together it increases the reproductive success of everyone in the group, therefore we all benifit from cooperation.

What are morals?  We might say they are  rules about humans not harming other humans.

What is the reason that we should not harm other humans?  The theists say that it is because god or gods said so.

I say that anything that a member within the group does that causes instability in the group harms the group.

If you kill someone in the group then we must protect the group from you, so we must find out if there is a good reason for why you committed murder.

If you steal someone’s property and this type of action was allowed to continue then people would not have a reason to work for themselves and improve their own personal circumstance so the thief is in essence causes group instability.

If you cuckold a member of the group you are bringing about group instability by hurting the stability of a relationship which could lead to violence and murder.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a good way to say that the stability of the group is paramount for the survival of everyone.

What is happening today is that our group is becoming all of the people in the human race so we can no longer attack the people in our out group because our in group is being redefined as the human population of the planet.

I hope this is a starting point for more thinking but in the mean time think about it.

 

 

 

I write this because I recently joined Family Sharing in iTunes.  As I sit here listening to any music that I can think of, I am thinking about just how lucky I am to be living when I am living.

Think about it.  I sit here listening to exactly the music I want to listen to.  I am typing on a computer.  Two things that could not have even been imagined by people who lived a mere 75 years ago.

What I have right now is more than most people of the past could even have imagined.  So much.  I am sitting in a condo and the temperature is perfect for me and if it wasn’t I could adjust the thermostat and it would be.  I can walk down the hallway and shower in a bathroom that has an indoor toilet that removes waste by moving a lever.  In the shower I can adjust the temperature of the water to what I deem to be perfect for me.

If I am hungry I can eat food that I have in my kitchen.  The kitchen, what miracles live here?  The refrigerator keeps food fresh for me and drinks cold and the freezer has ice in it even though is it a warm summer day.  I can take food out of the places I have it stored and cook it indoors.  No worries about the smoke, the vent takes care of it.

I can connect with anyone I know, most of them with both video and audio.  Almost anywhere in the world.  I can type messages for the people that I want to connect with or leave them a voice message.

If I want to visit anyone I can take the car that I own or I could connect with transportation that could literally take me anywhere in the world within 48 hours.

If I am in trouble I can call with a phone that I can go anywhere with and be able to get people to come and help me.  If I am sick people will take me to a place where the latest medical technology can help me get well.  I will probably live longer than 99% of the people in my genetic line.

I can do this because I am rich?  Not even close.  I live on the poverty line in the country in which I live.  I repeat my initial question, “How can I complain?”.

Think about it.

I have something that I want you to think about.  I think we are at a crucial stage as homo sapiens.  I use the term homo sapiens because that is the term that represents our species.  All of us humans that are capable of producing offspring with one another are all the same species.  We see proof of this all around us.  This angers some of us but it is time that we got over it.  What happens when a black man and an asian or white woman have a child.  The child looks like both parents.  The child is neither an exact copy of the father or the mother.

To put the example I am using into black and white i will ask.  What happens when a black man and a white woman have a child?  The questions fill my head.  What does it mean to be a black man?  What does it mean to be a white woman?  What does it mean to be the child of that union?  I could keep on asking questions but I am using this example to get to a point so here it is.

We use the terms black and white to refer to the races of the parents.  I contend that the term race doesn’t mean anything genetically.  Skin color is just an expression of certain genes.  Said another way there are no races in our species from a scientific or more correctly from an evolutionary perspective.  We are looking at genetic variation and referring to it as race.  The phenotype that seems to be causing so much trouble within the members of our species is skin color.  We call people by words that are supposed to refer to that persons race but it a persons “race” says nothing about the person.  We use race to refer to phenotypic expressions of genes or combinations of these phenotypic expressions but these differences are nothing but genetic variation within our species.  The physical or phenotypic expressions are just surface differences.  They don’t make the person different psychologically.  The genes that cause the physical differences are not linked to personality or value differences.

At some point in history, someone used skin color to make a decision about who was a part of our group.  Put another way this person used skin color to make an in-group versus out-group decision.  The person that did this wanted to be able to distinguish her group from another group.  What if this person would have picked another distinguishable differentiating characteristic.  What if they would have chosen hair color or texture or eye color or shape?  How different would the world of humans be?

We all live in an interesting time.  It is a time when the planet is becoming a smaller place and more and more different humans are coming in contact with one another.  We have a choice.  We can choose to continue to use our phenotypic differences to cause separation between ourselves or we can recognize the faulty thoughts of our ancestors and see that we are all part of the same group.

 

The discoveries of anthropology and evolution suggest that all of the people alive today have ancestors in common.  If we didn’t we would not be the same species.  If the genetic variation inside of our racial group doesn’t cause separation then why should the genetic variation outside of our group?  Put another way if we of the same “race” don’t further separate into further classes by eye color or hair texture, why should we continue to use these randomly chosen physical characteristics to cause division in our species.

The house that we all live in is this planet and we all have common ancestors so I will use the common terms: sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles.  WE, all of us that are part of the same species are all part of the same family.  We are all sisters and brothers with common ancestors.

Talk about something to think about.  It has taken me a few months to read this novel and every moment that I invested in this read has paid off.

I started reading this novel because of Jocko Wilink and Tim Ferriss and the Jocko Podcast.  I have always been interested in Japanese culture and I thought this might give me an insight into it.  I loved it.

Something to think about, a take away.  A love story that has no description of the bodies of the characters being intertwined or even any hint of impropriety before marriage.  This same two characters denying each other their union until the time is right.  The female character loving the male character and being able to wait even though the male character seems to repeatedly tell her that she should get on with her life and forget him.  The female character taking the male characters dedication to the way of the sword as something that makes her love him more.

Concepts that are foreign to us in modern America.

What totally welded this novel into my consciousness is the final battle between combatants.  After the bout is over the winner thanks the loser for the part he has played in his development and his travel through life.  IE His life was improved because this guy made it difficult.  To say it is a different look at competition is an understatement.  It shows that another culture (not American) is beautifully different enough to teach me something by the mere exposure of reading a novel.

What can we learn from other cultures?  Think about it.

In my meditation and introspection practices I learn a lot about myself and I hope this translates into learning a lot about all of us.  We are all humans, and so many of our thoughts are similar.  We all seem to hide our vulnerabilities, and in many instances cover them up by acting confidently when that is not what we feel.  We also have a tendency to try to find reasons for what is happening.  We may for instance notice that we are broke all of the time, especially as it gets further and further away from payday.  We may look for a reason.  We look in our checking account and see that we tend to eat lunch at restaurants every day which means that we are spending $100.00 a week on lunch.  We now see a reason why we are broke.  Since it is a reason we can change it,  We decide to bring our lunch to work.  By doing this, we find that we only spend $30.00 a week on lunch.  By changing this we now have more money at the end of the pay period.

If you are an introspective person like I am, you tend to look at your life and try to see where you can improve it.  The example of eating lunch out too often is a personal one.  As you reinspect what is happening in your life, you can look for reasons why things are happening.  If you find these reasons then you can change some behaviors which, if changed, will make your life better.  If you do this, you may see certain reasons coming up more often than others and when you find these kinds of reasons you really have a chance to improve your life.  This is IF you are finding reasons.

Reasons have a causative effect.  If you discover a behavior, like you tend to react to certain situations in a passive aggressive manner.  You may have found a reason that causes you to get fired and lose friends. You can choose to work on how you react in those situations and if you are successful in changing yourself, you can improve your life immensely.  Reasons tend to point to things that you can work on to improve yourself.

There is a classification of reasons called excuses.  An excuse may seem to explain a lot of things.  It may explain why you are not getting where you want to go.  When you find a good enough excuse you can relax because it is not your fault.  An excuse tends to shift the blame onto someone else.   A really good excuse can even explain many of the problems you have had all your life.

Some people find excuses in their personality.  Sometimes they will even make it sound cool like, “I have always had a problem with authority but you know that is just a part of my personality.”  They are telling you that it can’t be changed, that it is just a part of them. They may even say things like, “What can I do?  I was made that way.”

Some people may find an excuse in a behavior. “What can I do?  I gotta party.”  You can go to AA or NA or many other such groups and find all kinds of people that remember using their behavior as an excuse for why they were struggling.

The excuse that I think is most dangerous to all of us, is racism.  When racism is used as an excuse then there is nothing that can be done.  After all, you can’t change your race.  I say when racism is used as an excuse.  What makes this excuse difficult to identify is that racism is also a reason.  The statistics seem to show that african american men get substantially longer sentences than other groups for the same crime.  The reason that these men get a longer sentence is because they are african american.

Too many of us are using racism as an excuse.  On a personal level.  Why don’t people like me?  On a career level.  Why didn’t I get the promotion?

When you are using racism as an excuse, you might say that racism explains why you did not get the promotion.  This allows you to shift the blame to someone other than yourself.  It is the company that is racist and it is the company that is not going to allow you to succeed so you can give up.  You don’t have to try any more.  Why subject yourself to further disappointment. Hopefully it is obvious that in this case racism is being used an excuse.

If you think that you might be using racism as an excuse then ask yourself if there might be other reasons that you did not get what you wanted.  If it was a promotion, then what can you do to be better prepared next time?  Could you do a better job with the interview or could you have certification in something that would help you.  Could you get an advanced degree.  Or maybe you can just work hard and be the best employee that you can be.  Show the company that you can help others get the job done.  Any time you are given a project, make sure that it gets done on time and to the best of your ability.  When the company needs someone to stay late you could volunteer.  Show the company that you are the best person for the job and always ask yourself how you can improve.

The big point here is if you find reasons you find things that you can do.  When I think about this subject, I wonder if people that have broken through into jobs that nobody of their race had ever had before ever used racism as an excuse.  Do you think Jackie Robinson ever thought that he could not play Major League Baseball because the organization was racist?  I bet if that thought ever came into his head, he used it as motivation.  Somehow I think that he used his energy identifying where he could improve as a player or as a person and in doing so he showed Major League Baseball that if they did not let him play then they were making a mistake.  If he had used racism as an excuse then I don’t think we would know who he is.

I was listening to the 10% Happier podcast and the guest was James Altucher,  An exchange happened that helped me clarify the idea that has been brewing in my head. Basically the exchange was started when James Altucher talked about having a friend get rid of all of the contents of his house. He wanted them to do this and their pay was that they could keep the proceeds or donate them or dispose of them as they saw fit.

In the conversation that followed, the podcast host seemed to try to get Altucher to admit that it was crazy to rid himself of ALL his stuff and that he regretted it. Altucher admitted that he missed some of his things and that living in air B and Bs had gotten a little tiring but he would not admit what the host wanted him to admit. As I listened to this, I realized that this man had done what I am trying to do. He had totally de-cluttered his life. He was also capable of not necessarily defending his reasons for clearing everything out, but talking about the positive that had happened since he had done it.  He was now renting a much smaller apartment and the things that entered his new space had purpose and he was mindful about what those things were.  He also said that his new apartment was cleaner than anywhere else he had lived and he felt that this was because  he appreciated the things that he now had more than he used to in his old life.  Very rarely have I felt that someone got the ideas that flow in my head like I did while I listened to this conversation.

I have questioned for a while now, what having so many things does to my freedom and my sanity. I think that we have been taught by society to value things way too much. I have been questioning the value of things for a while now. Some of my questions have been about why people live in such large houses. Sometimes there are rooms in peoples houses that they don’t enter for months. Why put things in these rooms and heat and cool these rooms. What would happen if you saved all of the money that you would have spent on these extras and put that money into investments that made money for you? I am not going to talk about the investments but I will say that I have discovered in my own life that it is not how much I make but how much extra I have at the end of the month that brings me contentment. To watch this figure get larger month after month brings me a sense of peace.

With the way I feel about things, I feel that I am assaulted every day by sales and marketing that try to convince me that I am not content and that I am worth less as a person because I don’t have certain possessions or spend money on things. For quite a while seeing these marketing ploys caused me to feel anger.  I am getting past the point where I feel angry when I watch a TV commercial but these presentations still rub me the wrong way.

I feel there is a better way to live,  The first thing that you need to do to have a wonderful life is to unlearn much of what you have been taught.  Think About It!

 

If you were going to pay an organization to brainwash you, and you were going to spend 100 minutes a day listening and watching what that organization prepared for you, how much time would you spend investigating what this organization was going to brainwash you to do? If you are a thinker you would probably want to hear many stories about how other people’s lives were changed by this brainwashing. Maybe you would want to try it in small doses to see what it did to you. Maybe you would just say no because you don’t want to be brainwashed by anyone. I mean brainwashing is a scary thing. If you saw “The Manchurian Candidate” you know that brainwashing can make you do anything. I mean look at what the whacked out religions do with brainwashing.

The average American has already made this deal and they have done no research to find out about the organizations that prepare the content. If you look at the waking hours of most Americans you would find out that most of them actually spend more than 100 minutes a day.

I will quit browbeating the idea and just say it. The organizations that I am talking about are the companies that make commercials. You all knew that this is what I was getting at.

What are we doing? I MEAN, WHAT ARE WE DOING?  Would we really choose to let advertisers inside our heads and program us?

Some of the info that I found is that the average american spends 5 hrs a day watching TV.   Take this with 20 minutes an hour spent on commercials (actually more) and you get the 100 minutes.  Advertisers spend huge amounts of money making the commercials resonate with us. The music and images are created and edited to get you to buy products. Their makers don’t consider what these creations are doing to our self image. Did anyone you know get their significant other a brand new car for Christmas?  What percentage of americans could afford this?

How do you feel about yourself knowing that you can’t do this for your loved ones?

Think about it.

 

We

Small word, simple word, short word,
It is all of us contained in a simple word.
We are beautiful.
We are ugly.
We are strong.
We are weak.
We are everyone.
We don’t exclude anyone.
We are humans.
We are guilty.
We are innocent.
We are judges.
We are the condemned.
We have done the greatest of things.
We have done the most vile things.
We are us.
We have created.
We have destroyed.
We is you.
We is I.
We are connected.
What one of us has done we all have done.
What one of us has done we all have done.
That is a big statement. If you load that into your brain and live with it you will understand who we are. We are humans. What one of us has done we all have done. We are the judges. We are guilty. We are innocent. We have done this to ourselves. We cannot separate ourselves from us to avoid being guilty. We have done it. We have created laws and we have done crimes. We have owned us. We have married us. We have had children and the children are us. We have taken care of our children. We have abused our children. We have helped our children to become great. We have failed our children. Our children are us. Our children do the same things that we do and they do different things than we do. We are the weak links in the chain and we are the chain. Can we repair ourselves? Truly can we reunite and become one again. Can we put us back together. We have created the world that we live in. Our world is great. Our world is alive. Our world is a failure. Our world is dying. Society is us. We are society. We are the world. There is no one who is not part of us. When we separate ourselves we die. We without the group of us are weak. We cannot survive in the world without each other. We can not go to war without each other. We have to cooperate to have war. We have to cooperate to have peace. We have some choices to make. Do we want to become us? Can we unite into something bigger than the sum of its parts or are we going to eliminate ourselves or is something else going to happen.
We is a small word.
Us is a small word.
We is an immense word as is us.
Do we want to die or do we want to live?
Do we want to treat ourselves with respect?
Do we want to take care of ourselves?
I think we do. I think we will.

Think about it.