Is the ultimate agenda to take God out of everything? Counterfeit the creation through science? All signs point to exactly that.
Many Christians today are taught to compromise Biblical Scripture with the ever-changing theories of what's claimed to be "science." But is it really science? Because true science is simply the scientific method or empirical data. It is a method of inquiry and the knowledge acquired by that method. The scientific method involves hypothesizing, experimenting, observing and drawing conclusions.
Central to the method of science is that no theory is ever considered final. All theories are subject to scrutiny and reexamination, and it is assumed that all will eventually be proven false by a more comprehensive theory. Yet try to question Evolution, Relativity, Big Bang, the heliocentric universe, gravity, dark matter, dark energy, black holes, etc., and you will be mocked, called names, and/or ignored for your stupidity and utter ignorance, no matter how much real evidence you provide, or how well articulated your argument is.
What is commonly called science these days is actually religion of the world. Full of fabrication and anti-God agenda. The failing of science is not about the scientific method; it is about a largely unrecognized epistemology that developed as a result of the successes of "science". This faulty epistemology can be called scientism, and we should make a sharp distinction between science and scientism.
However, in order to accomplish such a feat, they, the global elite, must systematically create an entire paradigm/”reality” without God, that is anti-Christian, anti biblical, and that dehumanizes, and discredits that you are special, loved, uniquely made in the image of an all-loving, all powerful God. Is it possible that this deception started long ago, maybe even as far back as Pythagoras?
Again, science is nothing more that metaphysics if we simply proclaim it true without confirmation. Science requires repeated confirmation by testing predictions. A clever theory does not solve a problem if it can't confirm the prediction. Where is the confirming example?
"It’s when we allow the world to provide the lens through which we look, that we lose our 'deception perception'."
“Let no man deceive himself. If any man from you seemeth to be wise in the world, let him become a fool that he may be wise For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, he taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. Therefore let no man glory in men” 1Corinthians 3:18-21
It's no secret that the Christian religion has been--and continues to be--responsible for much human suffering throughout history; however, what is not so broadly publicized, therefore, overlooked by many, including Atheists, themselves, is the human suffering brought about--albeit, more recent history-- by another form of religion: Atheism (see video below)--not to be confused with Agnosticism, the view that the existence or non-existence of any deity is unknown and possibly unknowable--which claims to be anti-religious, despite it's passionate belief system. I mean, one must ask why was the bloodiest century in history, the most secular century in human history? That is, of course, the 20th century.
Of course, Atheists, like Richard Dawkins, argue that it wasn't militant atheism that was responsible for so much death and destruction; it was the result of communist leaders such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Ceausescu, etc. Yet, the enforcement of atheism was a critical requirement for the success of communism, and thus it had to be implemented at all costs. Not to mention, if you're going to argue that millions were killed due to the insanity of a few men, the same argument could be used for all of the human suffering caused by Christianity. An even viscous leader like Hitler only feigned Christian belief, until it was no longer necessary. Hitler's acceptance of the ideas of Nietzsche and Darwin shaped his ideology and allowed him to justify his atrocities in the minds of Nazis and their supporters. In other words, his initial identification with Christianity was strictly a utilitarian move. The same might even hold true for Constantine the Great, well known for being the first Roman emperor to be converted to Christianity, the question remaining, "was his conversion, authentic, or purely political?” Moreover, conversion to Christianity had to be understood in the context of that time. Many early Christians were still polytheists, including Constantine, accepting a Christian God together with their old gods, and that Constantine was seen as a god, and saw himself as a god, and people revered gods not because they were gods, but because gods were "useful". In other words, it's more complex than the black and white issue portrayed.
“The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people - the Jews, the landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped - have to be eliminated in order to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's dictum, "If God is not, everything is permitted." -- Dinesh D'Souza
Like many religious people, there are many atheists who want the world to believe as they do, that all life is an unintended consequence of coincidence, that life exists by mere chance. This belief is unsupported by scientific fact, thus, 100% faith based. Therefore, militant atheism is the orthodox rejection of intelligence in the creation of life, and in physical reality. Science, or some would say pseudo-science, is their god, because there is no scientific proof that life evolved from nothing, by chance. Skeptics who advocate a materialistic or atheistic viewpoint can be just as militantly intolerant, authoritarian, and dangerous to society, as any fundamentalist religious zealot of any persuasion.
Some might say, yeah but, unlike Christianity, atheism lacks the organization necessary to exert any kind of influence or power. Well, on the surface, that might seem to be true, but dig a little deeper and you will find a very well organized group of people, whose arsenal of persuasion and strategic influence is that much stronger due to its apparent non-existence.
On the surface, this might sound preposterous. How could a few people do battle against the power and wealth of the Christian church? Well, besides infiltrating the Church and the schools dating back to at least the 1950s, which senate hearing testimony proves, today, advances in information technology and the proliferation of electronic media have, more or less, leveled the playing field between these two "religions" in the "war of ideas" After all, critics of Darwinian evolution-- Atheist doctrine--are labeled raving lunatics, fundamentalist Creationists or Right-wing zealots, despite the fact that Darwin's theory is based on post-hoc explanation. In fact, the addition of extraneous hypotheses to a theory to save it from being falsified is what saves the Big Bang theory from complete abandonment. Without the creation of black holes, dark matter, dark energy, the Big Bang theory would've died out long ago. Yet, this is what the public schools and mainstream media promote and teach.
The League of Militant Atheists or Goddless was the organization founded by the Bolshevik's regime in 1925 to spearhead its efforts to promote atheism and he presents the League's propaganda, activities, and personnel at both the central and the provincial levels. Although this organization no longer officially exists, its ideological followers are very influential and powerful in mainstream academia, and to a large extent control the public's understanding of science through suppression of alternative theories, and censorship in the name of science dogma. Countless numbers of scientists have paid a heavy price for the heresy of opposing orthodox interpretations of the cosmos, of how life began...for going against the established paradigms, such as the "Big Bang" theory, and/or the doctrine of Darwinian evolution...
Take TED Talk, a nonprofit supposedly devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading", and its recent censorship of Rodger Sheldrake and Graham Hancock because a few militant atheists declared that they were spreading pseudoscience. Not only that, they admit to having a number of dedicated activists working on the most popular online encyclopedic resource, Wikipedia--that advertises itself as a the democratic information editing platform--amongst other popular platforms of information dissemination that aren't always what they seem. They admitted to it in The Skeptical Inquirer. , one of their publications as well as its British counterpart,the Skeptic.
Don't get me wrong. It's not that atheists aren't entitled to the same rights to free speech as everyone else. Of course they are. What I find objectionable is their intellectual conceit...that thay actually think they aren't involved in a religion, and their insidious effort to censor and suppress on the grounds that it denies scientific evidence, especially when they know these resources are used by the majority of young and non-skeptical readers.
Today, everyone has been indoctrinated taught to believe that enlightened modern man's knowledge is based on objective science and dispassionate secular reasoning, freed from religious superstitions. But true science does not affirm nor reject any theory out of hand, but,
instead, first carefully, and impartially, examines all available
evidence before jumping to conclusion. True science does not suppress
or censor dissenting viewpoints and voices.
That said, the establishment paradigm has conquered the physical sciences of astronomy, physics and biology, and has dug its heels in universities and lower schools everywhere. Questioning and/or non-acceptance of these paradigms is equivalent to career death for scientists. So, it appears mainstream science is merely a veneer that masks a very powerful religion.
Martyred in the USSR is a documentary about militant atheism in the former Soviet Union. It tells the personal, emotional and horrific story of what people went through simply because they chose to cling to their faith, even at the risk of death. It did not matter what religion you practiced, if you believed in God in the USSR you were persecuted, and persecuted brutally. From 1917 to 1990 people of faith were shot, executed, thrown in the gulag and left to die because the Soviet Government hated religion. What makes this story extremely important is that the new generation in Russia knows nothing about their past and will deny that the brutality ever happened.
Believe it or not, The Origins of Species By Means of Natural Selection or Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, by Charles Darwin was not the first time a proposal for the diversity of life included an evolutionary explanation. In fact, evolutionary concepts about life date as far back as 5,000 years ago.
According to the 4,000 year old Babylonian text, Enuma-Elish, life first appeared spontaneously in water and then evolved one species from one another. Many years later, the myth of evolution found fertile ground in Ancient Greece. Some Greek philosophers, calling themselves "materialists", accepted only the existence of matter and counted matter as the original source of life. Consequently, they resorted to the myth of evolution, inherited from the Sumerians, to explain how living beings came into existence.
Much later, in 1803, Jean Baptiste Lamarck gave a detailed account of the theory of evolution. From there, in 1859, Darwin published his theory of evolution which is basically a more detailed account of the Sumerian myth. Nevertheless, his theory gained political momentum because it provided a "scientific" basis for the ruling class to this very day.
The fossil record revealed that things did not under go an evolutionary process from primitive to the complex. Even things that lived hundreds of millions of years ago possessed the same complex structure of their counterparts living today. There was no trace of transitional forms that Darwin assumed to have existed, and were supposed to link one species to another. Biochemistry revealed that life was too complex to have emerged by chance.
"Highly sophisticated molecular machines control every molecular process. Thus the details of life are finely calibrated and the machinery of life enormously complex... The simplest self-sufficient cell has the capacity to produce thousands of different proteins and other molecules…synthesis, degradation, energy generation, replication, maintenance of cell architecture mobility, regulation, repair, communication…All of these functions take place in virtually every cell, and each function itself requires the interaction of numerous parts.”
[...]
A child can die because of a single defect in one of the many machines needed for taking protein to the lysosome. A single flaw in the cell’s… protein transport pathway is fatal. Unless the entire system were immediately in place, our ancestors would have died. Attempts at a gradual evolution are a recipe for extinction”.
In 1871, Darwin went on to write The Descent of Man, claiming man evolved from apes without evidence to back it up. Moreover, he claimed certain races of human beings - Caucasians - were more evolved than others, suggesting further, that the less evolved races would eventually be totally annihilated. After all, life was based on a bloody struggle between the weak and the strong.
The Piltdown Man Fake: The Greatest Forgery of the 20th Century
In 1912, Charles Dawson discovered Eoanthropus dawsoni, the "Piltdown man" giving credence to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Of Dawson's discoveries, 38 were found to be fakes. In 1953, a scientist named Kenneth Oakley examined the Piltdown man and discovered the jaw of an ape had been attached to a human skull. One of his partners was none other than Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who in turn, really pushed evolution on the Catholic Church. Teilhard would go on to work in China and take part in the Peking man discovery, a collection of would be missing links – 175 fossil fragments - that mysteriously disappeared in 1941 before anyone could fully examine them.
Darwin's theory provided the foundation for a ruthless ideology (Communism, Nazism), that humanity could be exalted through struggle and violence, to leaders and thinkers, such as Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Tse Tung, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.
Engels, after finishing Darwin's book, wrote to Marx: "Darwin, whom I am just now reading is splendid." In response, Marx replied: "This is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view."
In a nut shell, Darwin's theory lacking a scientific basis has generated nothing more than a dark legacy to humanity.
It's really no wonder that we consider ourselves evolved. What with the amazing technological advancements and the unprecedented material progress of Western civilization; how could one think otherwise?
But before the modern era, technological advancement was slow and new discoveries were rare. Cultures changed so slowly that it was barely noticeable. Without having witnessed any significant change or even being able to imagine how change might happen, people formed the impression that the world would remain more or less the same.
Rarely, when change did occur, especially if that change included advances in comfort, knowledge, beauty, or involved profit, people began to think civilization was was evolving. But is it really?
Take the use of radioactive materials in cosmetics that dates back to the 1920-30s. It is a good example of the what can go wrong when any industry jumps on the bandwagon of a scientific advance too soon. Despite this, and other technological "advances" that proved detrimental to life, the role of science in industry exponentially increased.
Zapped with radioactive dust that was supposed to have been 100% safe.
Moreover, during this same time period - the twentieth century - we murdered more human beings than during the nineteen centuries that led up to this age. Could it be the more technologically advanced we become, the more deadly we become?
"We are close to dead. There are faces and bodies like gorged maggots on the dance floor, on the highway, in the city, in the stadium; they are a host of chemical machines who swallow the product of chemical factories, aspirin, preservatives, stimulant, relaxant, and breathe out their chemical wastes into a polluted air. The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again".- Norman Mailer
"After all the body is an extension of fashion...We will have cyborg bodies. We will have augmented bodies. We will auto-morph ourselves into whatever vehicle keeps us in existence for the longest period of time with the most pleasure, the least pain, and the most ease, the most elegance ." - Natasha Vita More transhumanist artist in documentary, TechnoCalyps, below
Non – biological intelligence is growing exponentially, while biological intelligence is not growing at all. Does this mean that one day machines will have consciousness? Will rule us?
At the dawn of the third millennium, we face the possibility of fully merging man and machine, radically changing mankind as we know it. Technology is about to take over the torch of history and guide us into a new era with the goal of transcending human limits and creating a more evolved species. This begs the question, what will happen to human beings? Like the Neanderthals, will human beings become a fossil of history? Or, will the new evolved species enslave human beings?
Upon first viewing of this pithy little video below, I thought it was wonderful. It's brief, forceful, and gets right to the point. But, therein lies the question: what is the point? Does it leave you with a feeling of disgust for the parasitic, plundering ruling class who are destroying our nation? Or does it leave you repulsed by the "barbaric" low-class, mindless, "too-stupid-to-live" animals consumers from Hell? What are the chances that any of these "barbaric" shoppers will even see this video in order to mend their ways?
Just listen to the dehumanizing, condemning rhetoric...and to whom it is aimed. It sure ain't the pompous-assed prima donnas.
Throughout the history of mythology, twins appear, representing polarity, duality or opposing principles, within what is essentially, a united structure: Good/evil, light/darkness, masculine/feminine, introvert/extrovert, etc. These dualities power the circulatory process so crucial to the eternal cycle of renewal and the cyclic nature of our universe, thus, always a center of spiritual force.
The 'horns' (bull) were a sacred symbol of the Minoan religion. It was this "corner of the Aegean that saw the rise, nearly 4,000 years ago, of the first high civilization of Europe, the prelude to the Homeric age and to the full noonday of classical Greece that was to follow". Like the sacred 'horns', the sacred 'towers', gave an asymmetrical appearance, as they were not actually side by side on the same axis, often portrayed as one appearing taller than the other.
Today, 4,000 years later, the bull is still sacred. He represents virile strength, massive power, stubbornness, and destruction. The ultimate "blessing" of our one true religion, capitalism, is the bull market; the twin towers (horns), emblematic of - amongst the numerous other meanings interwoven into it - our might and trade.
'Leaving the waters of the splendid East, the sun leapt up into the firmament to bring light to the immortals and to men who plough the earth and perish.' - Homer, Odyssey, Book III
He came back,
This time for me.
On the 110th floor I was so close to God
I could almost grab his beard.
Never before has heaven been this close to hell.
I can feel its fire on the floors below
Raising ash and paper and smoke
Thick as Satan’s laughter.
At the window, shattered,
I look for salvation and he tempts me,
Dares me to jump,
Whispering a psalm in my ear
He spits as he speaks:
“He will bid his angels watch over you.
With their hands they will support you.”
I mumble “Amen,”
Close my eyes and sense the rush of air.
I cannot breathe until I finally feel
Those hands of angels
Hard as cement against my face.
-- By Doug Seubert
Funeral for Staff Sgt. Marcus Golczynski. Christian, Golczynski's son receives flag from Marine Lt. Col. Ric Thompson. Photographer Aaron Thompson
8/19/09 Paul Pickett of Minden La., U.S. Army's Apache Company, 2nd Battalion 87th Infantry Regiment, covers injured soldier as helicopter lands to evacuate wounded after armored vehicle hit an improvised explosive device in the Tangi Valley of Afghanistan's Wardak Province. (AP Photo/David Goldman) #
Jeremy Rifkin, founder and president of the Foundation On Economic Trends, is an American economist, writer, public speaker, political advisor and activist. Rifkin's work explores the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. In the video below, he investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society.
As the evolution war rages on 200 years after the birth of Charles Darwin, it's important to note that the media has confused a fundamental issue, according to Dr. Stephen Meyers, author of Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, and that is, Intelligence Design (ID) theory is not based on theistic belief. Rather, just like evolution, ID is also based on science.
"They’ve confused the evidence of the Intelligence Design (ID) theory with the implications of the ID theory. The theory may well have implications that are supportive of theistic belief, but the theory is not based on theistic belief. It’s based on the discovery of digital code in cells, miniature machines in cells, the fine-tuning of the laws of physics and chemistry and standard ways of scientific reasoning about the remote past and the history of life."
Both theories are based on what we know about the cause and effect structure of the world, on Darwin's own method, and applying that method to evidence that Darwin did not yet know about, which reaffirms the case for design based on the discoveries of modern biology.
Why is this important?
Because the knowledge landscape has changed considerably since Darwin, as the information age has come to biology. This has illuminated the complexities of DNA - "double helix" structure of DNA which carries our genetic code - which has raised questions that scientists and evolutionary theory cannot begin to answer. For example, explaining the origins of the information and the amazing depth of digital technology found in each and every living cell: "nested coding of information, digital processing, distributive retrieval and storage systems, hierarchical filing system, design patterns or design logic executed with engineering elegance, and genomic operating systems." Not to mention the calculation of the probability of a protein assembling itself from its units is infinitesimally small.
And most importantly, pre-biotic natural selection presupposes information, but where did that information come from? Darwin did not address this question.
We know that proteins (peptides, enzymes, hormones, transmitters, etc.) are analog. It is a digital to analog conversion as the digital information on the genome is read as words to provide the instructions to make a particular protein.
On the other hand, DNA is digital, in that the genetic instructions in a biological cell, are coded as a language using the four nucleotide bases or characters (A, T, G and C) as an alphabet. This four-letter alphabet is used to make sentences of three letter words. which are called codons. DNA can form digital strings of information because the four nucleotides can be linked to each other in any order.
What is DNA enigma? Or the origin of the biological information necessary to build the first living cell?
What, who, how is/are the characters sequentially ordered?
Claude Shannon an engineer and mathematician, known as "the father of information theory"defines information in statistical terms as a measure of improbability, the more improbable a sequence is, the more information it conveys. The top string of characters in the image (left) illustrates complexity, and conveys more information, however the bottom string, is an example of what William Dembski called specified complexity, which enables that sequence to carry or convey functional information.
The specificity of shape in the protein derives from specificity of sequence in amino acids which in turn derives from specificity of sequence of information, the instructions, the digital code stored along the spine of the DNA molecule. In other words, the arrangement of characters matter.
Dr. Meyers uses magnetic letters on a magnetic chalk board as an analogy to what's going on in the DNA molecule. The backbone of the DNA molecule corresponds to the magnetic chalkboard, the nucleotide bases or characters correspond to the magnetic letters. The magnetic forces of attraction at work that bond the letters to the chalkboard operate much the same way when nucleotide bases stick to the backbone in a DNA molecule. However, the magnetic forces of attraction do not explain the sequential order or arrangement of the characters in both the DNA molecule and the magnetic chalkboard.
In other words, it's not the chemistry or physics that produces the sequences that conveys the instructions, it something extraneous to the physics and chemistry of the system, and that extraneous something remains a mystery.
Neil Patrick Harris and partner David Burtka Homosexual coupling occurs in over 1,000 species, from locusts and fruit flies, to penguins, dolphins and primates and the latest studies claim the pairing of same sex couples is not only widespread, but a "necessary biological adaptation for the survival of the species."
For a number of reasons, same-sex bonds have played a significant role in keeping a variety of species from possible extinction. For example, male-male pairings in locusts killed off the weaker males; female-female pairings in the Laysan albatross population raised offspring due to a shortage of males; same-sex couples amongst the dolphins engage in interactions to facilitate group bonding, and many of us have heard about the gay male penguins who hatched the egg rejected by its biological parents.
These are just a few examples that indicate, that not only has natural selection shaped same sex couples, but that same sex coupling acts as a selective force in and of itself. Therefore, it could be said that prohibiting marriage on the basis of a partners' gender is not only unconstitutional, but could adversely affect the evolution of human beings in the long run.
There is no doubt that same sex couples predate recorded human history, cross all social and cultural boundaries, and have played more than an instrumental role in creating culture which is so crucial to human survival. We don't come equipped with built in defense mechanisms like so many other species, as we lack the speed; endurance; strength; "molar" power; ability to fly; ability to camouflage ourselves; and/or shoot poisonous substances, etc.
Yet, in the transition from hunter-gatherers to modern day humans, despite the aforementioned deficiencies, we continue to thrive. While it is true, that our superior intelligence and our innate power or capacity to create factors heavily in our continued existence, it is our exigency to share the world with others that seals the deal.
Gay men and women, all throughout history - from Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar ["every women's husband, every man's wife"] to Leonardo da Vinci to Barney Frank - have overwhelmingly participated in the process of constructing, maintaining and innovating the culture and civilization we depend, not only for the evolution of our species, but the quality of our lives.
Not that it should matter, but sexuality is not a choice. Aside from the fact that gay men have larger penises, recent studies have demonstrated biological differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Amongst many other discoveries, Dr. Allen and Dr. Gorski at UCLA found that the part of the brain structure called the anterior commissure, a "cord of nerve fibers that allows two halves of the brain to communicate with one another, is larger in homosexual men than it is in either heterosexual men or in women." Who is to say that this anatomical difference not only affects sexuality but other spheres as well? Perhaps this difference accounts for what appears to be gay men's large contribution to our political and cultural landscape.
So, if thousands of gay and lesbian couples are forced to leave their American homes and move to one of the countries that do acknowledge homosexual relationships, or we go along with what the right-wing Christian group Family Research Council wants,
"I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe homosexuality is destructive to society." -- Peter Sprigg, FRC's Vice President for Policy
there is no question American culture would suffer tremendously, if not collapse all together.
And the real reason for the existence of homophobia:
Yeah, I know, we're supposed to be cooling it off, but whatever...
Most of the time, as I surf the net, I feel like this guy trying to warm the ocean with a teapot of boiling water. In other words, I'm accomplishing nothing, and many times this is true. But every once in a while, the boiling water I pour, travels an infinitesimally short distance, before assimilating itself, and either provides warmth for - or death, more than likely - a one-celled, planktonic marine organism. The most recently discovered is something called a choanoflagellate.
Yep, that's what I discovered today, the choanoflagellate. It doesn't sound all that interesting, but it most certainly is, as incredible organism is "already telling scientists about the evolutionary changes that accompanied the jump from one-celled life forms to multicellular animals like ourselves." What could possibly be more important?
"Choanoflagellates are the closest living unicellular relatives of animals and, as such, can help us learn about our history and the history of life on Earth, which has been dominated by one-celled organisms." -- Nicole King, Biologist at University of California, Berkeley
Here's the thing: Yes, I could have used the time it took to discover this fascinating knowledge, to, let's say, get off my ass and add a few more greenbacks to my 401K, however, talk about warming up the ocean with a teapot...
Anyway, this new fact cannot be taken away from me. Yes, of course I will forget all about choanoflagellates in the next few minutes. If someone were to approach me today, and ask me about choanoflagellates (ko AN oh FLA je let) called Monosiga brevicollis, and their first comparisons with the genes of multicellular animals, the so-called metazoans...more than likely, I will stare at him as if he were speaking Chinese. That is, until, he says - "Yeah, I discovered this important food source for krill, which are the main source of food for baleen whales, and that by consuming large quantities of bacteria, they, choanoflagellates, play a major role in the carbon cycle of the oceans," on this blog, Smoke and Mirrors - and then, I will, no doubt, retrieve that information as if it were never lost.
Of course, then this guy, whoever he is, will tell me that the link that he discovered - on my blog - will most definitely provide the catalyst needed for him to go on and discover a cure for cancer. This sort of thing happens to me all the time.
So, you see, taking time to surf the net is not so wasteful, after all.
Another problem with the net is that it’s still ‘technology’, and ‘technology’, as the computer scientist Bran Ferren memorably defined it, is ‘stuff that doesn’t work yet.’ We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‘crash’ when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs (and a couple of decades or so after that, as sheets of paper or grains of sand) and we will cease to be aware of the things. In fact I’m sure we will look back on this last decade and wonder how we could ever have mistaken what we were doing with them for ‘productivity.’ -- Douglas Adams, How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet
Two or three generations have grown up in an atmosphere of cultural delusion, constructed to keep President Reagan's ideal economy afloat. This “greed is good” delusion has created an atmosphere that has nurtured rampant materialism and the belief that never ending financial gain is the source of all happiness.
However, over time, this type of atmosphere becomes toxic. Throughout most of our evolutionary history, human beings have had very little experience with abundance. Our physiology and brain functioning are wired for scarcity. Prolonged times of excessive opulence only lulls us into an obtuse complacency. Keeping this in mind, it starts to make a little more sense as to how "Jack" became such a dull boy.
Sure, now, that the economic meltdown has exposed the limits of this delusion, the vastness of stupidity and greed that has engulfed so many people (stupid person #1 right here) becomes glaringly visible. But since our economy is built on our never ending desire for more stuff, changing what has been drilled into us for 30-years may not be all that easy. Can we - government, businesses, and consumers - reorient ourselves and reconceptualize the way we measure "goods" and "services", especially since we're emerging from a Rumpelstiltskin like stupor.
Although this individually and celebrity driven culture has all but crushed the values by which we take care of each other, Dacher Keltner, author of Born to be Good: Signs of a Meaningful Life believes all is not lost. He argues that human beings have survived as a species, not solely because of "survival of the fittest", but because we have managed to control the aspect of ourselves that is naturally greedy, and destructive in order to connect so that we can instead, protect and help each other survive.
In addition, a recent study suggests that giving is better than receiving, providing further evidence that altruistic actions may improve health and longevity. After three decades of excessive desire for more than one needs or deserves, this study may prove useful in convincing people to give up their materialistic obsession and devotion to pleasing themselves, without any regard for anything else.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." -- Edward Abbey.
Killed by a hunter last month in the Canadian Arctic, this male bear was confirmed via DNA analysis last week to be half grizzly, half polar bear.
The act of mating with a species other than your own may not be as ill advised or peculiar as it seems.
Recent research indicates that hybridization is not only widespread in nature but it might also spawn many more new species than previously thought.
A growing number of studies has been presented as evidence that two animal species can combine to produce a third, sexually viable species in a process known as hybrid speciation. Newly identified examples include both insects and fish.
This evolutionary process, while known to be common in plants, has long been considered extremely rare among animals.
Animals are generally thought to evolve the opposite way, when a single species gradually splits into two over many generations.
But some scientists now believe that the behavior that has been called animals' sexual blunders could be an important force in their evolution.
Psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson Jr seems to think so. He sees depression, not so much as a disease, but something that has evolved as a "way of eliciting support from family and friends."
"sees the mind as a set of evolved mechanisms, or adaptations, that have promoted survival and reproduction. Evolutionary psychopathology — abnormal psychology through an evolutionary lens — looks at what has gone wrong."
Evolutionary psychology questions the recurrence of mental disorders throughout our evolutionary history. What is the reason many of these disorders were not eliminated during the natural selection process?
Matthew C. Keller, a postdoctoral fellow at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, theorizes that medicating symptoms of mental illness could be blocking the healing process when he says,
"If we're blocking the depressive symptoms — through medication for example — we could be hamstringing the body's defenses."
Evolutionary psychology is very new field. The article in the LA Times summarizes the theoretical debate and some of the therapies that have evolved from the research.
Read more...
I finally understand why economics is so hard for many people to grasp.
It's not because of complexity. The rules of supply and demand aren't inherently more difficult to fathom than those that apply to, say, politics, or cooking, or sports.
Yet while most people have no trouble wrapping their brains around these subjects - indeed, millions will be eagerly absorbing their finer points this weekend - (What are you watching: Meet the Press, celebrity chefs or college football?) - few have a similar appetite for economics.
And now I know why, thanks to Alan Fiske.
Fiske, a professor of anthropology at UCLA who previously taught at Penn and Bryn Mawr, has devoted decades of research to disentangling human relationships. He's studied communities all over the world, comparing cultures in West Africa with those in Europe and America.
His conclusion: Just as every human language is composed of the same grammatical elements (subjects, verbs, etc.), all relationships are built from exactly four kinds of interactions.
Fiske labels these communal sharing, equality matching, authority ranking and market pricing. Here's what he means:
Communal sharing is how you treat your immediate family: All for one and one for all. Or as Marx put it: From each according to ability, to each according to need.
Equality matching, by contrast, means we all take turns. From kindergarten to the town meeting, it's all about fair shares, reciprocity, doing your part.
Authority ranking is how tribes function, not to mention armies, corporations and governments. Know your place, obey orders, and hail to the chief.
Market pricing, of course, is the basis of economics. It's what we do whenever we weigh costs and benefits, trade up (or down), save or invest.
Don't get Fiske wrong: He's not saying that each relationship in your life fits into one of these four slots. Rather, these are paradigms - mental models - that we use to help make sense of our interactions.
When there are conflicts, moreover, Fiske maintains it's often because we aren't all using the same model.
For example, you might see housework as a communal-sharing function, while your spouse approaches it as equality-matching. Neither is wrong, yet you still end up angry or guilty when the laundry isn't done.
The same problem can afflict whole societies, as Fiske described to me recently. "The Danes pride themselves on being fair," he said. "They can't understand why they don't get along with their Middle Eastern immigrants."
But Fiske does: "The immigrants expect authority ranking. The Danes expect strict equality matching. Each side sees people constantly violating the models."
To call this a far-reaching theory is probably a gross understatement. The more I think about it, the more it seems to fit and explain.
Does the boss have a leadership problem? Maybe it's because she has a communal-sharing model in her head, while the troops are mainly into authority-ranking. Or vice versa.
But what is particularly interesting is the role of market pricing, which Fiske speculates might have been the last to evolve in our prehistoric ancestors' brains.
It makes sense. For hunter-gatherers in small bands, sharing, matching and ranking were probably as fundamental to survival as eating and breeding. But market pricing involves complex choices based on mathematical ratios.
"It's the difference between addition and subtraction on one hand, multiplication and division on the other," Fiske says.
Commerce and global trade, of course, require a finely honed version of the market-pricing model. But if humans developed this model relatively late, it might well be less than universal, even today.
In other words, to have an intuitive grasp of economics, you might just need to take a step or two up the evolutionary ladder.
