What do I know?

"The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know…" - Socrates

Now there is some truth, some words that have some impact behind them. How amazing were the philosophers of ancient Greece? I can see why though, they would sit around all day and philosophize with their fellow men of thought. Through conversations and expressing ideas they were able to formulate representations of themselves and the world around them. Much of their teachings are still passed down in todays age. This quote really hit me hard, just because it is so true. The more I learn about anything, the more I realize how complex it really is. The more you learn about something, the more those basic layers are peeled back and the intricate nature is revealed. Yet, it is only when you allow yourself to be open to the possibility of something with deeper meaning that you can actually begin to find it. I found myself telling a dear friend of my "The moment you realize you know nothing, is the moment you can begin to understand anything..."

"I love...

...the feel of the grass under my toes, the sun's warmth on my skin, the breeze on my face, the sound of the trees rustling, and the smell of natures perfume." - Me

Nature is truly amazing. I cannot get enough of it. Hell, there is even recent articles claiming that if you spend more time in nature, you increase your vitality, your life. I believe it. It is so stress relieving too, picking one leaf from a tree, I can just look at it and become encompassed by its simplistic beauty. It's a fractal, like the tree, like a forest, like everything. Built on repeating patterns. The golden ratio perhaps? Hmm. Interesting. Anyway, I love everything about nature. I have become a complete nature buff. Climbing trees, hiking, rock climbing, laying at the beach all the time, wading in the ocean waves and soaking in the sun. I love it all. The end.

Destined to be Free

I was asked my thoughts on destiny the other day, which goes hand in hand with free will. This is a great question, and it's been one of the biggest philosophical questions of our times. Is there such thing as free will? Or are we just big gears fueled by our chemical and biological processes? There has been a vast array of different views on this... If you look at Sir Isaac Newton, he loved something called determinism, the idea of a physically determined universe. This is sometimes referred to as the Billiard Ball view of nature, for example, if we had billiard balls on a pool table, they will only move if acted upon. If we could measure the exact velocity and angle of the first billiard ball hitting the second, we could predict the movement of the second ball! This continues to - if we knew the exact chemical makeup of a human being, the historical and social factors he has grown up with, in effect, everything about someone, we could then predict his future actions... in that they are simply all previous experiences leading up to an acceptance or ignorance of causal factors. A good argument to look at on the other hand, is a man named Jean Sartre, his view was something called 'Existence precedes Essence" ... He was an atheist, and with this he believed there are no essences bestowed upon us, meaning pre-defined human nature, rather we have a self-conscious that allows us to define ourselves by making self-directed choices. He yearned for humans to "act authentically" in that we do not follow social norms and standards, but we take responsibility for creating our own future.

Now, I myself haven't really planted my roots into either one of these views just yet. As I am still learning! But, I am reading a book right now called "The Field". To sum it up, everything is in/part of this giant background field of energy, on the smallest level of anything, at electrons and quarks, this energy field is constantly exchanging information back and forth with them. This connects everything in the world, and universe. A view which I am quite fond of. This book attributes our cells abilities to group together and generate a leg as a leg, or our liver as our liver, to a "mold" set by this energy field. As we do not really know how the processes that this happens by while we are developing as a fetus. For example, the scientists looked at energy currents surrounding a salamander egg, they were able to measure a field surrounding the egg which took form of the adult salamander that the egg would one day grow in to!!! As if it was already fixed. So, as you can see, this poses a very interesting question. Is everything fixed? Is an act that you think is out of the normal and against your normal actions already accounted for?

It is amazing to think about all the decisions and things that have happened to make you be sitting where you are this very instant. I can think about hundreds of small choices that eventually led to a huge life change in retrospect. It is insane. So many things and decisions are constantly being made, I view the world as a giant web of decisions, we weave our way through one day to the next, in the end - I think you we sitting here because it is exactly where we were suppose to be sitting. So, I guess to answer the grand question, I do have a little hunch in me that the universe is unfolding as it should...

What Am I?

I was driving to Newport Beach the other day... I found myself both on the way there and the way back in intense thought. I wasn't focusing on driving, at one point I even texted my cousin - "Thanks for steering subconscious." Anyway, back to the good stuff, I've read somewhere that the mind does the best thinking during mundane tasks... such as driving. I kept thinking, what am I? Are we just brains? What is this consciousness and why can I think that I am just a brain? To think that, you have to have such a strong sense of self - ironically.

Aristotle said - All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Well, is that it? Are we just big gears, chemical and electrical processes? Do we just follow these laws of physics? Or is there something more? Is there something else? Perhaps a unified consciousness or a field that connects everything in life; I can assure you that we do not know everything about ourselves, this world, or this universe.

When I look at some of the processes our brain computes daily, such as vision - here I see a tree, it is green. In a nut shell, my brain takes in the light rays that are given off in the electromagnetic spectrum, some cones in my brain are "tuned" to this medium lightwave that green gives off, and all of a sudden the color "green" is recognized and sensed! Now it is one thing for my brain to have these cones that are sensitive to light waves in the first place, it's another thing for these light waves to register as the color green, and it is another all together that something is doing the recognizing! Is it a gear driven process, that one thing leads to another and brings up this knowing of seeing the color green? Or am I the driver of my brain, if you will, someone the manifestation of all the processes at once, another level of awareness. Our brains are mostly working on the subconscious level, we don't consciously process colors, sounds, motor movements... well almost anything. This is more supportive of the Darwinian evolution theory. That all we are has been derived over time, evolving to support survival. But what is this consciousness? Neuroscience today is looking at this crucial and interesting question to understanding ourselves. In the words of Ramachandran, we are aiming to find the double helix of our brain, what makes some things conscious, where others are unconscious. One interesting case that shows the clear discrimination between conscious and subconscious is in the visual system once again, with the case of "blindsight". What happens here is one of the routes to vision is damaged, typically the V1 or visual cortex itself is damaged. This is essential to note, because it isn't the eye itself that is damaged, but a conductor to one of the visual routes. Now I say one of the visual routes, because there is another route that bypasses the visual cortex and uses other brain structures. So here I have this blindsight patient, patient X, he is unable to "see", in that if you ask him what is in front of him - he will report seeing nothing at all. However, if you were to stream dots across a screen in front of him in a specific direction, such as to the right, and then ask him to guess which direction the dots are moving, patient X will 'guess' correctly every time! Without ever actually being able to "see" the direction of the dots! This is made possible by one of the intact visual routes, and ironically, it is an older route that is utilized by most reptiles. It revolves around the processes of motion. For example, a frog can't see still things, if a fly was to perch directly in front of it, the frog would not notice the fly. Yet once the fly left that spot and moved, the frogs visual system would go haywire and the frogs stomach would have some digesting to do! Basically, this poses two things, one - that we have subconscious structures assisting us with everyday tasks, and two - since in this specific example, that subconscious structure is apparent in older species, are we merely just the evolution of it? Leaving me to pose to you the grandiose question of it all... Are we just brains?