Waking Life and Some Thoughts

That movie (Waking Life) is one that I feel everyone should watch. It isn't packed full of action, drama, comedy or any of those typical movie categories. It is packed with information, with ideas, with philosophical questions. The things that bring people to life when they think about them, the very things that gives us our individuality. It isn't what kind of clothes we wear, or how we wear our hair. It is what we think, who we are to the deepest core of ourselves.

I feel like most people don't even have this conscious awareness of the universe to realize how small we really are. We are the big bad humans, here to control the world. No - we are the size of 1/1000000 of a grain of sand. A very wise Cosmologist Carl Sagan compared our attempts in contacting other life forms in the universe to that of a single man, standing in the middle of the Amazon Rain Forest, screaming trying to reach our civilizations on the outside. This is highly improbable. There are 250 billion known stars in the galaxy (as of 1976), with all the calculations of pressure, atmospheric conditions, temperature, the whole mix needed for life - there is approximately one million other intelligent life forms out there. Now that may sound like a lot, but that is every 1 / 200,000 stars. The closest star clusters to us are 300 light years away, that's really far away. To give you an example, if we (and we have) tried to contact them via radio waves (travels at the speed of light, which is the fastest something can travel [as we know]) it will take THREE HUNDRED years just to reach the star! Not to mention the other THREE HUNDRED years to reply! Even if there was life on the closest stars to us, we wouldn't know until the year 2600!!! That's to say if we haven't blown ourselves up yet.

Which brings me to another thing, war. I cannot stress how much I dislike the concept of this. I have found through my recent traveling around the world that a good majority of the people I talked to categorize people into races, countries, etc. I do feel this is normal, as you probably are thinking as you are reading over this. Now although it is sometimes useful when talking about select groups of people, to refer to the human species in terms of countries - or different religions, is a terrible way to look at the human species! I believe it is the sole reason that we have war in the first place, we place these categories upon people, we separate us from them. This creates differences that normally would not be there, after all we are the same species. Sure we grew up on different continents, using different arbitrary language symbols to communicate feelings and ideas. But we are one in the same, in the very essence of our humanity. Once these restrictions and classifications are lifted off people, I think a great weight will be lifted off the human race as well. We will spend less time worrying about what other countries are doing, our relationships with the other people and finally become one with them. We will strive toward a common good for all humanity, I predict this will be necessary in the near future, if not, I think our world as we know is posed with great danger. Especially with the new developments of weapon technology. The capacity to entirely destroy a civilization is harnessed with the press of a button.

The more I learn, the more I want to learn. I said these words Yesterday. I don't know why, they kind of just came to me. I couldn't agree more with myself, though. I can relate it to the example of a bunch of fish in a pond; starting with a little fish, who eats littler fish - becoming bigger, now this same fish eats more little fish or bigger little fish to grow even larger, the cycle keeps going and going. With the fish needing to eat more and more to keep growing. I relate my mind to the original fish, and all the fish I am eating are the arts, philosophy and science. The more and more I learn, the more I realize how much is still out there to learn. The mysterious is beckoning me to come explore in all of its wonder. This just brought two quotes up to mind; the first, by Gerry Spence "I'd rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief" I wish more people would hear this quote and understand it. What good is having a working mind without being able to explore the different possibilities of a situation? So often I see people firmly committed in a belief, when I question them about it, they not only fail to defend the belief with any weight, but seem to dismiss the question all together in a ' I know I am right ' kind of fashion. If you keep the mind open, you will keep learning, once it is closed, learning ceases and biases are formed. One of the biggest things I have learned in recent times is the value of an objective mind, without emotions and without bias, this leaves everything as it is ready to be examined. I have been able to look past how I feel about things personally, and view them for what they really are. This has increased my knowledge and understanding of both people and the universe tremendously. I will leave you with the second quote, by Albert Einstein "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." This couldn't be more right on, I believe, and of course we couldn't expect less from our good friend Mister Einstein. . .