Andrew McAuley suggested that sea kayaking was the new mountaineering. For him it was, and it is luring me in too. But for some reason it isn’t drawing the crowds that a new frontier maybe should. It is baffling how many untouched adventures exist on the open water. But even many serious mountaineers draw the line at an open ocean crossing. 95% of the ocean has yet to be explored and until recently, more was known about the surface of the moon. The water turns people away and rightfully so. It has been hundreds of millions of years since we were residents of an aquatic environment. It is foreign to us, unstable. We are not the top of the food chain in the ocean. In fact, we are so outnumbered that an open ocean swimmer is as easy of a meal as a pork tenderloin on your dinner plate. We can only be visitors to the ocean, and that humility is something foreign to the designed environments. Continue reading “A leap of logic”
Tag Archives: universe
“The Universe manifested into self recognition”
“Seeing as we are the Universe manifested into self recognition we have the right to explore itself. Stop thinking of us as earthlings but rather, as how Carl Sagan put it, hydrogen given 15 billion years of evolution”
This was a comment posted on a facebook picture about the question of how to manage our space travels and interactions with alien lifeforms. This is amazing statement, and one that with adequate knowledge is not hard to recognize, but is seemingly impossible to grasp. We are exactly that; we are atoms trying to understand themselves. We are the universe trying to understand itself. That is a mind boggling realization and makes me soooo happy to acknowledge it. Continue reading “The Universe manifested into self recognition”
Cosmological significance
Yesterday I listened to a talk from Sam Harris on the subject of free will. It was a brilliant speech, one that I definitely feel is worth watching and may clarify some elements of my last post. What he is addressing is that not only does free will not exist but that it could not exist, that the concept itself is impossible, that to imagine free will is muddled and intangible. Harris spent a large portion of his speech outlining the benefits to knowing that we do not have free will, how an acknowledgement of this reality could help retain fear but abolish hatred, how it could help inspire a reconstructing of our justice system, and many other reasons for adopting an awareness of our true freedom. I was challenged the other day on my analysis of life and my inspiration in life coming almost purely from a cosmological perspective. While Harris supplied us with an adequate and logical reason for understanding that our thoughts are not our own, I wondered about the benefit of analyzing everything from a cosmological perspective. Continue reading Cosmological significance
Bursting at the seams
I am really happy to be here. I love this planet, I love this species, and I love this universe. Sometimes (often) I get so overwhelmed by this place that I feel like I am going to explode. Tonight my barriers holding the excitement back fell to the jumping, pacing, happy, overwhelmed Grayson within. First it was negligible senescence, then it was multiverse theory, then it was genetics, then neutron stars. I got excited and giddy as hell. I couldn’t even stay seated. I don’t know why it is that this happens. It is like a tick, crippling if held back. Continue reading Bursting at the seams
Overwhelmed with awe
People usually start thinking I’m crazy when I get exited about existence, from the smallest to the biggest, from biology to astronomy, life to death. But it’s all so goddamn amazing, I don’t know how to keep it all pent-up. I’ve tried before but I get antsy. So now I’ll risk embarrassment for the potential reward of someone responding with equal excitement.
Think about how crazy awesome all this is. Look at your hand. You are composed of atoms. Everything inside you is atoms: protons and neutrons in a core surrounded by spinning electrons with an ability to exist in two places at once. I mean, holy hell. If that isn’t enough reason to always be happy, I don’t know what is. Electrons don’t orbit a nucleus like a planet does a star. Instead an electron orbits in a chaotic pattern that we define in probability terms as orbitals. They are simply our best guess as to where the electron may be.
Humility over certainty
Recently I watched an internet troll attack the idea of a godless universe on a freethinkers Facebook page. It was an interesting challenge to a group of people who typically always agree on this subject. His argument, however well disguised with jargon and circular logic, was entirely delusional and arrogant, claiming divine knowledge that not many claim to have access to. He asked the question of why someone would want to choose a life without certainty in a godless universe in lieu of a life of certainty with faith. I was interested in the question and had it not been for the raging hatred on the other side, it could have been an interesting discussion. So instead of responding to someone who refuses to give my words recognition, I decided to record it here. Continue reading Humility over certainty
Senseless violence
I once believed that religion and violence could be separated. I once believed that people simply used religion to justify their craving for violence. They used it to justify it to themselves and to everyone else, to rouse a riot or to begin a war. I thought religion preached non violence and it was counter intuitive to follow a path of destruction.
I am struggling to see that peaceful coexistence anymore. The reason is not because religion is inherently violent which most often it obviously is apparently not. Instead, I believe it to be a result of the fundamental basis of believing in something that is unprovable, immeasurable, and unseen. Alongside that illogical thinking comes a senselessness that violence fuels off to become justified.
No one has ever been able to tell me what god is. No one ever can put it into words so that I can understand. Everyone just tells me it something you know, something personal that you may feel. Continue reading Senseless violence
I am a brute
My body has no concept of anything. It is a machine. Actin sliding over myosin, ATP shuffling through my cells. I race to show the power of the body and of nothing more. I love my machine. I respect my machine. I want to show the capacity of my machine. That’s a powerful goal, one that I can grasp, one that I can massage, one that I can tweak and train and nourish and stress.
I race to show the power of selection. My mom, in the deepest part of her subconscious chose my dad at least partially for the seemingly superficial reason of his muscles and ability at sport. She may not know it, but she did. My dad, maybe more willing to admit to his desires chose my mom partially based off her physique. She’s strong, fit, and capable. Less superficial, they both saw each other’s drive, the work ethic that underlined and highlighted their personalities. It was a process of selection. They wanted strong children and as little as they may have consciously considered this result, in the deepest well of their subconscious it was ingrained: to choose a mate based on strength. Continue reading I am a brute
Time to graduate
Illogical thinking is the cause of war. So does that mean logic and reason would result in world peace? I believe it would.
Animals follow simple rules of nature. Animals have a desire to reproduce and a desire to survive. They have adapted to environments to best suit their needs and grow to allow them to spread their genetic code. These are traits of every productive animal. That is, it was consistent until education and logic. Humanity is the first and only species on this planet to have overcome these animalistic cravings. That is not to say that everyone has overcome them. The world is littered with people who believe these rebellions to be satanic, preaching birth control and other modern advancements as evil. But I do believe that the overcoming of primitive urges will be the cure to every problem the world faces. I am no hippie. Hear me out. World peace is a product. But the change itself is the real goal. Continue reading Time to graduate
Post Script
I feel the need to clarify some things written in a post titled “My reason for god” as well as state some things I forgot to mention and highlight some other points.
To me, god is not defined in the undefined. God is not limited to what we cannot explain. In that, we would simply be admitting to inadequacy. Instead, I believe in those points, god can be evident. However, what I really see as god is a belief that this is all too strange to have been an accident. With that said, I believe that thought can be left at that. I do not have claim to have conversations with this force nor do I claim to be able to define it. I simply filled in the three letter word in place of my amazement of existence.
When I was younger, I abandoned the term god for that word above, existence. Continue reading Post Script