In Living memory.

What do we know about the world around us?
The map of the world around us in our head and gets updated from time to time.
The map of the world is all we have of the world. You could say it is our world.

When you are at school or work and you think about your front door you have an image in your head of that front door. You could maybe tell from that picture what color the door has as well as some details of that door.

You can even see things that aren't there. Just like when a house number is cut out in wood, you recognize what is missing.

We rely on our memory all the time. When we automatically open a door we do so many little movements and trust that all doors that look the same work the same. Those generalisations save us time and energy. Our muscle memory is something so crucial to how we operate in our day to day life and job that when we would lose it we wouldn't be able to do the smallest thing.

Sometimes people lose one kind of memory but maintain another kind of memory.
So people can lose their short term memory but maintain their long-term memory or they can lose their long-term memory but maintain their muscle memory for actions they did over and over again over the years.

People with retrograde amnesia lose events and information that happened before an incident or disease (often temporal) and people with anterograde amnesia lose the ability to create new memories from the moment that the amnesia happened.

Short term memories are, what I like to call, liquid, the activation of neurons and neuro-networks by electrical and chemical communication in a particular direction.

Long term memory is structural, due to the constant activation of neurons and neuro-networks there is a structural change in the hippocampus. The network has changed.

I remember ..... being taught, due to the religion I was in then, that God remembers all of us to the smallest level of detail and that it is because of that, that He can resurrect people on judgment day.
Now my beliefs of what God is and what Judgement day is and the resurrection has changed drastically.

Studying Kabbalah, I learned about the "4 worlds":

Assiah, Yetzirah, Beri'ah and Atziluth. These can be translated to

Action, Formation, Creation and Emanation. Or in other words

A Archetypal world, a formative world, a creative world  and a material world.

Now, instead of me trying to explain it somewhat decent let me show you how a master like Lon Milo Duquette explains it:

You see how things come from something big and general and go to the specific and material.

This idea together with the idea that we are God, we all are part of God, as God is the unified consciousness of all consciousnesses, this reminded me of my old belief in God's infallible memory. 

It made me feel like this "me" I am experiencing now is just a projection of God's memory and we all live in God's Living Memory. It makes me feel like the real me is this archetypal idea that creates a sort of cookie cutter that pressed me in this illusion of separated conscious being. 

But then again, consciousness can only be experienced separately. Borders need to be in place in order to experience anything! Experience can only be had when there is difference. Form leads to function. With no borders there can be no function. In order to maintain life the body needs to sense it borders so it can regulate and maintain in a tolerable range of homeostasis. 

Seeing this world and ourselves as a projection seems what far-fetched, I admit but it makes me think again about quantum physics, the theory of the multiverse(s) and how everything is metaphor.

(For more information about how everything is metaphor you can take a look at my post about magick here. )

There is this quote from Aldous Huxley: 

that makes you think of how relative our idea of where we are and what this world is.

Immagine holding this quote in the back of your head when you think about the 4 worlds , the spheres of the tree of life, the Qlipoth and any other map we have in our head. 

In the end, don't forget to have some humor. we know little after all. 

Laugh and Smile, maybe we are God's muscle's after all ;) 

Why we often misunderstand people's personalities.

Do you love to watch reality tv, shows about relationships? Do you sit on the couch and like to tell other people why that person in the show is really likable or maybe totally not?

What makes that person so likable or unlikable? Is it maybe that we are trying to gauge the personality of that person? 

How do you define somebodies personality? How do you define somebodies personality in a relationship? 

We can go round and round but in the end we all give out a first impression that is really strong and we all place much importance to the first impression we got from people. 

The Halo effect sometimes makes us think that one attribute of a person defines that person completely. 

We are often too quick with judging a persons personality as something on its own.

We are often too quick with judging a persons personality by how they behave in a relationship.

As if that behavior is independent of the changing relationship and the other person/people in that relationship.

"OMG he is so weak." 

Maybe that person is responding submissive to that situation in that relation because the other person is too aggressive. 

The coping strategies that we use depend on the situation, the options we have, the risks we want to take, the outcome we have in mind, ext ...

"She is such a bitch" 

Maybe she is responding in such a way to defend herself from being seen as weak. 

If so how come that she needs to defend herself from others options.

Maybe the partner was responding aggressive to what that person sees as sings of weakness.

You begin to notice how all we perceive is a moment in a process while we tend to see that moment as the whole process of changing relationships, actions and reactions between different people. 

The halo effect seems to be present on this level of perception too. 

On a more macro level we see this too in how we think aout the "national character" as a fixed thing. 

This can be further studied in "ecology of mind" by Gregory bateson, from page 98. 

(link to book online) 

The more we can open up what seems like fixed things into open omgoing proccesses the more we can see how things really operate. 

Our understanding grows and our understanding of people grows with it.

All kinds of love.

So many love songs and so many definitions of love.

What borders are there on our concept of love? 

Where does it stop? 

Not so long ago there was a article about Louisiana: "Louisiana Upholds Ban On Oral Sex, While Necrophilia Remains Legal".

It seems that laws about sex and love aren't that easy. Some laws aren't revised for decades until some taboo seems to be broken and people get upset.

In a time where norms and concepts change faster and faster we could easily be trapped in a slippery slope fallacy. 

In earlier times the kind of romantic love that we know of now didn't even exists or was forbidden.

Marriages were arranged and were for political reasons. Research have shown nevertheless that people in arranged marriages are quite often more happier then those out of free will. 

Now LGBT people seem to have most of the challenges concerning marriage. 

People ask themselves if children raised in same-sex marriages could be missing crucial parts of their education and development. 

The titles went from "Kids of gay parents fare worse, study finds, but research draws fire from experts"  to "Child Abuse Rate At Zero Percent In Lesbian Households, New Report Finds" 

Now there is this article "New Study On Homosexual Parents Tops All Previous Research." that concludes : "The articles by Marks and Regnerus have completely changed the playing field for debates about homosexual parents, "gay families," and same-sex "marriage." The myths that children of homosexual parents are "no different" from other children and suffer "no harm" from being raised by homosexual parents have been shattered forever. "

With flashing titles for scientific research and bold claims as conclusions I suspect that the debate is hot as can be and I suspect that is not yet over. 

I don't think that raising children should be seen in such a black and white way and put a number on from 1 to 10 in efficiency to be honest. 

And as a friend mentioned to me on facebook, the people that fund a research can influence the results of the research, or as he responded to the New study mentioned above: "American Christian group funds the study and you get what kind of results? "

Transgender people have some difficult challenges too. 

I remember people telling me that homosexuality was unnatural, you know the kind of people I am talking about, but there is quite a list of homosexual animals out there when you want to counter that argument: List of animals displaying homosexual behavior.

You would think that with this diversity it couldn't get more complicated .. but it does.

There is still a lively discussion about porn and if it is damaging to the brain for instance. 

Young people in Japan date less and less while virtual relationships rises. 

This makes me think of a scene out the matrix where a program expressed his love for its daughter. 

And that is the question that will change how we think about love. With AI being more and more effective and sex robots being made will how we think about relations change too? 

It seems like our definitions of what a relationship are and of what love is, is changing over time. 

We can only wonder in what wonderful and strange directions love will take us. 

Are you trapped in your own stories?

Stories are being used trough the ages to convince and persuade people.
Mostly by people who already have the most power.

Some stories come from people who are professional storytellers and other from fishermen at sea who wanted to explain natural phenomena with a supernatural explanation.

We like to follow stories as guidelines for our life. The stories of Jezus from Nazareth and of Mohammed are two stories that are followed by many people. Not as if there is one story for each guy, the more people you ask the more versions you hear.

After a messiah figure is gone the message can be used to fit every cause people desire.

We like heroes and think we are the protagonist in our own story. We like to feel in control.

Joseph Campbel studied mythology of different cultures all over the world and found a common thread wich is called the monomyth.

The Wachowski's showed us in the movie "The matrix" how such a story can trap us.
They used Joseph Campbell monomyth and then showed how it is a trap in the end.

George Lucas used the monomyth also when he made Starwars movies. He didn't realize how it was a trap.

This still comes from the idea that we are in the center of everything. That we are exalted above the rest of the earth and this universe. 

This creates blind spots in our thinking. Not only that but it can be fatal for us as species when we fail to notice the full ecology of the systems we are part of.  It will leave us very vulnerable for sudden changes. 

A great example is in the comic : "Crossed" (1-5) written by Alan Moore. 

So I give a story as example of how stories can trap us and can give us blind spots in our thinking and understanding.

It seems like the only way to alert people of the danger of clamping to stories is by stories.

That's why we shall make this like a Zen story. 

In Zen there are masters who have authority and who oversee the process of the students.

Portraits of those masters are originally almost always done as a caricature or joke. 

And that's how the master wants it because it is all about authority.

The stories that a Zen master uses to teach Zen are, when one is serious about learning what Zen is, not to be taken serious at all.

Having this kind of humor and self-relativisation keeps us alert and helps us avoid and get out of such narrative traps. 

So in all seriousness, don't take this blog post too serious. 

For more check out: The case against Mythology

Why the best content is not about you.

I have been thinking a lot about content creating.
I like creating content for people and share information that helps people in their life.

The question you could ask yourself when you create content is wether you like to create content just for you and share it in the hope that other people will like it too or to se what gap there is in the market, see what the audience wants and create that. Another question that comes with that is, is there a balance between the two that can be made?

This comes with another set of questions that are closely related to the previous questions. Questions about stability and money. Do you want to make a living with your content creating or is it just as a hobby?

All these questions can be considered when you create content and will change what content you create.

There is also another way of looking at it.
Creating a tribe.

When you have found your personal mission in life, what you want to put in this world, something that you can offer to the community, to mankind maybe, a change that you want to make, you can create a community around it.

This is why I started this blog.
To show how everything in life is connected.
And to inspire people.

When you think about what you want to do for others it will be more easier to create shareable content. It's not about the content creator, it's all about the community.

On the other side, knowing how your persoanal story motivates and inspires other people is crucial in communicating your personal mission. Well, now it's not only your personal mission but a shared mission with the community, the tribe.

Contributing to a community is the most sustainable way to create content.
Know what tribes you are a member and know what tribe you can lead.

With this in mind we can learn to improve content along the way.
I hope to write content for you as long as possible and improve as much as possible.

Hidden Heroes of everyday life.

Every day we use things that we take for granted. Every day we can go about doing our business without interruption we count on things being in place and working.

In order to have things that we take for granted, there are people working day and night.

Traffic, electricity, some safety.
We only think about the work behind it when things don't go as planned or as they are absent.
When there is a sudden change.

Rules and regulations that are in place so that we have a civilisation.

All the people that work so that we can have a "normal" day. Those are the Heroes of Normal.

In order to have stability, there are changes that have to be constantly made.
In order to achieve homeostasis, the body is constant making changes.

Let's take this even a step further...back.

The items we use have a history.

In order to have a glass there first had to be the art of glass making.
There were people that came up with the design.
There had to be people that are paid (I hope) to do the work.
Now there are machines that do a lot of the work.
Those machines needed to be invented. A science a mechanics is needed for this.

You notice at once how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Everything has a history and everything supports on something that already was in place.

When we look at the form of something we can see history.
When we look at somebody we see the result of decades of evolution. We see the results of interplay of genetics and circumstances from the person and the family that that person comes from.

Some decisions in life, that become a part of lifestyle can have a genetic impact over generations.
This is called Epigenetics.

You see the impact of the lifestyle and habits in a person,
True, you may not notice it always consciously.

This realisation can help us see the beautiful complexity of life and appreciate what there was in place for us so we can have some stability and go about our days.

Thanks Heroes of Normal.

Can we now get MAD , please?

As if every part of reporting needs to be done with silk gloves on.

I agree that we don't need some raging madmen to put fear into contestants in every competition on tv just so we can get a hardon from seeing people getting emotionally broken.

I find it disgusting when journalists try to interrupt politicians all the time and try to get the politician to say what they want. That's not a debate nor good conversation at all. Stop it.

Just try to be political correct. By  the time you know what that entails it has already shifted again.

Not every argument needs to have a nice counter balance so you what you say can go both ways. That's the same as saying nothing. That's creating confusion and confusion is good for people who don't want you to know what they are really doing.

It seems like we aren't allowed to react upset anymore when something happens. Like it's immature. When you get angry you must be childish.

Outrage is something else imo. Outrage is not very helpful, it spends our energy and attention is such a short time that we get desensitised for other important information. We get so emotional that we forget sometimes why exactly we were outraged. It creates mental blindspots.

Getting mad on the other hand is necessary from time to time so we don't get desensitised to injustice.
People in power count on it that others will just let it pass and forget it after a while. It blends into the confusion.

Before everything fades into some grey noise of confusion let's get mad when information is being deliberately made to confuse and bore people.

I am talking especially about laws, privacy laws, laws about  personal information gathering and sharing. Laws about warfare were the language is so altered that every possible word in the document has two meanings: How a regular person would define it and how the American department of intelligence and defence defines it. In that way, everything can be explained away and justified.

Give me some Charlie Brooker and John Oliver to shake me up anytime. Why not put some Penn Jillette in the mix too?

Let's get rid of this post-modernism "bleak circus" (video here) as Warren Ellis called it, where "nothing matters" anyway. Even if all change is temporary, sometimes they  ramp up.

Let's start meaningful conversations, let's create meaningful changes.

Let's start today.