Earth from God’s perspective

As one of thousands of creatures in God’s Earth zoo, our human view of reality often is myopic. That view is important because it keeps our species alive from day to day. The downside, of course, is that it is easy to ignore the bigger picture – the view from God’s perspective.

Unfortunately, over recent centuries education in formal categories of study has been socialized. The relationship between students and the Earth Sciences is taught as if the Earth’s 4.6 billion year history were a science-fiction movie. In fact, Earth’s history is very much a daily dynamic that encompasses every move every creature, including humans, makes on a moment-to-moment, day-in day-out basis.

The Earth’s history shows very plainly that the planet is in charge. It is the planet’s rules that will prevail. All creatures in the Earth Zoo must acknowledge the zoo rules for their respective cages, that is, how a species must relate to its environment and fellow members of its species.

Again unfortunately, the Earth itself must abide by God’s rules for astronomic behavior. This means that the Earth will not always be the same. For example, the Earth moved from a dry, barren planet to one that was covered in water because at the time it rained for millions of years. Life began in these waters but perished when the Earth suddenly incurred a centuries long ice age that froze the seas; ocean life had no choice but to perish. It was largely true with the large dinosaurs; a meteor hit the Earth and destroyed 90 percent of life on Earth.

These misbehaviors by Earth are rare. What occurs more frequently is smaller changes attributed to Sun storms, shifts in orbit and the aging of the planet. For example, what was called the ‘Fertile Crescent’ (the region east of the Mediterranean) in early human migrations is now largely desert. The absence of agriculture has left the region in turmoil for centuries; human stability in the environment has disappeared – an example of Earth changing the rules of the ‘human cage’ in the zoo.

For the first time in 4.6 billion years, a new zoo perspective has occurred: a species has decided to make the rules for interacting with the Earth’s environment. Yes, the humans.

It isn’t working too well. The humans are changing the environmental rules from a sophisticated, self-managing zoo to a resource for allowing humans to actually claim ownership of the environment, motivated less by balanced self-management than to optimize comfort, reduced accountability and personal advantage over other humans. (Reminds mariner of the crypto crisis).

Zoo management isn’t taking this sitting down. Earth’s environment is growing unstable. Sadly, this imbalance affects all the species at the zoo.

God is watching.

Ancient Mariner

The Election

First and foremost to celebrate is the election of the first Zer to Congress. At the age of 25 Maxwell Frost was elected to represent the 10th Congressional District in Florida. When Max was born in 1997, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was 63 and had served in Congress since 1981.

It isn’t just republicans. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is 82 – less than a year younger than mariner. Mariner remembers when she was a teenage hottie in Baltimore. Not to mention Biden, Sumer, McConnell and the Trumper as well.

The median age of Congress is 60! Mariner thinks about this as he rakes fallen leaves out of the garden. Many of the large issues clouding over the nation and the world today cannot be managed by individuals whose intuition was formed when most telephone networks required talking to human telephone operators or when Bill Gates was 10 years old. The first credit card wasn’t around until 1958; Chuck Grassley was 18. Can Chuck comprehend the social, economic and family impact of going Crypto?

But putting mariner’s crankiness aside, it was a night to celebrate! The Red Tide did not appear. Most of the election deniers were defeated (but many remain – the republican party still has some huge issues). As this post is written, the Senate leadership is unknown but both houses of Congress are close enough to require an attempt at negotiation.

It was an election balanced enough to keep the nation’s head above water and possibly deal with two imminent wars and a never ceasing invasion by global warming.

Bring on the Zs!

Ancient Mariner

About Earthly phenomena

 

A question was raised asking what a polar reverse is. Mariner has written about the phenomenon in previous posts:

Yes, Virginia, one day Santa may have to move to Antarctica

Posted on February 24, 2021

Mariner has written recently about Earth’s polar magnetic field currently flipping erratically in the Bering Sea and the southern Atlantic. The following summary is copied from the February 2021 Science Magazine:

Kauri trees mark magnetic flip 42,000 years ago

By Paul Voosen

Using a remarkable record from a 42,000-year-old kauri tree preserved in a bog, researchers have pieced together a record of the last time Earth’s protective magnetic field weakened and its poles flipped—known as the Laschamp excursion—exposing the world to a bombardment of cosmic rays and, the team suggests, briefly shifting Earth’s climate. The record shows the field nearly failed prior to its brief swap, which only lasted 500 years. Combined with an unusually quiet Sun that is believed to have occurred during this time, cosmic rays could have caused a notable drop in stratospheric ozone, shifting wind flows and climate patterns, they suggest.

For those curious why the magnetic field flips, it is caused by the Earth’s iron core rotating at a different speed than surface layers of the planet. Eventually what can be represented as static electricity disrupts the magnetic balance – just like lightning or touching something while walking in your socks across the rug. Unlike the instantaneousness of lightning or socks, the mass of the entire Earth acts like a capacitor, slowing the change to hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

֎ It was just in the news that the Mississippi River is running shallow. Already it holds up the huge barges that carry Midwest grains to manufacturers. Add to this the failing cattle grain farms in the southwest and one can assume buying grain products and beef at the market may well run up credit card debt. Perhaps anchovies, scrapple and spam may become popular again.

Ancient Mariner

For What it’s Worth

There isn’t much further to be offered by mariner. The entire world is in a state of upheaval not seen by planet, man or beast for the last 300,000 years. There are none among us who can foresee the future reconciliation of the turmoil. There are none among us with the strength and wisdom to command the tiller of history.

Overly truncated, he will share a few random thoughts that linger.

֎ To reduce the faith Jesus proposed to one observation, He said what matters to you for your own wellbeing is irrelevant. All that matters is what you do for the wellbeing of others – only in this act will you know the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus knew in his heart, however, that humans were simply over-intelligent chimpanzees so he offered forgiveness to provide time for humans to discover how Christianity worked. He was overly kind – perhaps a weakness in His doctrine.

֎ If, If democracy continues to clatter along for the next two years, only the option to run Biden again will avoid the collapse of Federal relevance. Both parties are in frightful disarray. In a time when the economy is a critical factor, a collapsed Congress led by a zealot, red or blue, will be useless.

֎ The only solution that avoids oligarchy and authoritarianism is to turn the tax structure upside down. Where is FDR?

֎ The world is headed toward corporatism. Super-sized corporations will assume control of many government functions; for example, capitalizing the health industry. The backbone of policy will no longer be driven by nations but by the internet.

֎ It is a personal fear that mankind will not survive global warming. Social collapse will occur. An example from history is the fall of the Roman Empire.

Will there be a global ‘dark age’?

֎ The one sustaining force that may sustain humanity for a coming communistic age is family unity. Not the nuclear family – a victim of technology and automation – but geographically bound multi-generational families that can muster a meager GDP for themselves. Was Jesus right?

But hang in there to witness a polar magnetic reversal, a Solar storm and, if you live long enough, a major ice age – all within the next 200,000 years.

Ancient Mariner

Stephen Hawking and the end

As mariner prepares for a week of travel and vacation, he leaves the reader with the following:

“Anyone who has seen any of the “Terminator” films knows how this whole artificial intelligence thing is probably going to end, and here’s a bit of terrifying validation: Stephen Hawking agreed. In 2017, he told Wired, “The genie is out of the bottle. … I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that will outperform humans.”

Well, that’s all right, then, we’re safe for a good long … time? Right? Not quite: It’s already happened.

In November 2021, the Wyss Institute at Harvard announced that a collaboration between Wyss, Tufts, and the University of Vermont had created “the first-ever, self-replicating living robots. “Called Xenobots, these tiny, hand-built organisms/robots (which look disturbingly like Pac-Man) can hone in on living cells, then gather together to collect stem cells to build new little baby robots inside these cells. The University of Vermont’s Joshua Bongard confirms: “With the right design — they will spontaneously self-replicate.”

Read More: https://www.grunge.com/134971/this-is-how-stephen-hawking-predicted-the-end-of-the-world/?utm_campaign=clip

So the cat is out of the bag. We humans won’t evolve into Amazonus gobbetii, we simply will die out – or, if our new cohabitants so desire, humans will be wiped out.

It is hard to imagine a wholly electronic creature as a living creature. Perhaps, if two-celled creatures could think, they may have the same response to hearing that species with several billion cells would roam the earth.

Pony carts aside, will there even be roads?

In any case, don’t worry about the Earth being a waterless, lifeless rock in a million years.

Ancient Mariner

Of Books

Mariner recently read Neil Degrasse Tyson’s recent book, Cosmic Queries: StarTalk’s Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going. As we’ve come to expect, the astrophysicist’s works are easily read, loaded with logical explorations and saturated with facts. Just as many readers have a ‘complete book on gardening’ or ‘500 best recipes’ this book is everything one would want to know about astrophysics and the Universe, our galaxy and our own role in it all. This book belongs on every home bookshelf.

For example, Tyson suggests that in a million years Earth will have lost its oceans and be a big, dry, lifeless rock. He references the miracle adaptation by living things to the magnetic, mineral-based Universe. He leaves open to speculation what the future of Homo sapiens may be in the long future ahead. [Mariner suggests humans will evolve into a species called Amazonus Gobbetii; variations will evolve as Googlian, Muskian, Xi-Pings and Kochs.]

It also is Tyson who suggests that if all the planet’s glaciers melt, the oceans will rise to meet the Statue of Liberty’s book-holding elbow. Does the reader know what her book is about? Further, does the reader have flood insurance?

Back to thinking about books, how many readers have gutted their libraries, giving or tossing away lifelong friends and mementos and all those overstuffed filing cabinets? Mariner has relinquished very few books to public libraries. Mariner has many books very much older than some tee-shirts that are older than his children – who have children.

Mariner has bloated library disease. He is not alone in this respect; one of his fellow book-o-philes recently moved to a smaller residence in a retirement village. His study, like mariner’s, still is stuffed with his friends and mementos. Does the reader suspect that the printed word has become anachronistic? Is it similar to the donkey cart when the automobile was invented? An intimate relationship with a tin Lizzy isn’t as emotive as a relationship with an indifferent donkey.

What has the smartphone replaced? Face-to-face communication. The published word has faded away – so now will the spoken word as our species moves forward to the gobbet epoch.

Please write a book, Dr. Tyson, about our salvation as water rises to our elbows and, for that matter, when water has disappeared.

Ancient Mariner

It is voting time

The last several posts on philosophical subjects largely were provided by alter ego Guru. If nothing else remember the core issue: if the postulations of campaign ads aren’t present in your personal reality zones, be critical of their truths – conservative or liberal; don’t let your emotions drive your decisions, use existential reality.

But now the time for pondering is over. It is judgment time. It is important to separate local issues and experiences from the flamboyant pontification of nationally promoted campaign ads. Democracy works best from the bottom up: local needs elect local representatives, regional needs elect regional representatives, national needs elect national representatives.

Top down, nationally funded ads are an example of data popping up in the wrong zone. It is the voter’s own reality that is the foundation of decision making. One obvious example is the argument that police forces will disappear. Republican or democrat, this is an absurdity.

The reader should look at their own neighborhood looking for signs of satisfaction or need. What are the local hot topics? What represents the good life? These perspectives are the decision makers, not television ads or social media garbage.

Top down campaign funding produces ads similar to “Uncle Sam Needs You!” an ad for raising an army in the Second World War. If the reader wants to join an army, so be it but consider the neighborhood folks; what would an army do to them?

Vote for adult personalities. Shy from flamboyant candidates. Give credence to evidence of compassion and ethical objectives.

Mariner’s personal prejudices are: don’t vote for anyone over age 55 and don’t vote for candidates entering the race without local and regional political experience.

The universal mandate is VOTE!

Ancient Mariner

About animals

As the nations of the world feel the burdens of a changing planet, as the global economy weakens, as citizens become insecure, authoritarianism seems to step in. The surge of Trump into the public arena is an excellent example of this global trend. His flamboyant, wealthy and argumentative characterization is a magnet that attracts a fearful populace. If a citizen is fearful, they seek security within the authoritative strength of a leader.

Below is an excerpt from Aeon Magazine written by biologist Lee Alan Dugatkin:

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power … We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end … The object of power is power.

– from Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell

“Animals don’t relinquish power once they get it either. But for nonhumans, power is always a means to an end. Many ends, in fact, including food, mates and shelter. Attaining and then maintaining power – defined as the ability to direct, control, or influence the behaviour of other creatures or resources – lies at the heart of almost all animal societies. . .”

Are we super smart humans only fooling ourselves? Is money only about personal safety and control over others? Are assets comparable to the horns of other animals? Was the Age of Enlightenment just a verbal sudoku puzzle? It is true that humans are like a grafted branch on an apple tree – no matter our unique flavor, we still are apples? Looking back over the entire history of humans, we always have been a tribal (AKA herding) creature. Tribes need leadership, typically a human of stature and cunning. Is authoritarian leadership more human than socialist leadership?

Further, what is it about this time in history that everyone is becoming more fearful? Will our animal instincts provide the organization that best sees civilization through these times?

Mariner has left the reader with a handful of questions. Enjoy pondering!

Ancient Mariner

 

On Morality – 2

The human plight of fragmented reality is the same circumstance as a severely tangled 100 foot extension cord. ”Is this really just one cord?” and “Finally, I found both ends but the cord reaches only 11 feet.” To solve fragmented reality, the entanglement must be addressed one tangle at a time and starting at the beginning of the extension cord.

In his book Mark Boyle forces himself to abandon money and industrial inventions. He was looking for the beginning of the cord – just him and Mother Nature. Mariner repeats Boyle’s description of a shift in his reality:

“. . . surprisingly, over time I found my reasons slowly change. They now have less to do with saving the world, and much more to do with savoring the world. The world needs savoring.”

An event that triggered his angst about reality today was a change in the Oxford Junior Dictionary, 2007 edition. The current publication deleted the following list of words:

Acorn, alder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture and willow.

In their place the dictionary added:

Attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voicemail.

This action by the dictionary seemed contemporary and pragmatic but also troubled Boyle. Part of his preparation for living without the Internet was to stop googling modern dictionaries. Instead he obtained an ‘every word ever spoken’ dictionary published in 1785. He claims his understanding of words and the size of his vocabulary has improved. The speed of communication was dictating the speed of change rather than the existential experiences that normally modify reality. All the words deleted from the junior dictionary still exist and have contemporary meaning.

The ‘hurry up do it this way’ impact of machines, computers and communications is well documented. Mark Boyle’s key to successfully adjusting reality/morality is to slow down – really, really slow down; slow down more! To this purpose Boyle committed himself to writing his book longhand with a pencil. He discovered that his bad handwriting improved when he made himself write slowly – writing fast (like a computer) was the cause of his terrible handwriting. Citing mariner’s metaphor, Mark was untangling his extension cord, one tangle at a time.

Very few people have the opportunity or the motivation to live Boyle’s three-year adjustment to improve his perception of reality. There must be another way to examine and adjust one’s own reality.

Giving thought to untangling tangles, a suggestion from a psychologist’s treatise about the self [sorry but the name is long forgotten] suggested that there are four zones of emotional awareness: (1) within one and a half feet around the body is called the ‘intimate’ zone. (2) within ten feet is the ‘interactive’ zone. (3) within 30 feet is the ‘recognition’ zone and (4) beyond 30 feet to infinity is the ‘inactive’ zone. These distances aren’t for detailed mapping but suggest a change in emotional expectation. For example, three situations mariner used in the last post, McDonalds, supermarket and smartphone all occur in the interactive zone. Boyle’s three-year experiment was an attempt to reorder his intimate and interactive realities.

At the time he read the treatise, mariner would test it by seeing a co-worker or friend coming toward him. When they were beyond the recognition zone, say 40 feet, mariner would shout out a greeting by name. It was amazing how many were caught off guard and did not know how to respond until they were closer. Another test was when, in a normal conversation, he stood within the intimate zone of the person. It was obvious that the person was uncomfortable.

Society’s tangles are caused when one is expected to respond within various zones with information or actions that don’t belong in those zones. A classic example is when an individual is exposed to a situation that alters the reality of their recognition zone but should remain in their inactive zone – perhaps Donald saying the election was rigged without proving it. Being in the wrong zone disturbs the subconscious which has license to adjust reality even under false pretenses – hence the formation of a tangle.

Confusing emotional awareness for ulterior, unrecognized motives is the great sin of the Internet. The subconscious doesn’t need actual facts to adjust reality. Therefore not wearing masks in a pandemic because irrelevant information about government takeover and personalized inferences like voter fraud are combined and target the interactive mind– that is, information that belongs in one zone pops up in the wrong zone. If new information causes alarm, verify it based on the reality and morality of more intimate zones.

Repair does indeed require slowing down. Slow down to the point that the first zone, intimacy, is in order. Use the morality of the intimate zone to measure the morality of experiences in the interactive zone. Use the reality of intimacy and interactive morality to measure the value of the recognition zone. Finally use the proven morality of the first three zones to consider the importance and verity of the inactive zone. Much slower than letting Google give you the answer in one second. Being exposed to hate mail when your interactive reality says there’s no reason to hate is just one example.

There is another expression that fits this process: Lead with your heart.

 

Ancient Mariner

On Morality

Back in August mariner wrote about Mark Boyle, an economist who decided to live without money for three years. A quote from the August post is repeated below:

“. . . surprisingly, over time I found my reasons slowly change. They now have less to do with saving the world, and much more to do with savoring the world. The world needs savoring.”

Boyle’s change in mindset from fixing what is broken to preferring an existential experience has lingered in mariner’s mind. Boyle’s primary point in the book is that the farther the distance between genuine reality and manufactured reality, the more human judgment becomes dysfunctional.

Is Boyle’s philosophical assumption the reason for 7 billion humans around the planet to simultaneously experience political imbalance, diminishing natural resources and an unstable atmosphere?  Do the political and religious trappings of religion prevent savoring the spiritual core of faith?

Mariner is sensitive to Boyle’s assumption on four occasions:

  • Ordering a meal from a kiosk in McDonalds instead of experiencing a very brief subconscious gratification from interpersonal engagement.
  • Similarly, in the supermarket having to be one’s own cashier eliminates brief conversations that engage human awareness and even enjoy a shared accomplishment of the task at hand.
  • Watching individuals of all ages avoid human contact at meals, family time, taking breaks at work and even interacting with the dog they are walking. Why? Smartphone.
  • Institutions of religion – particularly Christianity – behaving in grotesque ways that are in direct violation of Jesus’ mandate to love others by personal commitment.

Even the wonderful experience of purchasing online diminishes the need to do human things like walk, talk, make real-time-on-the-spot decisions, experience the weather, and identify with nature. Avoiding these small experiences denies exercising judgment in existential circumstances – Boyle’s point is that our unpracticed, hands-on judgment becomes warped; our individual liaison with reality is not properly understood.

Mark Boyle’s ‘savory’ experience was his daily connection with an undisturbed Mother Earth devoid of any intrusions by the industrial and technological revolutions. Not having to see the world through steam engines, computers or mechanized destruction of the habitat enabled him to see how ethics and morality are derived from intimacy with one’s surroundings. The purity and simplicity of Boyle’s experience with nature allowed a moral attitude to develop between him and his environment.

The insight is that presumed reality bears presumed morality. As we sit in comfortable chairs at a dinner setting and eat pigs we haven’t watched spend their entire lives in tortuously small cages, our morality about eating pigs is indifferent to a reality we do not know. Building dams on salmon rivers produces massive amounts of electricity for millions of people but having no awareness of salmon reality, there is no moral compunction to deal with the salmon’s world. Consequently, salmon is an endangered species.

On the other hand, the Native American Hupa tribe has a direct relationship with salmon and is aware of the stress on the species. The tribe leads the fight to save the salmon. Their reality shapes their morality.

Agreeing with Boyle, mariner’s assumption also is drawn from a popular college text, ‘Situation Ethics’ published in 1988 by Joseph Fletcher.  Fletcher suggests that certain acts – such as lying, premarital sex, adultery, or even murder–might be morally right, depending on the circumstances. Hotly debated on television, in magazines and newspapers, in churches, and in the classroom, Fletcher’s provocative thesis remains a powerful force in contemporary discussions of morality.

In other words, presumed reality bears presumed morality. Is the world’s problem that we don’t have a common reality? For example, as resources grow scarcer and oligarchs grow wealthier, does that represent two different realities, therefore two different moralities? Does a meta creature have the same reality as a homeless person? Do coral reefs have a different reality than a person driving a car?

Ancient Mariner