Humble Opinions

We live in a fascinating and unbelievable world. I use the term unbelievable because it is truly hard to believe. We live at a time where people can be seen casually walking down the street, watching a realtime, high definition video stream of events taking place on the other side of the planet on a wireless handheld device. Information is sent and received across oceans literally instantaneously, and perfectly recorded musical performances of the past can be listened to at one’s leisure, while zipping down a paved highway at 65 miles per hour in a personal transport vehicle - free of charge. An enormous percentage of humankind’s labor has shifted from physical toil that produce physical results, to the simple typing on a keyboard that results in virtual currency being transferred to one’s virtual collection of wealth. Employees and employers no longer need to live on the same continent, and highly successful businesses can be run by individuals whom have never met face-to-face. Man has truly optimized the output of the human brain and soul in ways history never dreamed possible.

What a world, ladies and gentlemen. It really does deserve a moment of analysis and awe. Look how far we’ve come as a species. We have worked and worked, tried and failed, learned and re-learned, improved and enhanced almost every aspect of life and the world to get to where we are. Congratulations man - you’ve come a long way. Now here’s the kicker……   so what? What’s the point of all of this, and what are we going to do with it now that we’ve created it?

Ask the businessman, and he may answer the point is to expend as much energy as possible to yield the highest possible wealth and success in a single lifetime. Ask the musician, and he may answer the point is to create something beautiful that touches and enlightens the mind; and to bring world peace - apologies for the stereotype ;). Ask the atheist, and he may answer there is no predefined point - the whole thing is pure coincidence that can disappear as easily as it appeared.

This is something I think about a lot. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will one day die, and as rapidly moving and confusing as the world can be, it has been important for me to know what this whole thing is about, and what the end game is. I have been on an ongoing search for this, sometimes unbeknownst to myself, from the moment I was born.

I have had the phenomenal opportunity to live in two countries - two very different countries. The United States of America, and Israel. I look at the US, and see an endless loop of work ethic, consumerism, and momentary fads that ultimately lead to no end game. I see people trying to satisfy the desires of their soul with the desires of their body. I see the glorification of fabricated illusions, and the promotion of nothingness. It saddens me. I look at Israel, and I see something wildly different - an end game, true goals, spiritual fulfillment, and the strive to replace evil with good.

The original monotheistic religion, Judaism, is a very deep, complex religion. It is based around the belief and knowledge of a single Creator of what we call the world, as well as a single goal for mankind. It includes the strict observance of many hundreds of commandments believed to have been given by said Creator as guidelines for achieving this goal. It teaches the use of the physical aspects of existence for the purpose and perpetuation of the spiritual. What is this single goal? Tikkun HaOlam, in it’s original Hebrew, which in English I would translate as the completion of the world. Judaism believes the world was created incomplete, and mankind, the leader of all species, was given the tools to complete it, using its unobstructed freedom of choice.

This raises many questions, such as why? Why was the world created like this, and why was man left to complete it? These are vital questions that I unfortunately don’t have the time to attempt to explain here in a simple blog post. These are the questions the sages of Judaism have spent literally thousands of years investigating, probing, and studying tirelessly. I highly recommend exploring these areas of study, as I have found them to be very intellectually challenging, and truly perspective changing.

For now, I’ll touch on the question of how. How is man supposed to complete the world? The answer is relatively simple at face value. Use the tools he has been given to craft a perfect world - a world free of war, free of manipulation, free of greed and immorality. Every tool is like a yin yang that can be used for good or for evil. Nuclear energy can power the world, or blow it all up. The internet can help spread education, globalization, and medical advances, or can be used to organize a hateful intifada aimed at the destruction of people. The human organs that can be used to produce the next generation of life can also be used in unspeakable manners. A position of power can be exercised to help a lesser fortunate people, or to exploit the helpless.

The answer? Think. Think hard. The next time you set out to do something; the next time you set out to build something; think of the end game. Will you help fix the world, or are you adding to the noise distracting the rest of mankind in its goal? An iPhone is a monstrously powerful device. Please don’t use it to video tape your friend peeing on his neighbor’s lawn, and upload it to Facebook.

Thanks!

Posted by admin under Jewish & Philosophical | 1 Comment »

I was once told that computer programming is considered one of the ten most emotionally rewarding jobs. As an exceptional computer programmer myself, this made perfect sense. It’s a pretty amazing feeling to spend hours, days, weeks, or even months developing software, and then actually use it - or even better, to watch or hear about others using it. Recently, during one of my regular contemplations of the meaning of life, it finally struck me: Life == Programming!

The basic goal of software development is shockingly simple: make it possible for a human being to accomplish a task, or tasks, that they either could not or would not want to accomplish with the limitations of a human brain / human laziness. Example: say I had 500 pictures I wanted to shrink. Instead of resizing each of them inside a program like photoshop, I could write a program that shrinks pictures, and then just loop it through all 500 pictures, and wallah, I’ve just saved some precious guitar playing time. Very complicated software is this same idea multiplied, possibly with more intricate tasks.

So in short, one could say that the idea of programming is to expend effort upfront, to create reusable tools, and then to sit back and enjoy them. I actually believe this is the exact same concept of life, on a grand scale. Throughout the course of life, people develop several kinds of skills and tools: physical abilities, mental abilities, and the ability to gather and use information in many ways. I believe that after life, people are stripped of their physical selves, and are left with only the tools and information they developed and gathered in their lifetime… meaning, a person spends their life developing themselves, and in the after life, using the tools they’ve created, and being the person they developed themselves into with the information they gathered.

Sometimes programming is fun, interesting, and even exciting (yeah!!), but often times, it can become cumbersome, difficult, frustrating, and can reduce your supply of instant coffee drastically. The tough part is keeping your eye on the prize: a perfectly developed software application that can be used for the rest of eternity without any errors, and that can accomplish many tasks, well. So to, life can become extremely pressing and uncomfortable at times, but the goal remains: make yourself into the person you want to spend the rest of eternity being.

Who do you want to be for the next 15 billion years (and then some) ?

Posted by admin under Philosophical | 2 Comments »

An interesting topic is that of the subconscious. It is generally believed that the mind can be broken into two parts: the conscious and subconscious - the conscious part being those functions of the brain we are imminently aware and in control of, and the subconscious being the functions beyond our on-demand control, and which influence our thoughts and actions.

So in my humble opinion, if something I am not in control of is influencing my thoughts and actions, I’d want to know a little bit more about it. What kind of trojan horse situation is going on here? Does this mean I’m a robot, following the commands of the man behind the curtains? And worse, I am not even fully aware I am doing so.

Relatedly, how is it that a particular scent can conjure up old memories and emotions so precisely? And how is it that hypnosis can be utilized in therapy (and even court cases) to help a person remember events and details they are unable to while conscious? An interesting topic indeed!

Instead of conscious and subconscious, I like to call the parts abstract and form… or imagination and intellect… or passive and active. I believe the human mind is far under appreciated, due in part to its enormously complex and fascinating functionality. This is how I see it:

The mind has a part of it that is always hard at work, 100% of the time. This part, known to us as the subconscious, is constantly recording every detail of every possible input a body receives (sight, smell, sound, feel, taste). I mean this in the most literal possible way. If a person turns their head and scans a room, their brain just stored an unbelievable amount of information, including the position of every object in the room, its color/shape/size, the smell of the room in every direction, any sound frequencies that passed the person’s ears, etc. And they’re all stored as related pieces of information.

If you want to test this out (which I obviously have), try listening to a CD in a single place/environment only, for several weeks. Then don’t listen to it for several months, and listen to it again in a new setting. You’ll feel like you are in the original place, and it’ll be a very interesting experience. If this doesn’t happen to you, your brain may be broken. I would suggest seeing a licensed subconsciousition.

This is why companies pay huge sums of money to have their logos or taglines appear in strange or highly populated areas. When a person is exposed to a brand name, it becomes ingrained in their subconscious. Later, if that person is trying to choose between two brand names, having seen one of them at an earlier point in time, it is more likely they will choose that brand.

Anyway, not only does this active part of the brain record every detail of all inputs 100% of time, it also feeds the passive (or intellectual, or conscious) part of the brain with images, thoughts, memories, and information from the past. This causes a person to act based on their past experiences. It is also the source of a person’s psychological defenses. Example: If a person reveals where they went to high school after being asked, and was later extremely embarrassed they had done so, the next time they are asked where they went to high school, a psychological defense mechanism will intercept the question and will influence them to not repeat the same “mistake” they did previously. This brain function can be applied to almost every aspect of human behavior - namely, a person acting solely based on past experiences. This includes a person’s decision to run instead of walk (because the last time they were late), a person’s decision to hold their nose in a certain part of town (because the last time, it smelled bad), etc.

The older a person gets, the more locked in their psychological defenses become, and the person eventually does not even realize a defense mechanism has kicked in. They are essentially a slave to their past.

By the way, I say active and passive because the intellectual part of a person’s brain needs effort to work, while their imagination (subconscious) does not. When a person kicks back in a chair to relax, they may not be trying to figure out a math problem, but their imagination and thoughts do not stop for even a moment (whether they’re aware of it or not).

This is actually where meditation comes into play. Meditation is intellectual weight lifting. One form of meditation, known as visualization, is performed by a person closing their eyes, and trying to picture a single, constant shape. This sounds easier than it is. For an untrained mind, it will be roughly 3 - 4 seconds before another image or thought pops into their conscious - even the thought “hey I’m pretty good at this!” The more a person meditates, the longer they will be able to control the images in their mind, and the more sophisticated the interaction between the intellectual and imaginative parts of their mind will become.

I can go on for a while about this topic (hey, maybe I will in another blog. It’s my blog, I can do whatever I want. nice), but for now I’d like to focus on two lessons to be learned from this:

(1). Open your mind

As I discussed earlier, a person’s actions and opinions are very heavily influenced by their past experiences. This can be extremely helpful, as well as extremely harmful. The helpful application is knowing not to lend a particular individual money, or not to touch a hot stove. The harmful application is when a person’s past closes their mind to new ideas that they wrote off when they were 10 or 11 years old. Consider the possibility that you are shutting down enormously powerful and enlightening ideas simply because the last time they were presented to you, it was in an uncomfortable setting - or you were emotionally injured in the conservation. It really happens! The next time you shut down an idea, try to think long and hard as to why you’re shutting it down. It won’t be quick, and it will take work. But it’s well worth it.

(2). Protect your mind

Earlier in this post, I explained how a person’s subconscious records every detail of every event. This is actually pretty serious. A person’s mind never forgets. That means that in a way, everything a person sees or experiences literally stains their mind, and affects it forever. I’m totally serious about this. You may think I’m being over dramatic, but I’m not. Every thing your eyes see will remain with you until your dying day. Protect yourself!

The more negative conversation a person is surrounded by, the more negative an attitude they will have about life. The same goes for positive. Why do think a large portion of parenting is simply setting a good example? Children’s subconsciouses are clean, and eager to learn about the world. Be careful what you stain their minds with! (ie. Don’t throw them in front of a TV for hours… please).

Why do you think there is a biblical prohibition against speaking about other people, AND hearing others speak about other people? It seems strange that a person would be at fault simply for hearing what another says. The bible was written with foreknowledge of how the subconscious works. That prohibition (like all others) exists for one’s benefit. Listening to people getting trash talked ruins a person’s attitude toward people in general. When a person speaks poorly of another, they’re damaging themselves and the people they are talking to far more than the person they are talking about.

Please be careful! Protect your attitude, your outlook on life, your interaction with others. Only let yourself be exposed to clean, positive, thought-provoking ideas. And open your mind to possibilities outside your ’safe’ zone. That should be pretty simple, duh. I’m sure you already knew all this already. I’m just saying it again because I figured out how to setup my own blog.

P.S. If you’d like to read more on these topics, I recommend the following books as starting points:

Jewish Meditation by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan
Living Inspired by Rabbi Akiva Tatz

Posted by admin under Philosophical | No Comments »