Humble Opinions

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) ?

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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

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Great question, Dani, but here’s a follow up: Who cares?

Many of you might be thinking “I don’t have time for such nonsense. I’m too busy with my job / social life / going to movies / (fill in the blank).” I believe the answer to this question can vastly impact every moment of a person’s life. And with that, I divulge:

In Jewish thought (and many other bodies of thought), a human being is made up of part body, and part soul. The body houses the organs and machinery that allow a person to accomplish action in the world, while the soul is its “battery pack” in a sense. For those that truly believe in evolution, or think a human being is 100% body, I ask the following questions:

• What caused the original single celled amoeba to evolve into an orange in one circumstance, iron in another, and a human being in another?
• What is the factor that gives a human animation, and a table not?
• Where are memories and emotions stored? I don’t recall hearing of a memory cell.
• What makes a person more artistic than another, and where is the source of a person’s creativity?
• Why does a human die and disintegrate? shouldn’t their “lifespan” remain static like a golf ball?
• Why does a body cease to function at the instance of death? it’s the same bunch of cells it just was.
• And why can’t a dead body be brought back to life? seriously, why?

Okay, so what is a soul? Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, it is an actual piece of G-d Himself. Though, it’s hard to picture it in terms of a “piece” because what is a piece of infinity? That line of thought is beyond the scope of this post, though I have much to say about it.

A soul is what powers a person’s body. It is what sends messages via the brain and spine. It is what captures the output of our body’s nerves so we can “feel” the physical world. It is what receives the converted rays of light that our eyes filter so we can “see” the physical world. It is you. Your body is the machine that it drives for its 120 year stay in this world.

Yep. Face it. You’ve never even seen your real self, and you never will in this world.

Why does a baby smile when you smile at him/her? Does the sight of another human changing the shape of their mouth actually cause joyous emotion? And if you say it’s out of habit, then why do babies respond in the same?

I hope this post has helped you realize “there is more than meets the eye.” So to conclude, what does one make of all this? Well, there are many things to be learned from this discovery, but an important one I’d like to focus on right now is respect. Have some respect when you talk to another person. Whether they are smart are stupid (by your perfect standards), and whether you agree with them or not, realize you are communicating with a piece of the most ultimately unfathomable.

And if you can’t, kindly keep your lip cells touching each other.

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