Lasting Precious Moments

When John went into Mom’s room a 3:30 a.m. to give her medication, she smiled at him, took a couple of more breaths, and left. In the last few days, this had been the pattern. She would take some juice, some liquid food, her medication, and we would assist her in turning from side to side. Each time she would say something: “I love you,” “That was good.” She looked us directly in the eye and smiled a smile that could only be described as pure love and appreciation. These are moments we shall carry with us forever. These are a great gift.

Les, too, spoke of such special moments he and Ruth shared when they were here visiting. She shared a moment with Barbara, her nurse and case manager in the first months of hospice care. The two had a special relationship, stemming perhaps from both being brilliant and professionally driven, plus both returning to school for advanced degrees as their children approached maturity.

I suspect that one last accomplishment Mom mentioned ten days before may well have been a book Mom wanted Barbara to have. The author had autographed the book, and Barbara had returned it or given it to Mom accompanied with a warm note Mom cherished. When Barbara had visited a couple weeks ago, we could not locate the book, so Barbara had not taken it. Barb was unable to return the following week as planned, but when Barbara did come back, the book was delivered and Mom relaxed.

Typical of Mom was guidance given others, often when others did not realize they were receiving it. It was a deeper level of communication that may not have been conscious to the recipient, but effective on a deeper, longer-term level. Mom had an almost unique ability to read people, easily analyzing how and why of their driving forces and self-impediments, then from her mentoring self, provide some queue that assisted the recipient in progressing.

Although the book was not especially extraordinary, I suspect it served as the tangible symbol of something deeper that Mom wished to communicate to Barbara—the encouragement and approving happiness for Barb's path and Barb herself. She saw Barb as extraordinary and wished to communicate that to Barb.

We have all received such gifts from Mom, even though we may not recall exactly what, and may very well not recognized them at the time. It is said the greatest kindnesses are those provided anonymously, and Mom was a constant fountain of such. If the greatest service is to be a good example, she succeeded both magnificently and better than we know.

We shall miss her, but through her gifts, she is still very much here.

Hokaheh, Hoka hey, Hoka hay

The Lakota have no alphabet, so any phonetic spelling is as correct as any other. The first was seen on a license plate prompting a question, sending me on this search. Her motorcycle plate spells it with a “y”. But what does it mean?

The majority definition states, “This is good day to die.” It was use by Crazy Horse to exhort fellow warriors to action. A different opinion was that it is in conjunction with the “good-day-to-die” statement, and means “Let’s go!” A finer shading indicates deeper, soul meaning, with the peacetime translation being “Welcome to the soul.” Eagle Voice, a Lakota Holy Man, told John Neihardt, biographer of Black Elk, it literally means, “Hold fast. There is more.”

It isn’t clear, so its user, the license owner, gives it the most meaning. She is a hospice nurse, who quietly talked with Mother, telling her all was well, that it might be a little tough getting there, but that where she was going would be fine. She told Mom to listen to her body, it has the wisdom of knowing what the mind sometimes resists. In spite of being hearing impaired, Mom heard every word, visibly relaxed, accepting and serene. Magic was happening there.

Later, the nurse told me she has studied seven years with the elders. When she came here to the mountains, she did not know that was to happen, but seemed to imply it was the inevitable reason for doing so. The meaning of Hokaheh, says she, is to live life in such as way that one has done all that one should upon one’s last day, so it is indeed a good day to die. After watching those moments with Mom and hearing this history of working with the elders, “there is more” and “welcome to the soul” are indeed within her definition.

Magic happens. I am blessed I now see it for what it is. Hokaheh.

Educational Floss

“We pass thoughts around, from mind to mind, so compulsively and with such speed that the brains of mankind often appear, functionally, to be undergoing fusion.” ~ Lewis Thomas, 1974, former Dean, Yale Medical School; former Dean, NY University School of Medicine; former President, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute.

That's an amazing statement for 1974. Today, that speed has gone exponential. The internet offers tremendous educational potential, available without the incredible overhead of travel, gas, parking. Usually, travel time alone equates to at least another course each semester. It becomes even tougher when the student must work full-time, raise a family, and, then dress and drag themselves to a single class in the evening where travel time mounts to a staggering percentage of actual class time.

To offset this scenario, numerous on-line schools sprang up to offer degrees from associates to doctorates. These schools exact an extra-ordinary cost for the convenience. Their degrees either need to greatly return the student’s investment or be paid by corporate educational reimbursement. Their popularity exploded—with students and Wall Street. They rate among the highest earning and fastest growing corporations on the market.

Traditional schools failed initially to follow suit for a number of reasons other than rampant neuronal inertia. For example, they had a huge investment in brick-and-mortar and years of begging for more. To change so one does not use this plant fully would be, well, unthinkable. This mindset receives further enforcement when various fiefdoms compete for space as empire.

Education systems are not organized to fulfill the best interests of society on an immediate or timely basis. This is not to say educational organizations do not exist for society’s benefit; they do—they just aren’t organized to fulfill that mission. Internal fiefdoms, again, contribute to if not dictate the problem. Committees make up education’s power structure, and one fiefdom is not willingly undergoing retraction to support another’s expansion. For example, 15 open jobs for English received 1500 applicants, where 1500 open jobs compete for 15 nurses. The English Department is not about to shrink so Nursing can expand. Nursing salaries increase because of the nursing shortage, so the Nursing Department doesn’t fight too hard.

School quotas also dictate expansion because of funds provided. The student-paid tuition receives funds from the state equal to 4 or 5 times that amount, but these funds do not dictate whether student should be a nurse or an English major. The mechanics may differ from school-to-school or state-to-state, but the result remains the same. Students applying for nursing programs gain entry by quota and competitive point systems, thereby incurring years awaiting entry before starting their one- or two-year programs.

Society’s loss is partially offset by on-line schools offering nursing with various methods to complete the practical requirements. The personal loss is not so easily offset, since most cannot afford the highly profitable prices of online schools or waiting uncertainly to see if they gain entry to a public-school program.

To obtain education without credit is becoming easy. Many schools are placing courses online, limiting them only by having no contact with the instructor, no other students to interact with, and no credit. Massachusetts Institute of Technology intends mounting all their courses online and already has 1800 available. For the states, the normal funder of education, this type of arrangement would be tremendously beneficial with arrangements for earning credit. A small fee could offset the cost of administering a credit exam, but basically the course cost is moderate and richly paid for from the increased earnings of increased education. In fact, it should provide stellar return on investment as well as people's quality of life.

Everyone wins but the fiefdoms. Perhaps they qualify for bailouts.

"A great educational system almost always pays off! And a poor one is paid for, over and over. Eek." ~ Elizabeth Elzey
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No English majors or fiefdoms were hurt while writing this post.

Reality Stretching

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch. ~ Lily Tomlin.

I began this topic with A Tart Experiment, which described silent communication between two deeply, mutually hypnotized subjects in a formal experiment. It is described in sufficient detail to allow anyone or “anytwo” to repeat the procedure. The experimenter remained in good reputation at UC Davis for 28 years until he retired, indicating no one found his work fraudulent.

There are other experiences in hypnosis that stretch reality and allow trial of replication. For example, Michael Talbot, in The Holographic Universe, described a birthday party from his youth where the entertainment was a stage hypnotist. The hypnotist selected a father, hypnotized him, and instructed him that his daughter was invisible. The hypnotist pulled out a pocket watch, held the inscribed back to the daughter’s stomach while she stood facing away from and immediately in front of her father. The hypnotist asked the father to read the inscription, which the father did, right through his daughter.

An even richer stretching of reality comes from placebo healings—the healing power of nothing at all. Half a century of rigorous research demonstrates an overall 35% success rate of placebo. In the 1950s sham surgery, just cutting patients open and stitching up the cut, proved equally successful to actual surgery. Rigorous double-blind studies determined placebos 54% effective as aspirin and 56% effective as morphine.

Lewis Thomas related a story of a doctor who regularly eliminated warts by painting them with harmless purple dye. Thomas, then president emeritus of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute, stated, “If my unconscious can figure out how to manipulate the mechanisms needed for getting around that virus, and for deploying all the various cells in the correct order for tissue rejection, then all I have to say is that my unconscious is a lot further along than I am.”

Placebos have proven effective in arenas of headaches, allergies, fever, the common cold, acne, asthma, warts, pain, nausea, peptic ulcers, psychiatric symptoms such as depression and anxiety, rheumatoid and degenerative arthritis, diabetes, radiation sickness, Parkinsonism, multiple sclerosis, and cancer—diseases from mundane to the most malevolent.

Patients can also change conditions themselves. A woman having multiple personalities was admitted to hospital for diabetes switched to a personality that did not have diabetes, and the diabetic symptoms disappeared. Similar stories change color blindness, asthma, drug response, allergies, epilepsy, etc. A multiple who is drunk might change to a different personality and be instantly sober. A multiple can change to an “unanesthetizable” personality and wake up on the operating table. Multiples have entirely different brainwave and speech patterns. Under normal medical reality, these things are impossible, except they happen.

These indicate the unconscious mind has powers largely unimagined, and definitely unmastered—except by a few. The objective then becomes to determine how to enlist the unconscious into controlling one’s health and curing it when needed. Our "collective hunch" has been wrong.

The first step is to collect such experiences and look for possible techniques toward self-mastery. Hypnosis, of course, suggests itself as a first technique of great potential. The apparent task is to instruct the unconscious in what is wanted and trust it knows how to accomplish it. The problem is to make it do it, want to do it, and/or believe it can do it.

I’ll either find the book—or write it! Surely this one is already written many times over.

Miracles happen, not in opposition to Nature, but in opposition to what we know of Nature. ~ St. Augustine
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Michael Talbot reported these examples in The Holographic Universe. Talbot passed away from leukemia, at age 38. He wrote of the potential, but not of techniques for mastery.

Tips, Tricks, and Techniques – Cold Treats

Tina just described her condition as her head being more full of snot than ideas. I would like the pass on some wisdom picked up from years in nursing homes:

1. When one catches a cold, take a massive dose of Vitamin C (3000mg) and Echinacea (800mg). The Echinacea boosts one’s immune system to cure the cold. I find the cure works even better if one also includes a multi-vitamin. Earlier is better. I used to take Echinacea daily during winter season. Colds were less severe and caught less often.

2. A new addition is Zicam swabs, where one swabs the effected portion of the nose. The Zinc retards rhino-virus replication while the immune system comes up to speed to eradicate the cold virus. It is imperative to do this in the first 72 hours, says it, but the first 24-hours are the real secret. The next 48 hours, I think, just sells more Zicam. Anyway, Zicam really seems to inhibit cold severity.

Both works best. If caught in the first few hours, one wonders if it really was a cold or just a momentary runny nose. Please, understand, these do not directly control the symptoms of a cold as do most cold "remedies." These techniques limit the virus causing the cold. A regular remedy will also be desirable for symptom relief.

Snot mostly comes from the immune system taking on the bacteria eating the dead cells ruptured by viral replication.

Placebo? Perhaps, but it works whichever it might be, and I am a bit of a skeptic. Of course, I believe in placebos; I know they work.

Hope this helps, at least, next time. Perhaps Liz can add some Chinese medical wisdom. Echinacea is Eastern, but it's Eastern US.

Exit 5—The Coming of the Borg

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
~ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

I have no idea if this scenario relates to reality at all, but it fulfills a childhood dream--dream here meaning a vivid, while asleep, repeating dream, not a life goal (although making it one is not unattractive). I will say that I’ve had a reliable intuition about the large events of my life, thus the Exit numbers. Each represents, I think, a possible life exit, numbered by order of occurrence during my lifetime. Three I’ve successfully evaded, with help; two are pending. If I can successfully evade Exit 4, Exit 5 becomes the final exit—the one where I become a star ship, literally. Actually, I become the computer in charge—or specifically, my mind and personality become embodied in that computer. Allow me to explain.

In the 1960s, modified to its present form in 1975, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, formulated a growth curve for number of transistors on a chip vs. time (and cost). Basically, the transistor count per integrated circuit chip doubles every two years, thus provides a benchmark for computer performance doubling every two years. It's called Moore's Law.

Computer chess illustrates this exponential capacity growth. In 1989, IBM mounted an effort to successfully play championship chess, and in 1997, Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match. Deep Blue, backed by an IBM department, was a supercomputer enhanced with 256 special circuits built specifically to play chess, analyzed 2,000,000 moves per second. After winning, IBM dismantled Deep Blue.

In 2002, chess program Deep Fritz played world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik to a 4-4 tie. Deep Fritz ran on a network of six PCs. In 2004, Kasparov’s chess rating was 2795; Kramnik at 2794. In 2007, Fritz 9.0 was rated 2803, 20 Elo points below the chess-program leader, Rybka 1.0 (Russian: "Little Fish"). Fritz listed for $51.28, executed on one PC, and played Kasparov to a 2-2 draw.

Projecting into the future, Moore’s Law predicts a computer with similar capacity as the human brain by 2018, and, by 2028, that computer costs under $1000. This assumes photolithography will be replaced by other abilities to create increasing density chip equivalents past x-ray lithography limits. Confidence is high based on three factors: 1) Integrated circuits are still 2-dimensional constructions; nanotech engineering could enable building 3-dimensionally, with the additional heat offset by use of super-conducting material. 2) Metamaterials which are now being thought of as potentially providing stealth like a Klingon Bird of Prey because of light-bending capabilities. The real potential lies in photon vs. electron computing, because photon computing is faster and not restricted to binary. 3) Quantum computing uses the magic of superposition and entanglement.

Although Moore’s Law was not meant to predict in this arena, it appears to validly do so. Continuing into the future, a computer of the year 2068 thinks all thoughts of all men in all of history—in one second. In 2088, this computer measures 1-cubic centimeter and costs $1000. With nano-engineering, it self-repairs and self-replicates. Man ceases as the apex species. Further, this new species is long-lived and ideally suited to space travel. Its food is the energy plentiful in space.

An individual’s existence continues by being scanned and uploaded. In Star Trek, the teleporter disassembles the person to be re-assemble at a different place. In other words, it replaces the original person with a duplicate. Uploading to a computer is similar, except the replicate is, if you would, Homo silicon rather than Homo sapien. Our machines do not replace us; we integrate with them. This perhaps started in 2004 with the surgical implant of mouse controls into the brain of a quadriplegic.

From this backgrounding, one can see that my original childhood dream becomes a definite possibility, and certainly improves my original view of my brain being extracted and stored in a nutrient jar, hooking sensor and control circuitry to nerve endings. I would rather be Borg.

However, I'll not become Borg if I cannot evade Exit 4, but that's a different story for a different day.
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The merging of man and machine is covered extensively by Ray Kurzweil in The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.

Educational Froth

Once, when young and idealistic, I studied educational theory. It is indeed rich, with even normally unexpected personalities getting involved. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the US Navy’s father of nuclear power, wrote several books on it, for example. But, well he might.

In creating the Navy’s nuclear power program, he created schools to train engineers, officer and enlisted, who would be operating those nuclear power plants. For enlisted men, the program was one-year long, six months of classroom, six months of actually operating shore-based nuclear plants duplicating those at sea. “Intense” would be the descriptive word. Each week was a different topic and that one topic was all that was taught that week. At the end of the week, a pass-fail exam was given, and should one fail, a review was given to determine if the person repeated the week or was dropped from the school and nuclear program, reputedly for transfer to the least desirable duty the Navy could imagine for one’s specialty. If one made a “C,” one attended mandatory study hall until one’s grade average rose to “B” or one finished school. Study hall ran from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m., and was manned by qualified instructors who did help the student.

Performance of school graduates was so high that the Atomic Energy Commission, the outfit that ran the US civilian nuclear power program, and was run by Rickover, passed a rule that civilian companies could not hire Navy nuclear personnel for at least six months after they were discharged from the Navy. Navy nukes, as they were called, were preferred over even Masters graduates from civilian colleges, and the civilian companies offered sometimes twice per week the amount the Navy paid per month. This of course does not consider that civilian-power-plant duty did not require being at sea for months at a time.

Rickover certainly had credentials for writing about education, and felt impelled to do so because of the low educational quality of high school and college graduates he had to deal with when inducting people into his program. He favored the British system of the 11-year exam that determined which schools one could attend next. Lower scores received training toward making a living, graduating students for work earlier than American high schools. Higher scores were able to attend liberal arts or technical schools, graduating at 19 with the equivalent of two-to-four years of an American college. I worked with one graduate of a British technical school, and his knowledge seemed far superior to American electrical engineers with a BS. I was very impressed.

This is but one example of educational methods, theory, etc., easily available and widely published, but seldom practiced in the imperative immediacy of "teaching to the test," and other such well-intentioned requirements to offset low budgets, low salaries, low priorities and other impedimentary ills of the educational system. Short sighted, they are, since the one law most profitable for America was the World War II GI Bill, which paid the educational expenses of millions of former servicemen, providing government many extra billions in tax revenues from the increased income those servicemen earned over their lifetimes.

Too bad the country doesn’t see education as a stimulus.

Diversions

As mentioned, John keeps his mind busy at oh-dark-thirty monitoring earthquakes. I said in Indonesia, but he actually does so worldwide. Indonesia has just been especially busy as of late. The attached list illustrates two days of multiple quakes in one area. Something extra-ordinary is obviously happening there.

Current maps and lists can be located: Map, List, Big List

Personally, my diversion is counterinsurgency, especially as it applies to Afghanistan. I have no more illusion of influencing any outcome than John does of influencing earthquakes, but I am intensely curious how we could win or loss—and why. Basically, the insurgent strategies date back to those used by Generals Washington and Greene in the American Revolutionary War. They were refined by Giap, in Vietnam, where we failed to adapt. It has become the norm since few, if any, can match us for lethality on the battlefield, though Saddam was insane enough to try.

Ironically, we initially were effective against insurgencies, succeeding the Philippines early in the 20th century, then later, in the 1920s and ‘30s, in the Caribbean and Latin America. From those conflicts, came the Marine Corps Small Wars Manual, in 1940. Our success in using insurgiency against the Japanese in World War II was lost to history, probably because MacArthur wasn’t behind it, but the resistance on Mindanao met the returning Americans with thousands of effectives including a military band in uniform. In order to keep OSS from operating in his sector, MacArthur had stated that guerrilla operations had been impossible.

Iraqi was thought lost and initial Democratic platform was a pullout, until the Army/USMC Counterinsurgency Manual came out with the generals in command of Iraq forces fully behind it. The surge was but a part of that strategy.

Now, in Afghanistan, we are locked in another struggle, largely inside our armed forces themselves to determine the strategy in Afghanistan, with Afghan success or failure basically in the balance. In the Army, this is analogized as a conflict between the jocks ad the nerds, the jocks being those all for pursuing the enemy with shock and awe, regardless of collateral casualties, while the nerds are after the “hearts and minds” (heard that term before?) of the Afghans themselves. I am amused the tough, “snake eaters” of Special Forces, the Green Berets, are in the nerd camp. I suggest hesitation in addressing one of them as “Nerd.”

To win, we need to furnish the villages 24/7 security (vs. patrolling periodically), help them build what they want and need, e.g., roads, electric grids, schools, and hospitals, and generate on-going jobs. When they have vested interest, they’ll defend it themselves. Our embedded teams know this; the FOBbites as the embedded teams call the denizens of Forward Operating Bases, Army speak for those behind the front lines, are those who choose not to understand or care about winning. This is summarized better than I can by an article in Foreign Policy. Here is another, this one from an embedded "boot on the ground."

Anyway, to make a long story short, America hasn’t been good at nation building, so our enemies repeatedly force us into just that scenario. We are basically in an internal debate of whether we’re going to get good at it or accept being unable to win. We can of course send in a few cruise missiles now and again. Clinton tried that with some cruise missiles aimed at mud huts. Let's see, at $1-million each, we use 19 against mud huts, then, they hit us back, taking out the twin towers, damaging the Pentagon, and targeting the Capitol—for 19 airline tickets.

Now, the pendulum seems to be swinging in favor of the nerds. Here is an article from the Washington Post, by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. There are also numerous good blogs on the topic should one be interested: Small Wars Journal, Afghanistan Shrugged, Bill & Bob's Excellent Afghan Adventure. Afghanistan Shrugged is from Vampire 6, the embedded boot on the ground earlier referenced. Now he can tell you about Fobbites.

Chris Visit

Chris was down for a visit. Mountain man seems doing well, except maybe in the hair department. John says he is just turning transparent.

See the two white bags with the green tags above the TV cabinet? One is marked Les & Ruth, the other Tina, Liz, & Dee. They are gifts from Chris & Teresa from Christmas. Being above eye level, I forget them, too, so if you are down for a visit, please, pick up your loot.

Childhood Dreams

Three vivid dreams repeated during my childhood. They shocked me awake each time they occurred, perhaps explaining why I remember them to this day. Their meaning I can speculate on though I really do not know. I do know they were reality stretchers, then and now.

First, and most distressing, I was a 17-year old, replacement soldier of the Waffen SS, fresh from years as a Hitlerjungend, traveling across Russia towards my assigned unit. While in line for a meal, a Russian youth, younger than I, shot me fatally in the stomach. Perhaps you can understand why this would jolt me awake in a cold sweat. Had it not repeated several times in exact detail, I probably would not have remembered it.

The second such shocking dream was being the 15-year old Russian youth who shot the German youth of the previous dream. After shooting him, I was kicked to the ground and shot through the neck by another German soldier. This one, too, repeated, but not as often.

The third was being an interstellar spaceship—not manning it, being it. Data from the various hull-mounted sensors came directly to me as if the sensors were appendages. Later, when awake, I would imagine some kind of brain-in-a-jar scenario to explain this, which was a popular science fiction scenario of the black-and-white movies. Today, an alternate explanation better fits: My personality and consciousness is uploaded to the computer controlling the ship. I am the Borg. I now think of this as Exit 5. More on Exit 5 in later post.

Strange dreams, but then, again, I was a strange child.

Speculations on Everything and Not Much

I contemplate on what the one item Mom had not done that she wished accomplished. If it was mine, perhaps, I easily think of one thing that these months of caregiving have enabled me to accomplish. I again see the good side of people where before I skewed toward a darker view.

Over years working in nursing homes, one sees people basically abandoned there by their families. Sometimes these families visit on Christmas or Mother’s Day, and abuse staff to pretend they cared. They may fool themselves; they don’t fool staff—or their loved one. There are also residents who abuse staff because they are finally in a position of some power, and use it. All my life, I have not suffered petty tyrants easily.

Among the many residents of nursing homes are those few who are true angels, and no doubt they were before arriving at this final residence in life. If the greatest service one can perform in life is to be a good example, these few are our saints. Some, even as dying, often painfully because of allergies to effective pain-killing medications, remained gracious and grateful, especially toward staff. Though I recognize these saints, the darker experiences overwhelmed me, weighing too heavily on my outlook. I was sinking to a darker place.

These months caring for Mom calmed this tendency, allowing me to see at gut level that most people are merely doing the best they can, even when their best isn’t very good. There also walk among us a very few I label authentic people. What you see is what you get, kindness and consideration with strangers as with family members. I am happy to report I now know these few exist and recognize them when I see them. My refurbished outlook comes with an absence of previous pain from only seeing the dark side.

I do not know if this is the one thing Mom wished accomplished before leaving, but it is a worthy Mom-thing in my eyes.

Last Watch

Mom is sleeping more, John and I less. Last night, John was emailing me at 01:49, about earthquakes in Indonesia. I was reading them at 03:20. Tonight, John has returned to Brevard; I am at Mom’s. I’ll try not to keep too close an earthquake vigil.

Mom is reposed and serene, usually a sign one is ready, without reservation. Today, Leslie and Ruth came by for a visit, and then went on. Tomorrow, Chris will visit, completing Mom’s request to see the four of us.

When driving down, I would notice the dried leaves tumbling in the high winds of today, thinking they were somehow a timely symptom, the last telling of a season gone.

Hers now, mine in time. I, too, am serene--with both.

Serene is “clear and free of storms or unpleasant change; shining bright and steady.”

She is.

Up from Dreamtime

We are just learning how to survive in infinity. ~ Aboriginal saying.

Julian Jaynes (Psychologist, Princeton) speculated the conscious mind (subjective self-awareness) originated in the last three thousand years, as illustrated in the lack of subjective self-awareness in Homer’s Iliad and the early books of the Bible. I would agree the conscious mind is a new addition to the human brain, but do not agree with his timing.

Toba, one of ten super-volcanoes in the world, exploded 74,000 years ago, ejecting 1000 times the material into the atmosphere as Mt. St. Helens in 1980. The climatic stress reduced worldwide population of Homo sapiens to as little as 2000, and certainly fewer than 10,000. This is evident from the variations in man's current mitochondrial DNA. It also explains the reason for a second exodus from Africa approximately 50,000 years ago that repopulated the world. The movement to the east went quickly, populating Australia by 40,000 years ago, but took longer to populate Europe probably because of the ice age in progress and perhaps because of competition from Neanderthals already there.

The Australian Aboriginals and the Homo sapiens remaining in Africa do not lack consciousness, or subjective self-awareness, indicating it developed prior to leaving Africa. Not finding it in Homer or the early Bible may merely be similar to not finding perspective in art until the Renaissance.

Life without consciousness would be, in my mind, like driving a car while thinking of something else—except one isn’t thinking of something else or anything at all. Driving happens just fine, and may be even better since the subconscious mind has reaction timing around 1/10th of a second vs. the conscious mind being ½ second or more—then lying about it (really! see Benjamin Libet).

The conscious mind is certainly newer than the subconscious mind as indicated by the conscious mind's lesser capabilities. For example, the conscious mind can only readily remember 7 plus-or-minus 2 items; the subconscious is virtually unlimited. The subconscious apparently remembers everything using all sense tracks plus an emotional track. It’s retrieval that is the problem.

Wilder Penfield illustrated this in the 1920s and 1930s when probing open-brained epileptics caused them to relive earlier life experiences by stimulating a particular point. The relived experience repeated if the same point was again stimulated, even when the person was told a different point would be stimulated. At the time, it was thought the brain's memory method had been uncovered, but it turned out this does not work on non-epileptics.

The oldest continuous social structure of Homo sapiens, the Australian Aborigines, have a creation myth of coming out of Dreamtime, which parallels, if you would, coming out of Eden after gaining the knowledge of right and wrong. Are these both mythical memories of life prior to the evolution of the conscious mind? Possibly so. Perhaps the conscious mind developed in the challenging period following Toba, and the subsequent leaving Africa to repopulate the world is the coming out of Eden. This gives these two myths similar meaning.

The conscious mind also provides inductive reasoning vs. deductive reasoning of the subconscious. This may be true or not, but the subconscious being older seems to be more brilliant than the conscious, meaning merely it has access to greater concentrations of neurons available for task assignment.

The subconscious also appears to be self-programming and is best assigned a task without instruction on how to accomplish it. Just what the reason is that the more-brilliant subconscious should work for the less brilliant conscious mind is basically unknown, but it obviously is successful judging from the climb of mankind in terms of civilization, knowledge and organizational striving. We’ve all had the experience of working for a boss less intelligent than we—and much less intelligent then he thought he was.

Perhaps this also offers us an understanding of enlightenment as being the melding the conscious and subconscious to functioning in concert and as one. The Aborigines also speak of returning to Dreamtime, after all.

Hierarchy of Chores

Slowly waking up, not stoically looking forward to the chores of the day, even though they are not bad. I need to go by the credit union, get money to have the front, passenger-side tire replaced (it has a bubble from a split in the tread), and return of two library books (one of which I wish to renew because I’ve been reading everything but it). Did I really get all that in one sentence? Two, actually.

Actually, it’s a fascinating book: Stages of Faith, by James Fowler, who treats faith as what I call Lines of Development. The best known Line of Development would be Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. These stem from researching the development of various facets of the individual, and are a contribution of our civilization, starting around 1900, by James Mark Baldwin. Baldwin’s daughters sparked his interest in developmental psychology, which later inspired the more-famous works of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg.

Kohlberg’s morals development I’ve mentioned before, summarizing his stages or levels into egocentric, ethnocentric, and worldcentric. Carol Gilligan expanded on Kohlberg by looking into gender differences, showing females have Levels of Caring, where males have Levels of Justice. Clair Graves applied these same procedures into determining a hierarchy of values, which today goes by Spiral Dynamics, and can also be applied to groups and nations. Fowler applied this method to individual Levels of Faith, which brings us full circle for the moment.

I have no idea why I’ve developed such a passionate curiosity for Levels or Stages of Development, but I have. There are a number of such personally passionate topics, unrelated to each other. For example, the Younger Dryas, a period following the last ice age where temperatures returned abruptly to ice-age levels for 1300 years, then just as abruptly returned to the mild Holocene temperatures warmer than today. What power can shift world temperatures so drastically and abruptly? There are now two major hypotheses, both of which leave some major effects unexplained. This interest originated before the current debate on global warming, and neither side of that argument can explain the Younger Dryas.

So, you have a peak into the world in which I live. Though of no merit in everyday life, or may even be an impediment to daily functioning, these are items that give me passion. As Joseph Campbell instructs, “Follow your passion!” I agree!

So, I’ll renew the library book—after the tire, of course.

Tips, Tricks, and Techniques—Memory

Memory seems so closely associated with concentration, I doubt that one can be treated exclusive of the other. When reading a memory advisory site, the first mention was attention. Dale Carnegie reported that the most common reason we fail to remember other peoples’ names is that we didn’t hear it to begin with. Rightfully so—memory automatically improves as concentration does, thus I mentioned concentration first.

Memory improves with practice. Plebes (freshmen) at the U.S. Naval Academy are required to spout the menus of the upcoming four meals anytime an upper classman demands. When Mary was studying for her doctorate, she often fell asleep with her books, and I would later kid her about sleep-learning. She definitely could perform rather amazing feats such as, say, quoting the footnote on page 382 after obtaining that book from the library earlier that day. I’m still not sure there was not more fact than humor to in her apparent method.

One experience I can provide first hand is qualification in submarines. In order to earn one’s Dolphins, indicating one is a submariner, equivalent to wings worn by pilots, one had to memorize all ships systems figuratively and literally, in sufficient working detail that one could successfully answer such koan-like questions as “How can one pump fuel oil from the officer’s shower?” One had to know the two systems and proximity of their components in the submarine well enough that one could figure out how to cross-connect the two systems to literally get fuel oil from the officer’s shower. I sometimes wondered if someone had tried it, thus giving reason for the taste of the water.

On diesel-electric submarines (non-nuclear), one had to know how to operate machinery on the submarine well enough to get underway without lights. On nuclear submarines, that requirement was relaxed a bit since no one not nuclear qualified was going to get their hands on the nuclear reactor controls. One still had to answer questions about it, and any simplification enjoyed was offset by having more and more complicated other stuff. In other words, this was a major memory feat, and required completion on in a limited time.

In my last compartment, the auxiliary machinery space, the machinist mate on duty took me for a tour of all 143 valves and switches in the compartment, telling me the function and use for each. Upon finishing this one-hour-plus tour, I took him on the same tour, pretty much verbatim. It rather astounded him, and he must have told the engineering officer since the engineering officer signed off both that compartment and my overall qualification without ever interviewing me.

Afterwards I noticed a few, shall we say, unusual capabilities. For example, while on watch I had to calculate the location error for the three inertial navigators in latitude and longitude, and plot those errors, every fifteen minutes. I would do so mentally, including the carryovers of a 60-based system—in my head, then walk across the room and plot the six errors on graph paper—without writing them down. Although these capabilities have faded with time, my memory still astounds people at times. For example, I have taken vital signs from several patients, and then returned to the nursing station to chart these, not writing them down until I do so in each individual’s chart. I do that by replaying a movie in my head of taking the vital signs. In the auxiliary machinery space, I also touched each valve and switch, then mimicked moving it to perform the operation I was talking about. I also visualize actually doing things, even when not present.

The point in all this is to communicate what is possible—and the immensity of that possibility. Tricks and techniques are easily locatable once one looks for them.

When I was going to college, it was the fad for instructors to say, “This is not a memory course.” Cringing, my thought response was, “Well, if we don’t have to learn anything, how does one earn an A?” I suspect that one of the reasons the British Empire became so immense and successful was in no small part because those bureaucrats staffing it were from the British liberal education system that required memorizing the Greek and Roman classics—in the language they were written--in other words, the British Empire rested on developed and trained memory.

As do we all.

Tips, Tricks, and Techniques--Concentrate

One purpose of starting this blog was to pass on knowledge that might prove useful. This is definitely one of the items that I’ve found useful, and so might you.

In this case, it’s improved concentration. Concentration, like memory, and physical conditioning, improves with use. In meditation, the initial task is improving concentration to the point that the mind becomes a tool, not the unruly ruler of oneself. One learns that one is not the mind, where the average person probably conceives himself as a small ball of awareness a few centimeters behind his eyes.

This initial “monkey mind” as it is called in Buddhist and Hindu traditions can be tamed. Meditation has two manners of doing so. One is to merely observe the thoughts as they pop into the mind, watch them as they go their way, then fade. To help not get caught up, one can label each thought as to its type as it appears. This method allows one to not get caught up in one’s own thoughts, for thoughts produce reactions in the body, sensory and emotional. Think of a lemon, for example. A number of writers, including Mark Twain, have commented on things they’ve suffered, most of which never happened. This technique gives one isolation from most things that go bump in the night.

A second technique is simply to concentrate on something, and the most common one is the breath itself. One can attend or pay attention to the breath as it goes and comes, either in general or as it transits through the nasal passages. For some reason, females supposedly have trouble with that (I haven’t checked that our personally, at least, in this lifetime), so can attend breathings effect on the stomach or naval area—thus the joke of contemplating one’s naval. Breathing should be through the stomach, so to speak, as done by a baby. Breathing only through the chest is shallow, as in panic mode, while through the stomach is relaxing. Try and both ways and observe the emotional effect.

When one notes one’s concentration has strayed, bring it back gently as one would a small child who has merely walked off the path. This will be common, and it is important to do so gently.

Another method of improving concentration, not involving meditation, is one gained from Wayne Dyer. Picture a shot clock, and count it down from 24 to 0---without thinking of anything else—nothing! Difficult to do, and, be forewarned, the most common intruding thought is “How am I doing?” Should a thought intrude, restart the clock at 24 and begin again. It is not easy, and even Dyer said it took him days before being able to accomplish it the first time.

Often, in life, we are required to wait as in, for example, the waiting room of an office. These provide an arena for practice that allows one to benefit from the time. The benefits of mind mastery cannot, I think, be easily exaggerated, and concentration is a definite first and giant step.

Blog Blog Blog

I remember where I was going with the previous entries, but I'm not sure I want to go there, at least today. So, I'll just post some finger diarrhea.

The picture is the snow we had this week. It came down over two night,but the picture captured just the first night. Temperatures remained below freezing for two days, dropping to 7 overnight. I didn't go out except quickly to take this picture. Its followup was blurred from my shaking. Not going out for three days might explain weirdness of previous posts.

This was in Asheville. Columbus didn't get any snow, and Mom oh so wants to see some.

Earlier this morning, I installed a widget that captures visitor locations to the blog. I'm fascinated, as if you hadn't noticed, but the other attractive feature is that it is free. Anyway, find the map in the right column, click on the map, and it will bring up a world map showing visitor locations. One can drill down on the map for some very specific detail. It shows me, at mom's;, as being in Landrum, SC. I assume that's because that is where the telephone DSL connects with the internet.

Since John is using a Verizon broadband wireless modem in Brevard, I am curious to see where he comes up when he visits. Probably will have to wait until tomorrow since he is busy with his girlfriend this weekend. She returns home in late afternoon, if you also share my curiosity, ah, about his modem.

The other puzzle I am interested in is how to get what I think are called captions on the pictures appearing in the blog. When one holds their cursor over a picture for a second or more, a caption would appear with wording telling whatever the person wanted. I've noticed some of these in Liz' photos, where they say, "something-or-other by Elizabeth Elzey." Of course, when I asked her about it, I couldn't find any, and she did not know what I was referring to. Obviously Murphy is alive and well, and only goes on vacation when I do.

If any of you have an idea, please, let me know. Thanks.

The Eyes Have It

“Galileo keeps harping on how things happen, whereas his adversaries had a complete theory as to why things happen…. Galileo insists upon ‘irreducible and stubborn facts,’… his opponent, brings forward reason.” ~ A.N. Whitehead

As Bertrand Russell emphasized, science was nothing more than the consistent application of common sense. In Galileo’s instance, that was the eye of sense. The clash is between the eye of sense and the eye of reason, between empiricism and rationalism. Science is anti-rationalism? Yes, it comes to “irreducible and stubborn facts!”

The analogy of eyes as being the senses of these clashes reaches back to Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274) over three hundred years before Galileo (1564-1642). St. Bonaventure writes of three modes or “three eyes” to obtain knowledge, a type of illumination: lumen exterius, the eye of flesh, giving us knowledge of sense objects; lumen interius, the eye of mind or eye of reason, giving knowledge of philosophical truths; and lumen superius, the eye of contemplation, giving knowledge of the transcendent realm. The eye of flesh is also referred to as lumen inferius, inferior illumination, a statement perhaps leading to the later ignoring of “irreducible and stubborn facts.”

The idea of eyes of flesh, mind, and contemplation exist in every major tradition of philosophy, psychology, and religion. In Eastern wisdom traditions one hears of opening of the third eye, and a manners of doing so are the wisdom of the tradition.

Today, an example of this is the over-dependence on such as computer simulations, basing conclusions on the model rather than reality. The error of applying the wrong eye, remains unfortunately common, and with the ascendancy of science, it tends toward the same error—except in reverse. If they can’t see or measure it, it doesn’t exist. The eye of contemplation no longer exists. Is this scientism’s way of saying, “God is dead.”?
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St. Bonaventure, Doctor Seraphicus, a Franciscan, was awarded his Masters, the medieval equivalent of a Doctorate, from the University of Paris, at the same time as St. Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican. Both are Doctors of the Church. Saints are many; Doctors of the Church few and ultra select. In their few numbers appear some of the most extra-ordinary humans mankind has produced.

A Magnetic Personality

Galileo often receives credit for being the first of modern scientists because he tested Aristotle’s assertion that heavier weights fall faster than lighter ones. The story goes that Galileo dropped differing weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but truth is, he built inclined ramps, which were used to roll balls of differing weights. The inclines slowed the weights, allowing a more accurate timing. These experiments he documented, and are republished today in a volume by Stephen Hawking: The Illustrated On the Shoulders of Giants. Hawking reprints extracts from the works of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein.

Should one be interested, I recommend obtaining the book from a library to determine if one really wants to own a copy, unless of course one is not concerned about the expense. The expense is moderate.

One giant missing from Hawkin’s collection may be William Gilbert. Gilbert, who preferred the French pronunciation of his name, was physician to Queen Elizabeth I. In his spare time, which he seems to have had an abundance, he experimented with magnets, even spending 5000 pounds for a lab in his home. Adjusted for inflation, that's in the neighborhood of 1-million dollars, which also explains why he might also have had the time, and certainly indicates his level of passion for his subject.

After twenty years of study, Gilbert published De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth) in 1600. De Magnete, as it is most often called, served as the definitive work on magnetism for over 200 years; in fact, until 1820 when Faraday published on electromagnetism.

The pertinent quote comes from the first sentence of the preface: “Clearer proofs, in the discovery of secrets, and in the investigation of hidden causes of things, being afforded by trustworthy experiments and by demonstrated arguments, then by the probably guess and opinions of the ordinary professors of philosophy…”

The pertinent fact: Galileo had a copy. Galileo did take science a step further in pointing out and applying mathematics as the language of science. He wrote, "Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe ... It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures; ...". For that reason, Hawking and Einstein give him credit as the father of modern science.

Today, the scientific method seems common sense, but in that day it was not so. The eye of mind was considered superior to the eye of flesh; the scientific method combines both. The most often published defense of Galileo’s observations of the moons of Jupiter was a logical comparison of the number of wandering objects in the sky to the number of openings in the human head. The heavenly objects could not exceed the openings, so none need look through Galileo’s telescope.

The eye of flesh was not needed. It proved an opening of a 400-year war between church and science. Both have lost a great deal in the struggle. A look at the concept of eyes might help. So shall we look, at both the eyes and the losses.

A Tart Experiment

In an experiment to deepen hypnosis, Charles Tart, Psychology Professor at UC Davis for 28 years, had two graduate students, both deeply hypnotizable and versed in hypnosis, induct each other into a trance. The hypothesis being tested was that the mutual trust between a hypnotist and subject would deepen the hypnotic level attained. It worked—extremely well, with a surprise.

During the session, the two subjects began visualizing a beach, complete with sparkling sands, champagne seas, and crystalline rocks—an astral world. They also ceased talking, but continued relating in this astral world vividly, as if actually experiencing it. Post-session interviews determined the subjects had experienced the same environment and events even though they had ceased talking—at least out loud.

After the sessions, the experiences were so real and so unusual that the two students refused further sessions and the male student ceased hypnosis work altogether.

This experiment is documented in Tart’s book: Altered States of Consciousness.

The import of this experiment is tremendous:

First, the experiment is easily testable by any two people, and can be done without anything other than some hypnosis training. Knowing the expectations should alleviate the fears aroused in the original subjects. The world visualized was simply an astral world as described often in the spiritual literature of Victorian-era England.

If the experience is reproducible, a couple could explore each other in incredible detail, in heart and soul as well as physically. The Star Trek “mind meld” comes to mind. Could an intimate couple exchange roles, or feel what the other feels as they feel it?

Just shear adventuring appears to greatly exceed what is available from the likes of Xbox, Wii, or even multi-million dollar simulators.

This experiment also perhaps explains the knowledge and wisdom teachings documented in the literature of shaman-apprentice mind transfers—educational mind melds, so to speak.

If this consciousness state is possible and can be readily reproduced, the potential is staggering—and scary—which may explain why it has not been seemingly repeated in the almost 40-years since Tart’s book was originally published.

I have my Master Hypnotist certificate. Now I need…

Phase Shift

I find myself in the midst of one of life’s phase shifts, the one into old age. Advise is to embrace any shift as being for the best, and one might as well. It’s inevitable. In spite of that, I still dream of myself as in my late twenties, early thirties. Somewhere down inside, I’m not shifting apparently.

It has been happening for years, this giving up of those things of life such as career, power, money, glory, to follow an inner direction of discovering one’s highest ideals and a reason for being here. I am told that giving up may be a grieving process, and I recognize that process.

This season is Autumn and the Metal Element. The metal element is “paring down” one’s life to focus on what is of ultimate concern. In traditional Chinese medicine, the lungs and colon are the organs of Metal. The lungs breathe in new life and spirit; the colon lets go of waste.

My view is now to determine what was and is possible, and how it might be realized. This is not just for myself, but for others close to me, from family to country to world. Morals and caring, it is said, move from egocentric, to ethnocentric, and finally worldcentric. This is a “line of development” discovered by my civilization, and will receive a great deal of attention in coming posts. It allows peering inside the wisdom traditions from all of history and all corners of the world, to discover their strengths and weaknesses, and thus how individuals and societies might progress. This has become important to me.

I would love to make a Faustian bargain for all knowledge but there seems no one to bargain with, probably because they know now they loss in the end. I shall have to muddle along on my own, and perhaps find someone interested in sharing these ideas. That would be nice. Einstein, I think, made a great mistake in not following up on his promise with his first wife. He won her hand by promising to talk physics with her, allowing her to participate, as she could not otherwise because of her gender. After marriage, he did not, and finally had to promise her his Nobel monetary winnings in exchange for a divorce. To have someone like her to cohabit this world of ideas would be wonderful.

This, then, is what I want in this autumn season my life. We’ll see.

Earth School 101

Basically, there are two theories of the universe: the reason behind it and there isn’t one. I don’t pretend to know which is ultimately valid, I have doubts anyone really does. I come from a civilization where anyone can talk to God, but if He talks back, it’s psychotic. I also have trouble with those who think of God as someone stuck in the terrible twos. I grew up with some people like that, and don’t care for more. If those people think they are made in God’s image, I suspect they returned the favor—on steroids.

Without forcing an answer to the “I don’t know” question of whether there is a reason behind it, I took a logical tact. If there is no reason, I am free to make my own; if there is a reason, it should become clear in time. That’s empowering. The most beneficial theory seemed to be “Earth School.” We are here to learn and get to repeat the course as often as needed, usually at higher tuition—meaning with less subtlety and more pain. Also, when one later backslides, the course gets repeated. I also seem to notice that once one masters a lesson, the lesson seems to disappear. It doesn't continue on to some arbitrary end-of-course time. Whether this is the universe or my mind working, I’m not sure, but it’s worth watching.

As you astutely now surmise, this version of Earth School is not ecological although that can be a part if one desires. For many, Gaia has become their religion, but my Earth School is spiritual. It is the concept that I am here to learn with massive on-the-job training. This course or series of courses have lots of lab time, with the labs fully equipped and staffed. The instructor to student ratio is tremendous and there is no chance the instructors will not know one—grading will be accurate with no chance of being diminished or enhanced. Further, any lesson or class infinitely repeats until passed—and is easily, if not automatically, administered again should one’s learning regress. It can be a tough school.

My fellow students include everyone. The faculty, too, for everyone is my teacher. This allows me to think everyone is doing their best, even when their best may not be very good, yet I am free to react as I think best. It frees me, however, from even having to forgive them. The operative phrase is “frees me.” Forgiveness is a concept more beneficial to the forgiver than the recipient. Anger and resentment harbored for a suffered misdeed is a punishment of self, not the perpetrator. To not blame at all means one does not feel the destructive anger or resentment at all, but does not preclude action or reaction in any way. It frees it to be more appropriate, if anything. This is “Judge not!” but can be “Discern all!”

Finally, it allows me to continue working into my sunset years. It remains of use, even up to and through my last minutes. That becomes increasingly important, for having nothing useful to do is being already dead. This time, retirement will be merely a change of professions, well, maybe with a more casual work pace.