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Importance of language

We talk, we listen, we think, for all this we need a language. Everyone speaks some language, but here I want to convey the importance of knowing more then one language, not only more then one but the right one.

I know three languages, well obviously English, and you can evaluate my english skills from how I write, but English is my third language, I also speak Swedish and Russian, both better then I speak English, and what I have noticed is following:

First there are obvious translation issues, namely that some words simply do not exist in another language, and one has to try and convey the meaning when trying to translate from one to another.

But then there are more fundamental differences, namely, there are some concepts that do not exist in other languages, and there is no way to make a person that only understand Swedish (for example) to understand what you are trying to say.

This is of course what this is all about, we do our thinking in a language, and only being able to think in a language that does not have certain concepts, then those things do not exist for you, you can not reason with what you don't know, and you can't know it because your language simply does not support it, and if you don't have this concept then you can not evolve language and your understanding of the nature in that direction, certain things will forever remain unknown to you.

I think the implications at this point are clear, hence let's move on to languages.

First I thought that it was due to number of words, that one language just had more words hence one could express more things in that language, but this showed to be no completely true, when it comes to number of words English seems to have the most, then Russian then Swedish.

Though I noticed over the years speaking Swedish, English and Russian on daily basis that I often find myself unable to translate things from Russian to Swedish while I always could translate from Swedish to Russian. Swedish language do have words that do not exist in Russian, but it is always possible to translate meaning of these words, while there is simply no way to translate certain things from Russian to Swedish. Same thing goes for English, though, more is possible to translate from Russian to English then to Swedish. That is, what I noticed is that Russian is the most expressive language, then English and finally Swedish.

As an example so that you can experience it first hand try to translate:

упереться

Google translate will give you following translations to English:

Pierce

Stretch

Press against

Stretch against

Non of which translate the correct meaning of the word, but this is not the point,

the point is that I wen to a linguist at a university to ask for the meaning of this

word, that person tried for a very long time to find a way to translate what it

means, but finally gave up agreeing that there is no way to translate precisely what

it means.

I thought, how can this be? I sat down and thought about words and languages and I found out that the biggest problem is not only in words that are impossible to translate, but also in how those words are used.

For example the word above "упереться" in its primitive form means something like:

Pushing against something and being unable to move, for example driving into a garage you can "упереться" into the wall.

But it can also be bent to mean other things, for example:

уперся/уперласъ means a man/woman in the same way as a car can't get further in the same direction physically (would be fun to see), logically, or most common that the person refuses to admit being wrong in an argument.

But there is also упертыш,which is the same thing as above (with argument) but if you want to say it in a more condescending way, if you want to show your annoyance with the person not admitting being wrong. (Though it is probably not in the dictionary)

And so on.

Perhaps you could pick up from the example above how it works, and perhaps even learned new concept you never knew before, hence this is the key to the expressiveness of the Russian language, taking one word and being able to bend it to apply the meaning to other situations, and also transforming it to say it in a nice way or condescending way e.t.c. Hence you find yourself trying to translate from Russian to Swedish or English that and the meaning, the concepts, the representation of the natural world, the expressions of feelings are simply not there in many cases.

Hence the key is not number of words, the key is how the words are used in order to represent the world, and more freely words can be used and bent the more you can represent with those words, hence Russian language is perfectly suited for writing poetry, songs, stories e.t.c. because you can really express so much more.

The reason for this is that the Russian language is what is called Synthetic, that is where a word can have meaning of a whole English sentence, hence the problem described above arises when trying to translate from Synthetic languages to what is called Isolating language that you need sentences to explain all nuances of a single word, and in many cases not even that is enough.

This post was about making an educated choice when trying to learn another language, since you read this you already know English, and to you, or if you are too old to learn a new language then your your children, I would recommend to learn a Synthetic language. I would recommend Russian, since first of all it is widely used, and second of all I can not speak any other synthetic language, hence can not promise same expressiveness in those, but other synthetic languages are following:

Spanish, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, German, Italian, French, Roman, Russian, Polish, Czech, Navajo, Nahuatl, Mohawk, Quechua.

And for people speaking any of the above languages, I would recommend English, but that is pointless since you are already reading this.

Illusion of reality.

Every time something is said there are several ways to understand it, and that creates much confusion is the concept of reality being an illusion.

When it is said that we live in an illusion many smart people would say, "well jump off a building and survive then". The problem with that is primarily that those people are not only smart but they know they are smart, hence they jump to a hasty conclusion that they understood what is meant by "reality is an illusion" and therefore feel competent to remark about jumping of a building, thinking they are even more clever because no one else did same stupid remark, hence everyone else are even more stupid since they did't even managed to make such a simple argument such as jump of a building.

The main thing is to understand what a person is saying before starting commenting. There are few out there that literally do claim that nothing exists it is all an illusion, you can walk through walls, jump from high places and survive e.t.c. but those people are very few, and if you find such person, argument "then do it" is valid.

What needs to be understood is that when it is said that reality is an illusion, what is meant is not that nothing exists, but that people live in an illusion. That is for example, you do something, let say play a game, watch TV, work, or anything else, and you loose touch with the reality, you kind of wake up from whatever you were doing and are surprised about how much time has passed, hence you were in whatever you were doing, away from reality, and woke up from it.

In the same way as above, we do things every day without thinking, without knowing why we do them, we do it because we always have done them, because we need to do them, and so on. This is just the same thing as get caught in a game, TV or work, just forgetting about anything around you, until you stop and realize for example how much time has passed, or that you are hungry e.t.c.

Therefore it is said that reality people live in is an illusion, because they are trapped in it, doing things they no longer know why, having problems they don't know why, e.t.c. what one needs to do then is to wake up. Hence when people are talking about reality being an illusion one must start thinking, and perhaps even learning.

Reasons to pursuit awakening are many ranging from simple things to glorious experiences that you will chaise you whole life, whatever reason there are few practical ones that can be seen as the least you can get, even if you don't get unity with universe or whatever else some guru promise you, and those will be illustrated with a game example:

First of all, you can play for hours and loose, get frustrated and angry. To improve your game you can try different things as you play and it might even improve you game, but you can also leave the game illusion, sit back and think about the game, in order to realize what you are doing wrong.

In order to improve your game, you realize as above what you did wrong, but don't go back to playing, but first now when you know what is wrong create a plan how to make it right from where you are in the game, hence sometime you can continue where you were, just making it right from now on, sometimes you must load a saved game loosing some progress (in the wrong direction), and sometimes you have an unpleasant realization when you must abandon everything and start a new game.

Sometimes you might stop playing, think about the game and realize that there is no way to play it much better then I did, that was a perfect game.

Other time you might stop playing and realize that you wasted many hours and really are behind in you work that you need to do, and shut down the game altogether.

In short, to make an effective change, you must realize what is wrong.

To be happy with what you do you must realize that it is right.

To do so in a game, you must stop playing and think about the game.

To do so in life you must wake up from the illusion.

The thumb of rule

Dictators think people are too intelligent to be fooled by smiles and empty promises.

Freedom is a set of rules.

I am not talking about law, I am talking about social rules that regulate interaction between people. In this country parents don't educate their children when it comes to how to be a person. Nor do parents know those social rules since it has not been enforced for generations. Many people might argue that it is a good thing, and call it freedom from old aristocratic rules, but it is quite the opposite as I have observed in this society, and as you probably might be able to observe in yours.

First of all, social rules make up a kind of protocol that regulates how to communicate with strangers and in public places. For example, saying "Hi" or "Excuse me" when approaching a stranger on the street to ask what time it is or where this bus goes is part of this protocol of communication, namely how to establish a connection, but this is where the rules end over here and it all breaks down. For example, a person standing in a queue and seeing some stranger cut in in front of them will probably not do anything about it, he or she will get angry, perhaps say a few bad words to a friend about that person, but will not confront the intruder. It is not because they are not mad, but because there is no rule in this society that says that if you cut in line you will be jumped by everyone else in the line, and will probably get your ass kicked if you don't go to the back of the line. Hence the person that cuts in line will know that he or she can get away with it, and in worst case just say some lame transparent thing such as I am with him pointing at total stranger and that stranger will not get involved, because he don't want to get involved in a conflict that don't affect him, because it is not a conflict about right and wrong but about one stranger vs another stranger, and it does't concern him.

But the real consequence of not having a rule of

jumping on people that cut in line

is that person standing in line and seeing another just cut in front will not know how to act, he or she will be reluctant to confront that person since he or she will have no confidence that everyone else in line will back him or her up. With no clear rules among people of what is right and wrong people will rather start questioning if confronting is the right thing to do rather then acting on what is right with confidence.

Hence clear social rules are not only needed in order for people to know what is right and what is wrong, but also gives other people freedom to act when they see wrong doings knowing that masses will back them up even if it is a small guy confronting a big guys, and also as we shall see later reduces friction in the society.

When it comes to confronting wrong doing, backing up of other people around you is only needed in a very few cases, I lived in a country with strong social rules, that people live by naturally, in that society, when someone acts wrongly and you confront that person, they will most often back of and admit that they are wrong. But for the most part those rules are obeyed by everyone resulting in absolute certainty about how to interact with other people. And only rare cases does it result in a real conflict, but even there the conflict is eventually resolved resulting in greater understanding.

Lets take another example, rule that says

Smart people are smart enough not to act as if they are smartest in the room.

or

Dont't teach the teacher.

Lack of this rule make people act like total asses, I have a friend that explained for 15 minutes how a thing works, and I kid you not, to the teacher that was teaching him that thing one hour earlier. He did't do it because he thought that teacher did't know it, but to appear smart and to show that he knows the subject, and the teacher not being brought up in a society where those rules exist sat and listen until my friend finished.

That might sound harmless, but the consequence is that some of my friends constantly try to outsmart each other, and when they are in the same room it is so transparent, and creates such a bad atmosphere in the room, where neither is interested in the truth but instead what matters is to appear smarter then anyone else, in the process putting other people down, creating friction, and never admitting being wrong.

This also hinders healthy debates since they get impossible, where no one can admit being wrong, no one admits not to know something because it might make you look less smart and so on, hence the whole friendly debate breaks down.

Those two above are just two examples to illustrate how lack of rules just break down the communication and hinders people from freely interacting with each other. But lack of the following rule in a society really does create problems, namely:

Your word is most important thing you have.

or

Always keep your word.

or

In general don't talk crap.

No enforcement of the rule that you will be directly responsible for what you are saying is responsible for majority of the problems.

For example, people here often call themselves all kinds of things, and then say they were joking and move on. This results in that if you do it to yourself other people can do it to you too, hence the situation is widespread where people call each other damn idiot and so on. Which no one enjoys for that matter, but since it is made as a joke, no one knows how to react, confronting a friend for making a joke about you seems to extreme, so I can see people just turning in rage for being called and idiot but bottle it up and put on a fake smile because that other person "did't mean it" but eventually those joke will start sounding less and less like a joke and you end up in a situation where you are seriously being called an idiot when you do something wrong, or combined with above, called stupid moron when there is something they know that you don't.

This result in people getting uncertain of themselves they are afraid to admit things to each other fearing to be called idiots, stupid or something else, as a joke in the beginning of course. People are afraid to have a serious conversation on the subjects they are uncertain about because they might be ridiculed by others.

Being able to invalidate your statements or promises by just saying "I'm kidding", "I did't mean that", or "I take it back" creates another set of problems, people not trusting each other. For example people never bet here, because whenever there is a bet going on the loosing side always claims to have been joking about betting and no money ever exchange hands. Never paying for a lost bet or getting paid for a bet won is perhaps not the worst consequence of having worthless words as you might have guessed.

One quote comes to mind that I herd a long time ago:

English gentlemen are real men of their word, they can give it, and take it back as they please.

Hence all credibility is taken away from people, in this society (I am not from England) people have no credibility, if someone is saying something that rest did't know previously, the first reaction is not "Interesting I did't know that" but instead "Who said it", people here are never trusted, but everything you say must be refereed to some other authority. In societies where you are responsible for what you are saying, people evaluate your trustworthiness based on previous experience, and you you have a good record people trust you, and if you don't you are known to be untrustworthy and are never trusted with anything.

Over here on the other hand that trust does not exist as a consequence of worthless words, how do you then decide if someone asks you if he or she can borrow money and pay back at a certain time? Because them paying back in time is not common, not only that, the time limit doesn't exist, I mentioned time because I force time limits, but when my friends borrow things from each other they don't even mention time, because they know it is irrelevant since borrower will not keep his or her word if they don't feel like it, and it happens to me, when I force limits not a single time have I been payed back within promised time limits, the only thing that happens is that I start bitching after given period of time forcing them to pay.

Instead people here never lend anything to their friends unless it is something they can live without. For example if a someone is in real trouble and asks for a considerable amount of money, it is quite possible that his or her friends will deny lending money, because they don't trust that person with a considerable amount , not because that person is know to borrow and not pay back, but because there are no rules to evaluate if that person is trustworthy, such as to see if that person keeps his or her words because no one here keeps their word.

Combined with lack of the rule:

Don't ask for help unless it is the last way out.

The result is that people always ask everyone else for all kind of help, not because they really need it but because it will make their life easier, even though it makes life harder for the person helping them, putting it plainly people are exploiting each other because there is no rule in the society saying not to ask for help unless you need it.

In society where there are social rules if a friend asks you for help you know that he or she has exhausted all possibilities and you are the last way out, also since it is your friend you know that he or she will keep what they promise, for example borrowing considerable amounts of money but paying back next month, or in three months or whatever, and it is natural in such society to give help to friends that ask for it if you can.

It came naturally for me to always say yes when people asked for help, but it did't take long before I realized that I am being exploited, I have a car, many of my friends don't, it started out by asking me to drive them because they had some heavy things to move, which is ok, I did help, but then they ask for help because they had a big bag, and eventually it got absurd, I was actually asked if I could drive on a perfectly fine sunny day to a place which take about 10 minutes to go to with bus, and wait in the car while he takes apart a computer and bring home a hard drive to rescue and then drive him back so that he could make some money, and I actually agreed to this, acting as his private driver, and I did't even got a thanks. Same thing with money, I ended up not only getting my money back very late, but eventually getting back less then was borrowed.

And that happened not because my friends were evil, it is happening everywhere I can see, since there are no rules, when I agree to help them they think "what a nice guy" next time they think "he is nice guy he always helps" and eventually "he never says no so I ask him first".

This also make people that are not brought up with social rules act like asses toward each other, because when someone asks them for help, they don't know if that is the last way out for the person asking for help, or if that person just want to make life easy for him or her self by asking you for help instead, or if they say it is critical and last way out, you can still not be certain because their word is not worth anything. Because of that I have seen people refusing to help their friends, when if I would be denied that help I would not call myself his or her friend anymore, but here it is totally normal behavior since no one can be certain in other people.

Another common thing is that people are sometimes afraid to say no, since there are no rules they don't know if the person is exploiting them or really need help, so what they do, instead of finding out and confronting the suspicion of exploitation, they unwillingly agree to help, but will treat you as a bad person or non person and bitch about it during the whole period they are helping you.

But the consequence is that is that unless you are very thick person and don't care about bitching you will still be able to exploit that person, but if you are a normal person and really is in trouble hence already feeling down, you will have to withstand all that bitching as well, just making you feel even worse, regretting asking for help.

All this amounts to a society where you don't have friend that are like family, you only have people you are equated with, not only that but you don't have a family like a family. In places with social rules, you family teaches you those rules, your parents teach you not to exploit other, to keep your word, to help people in need, e.t.c. hence you can trust your family, family member never needs borrow money, family member only asks for money, because you know they share the same values, they would not have asked for it if it wasn't really urgent, and you know that they will pay you back as as soon as they can. If a family member asks you to get in a fight with him you know that the truth is on your side, because you share same values e.t.c.

Those values are unknown in this society, people don't understand why a family member unconditionally helps another family member without even asking what happened, but it is because they share the same values, and if some family member exploited that trust and started up a fight to exploit another family members help, well he broke the rules, and will be punished, because there is a known rule system with clear rules, and next time he will not receive that help so unconditionally, hence there is an intreats for people to uphold those rules and be honorable.

In this society families are dysfunctional, children are kicked out from parents houses as soon as they turn 18, because parents did't teach their children any rules, and therefore essentially don't trust that their own children will not exploit them and spend their money hence parents get rid of children, children in turn learned no family values or any other rules for that matter, hence parents can not hope to receive any help from their children. Brothers and sisters are no more close to each other then they are to their "friends", in short resulting in a "every man for him self" society.

Expression "he (friend) is like a family to me" is not understood, it is taken as something some people say to be cool, because no one can understand how a friend can be like a family, that possibility simply does not exist, a friend can never be like family. The reason no one here understand it is because there is no criteria by which to compare what a family means and how close to that a friend comes. As I said earlier there is no deeper understanding of a family here then biological bounds, no understanding of shared values and rules and complete trust, has never been experienced in this society.

I could go on and on, rule after rule, consequence after consequence, but the fact remains, a society without rules is simply is a dysfunctional society and not a free one, where people are afraid to speak their mind because they might be ridiculed and there is no way to know if they will be or not because there are no rules that regulate that, where they constantly compete with each other, where people don't do the right thing, where people don't trust each other, don't have real family or friends like family, where people don't help each other, e.t.c e.t.c

After I discovered this, I started experimenting and observing how people in this society manage to function at all.

The first thing I noticed is that they are uncertain, uncomfortable, and ashamed about everything. Hence when a person denies help to another person they don't say just no, or I don't trust you, or confront accusing the other person for trying to exploit or anything like that, because there are no rules to base those accusations on. Instead people get uncomfortable and make up a lie, like I need to go somewhere, or I have no money, hence person asking for help, knowing that the other person will do everything to avoid helping, tries to trick by first asking "what are your doing on friday" and then asks for something that day e.t.c. so that another person can't make up a lame excuse, and will be ashamed of feel uncomfortable to deny.

Since there are no rules, there is a lot of stupid things going on, but that they are afraid and ashamed to confront since there are no rules, hence they bottle it up and badmouthing each other behind each others back.

Why are they ashamed to confront when there is wrong doing you ask? Well partially because there are no rules and they don't know if they are wrong to get sad when someone calls them and idiot as a joke or if it is ok because everyone else does it. But also when there is a general rule that you don't call people idiots not even as a joke, when someone does it you can say, hey, rules, did't your parents teach you anything, that is you are appealing to a higher authority, rules, rules say this or that and you are just a messenger, but where there are no rules you are the one responsible, and you are the authority that need to enforce it, hence unless you are a big guy that can threaten others to obey your rules you pretty much can't do anything.

But the problem lies not in that people feel they ought to change the situation but they can't, no people live in shame and fear not knowing why, people are ashamed to ask a stranger what time it is or when the store opens, and they don't know why. They feel uncomfortable and ashamed saying something straight to someones face, and they don't know why, because there is no rule saying that it is ok, or that the other is acting wrongly.

I have a friend that is an extreme case of this, he never asks me something directly. For example if he wants to drive and buy pizza, he don't ask me directly, he starts talking about pizza, saying that it is good over there. And just out of curiosity I say "O yes it is." so in his world I agreed to drive and buy pizza, where in reality he never asked if I could drive him there or even if I want to eat. So when he gets up to go and I sit he gets confused, so I say "what" he assumes that I did't understand that he meant "lets go by pizza", but once again instead he claims that I showed interest in pizza, and I say "no I did't I just agreed that pizza at place X is somewhat better then average" and so on just confront him, and you get surprised how long I can keep that up sometimes in order to get him so just ask me a straight question. I basically have to "not to understand" everything until he finally have no more ways to avoid direct question.

Hence a society without rules is not a free society, but a society ruled by deception, dishonesty, uncertainty, fear, shame and general discomfort. Ones again by rules I don't mean law, because over here they are very good at following the law, but the problem is that there are no rules to follow.

Well then you ask, those people have lived like that for a long time, and they don't know any better, they have no unwritten rules to follow and they obviously manage, why then is it bad (except for few obvious examples mentioned above), why don't make it like that everywhere, certainly make the job of a parent easier, no need to teach children how to behave.

As an answer I can say that this country has among the highest suicide rate in the world, and I can not be totally unrelated to the fact that majority of population feel, insecure, afraid, and ashamed/uncomfortable to interact with other people and especially strangers.

Also in a rules less society there is no way to teach others how to behave and most important no mechanism to enforce those rules since no one lives by them. Hence immigrants that come from very different cultures with very different behavior towards other people never understand what rules govern this place, but quickly realize that they can basically act as they want without consequence as long as it is within the law because there are no rules that govern how to behave in the society. And then we have politician scratching their heads wondering why immigrants are not getting assimilated into society but instead form their own small Iraq, Iran, Somalia, you name it, and live by their own rule, but because there are no rules to be assimilated into.

Which in turn creates hostility and mistrust towards immigrants because they are different and live by their own rules. Immigrants don't understand locals because they act very strange and yes in many way immoral and it all just creates friction in society and hostility.

Hence if there is something to take away from this, social rules are necessary, and few of the basic ones are:

Your word is your most precious possession, don't give it away lightly, and you can't take it back.

Don't ask other for help unless it is your last option.

Don't put down other people or call them names, even as a joke.

Enforce the rules.

And if your society is remotely similar to this one, you already know how strange it will become without simple rules governing communication and interaction between people.

And don't be afraid to enforce the rules, to take it to the extreme, cornering a person until that person gives a concrete answer or asks a direct question instead, it will be weird for that person at first, but if that person will get a tendency to ask direct questions that person will automatically realize that he or she are trying to exploit you for example, instead of asking in some clever way thinking that no one noticed because he or she did't ask you directly.

Do point out if someone is lying or not following up on his or her word.

Do get involved when people argue if you see that one person is clearly wrong.

Don't be ashamed, afraid, uncomfortable to do the right thing, and point our to people why you did it, because no matter how obvious it might be, some people are not even familiar with concept of doing the right thing, for them keeping what they promised is a strange concept because it does not benefit them.

Simply do the right thing, and keep in mind from previous post, people that have not practiced something for a long time, especially if they never done it and are not familiar with the concept will have a hard time doing the right thing even if they know it is right. Instead it is easier for them not to do something for a while. Start by for example not letting other make stupid jokes about you, it is quite easy and work from there.

Internet and religions

Let's first have a quick and simplified views of the history and spirituality.

Long time ago when people still hunted and gathered there were no greater specialization, women were gathering and men hunting. People lived in small tribes and if someone discovered something such as a certain plant has certain properties it was shared with the community, and everyone had access to that knowledge. Hence if some spiritual beliefs existed these were commonly shared among the tribe and no one had any greater understanding then anyone else, hence everyone were their own spiritual guides so to speak.

But technology moved on, food production got more efficient tools were created, and it was no longer necessary for everyone to be concerned about acquiring food, some could produce news tools and exchange them for food, some could make nicer cloth instead of working in the field and there were still enough food to go around to support the community and be traded for other goods. This specialization divided the knowledge, wheres before a hunter knew how to make his spear, hunt, cook and make cloth from the hide, now there is a tool maker that makes tools and know nothing about how to farm or make cloth, farmer know nothing about how the tools he uses are made e.t.c. Hence the need arose for someone that knows how to heal people, someone that knows the effect of different plants and is only concerned with human well being, those people were called shamans. At this time the profession were decided by family, that is father teaches his son his profession, mothers teaches their daughters what they know, knowledge went from parent to child.

As time went and innovation continued so did specialization, some farmers became only concerned with sheep, producing wool and meat, some focused on cows, producing milk and meat, some farmed the earth producing food for other farmers animals and bread for the people. Tool makers specialized in construction tools, farming tools, weapons e.t.c. So did shamans some focused on healing physical body and some focused on mental and spiritual wellbeing. As the specialization increased the efficiency there was enough abundance for some not to produce at all, some could spend their time learning, schools were formed and children no longer had to follow in their parents footsteps. Among other things religious schools were formed, where the time is spent learning about what shamans before you discovered, hence organized religions were formed.

As time goes on more and more knowledge is compiled, more and more time needs to be spent in schools to learn it all, hence people that have studied for the longest time become kind of authority, priests are the only ones that supposedly know what it is all about and the rest have no chance of understanding it unless they dedicate their life to study of religion. This results in authority of the church and a single truth. Since the church had the truth it also merged with power, and the world had a system where kings ruled based on advice from church.


As more time went by and ways of governing changed, state and religion got separated in majority of countries. This is where the world is today, where there are established organized religions speaking with authority since they have studied the subject for such a long time, but exploring alternatives is no longer considered to be dangerous.

Then what is it we see today?

Today we see that established religions loose the authority, as informations is easier to get for every day, it gets harder to maintain that high position of authority claiming to be the truth, religions have to compete with other sources of information, and hence they have to adopt in order to survive and compete on the informational level, and that adaptation means going online, on the internet where there is so much information so easily accessible.

Result of that is that online there is no authority, all information is equal, a crazy person in the cellar can be as convincing as a Priest, Imam or Rabbi and it is up to the people to decide what sound reasonable and what doesn't, especially when it comes to the new generation, young people that grow up online, gathering information they feel is necessary and not what is fed to them through schools.

Hence we are back to hunter/gatherer society that I described in the beginning but this time online, with communities that share with each other, and every member knows the same thing, every member is his or hers own shaman. This community can be Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, some new religion or a merge of several, but every member in this community has access to all the information, hence there is no authority, just a knowledge database shared among members.

Over time patterns start to emerge, some Ideas will become more popular and some people will start spreading those ideas outside the community, those ideas will become more dominant and communities harboring those ideas will grow both in number of members and amount of ideas. This will result in some members that did join the community early and having greater knowledge will be treated as an authority by newcomers, in other words online shamans will be born, but instead of just educating the offspring those will educate the community.

Overtime the amount of information will become overwhelming and it will be hard for everyone that want to know exactly everything, hence those "online shamans" will be forced to write it all down in an easily readable form so that newcomers can read a "read me" thread before starting asking questions, this will be the new bible of the new online religion. But this bible will inevitably grow with new ideas and elaborations of old ideas and as it is with any other "read me" or license, very few people will actually read it, and newcomers that read might not understand what is meant.

Hence the "online shaman" will be forced to teach and interpret what is meant, and a new organized religion is bourn. With only difference compared with what happened before is that this birth has to be open for all in order to happen, any attempt to act as an authority before an agreement of ideas is made will kill the birth process, or kick you out of the community for preaching.


Where are the signs? Everywhere, there are countless forums online discussing philosophy, spirituality and religions, there are endless sea of videos online bringing new Ideas ranging from all mighty god as a creator to energy to aliens to atheism e.t.c. And spending many hours watching those videos and reading forum posts I see ideas converge.

I expect many years before what I wrote above happens, perhaps I will not be alive to see it, but from what I see it is where we are moving.

Human pattern and the red line.

Every person has something he or she finds difficult to do. For some it is talking to opposite sex, for some it is saying i love you, or it can be anything such as just saying hi to your neighbor can feel awkward because you have never done it before for so many years.

Every person has this line beyond which it is awkward to go, but for some this line is so close that talking to you neighbor is strange, and for others this line is so far away that they feel no awkwardness even when hurting others.

How is this line regulated then, it is very simple, by doing something it becomes easier, while not doing something for a while makes it harder. For example calling a friend just without reason becomes difficult if you haven't spoken to that friend for a while, but keeping regular contact makes it easier to just call to chat. The whole prison system is based on that idea, keep people away from things until those things become alien, and awkward to do, the line is so to speak has contracted, or at least that is the thought, it works in some cases, it doesn't in others. In the same way with people that study a lot, they spend much time alone, limit contact with outside world and in some cases this result in that the line if not well established during the childhood contracts, those people are called nerds, that know a lot but don't know how to interact with other people, because it has become difficult for them.

Now when this line is contracted it is very difficult to expand it, which is good in the case of a criminal, but for a nerd that wishes he could just speak his mind to other people so that they could understand, it is not quite as good, because it involves taking of the first step into awkwardness and remain there until it becomes the norm. And that is also principle behind facing your fears, because facing your fears many times enough and you get used to it, most of the time.

Hence it is an easily observable pattern, things we do becomes easy, things we don't becomes alien and frightening.

It might start with awkward feeling talking to strangers because you predict in advance that you don't have so much to talk about, then it becomes awkward talking to friends of friends, after that even friends you haven't talked to for a while, and finally if you spend long time enough without friends it becomes difficult to speak you mind to your friends.

In the same way taking one step in wrong direction makes it easier to do it again, because you know what to expect, and if you keep doing it it becomes easy and that is how people for example get cruel, how a police officer for example having abused his or her power once can more easy do it next time, and then it becomes easy, and when one such corrupt police officer gets arrested for beating someone dead, without any reason, we watch saying how can people become this evil. But in reality it is a simple process experienced by all of us every day.

Hence by being aware of this process there is a chance to stop if you feel things that ought not to be easy such as hurting others are, and there is a chance to start in a direction you want. And it is a simple process, it is how we human beings learn, what we do repeatedly becomes easier, what we don't do we forget how to do and it becomes more difficult.

We forget in every day life that it is so simple, pick up a phone and try to call a friend you haven't spoken to for years, you will start to make all kind of excuses, we have nothing in common to talk about, I am not the kind of person that just calls, he or she might not want to talk to me, he or she might be busily, or moved on e.t.c. but those are just excuses to justify your reluctance to do it, the reason it is difficult for you is because you haven't done it for a long time, do it once, do it twice and it becomes easier.

Hence we do contract and expand as human beings so to speak, by not doing things we contract, doing similar things becomes awkward, in the same way doing things we expand and doing similar things becomes easier, and where we draw the line is what decides what kind of people we are.

What is the point then?

For a person afraid to do anything and who is restricted by this fear of everything: Decide what you want and just do it, it will be hard, but by not doing there is no chance of it becoming any easier.

Similarly for a person with power over others, should consider how this power is used, should it be so easy to punish others? Because it might feel easy because it has become every day experience, but nevertheless it might be wrong.

Kabbalah Revealed

This is my second and last post about Kabbalah series, because it is less fun to write about it then I anticipated, actually it is very boring, and this is not what this blog is about.

This blog was created to be fun, to share ideas and thoughts with other people that I feel would be fun to share, but this felt like a job reviewing a movie, and I don't like how it feels.

So I started looking ahed at those movies, and there was few new things that I wanted to comment, and just was no fun.

But there is one last thing that I want to talk about, I think it was in the third movie where he states (quoting from memory):

Everything that happens is from God. God is good and never does evil things, therefore if something is happening to you that feels evil or unfair, it is not, but it is your wicked, unenlightened mind that perceives it as evil or bad when it is in reality good, because all is from God and God is good, so real Kabbalist don't get upset about why God is treating him or hear bad, unfair or evil but knows that he or she needs to changed him or her self to understand that it is good because it is from God.

Quote is not exact word by word, and might be exaggerated, but it is what is said in that movie, and that is a very dangerous idea.

This might be likened to Christian attitude

Everything that is good is from God, everything evil is from flesh.

but it is much more dangerous then that because it encourages people to accept misfortune, and not only accept it but try to change themselves in order to be able to interpret those misfortunes as something positive.

Hence if you work in some sweatshop for $1/week you should change yourself so that you understand that it is because God is so good that this is happening, and the situation you are in is good for you, instead of fighting for higher living standards.

If your country is overrun by Communist revolution it is a good thing for your people.

If your country is sold piece by piece it is a good thing because it is better that way, God knew that it was too big for you and is doing you a favor.

If you country is occupied by foreign forces that are killing civilians on daily basis, well that is good situation, somehow, change yourself if you disagree.

Basically what I am saying is this:

When I see Kabbalists packing their bags and moving out from Israel instead of fighting for their land, then I say oh they really believe what they are teaching others, but while they are fighting against and resisting "Gods good intentions" that is manifested by Arabs that are willing to become suicide bombers in order to drive them from the land I will consider Kabbalists hypocrites.

Few thoughts

Mountains are no longer mountains, rivers are no longer rivers.
But:
Mountains are again mountains, rivers are again rivers.
And:
If it looks the same, feels the same then it is same.

It can not be seen.
If it is seen it is not it.
Hence we see pattern.

Do not try to make cense of those patterns because there is no meaning in them, if there would have been, they wouldn't be it.

Do not create symbols of something,
create symbols for the symbols sake,
and let those that see create the meaning.

“Kabbalah Revealed” Episode 1 – A Basic Overview

I stumbled over this video (in the title) one day, and Kabbalah is something new to me so I decided to watch them, but as I watched them I had some comments to make, and this is what it's all about me writing down comments. If you want to watch the video I am commenting on just google the title.

I will not argue for or against Kabbalah, since I don't practice any religion there is no gain for me to demote or promote any of them, I will just try to understand the meaning behind the words he is saying and meaning of Kabbalah and write it down as I understand it in clear text.

I write down comments as I watch the video hence some things may be repeated or changed in the same order they do in the video. I don't comment on every single word in the video but only on things that seem to need commenting.

Lets begin:

The reason for one as far as this introductory video goes is that Kabbalah predates any religions. Reading up from other sources it seems that they claim that Kabbalah has its source in Eden and the founder was Adam himself, accepting those claims would of-course make Kabbalah predate any religion. But it is believed that Kabbalah originally was a part of Judaism's oral law given to Moses by God.

Wether Kabbalah predates any religion or not can not be decided here, but even if we assume that it does, wether something is a religion or not is not decided by date, but by content, and Kabbalah certainly has many elements in it that are characteristic of religions.

But it is important for Kabbalah to predate everything because he goes on saying that religions is disconnection from upper force and misunderstanding of Kabbalah, hence the argument is that the Kabbalah is the original truth and all deviations from it in form of Judaism and other religions are misunderstandings of Kabbalah.

But it is just taking it one extra step, if you believe that Kabbalah originated in Eden then yes their claim is true, if it originated with Moses then it is false, just as if Jesus was son of God then Christianity is the truth else its just a philosophy of Jesus. In other words it is a classical religious argument, one has to accept/believe certain things in order for the argument to be true, which also solidifies the claim that Kabbalah is a religion.

For the second that Kabbalah is a science the claim is that it is a way to make a direct connection with things that seem magical. How that differs from any other religions where people claim to have direct connection with God I don't know, but by that argument any other religion where you believe to have direct connection with something you believe to exist is also science. In other words it is the same reasoning as above taking it one step further, believing in higher forces is religion and mysticism, while believing that you have direct connection to the forces you believe in is science.

Now lets continue, he says that Kabbalah is not for everyone and one should turn to Kabbalah only if one find no answerers anywhere else. This will makes people that pick up Kabbalah feel good about it because they will feel special since they are doing something that is not for everyone.

But this is again a clever way to turn people to Kabbalah since human nature is such that there is always more questions then answers especially in religions where the subject is of the nature that by definition can't be known to the people, hence no matter what background you have you will always have questions about some things about God or spirituality because there is no way of knowing for sure. Hence basically saying Kabbalah is not for everyone but only for people with questions, that everyone has. Once again taking it one extra step, making it sound good, but at closer inspections saying same thing as every other religion.

People that study Kabbalah will be changed and will appear strange to others that are not, also common claim by religions.

You will find answers to the meaning of life in Kabbalah, also not an original claim, but there are few more videos to watch, so we'll see if that is true, but I guess one has to devote the whole life to it in order for that claim to be true, just as in any other religion. (then meaning of life will become the finding of meaning of life in this or that religion since you devoted your life to it)

There are also 125 steps from this world to the ultimate reality which is the goal to reach because by doing so you will become enlightened. This stepping is very common among sects to commit people, since people always want to reach higher levels and don't want to loose what they already have, that why all MMORG games always have levels and for every level the character gets better and better, and people spend countless hours and money to do repetitive, boring and utterly pointless things to get to the next level. And when the maximum level is reached in a game, that game start dying, since there is not a whole lot fun left to do, so people start collecting equipment, but that doesn't last for long, so to keep the game alive developers release expansions with more levels, because as long as there are levels to climb there will be people doing that.

Also already here he says that the plan is to rejoin what we call creator or that ultimate reality, hence the whole purpose is to climb those levels. This is directly connected to finding of meaning of life he mentioned earlier. I don't know but I would guess that there are very few people that has climbed all 125 levels and reached the creator in their life, hence the meaning of life you get from Kabbalah is to climb those levels all your life.

This concludes this video.

Afterthought:
I made some comparisons with other religions in this post, and of-course one way to look at it is that Kabbalah is just another religion since it has same claims, but a person that believes in Kabbalah would probably argue that it is not Kabbalah that is similar to other religions but those other religions are misunderstandings of Kabbalah, but since they are still based on Kabbalah it is natural that there are similar claims, but the ways other religions try to accomplish it are mostly wrong.

Line between love and hate

This is inspired by all the people I know that are "in the middle" they do anything to avoid conflict and always try to make everyone to like them, this is not about the reason they do behave that way, but about the consequence of that behavior.

Assuming that there is no thing without its opposite, as described in previous post, no cold without hot, no wet without dry e.t.c. then there is no love without hate, and that is what this is about.

Consider food for example, there is food you love and you eat it on special occasions when you want something special and tasty, and there is food you hate, that you will never eat, and there is food in between that you neither love nor hate but like in various degree and it is useful when you are hungry.

As food in the middle is useful when hungry, so are people that are in the middle useful to others when they are hungry emotionally. One can talk to a person that places him or her self in the middle when one is sad, because one knows that that person will never contradict or get into a serious argument with you, person in the middle want to stay there and don't want you to like him or her less, more likely that person will agree with you and do things for you in order to get you to like him or her more, making you feel better.

Hence people that are in the middle are neither loved nor hated by anyone, they are liked in various degrees, they are proud that no one hates them, and they say that they are loved by X if some X likes them more then Y.

People in the middle usually have many friends, friends that come to talk when they are lonely, play when they are bored, cry when they are sad, but those friends don't love, because there is nothing to hate.

To make another example, I have a friend that loves winter, the snow, the cold, and more snow and colder temperature it is the better, while another friend loves summer, and wishes to live somewhere where there is always summer. Hence the person that loves winter hates summer, because the summer has nothing of what he loves, only the heat that he can't stand. While the other friend of course hates winter because winter has nothing he loves and it is way too cold. Hence to make it clear, summer doesn't have those properties that winter lovers love about winter, and winter doesn't have the properties that summer lovers desire.

Lets say you love summer, then a person that is in the middle and tries to be liked by everyone is like spring(if you like that person) or like autumn(if you dislike that person) but that person will never be summer, because that person necessary must be to some degree also winter to be liked by other people that love winter, hence will never be loved by either.

Hence there is a choice when no choice is given.

Since we were children we learned what to do in order for other people to like us, and when we got older we learned what to do in order to attract opposite sex, there is an understanding that one has to do something to get love, but can one really do anything to get loved? Can you make someone to love you? As far as I know there is no way to make someone love you, one can increase the chances by being nice, dress nice, give presents, be good talker, but love has to happen of it self, and if it doesn't it doesn't matter what you do. Yet this is the only thing we learned since we were children, try to make people love you, even though it is impossible.

I am sure there are better explanations of why you can't make another person to love you, but one simple argument is that no matter how hard you try to acquire all those properties that another person loves there is always one property you can't acquire, and that is that you are that person, instead you try to become someone else in order for that person to love you, hence the best thing one can hope for is that the other person will love those properties you acquired, but those properties are not you, hence that person don't really love you but what you pretend to be for that person, and as long as you can keep it up it might work, and that is what many do. But when the relationship get more serious and one start to think that one can be more relaxed with each other and don't need to act all the time as it is the first date then people realize that who you have one year later is not the same person that you fell in love with, and it never was that person, it was all fake.

The alternative is of course much simpler, to get people to hate you!

First one has to be fully aware of who one is, for example many people do and believe certain things not because they feel conformable doing that or because they are that way, but because they want to fit in, they try to be "middle people" so that they are liked by others. So one should start by being fully aware of why one does and believes as one does, and work on the character until one can proudly state this is me and I do and believe this because of ...

And when that is done, you are proud of who you are and feel that you are comfortable with it and can argue for your ways, you can then just be your self, and never give up without a fight. And if some people hate you for that, other will love you for exactly that, and when that love comes, it will not matter if one, two or twenty years pas, because there is no act that will stop, you will always be you hence the person that fell in love with you will still love you, because it is still you.

This of course this doesn't mean that you should be stubborn and refuse to accept facts when you are proven wrong, you might, and hope that you will meet a person that loves unreasonably stubborn people, and perhaps you will, but it is just not healthy.

But if you can argue for your behavior and believes and no one can prove you wrong or give a good argument for you not to do so then that is the way to go. And there will be people that disagrees, and some people will disagree strongly, and some people will even hate you, and they should hate you, it only means that people that are opposite to them will love you.

The benefit is of course that your will not need to try and make people to love you, its like fishing, you just put out a net and some people will automatically love you while other swim by.

The risk is of course if you have many friends and hope to preserve relationship with everyone but some of which will start to dislike you, because you switched from very fine net that catches everything no matter if it taste good or bad to a net that only catches tasty fish.

I love spring.

The unity of opposites

This is about a view which is important for the next thought, but is not intuitive to understand, and I have yet not thought of any way to explain it, but I hope to create some intuitive understanding and hopefully agreement that it is so. In other words it is about yin and yang.

As the title suggests this is about how there must be an opposite of something in order for us to know the thing. For example to have white there must be black, to have smart there must be dumb, to have something there must be nothing. This is of course not a new idea, and certainly not my idea, but it is a very important idea that people usually don't consider.

If you already know or feel that it is so, there is no need for you to read further, but for everyone else I will try to convince you.

Lets start with this example, you are reading this on a computer, which you probably own, let say it is rather new computer you bought. Hence if you are happy about owning your rather new computer, that happiness comes from the memory and feeling of not having this computer, that is this happiness of having necessary comes from a not so happy feeling of wanting but not having, and without feeling of not having, there would be no happiness of having, and therefor those two things go together, you can not remove one without also loosing the other, because if you never wanted a computer, never needed it, then you will not get happy when you get it.

Lets take another example, a sharp knife, what is that? Well one answer is a sharp knife is a knife that is not dull, and we see that there must exist dull in order for us to have sharp, if there were no dull knifes we would not have sharp knifes, we would only have knifes, and there would be no concept of sharp or dull.

Hot and cold, dark and light, smart and dumb, green grass, small shoes, strong rope and so on and so on...

Examples are endless since for everything there is an opposite of that, otherwise we would not be able to think about it.

For example consider everyone are drinking water, and if we did nothing else with water we would just call it drink, we would say "I want to drink" without the need to specify water, because there is nothing else, we have to specify drink because there is a state where we are not drinking, hence reason for existence of the concept drinking is the opposite state of non-drinking.

Then let say someone found a second source to drink from, first one was a regular well and the new one is somewhere close to volcanic activity hence is heated. Then there would be a need to distinguish between two sources for drinking, one would say give me a hot drink or give me a cold drink. Before discovery of hot drink, the cold drink did not exist, even thou the drink was cold there was no cold drink because the drink was always same temperature and there was nothing else to drink.

Well then let say someone finds some leaves he or she dries and pour hot drink on them, and then it taste totally different from the original drink, and they might call it tea, but to have tea there must be something which is non-tea, just that what we did drink originally, and lets call it water, hence two drinks started to exist, hot and cold water, and tea. But then someone didn't drink the tea right away and it got cold hence there is now hot and cold tea.

And so on, I feel it is easier to understand the concept when constructing as above, instead of just saying that there is no green tea without black tea, it would just be tea, and there is no tea without non-tea and so on.

One should now understand how it is necessary that opposite or negation of something exists in order for that something to exist.

For something to exist without negation or opposite of itself it must then both exist and not exist at the same time, because basic negation of any thing is non-thing. And if there is such thing that does exist and don't exist on the same time, then everything else must be IT, because if something is not IT then that is a negation of IT.

Hence one thing is the unity of two opposites.

Meditation

There are many instruction videos on the internet about meditation, how to meditate, why meditate, and so on. This is not about some new technique or some new purpose of meditation, there is too much of that online already, instead this is about the basics.

There is one thing that everyone will agree separating meditation from sitting with closed eyes or sitting and stirring at something, and that is no thinking during meditation. To achieve that there is techniques like chanting, mantras, bells, drums, breathing and so on. Also there is also one thing that is usually described as the goal of meditation, and that is to be here and now, in the moment, which is harder to understand, and people spend endless hours meditating to achieve that without success.

As you might have guessed already, both above are closely related. If you never tried meditation, try to sit for 10 to 40 minutes, in such way that you can not fall asleep, and you will notice that the mind is never in the present time, it is in the future, planning, guessing outcomes, or it is in the past doing things differently, imagining what could happen if you did something differently, or it is solving problems, or it is somewhere else doing something else. Hence your mind is never here and now.

Why can't you be here and now and still be thinking? Well what do you have to think about when you are sitting and doing nothing? That's right there is nothing to think about if you are doing nothing, if you are thinking then you are not here and now where you do nothing but somewhere else in some different situation where thinking is required, which is often the future, what will I do when I am done meditating, well I must eat, for that I need to go and buy bread, and then I must, and so on.

Hence being here and now which is often described as being the goal of meditation, to feel that moment, necessarily implies not thinking about anything, since there is nothing to think about.

And as we know majority of the techniques of meditations (except some crazy ones), ultimately try to teach you to stop couscous thought.

And now it is obvious what meditation is, it is circular reasoning,
1. being in the moment --> no thinking,
hence
2. no thinking --> being in the moment.

What is unsaid but understood is this: no thinking <--> being in the moment, but for it to be true, both of the above must be true.

While first is quite easy to motivate why it is so, the second is not so obvious. It is also probably the reason for why people keep chasing this moment with endless hours of meditations and never seem to get there. But there are only two options from here, either:
no thinking --> being in the moment, then people are there in the moment all the time (assuming they mastered the no thinking part) without realizing it (perhaps because there is no conscious thought to think about it), and keep chasing it.
or
no thinking -|-> being in the moment, but there are still some people claiming to have experienced something special while meditating, feeling here and now, in the moment. Then being in the moment is something different and not connected to no thinking. This has two consequences first, there is no need to meditate to feel that feeling of being in the moment, it will just happen of it self if you are lucky, and second is what is then the point of sitting and not thinking about anything?

Hence:
No thinking <--> being in the moment, and everyone who is able not to think for a period of time has experienced that "moment of zen" but do not realize it.
or
?? --> Being in the moment
Being in the moment --> no thinking
no thinking --> ??
which simply is:
?? --> being in the moment --> no thinking --> ??

By looking at different kinds of instruction movies for meditation on the internet one can see which views on meditation they have, some believe in <--> relation claiming that by clearing you mind and keep practicing you will experience that moment of zen sooner or later, while others use second one and fill those ?? with love, cosmic energy, chakras, karma e.t.c.

Which one it true? I don't know.

ReCan

This is a bit different view, some might say opposite view to what I wrote earlier about cannabis. This thought differs from previous basically in one way, why people get slow, in the previous post I wrote that it might be due to the alternative ways of thinking, and there is simply too many connection, but I think this is a better one:

We already established in previous discussions that a person, after smoking cannabis gets his/hers views expanded, I will not go through it again, but I really didn't give any explanation to why It was so, instead I focused on consequences of that, here comes a thought about why:

This is based on a documentary i watched where it is said that smoking cannabis affect the brain in such a way that a certain chemical is released. This chemical is always present in our brains and is released in smaller amounts to counteract another chemical that is released in our brains that does create connection between neurons. Because if too much of chemical that connect neurons is released it will spill over and short circuit several neurons, that is what we call for epilepsy, hence that other chemical counteract that, and when smoking cannabis more of that counteracting chemical is released.

How come then that people are able to think of things when they are high that they would never have thought of otherwise, why do artists and writers smoke cannabis to get inspiration, should it not have the opposite effect, people just getting slow not able to think of anything? Well there is two possibilities, research mentioned above is wrong or perhaps following:

As mentioned in previous post, brain is like a network, a graph where connections are reinforced if they are used a lot, for example if you try to remember something it helps to repeat it over and over again until those connections in your brain are strong enough, hence your remember. Therefor when you think, hear, say , smell, see something those strongest reinforced connections for that particular situation will fire and you will do, say, hear, see, remember as you have always done thus far, since your brain is trained that way.

Therefore by smoking cannabis and releasing more of the chemical that counteracts those strong connections, your memory gets worse and your thinking slower, while at the same time the strength of all connections get more even. Hence seeing, hearing, thinking something while being high will results in other neurons being fired instead of the usual ones that are always fired, resulting in new thoughts and experiences that would never have been possible otherwise, allowing writers to write what no one else thought about, artists to paint what no one else could imagine.

Everything above can be easily illustrated with following example, imagine making deep paths in the ground with a stick, and when you pour water in one end you will be certain that most of it will follow the paths and end up on the other side, that is you memory, every time you se water in one end you know where it ends up. Water that spills over and end up somewhere else is the creative process, it can spill over anywhere creating new wet spot, like new idea, but they will still be close to the path. Now imagine you erase, flatten out, those paths so they get really shallow temporarily, pouring water in one end will just end up in one big wet spot, with very little ending up on the other side.

Creationism

Consider how todays technology would appear like magic to people hundred of years ago, and now imagine following:

Future technology appearing like magic to us.

Since humanity is so fascinated by origin of life and creation of the universe it is reasonable to assume that this kind of research will continue.

Big part of science is experiment and observation, and there is no better way to know what really happened then by recreating same conditions or events.

That is there is no better way to examine dinosaurs but to clone them and put into controlled environment for observation.

Hence it is possible that in the future science will advance so far that humans will be able to recreate big bang on a small scale in a controlled environment.

But in order not to contaminate the experiment they adopt a policy of non interfering.

Hence if intelligent life arise in that controlled universe on some planet, that life will have seemingly all powerful and all knowing god which knows what is good and what is bad while still doing nothing about it.

The question then arises if we are not inside such an environment, then there is no contradiction that all knowing and all powerful god that loves his creation don't interfere, he don't in scientific purpose to learn more about his own origin, and hence we have the potential to be gods is the future over our own controlled universe.

One can take this one step further and consider computers that were very large, expensive, slow, used only for scientific and military use in just a few countries. While over time they got smaller and cheaper, owned by regular people in millions.

In the future technology to create universes might evolve in the same way, and as people have maps on the wall today, people in the future might have their own universe standing on the table.

You can be wise, but why?

There are people saying that increasing wisdom is the goal of life. Wether it is so or not seem for me impossible to know, yet I believe wisdom to be quite important in life, if for nothing else then simply for making good decisions that you don't have to regret, or at least know why you do.

To be able to apply wisdom in a reasonable way one needs also knowledge to apply it on. Majority of people separate knowledge/intelligence and wisdom, and from real life examples I agree that those are two different things.

Then those who pursue enlightenment must acquire both, in order to have any success. Obvious question arise then, how? Gathering of knowledge is well established practice in the developed world, one goes to school and universities to learn the facts revealed thus far in a certain field. Hence ones higher education, where one has more freedom to choose, should agree with the personal interests so that knowledge gathered during that time does not only help you to find work and do it properly but also to help you with your personal enlightenment.

Enlightenment is loosely used to describe highest level of whatever one is determined to acquire.

So we know how to get knowledge, but how about wisdom?

It is understood that wisdom comes with experience, and can not be learned, but must be practiced.

Thinking is a way to practice wisdom, thinking alone or with a group of people, if you are lucky enough to have people around you that are interested in the same thing. Also to think before doing everyday things that we usually do automatically. Meditation focuses the mind, making it easier.

The reason I am writing this is about how to acquire experience. Well you might think now, everyone knows how to get experience, but problem is I don't have the skills / money / courage / time / freedom / something or other, to get that experience.

Let me then ask you this, aren't majority of people older then you also wiser then you? And did they all had what you “need” to get their wisdom? The trick is in the amount of different experiences over time, not in specifics. Then it seems that wisdom will come to you when you are old and experienced enough, and it will, but there is a simple way to speed up the process, the answer is: Live faster.

The idea of living faster did came to me about half a year ago, but until recently I didn't know how to make cense of it, what does it mean to live faster, what should I do?

For couple of weeks ago I did start a project that I have been going around and thinking about. It was nothing complicated, nothing hard to test, but yet I spend endless hours thinking about it imagining different outcomes for two years. It was then I realized how little I experienced, how slow I was living, I spend two years thinking about something that took me one day of work to test. I thought I didn't had the time and energy to really do it, while in reality I was wasting enormous amounts of time and energy thinking about it and getting frustrated.

Don't misunderstand me now, thinking things through is good, but there is a limit, there are things that need to be thought about, and things that need to be done. Only thinking about things that can easily be done is equally bad as doing things without thinking, but I know that majority only thinks without doing because it is safer that way. But being safe, only thinking/imagining, brings no experience, hence the life is standing still, and wisdom increases very slowly, if at all. Some people all so far gone into being safe that they don't do simple things even though they know that nothing will happen.

Here are some examples to make the point clear.

You like a girl/boy but doing nothing about it, hoping she/he will notice you one day.
Chances are slim, but fantasies in your head are many, how to approach, what to say, what it will be like and so on. My experience tells me, it will never happen, but will continue as it is until you two eventually separate, by changing work, school, cities and so on. And you can spend years thinking about it, and years after you two no longer see each other, when it only takes couple of words to find out.

You have something on your mid you want to say to somebody, and it is keeping you awake at nights, don't be “safe”, find the right moment and say it.

You are thinking about doing something, but you want to think about it first, good, do think, sit down and do nothing else, just think about that, and if you thought it through and decided not to act on it, then let go of it, if you can't let go, then do it, there is no point of thinking any longer.

I think therefore I am! [René Descartes]
I do therefore I live! [Me?]

This is the difference between existing and living, and without life comes no experience.
To live fast is to cut those endless years of pointless thinking and do in order to experience. We do make mistakes in life, and it is safer only to imagine what doing would be like. In order not to make any mistakes there is no other chose but not to live.

To do or not to do?
Pick one and do it!

Wisdom comes with experience, and more experience you have the wiser your are, but people we consider wise are the ones that can help us when we have a problem or hard decisions to make. Hence to be considered wise one must experience many things.

The question is then, why would anybody want to be wise? It sounds painful.