Speed Racer - culture and conter culture

I saw this movie, Speed Racer, intermingled with some images from Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Somehow they seemed similar, both presented lustful images, arresting images, both subtly seemed to imply that all of that is not enough. You need to remain free in all this ballet of masks, you cannot forget who you are, your inner hearing, the ability to see behind appearances. In Speed Racer the hero uses this ability to magically know that the car will start if he engages the fifth gear. But the marvellous aspect of that motion picture, is the way it exposes, in luscurious detail, all the sins in which we give in to the Devil. (the movie actually employs this word, and "religion" too)

The plentiful colors, the vibrant technology, the loving lover, the adoration of fans, the chance to save your family, the deep relation with the brother, being loved by all the family... everything, from peanut sandwiches, to amazing cars and cities, imense racing tracks, amazing abilities, notorious feats, villains easy to win, etc. Everything appears as perfect as we could wish with only one fault: the perfection seems to ruin everything. Usually we want to improve things, we fight against excess cold, warmth, we want water, food, money, a spouse, all the things that we blame on our not being entirely and utterly happy.

But here you are immersed by an avalanche of goods. There is too much of everything, and then you realize: they are not really that happy! They are just the same, with their dreams and aspirations and illusions, ups and downs... The Matrix is exposed again. This time with no obvious solution in the horizon (as it should be - because no one grows following footsteps).

Why should I keep going, now that I know that I will not change the nature of the game, that friends and foes are driven by the same principles?

"Sorry. That's for you to figure out. I just hope, when you do, I'm there to see it."

There are no easy replies in the movie for the ultimate question it asks: "why should I go one to live in a Matrix?" - but it beautifully shows the Matrix we live in, without criticizing it, loving it, caring for it, but at the same time showing it is just baloney, fake, it can never give us what we are searching for. But all these more complex quibbles stay away, unrepresented.

I feel this movie is in line, not only with Kubrick's movies, but also with the "Chronicles of Riddick" all of them opposing the repressive power of the system (society, desires, prisons, concepts) hinting to the hidden world of what lies beyond the mind, not exactly at our fingertips, but in the realm of our consciousness. All we have to do is trust the inner soul and let the world (both inner and outer) happen.

It is interesting to notice how our mainstream culture keeps us engaged, while the "counter" culture (although part of the same) tries to disengage us from culture to engage us at a deeper level. But, in almost every case, we are always wanting for the same, greater contact with the biggest Lover, we want to Understand, to be one with, Existence...

Deeper and deeper..., the rabit hole goes...

Raymond Kurzweil

This guy is a genius with probably a little nuttiness in between (probably the good kind of nutiness, in a Ratatoille (the rat) way). He enriches our thoughts about the short term future (less than a thousand years from now), raising very interesting and thought provoking hypothesis. However he has a view of death which is quite peculiar:

"...death is a tragedy. That is our instinctive reaction and that reaction is correct. In my view it is not death that gives life meaning. Life gives life meaning. The creation of knowledge in all its forms (art, music, science, etc.) and relationships gives life meaning. And death is disruptive of that." (source found on wikipedia)

He praises immortality as if it is a good thing. Well, I wonder how much time he takes to get bored of a particular state of mind. But if he his talking about maintaining abilities and memories, well, we've already done it to a large extent: it's called language and it's main result - culture!

Regarding copyright

(this was posted on isohunt, a p2p forum currently being prosecuted by the MPAA and RIA)

I think that there are two things everyone agrees with:

1) Man is distinct from animals because he has the ability to think;

2) Thinkers and people who promote that ability should be rewarded in a prosperous human society.

Now for this reason it seems abundantly clear that scientists, artists and researchers of every sort should be well rewarded in today's society, especially those who go further, who discover something new, something that works. In the case of artists: those that create "quality" art. The kind of art that leads us to new places, that makes us evolve and see life in a new way.

Now, with scientists and other thinkers we have no problems today, after the second world war governments and enterprises all over the world get their services and pay them accordingly.

But artists are not getting the same feedback from their creativity. For two different reasons:

- the problem of paying more to the "fast-food" artists: most artists are sold through advertising, the ones that get more money are usually not the best, but the ones that are more promoted, those who get more publicity. Some of them sound awful and we would not take notice of their art if we didn't know it was made by them. Truly good works of art should be appealing and rewarding even if they had no "brand"" on them. they should speak for themselves.

- the problem of "where did the money go?": most money goes into the pockets of people who just copy and distribute what the artist made (the companies and labels). This is reinforced by the fact that current copyright laws do not make the artist the owner of what he has made. The company is the legal owner in spite of generally not having had any creative part in its birth.

These two aspects end up by economically strangling the "good" artists, those that just don't follow a formula, but are creating something new (I am speaking particularly about independent and alternative artists).

Now the net released the grip of the companies over the artistic production. It has more or less implicitly provided an alternative source of incoming for all artists which is direct donation. A band or person puts his works of art on display on the net for billions of users to see and enjoy. Some of them will want to contribute back through economic donations, showing the approval of the work and the want to have more.

This new model of financing the artists is much more efficient: it almost completely eliminates the "middle man", it provides access to much more artists, it provides a much better way of assessing who "deserves" the more money: those that have really "touched" us.

Now this does not apply to big hollywood productions, but then, with the development of cheaper technology, it will be gradually easier to produce stunning motion pictures without much money. Music studios can be generally replaced by a cheap pc, perhaps something like that will happen with movies in two or three decades.

Now, to me it seems clear, that the well-to-do people who made millions or billions in the music, tv and movie industry, are the ones that have something to loose. What they are seeing is a completely new model of refinancing the artist in which they are completely excluded. There is no need for a music industry anymore, or for book publishers. As musicians or writers can simply put their works on the web for the general consumption.

Now, to societies, it is of the utmost interest that many, good-quality, artistic creations be available to the widest audience. Art is what helps to guide the values of society. There is nothing more important to the evolution of a human society than to be clear about what is valuable and worth pursuing. Art makes us go deep into our hearts, to discover new ways of feeling and seeing the world. It helps us to heal our sores, to become more tolerant and wise, to see more and with more detail the inner recesses of the human soul. Art is no less important than technology or science. It should be well protected and developed.

Today's corporations are interested in profits, they put a sail on the winds of artistic creation, and try to get some profit from it. The best for their profit is to create a culture of scarcity so that we will be "hungry" for what they got to give, and we will be ready to pay them big time. But the scarcity is very damaging to our societies, especially when we now have an alternative which can reward the artist directly. we should not forget that it is the ability to think that distinguishes us from other species, we should take the greatest care that we maintain this ability as clear, sharp and wide as possible.

The future:
We should create a society in which we are taught to donate, to give back to those that have given us. Without this, if we are all "greedy", big corporations will continue to flourish. Ultimately, they rely on our own selfishness. Our economy relies on balancing selfish actions and desires, we must create a niche of gratitude and donation. If we are able to do this, then the corporations will crumble for the artists themselves will prefer the free web. It is the gratitude of consumers who will make a difference (or fail to do so).

This change of attitude can be done by giving the example, by talking about it, etc, but it is also necessary to create a practical way of materially rewarding the artists. To give just one example, I love Regina Spektor, her music has changed my life. Yet I have no way of donating to her, I can buy some of her musics on her "MySpace" page, but half of the money will go to other people, and if I buy one of her CDs, then even less will go to her. But I don't feel indebted to any of those distributors, I don't even remember how I got in touch with her music in the first place. I would like to pay her, only! So... as long as the artists don't provide ways for us to make direct donations, someone should build a page with a bank account into which we can make deposits or paypal payments addressed to a particular artist. And then that someone would take like 0,1% or something and give the rest to the artist in question. Everything should be very transparent and public. One could make a living just by redistributing money to the artist in this fashion. I think that there are a lot of people like me, who feel grateful and would like to retribute in some way what was given to them.

On a final, personal note:
I don't feel like I have taken any money from any big corporation, I don't see tv and I don't listen to "mtv-music". I am a student with very limited financial resources at this time. I like reading and if every contemporary work of art was forbidden, as these rich guys would want to, I would simply read Plato and Plotino from the library, and would be even more distanced from all this consumerist society than what I already am. The free net is what connects me to this century.

comment on Regina Spektor's "Buildings"

this was written to and appears in the context of the following page:
http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858504412/

Wow, almost everything has been said (including lacrimosa's description of the tall buildings, but almost all comments have amazing insight and speak for themselves).

I'm just going to add what's different in my impression: I think it is difficult to understand this song as a direct description of a husband-wife relation. People are together for many reasons but it is mainly because they want to (it gives them pleasure or because they think they should), or getting out makes them afraid (of being alone, loosing social or economic status, etc). When one of us is alcoholic or getting into trouble the relation gets a complex change that is not reflected in this song (for instance good memories mix with present deception, a will to fly away mixes with wanting to cuddle, etc).

So it seems to me that this is the view of a son or a daughter, that is anxious to get out and live is life, he looks at his parents lives and sees them as getting stuck in the sift of time. He sees them as always repeating the same mistakes, going over and over again the same states of mind, giving time to each other, but just repeating the same things all over again.

The son (or daughter), looking at their parents miserable (to him) life realizes: time cannot be given. You cannot ask for time. No one can. You are waiting for your life to happen, but time is going on anyway and you are the one not being sifted in the sift of time. You are stopped, in the inner walls of your house and life, you can't move on, and everything else is around you, happening, evolving, etc.

So, the child realizes, time is not given, time is not taken, it is just passing along, sifting from the ones who want to change with it, who go along, and those who got caught in the past. This child then breaks away from what he/she sees as their parents circular (or even vicious) relation, and gets out.

The final words, disconnected, is like the child getting away, understanding his parent's life, and, because he understands it so well, at the very core, he can let it go. He has lived it, he has been through it, done that, so he can move on.

Of course, he really does not understand what is going on. Spouse relations may seem very dull and dry from the outside but, most of the time, they are full of light and freedom and adventure in the inside.

Another thing I would like to add is that there is a slight ambiguity in the song. It is clear that the explicit meaning is of an alcoholic wife, but there are also some hidden suggestions or hints at a sexually abusing husband:

"in the car he would lean her head gently against the side door window"

may be a subtle reference to sex in the back seat, and the following line

"And in the bathroom he would hold her hair back and hope"

Seems so close to "hold her hair back and forth"

I'm not saying the Regina though about this, but, you know, it's really easy to imagine this, and when you do the lyrics is complemented: you understand *why* the wife get's drunk all the time. She is not loved, she is simply used. The husband saying "Oh, oh it's okay" would now also have a double interpretation: he seems to tolerate her, or even to apparently support her in her role, but not really to *be" with her, to love her to her most inner core, to see her as the most beautiful thing ever (and without this "love" is just an empty shell).

This actually opens an interesting perspective on the song's meaning. What does "love" means? What is the difference between making love and using the person for sexual gratification?

I think what "true" love provides is what Kant said: we should treat others as ends in themselves. That means, not as a means to an end, but as an end in himself or herself. When we put the other above everything else and treat him/her as an end in himself/herself we are loving them.

In this perspective we are all turned into instruments (not loved) when we put success, economical development, technology, gadgets, etc, above what we want and who we are. Instead of being an end, we become just a means to get something (money, glory, friends, food, etc). We disrespect our inner being to get something outside of us. So the "they build building so tall these days" could also refer to the mesmerizing beauty of today's technology and scientific achievements. Some of us are so mesmerized by this beauty, that we follow, hypnotized as if we had no free will, the trends and fashions and best paying jobs. We become slaves to the system. And, because we become instruments to get the best place in it, we start begging for time, asking for time, time to be ourselves...

In this sense this song would apply to all of us. We are all asking for time, giving ourselves more time: perhaps tomorrow I'll do what I like, perhaps tomorrow I'll follow my dreams, perhaps tomorrow I'll break free from all this non-sense that interests me no more... perhaps... more time, more time...

But time is not given, time is not taken,

Time just sifts through its sift

And either you're with it, flowing with it, or you sit in its sift.

In a breaking moment.

Hell - a place where puppets are trying to find other puppets to play in their puppetry, all this and more on the inside of Paradise...

Whenever I open my eyes I see a beautiful world outside. Perhaps is just the place where I live, it has a wonderful view of the Cosmos. A few centuries ago and Galaxies would be unimaginable for the western mind. Now when I think of my body I know there's trillions of cells and stuff in it, all vibrating, living, meticulously articulated to create a moving body. Stars and mitochondria, feces, molecules, rivers, fur, eyes, brains, satellites, stars and black holes, this is certainly a very vast world where the homo sapiens has but a little role, almost invisible in the large spacio-temporal scale of the universe.

But sometimes I need to sleep. I need to close my eyes and just relax. Just absorb, pausing from all the travel into the beautifulness all around. There are two ways to stop: the first is the easy one, just enjoy being, stop, absorb, close your eyes, just be, let ecstasy flow in... enjoy ... stop ...

This is the first method, the second method usually happens to me when I'm feeling guilty, with all these things to do, and time, such a master, leaving us so little time to do them... and so I go on, with no inspiration, no nothing, just going on, insisting, banging my head against the wall... (kind of The Shining kind of thing). And then light slowly becomes this piercing hurting thing... I can stand it no more, beauty becomes hurtful, like a grin face despising your suffering... and so I look for some place that looks devilish... the problem with my finding such a place is that I already digested and integrated must evils of the world. Snakes and spiders just keep natures equilibrium, they allow for change and novelty, life continues. The same with lions and deers, death is just a door to life. Feces of a cow are certainly than gold, at the cosmological scale, so we should be proud of them. Disease is also a door into the new, a price we pay for such wonderfully crafted bodies, with billions of billions of pieces. From intruders to ADN failure, everything can happen... so, in such a marvelous world, where can I hide from the beauty and the mystery?

The answer is simple: in the place inhabited by those who love hate. Why? Because, apart from the things that are imposed on us, we are close to what we know and love, we might know something but if we disdain it, it does not stay in our mind, heart, etc. So the less we love the smaller the universe that is present to us in our heart. If we love hate then all that remains is us, the ego, the hating I, a machine of destruction. Everything else is reduced to shambles. A world like that is what is usually called a demon world, a world empty of everything but destruction, where only ugliness exists and feeds the spirit. It reminds me of the one dimension world described by Abbott in his Flatland, a vision so small that only the I remains, alone, separated from everything else. (The Lord of the Rings also has some accurate descriptions of this demon world.)

So when I experience this world where people love hate I finally have my eyes closed, a pause from all the beautifulness that surrounds us, instead I became entertained by thoughts of terror and destruction and "how can there be people like this, who actually like to think about this". But hey! I'm thinking about it, so... Happily for lovers of freedom there are such societies as ours in which laws forbid acts of destruction, slavery, torture (even towards prisoners of war) and other such acts that were frequent and sometimes the hallmark of many ancient civilizations. Mankind, although it represents itself as the culmination of rationality, was many if not most of the times, guided by despise, hatred and the gut feeling of feeling superior. There's a music by Regina Spektor which highlights a bit of this want of destruction: I've commented it on SongMeanings, so here it goes (music and commentary)

Regina Spektor - Belt

I know I say I'll go away
but then I don't, I come right back
and walk right smack into your lips and turn all black and blue
and though I've seen the light so many times before
I've also figured out the light is just a switch
that I can turn on, I can turn off
please, oh please
when it's off, you cannot see, you cannot hear
even in your ear, saying

yo girl, don't make me take off my belt
don't make me take off my belt and smack you upside the head
yo girl, don't make me take off my belt
don't make me take off my belt and smack you right side up

upside down a frown becomes a smile
and so he thinks I take it with a smile
double upside down a frown remains a frown
too bad he never checks the double upside down
when I'm doubled up on the floor and I see a double him
giving me a double wham bam

yo girl, don't make me take off my belt
don't make me take off my belt and smack you upside the head
yo girl, don't make me take off my belt
don't make me take off my belt(x2)
Smack(x8)

chicken soup, mashed potatoes, gravy, orange juice, milk shakes, pudding,
oatmeal, soft served ice cream
ain't it good that there's soft food cause I couldn't eat very much else right now
they ask me how well, haha, I bumped into a door
yeah, haha, I fell down some stairs
oh, I'm such a clutz
I say that very same thing to myself all the time
I say yo girl, can't you watch where you are?
you don't watch where the hell you're going, you're going to get yourself killed
you know, hey girl, can't you watch where you are?
you're going to get yourself killed(x2)
you're going to get yourself

I know I say I'll go away
but then I don't, I come right back
and walk right smack into your lips and turn all black and blue
and though I've seen the light so many times before
I've also figured out the light is just a switch
that I can turn on, I can turn off
please, oh please
when it's off, you cannot see shit, you cannot hear shit
even in your ear, saying
yo girl, don't make me take off my belt
don't make me take off my belt and smack you upside the head
yo girl, don't make me take off my belt
don't make me take off my belt(x2)
Smack(x15)

[comment] Upside down: sometimes we're happy someone is suffering, in the distance that separate us from her we appear in a better light. Poorer countries, dictatorial regimes, poor people on the street, prisoners in jails, mandmen in madhouses, all the lost and injured, the ones who got lost from civilization, all these people help us feel more comfortable, happier, in our lifestyle. In a world where everyone would be better off than we are, we would feel miserable, the worst of the world. But a King in the XVII century might not have plumbing, computers, vaccines, running water, tv... but a King is always a King because everyone else is worse.

Upside down, yes, I'm the king and you're the creepy who comes back for more. I'll be bigger by comparison, bigger the smaller you are. Look how gigantic.

"too bad he never checks the double upside down"

That's called compassion, a freak who wants to be big, but has compassion will want to be big by helping others instead of stepping on them. His self-regard will grow by identification instead of comparison.

"I say yo girl, can't you watch where you are?"

Wow! can't you watch where you are?

Where's the switch for the light?

You know? I feel a bit like this girl, I don't really know where I am, I mean, I know it's inside a galaxy, somewhere, but where's the galaxy any way, where are time and space tuck away? In some God's imagination? I don't really know, but I can't say I don't care.

Freaky? Perhaps it is better not even to think about, perhaps darkness is better, switching off the light, and it will then seem so simple, so "out of mystery", no questions asked...

just those lips, smacking against mine, once again and again... until they turn blue, until I really can't see anything really...

and all is so simple,

simple, simple, simple...

I can't see shit really...

This desire for nothingness, is it so bad? As I said lovers of freedom are lucky to live in an open society where cruelty is, at least officially and regarding humans, seen as something to be banned. But is the desire to punish and hurt really bad in itself or just the consequences of such a desire? Imagine for the argument's sake, that in a future society a new attempt to cure these horrid individuals would be to put them in a simulator, directly connected to their brains, in which they would feel, live and act in a simulated world, apparently so real that no difference could be noticed. In that world simulated victims - that could range from whole enslaved civilizations, prisoners of a single dictator, to a single slave - would be offered to the tortured minds of the sadists. Now, these persons would not in fact be hurting any one beyond themselves. All the tortures, humiliations, all the suffering would have only one spectator: themselves. All the rest was just bits and bytes running impassible on computer hardware. No one had to know what happened there, except the sadist.

Now, we can imagine that he didn't even know that he was in a simulation. We might also imagine that the machine would only let him out of the simulation after he was put to the test and unknowingly revealed himself by his actions to be completely cured of his sick desires and afflictions. It could take many years, even decades, but could a person get completely tired of torturing and possessing by having too much of it, like one gets tired of chocolate by eating too much of it? Or does one get more and more addicted, while the chances for "cure" get further and further away?

Regarding chemical drugs we find mostly, but not always, that addiction increases with consumption. But with other addictive behaviors like sex, sports, dancing, doing the yo-yo and stuff, it seems more likely that the more we fully live the experience, the more it becomes just another part of our life. Impossible loves may remain obsessions for a life-time, but marriage soon wears out all obsessions replacing them with the crude reality that the daily life brings. (Is your lover really a good lover, are you really a good lover? Day-to-day life will certainly tell.)

Since sadomasochist acts are so extreme, and they have such a powerful influence even at the biochemical level, it is hard to say if a person could be freed of such obsessions by immersing himself / herself in this experience, in this simulated world of torture where he/she could play all the desired roles. (The machine would have to maintain some consistency to give "reality" to the simulation. So changing roles could be difficult sometimes for the sake of consistency.) In any case we might imagine the simulator to be applied to sadists anyway, for instance as a "last chance" treatment, or to respect a choice of the sadist that might enjoy the prospect of living the rest of his days in his own "paradise"; or, because we, normal people, should rightly call such a place "hell", perhaps we would imagine it as the ultimate punishment: giving the sadist the opportunity to live the rest of his days thinking about horror, death and suffering, his mind filled with the screams he himself inflicted on his seemingly real victims. In other words, he would be thinking he was getting a reward, but, in our eyes, it would be an awful punishment, to live in such a world of screams and pain, even if we were to be the grandest master of it.

So, either as a punishment, a treatment, or just to get rid of that nasty person for a few years at least, we might concede them the simulator and the simulated life, for as long as they want it, for as long as it takes for them to be cured, to be "over it".

Now all this was meant to ask a question, when these people were inside the simulator, doing these incredible horrible things, were they really being mean and cruel, or just... you know..., experimenting, exploring their inner worlds, doing some sort of catharsis?

My asking this has to do with the evilness of the act itself: obviously any act that invades the freedom of another being is wrong, at least from the perspective of the being that is being invaded (a free horse running in the wild, how can he forgive his master, unless he is utterly transformed?). We usually don't care much about primates, mammals, birds and all the others we enslave, use for medical experiments, sell, buy and butcher as if they were made of plastic. These certainly horrific acts for the creatures that suffer them, are seen by us as natural, but we have realized that it is wrong to do them if the animal we do it to is a homo sapiens, even if it isn't even born yet, or, due to his age, has lost practically all his rationality. I might be 90 years old, and dumber than a pig, a dog, a horse, but I have rights to medication, sleep, food, rest: they have the right to be our property, if I own a pig no one can kill it, except me.

So our acts that limit the freedom of other beings and inflict them pain, either we are conscious or not of their evilness, are in fact evil, at least in the eyes of the beings that we kill, emprision in stables and chicken farms, modify through hormones, artificial light, etc. But if we did those things, either to animals or to human beings, in a simulated world, would it be bad in a moral sense?

Let me give you a particular example (the following is a text attributed to an author reportedly named Towaco Takamura and a larger sample of his text can easily be found in a google search)

««‘You … Sir … Sir … expects me to serve … how you … how my Master … likes it…’ She offered with far too much respect for her to really mean it.

‘That was before, darling,’ I answered. ‘Now and first of all I want obedience. You will do everything I say. What it is, isn’t important. I will accept no excuses from the most blind and instant obedience. Rule number two is respect. My superiority to you as a person is evident and so you will only speak to me when I ask you and when I invite you to reply, and you will do it in the third person and always using my correct title: Sir. The rest of the time you will bark like the bitch you are. One bark means yes and two means no. You need no more to serve me. The third commandment is loyalty: you will never try to escape or hurt me or betray the confidence I may have shown in you. And last, but certainly not least, the fourth commandment is about surrender. You will do all I ask and you will enjoy it, you will do it pleasingly, complacently. I will not accept half measures, most of all when your master decides to cum, do you understand?’
Marianne barked. I wasn’t expecting it and I must admit that I liked it. I told you before that I used to call her ‘clever clogs’.

‘Let’s try it.’

I showed her the needle again.

‘Do you know what this is?’

‘Woof’.

I gave her a loud slap.

‘Don’t you know how to talk like a person, stupid?’

She swallowed…

‘Yes … Sir…’ She replied her cheeks aflame.

‘That’s better. And now I’m going to repeat the question … Do you know what this is?’

‘A nail, Sir.’

It surprised me that she called it a nail, in fact it was big and very thick.

‘You’re a clever little puppy…’ I congratulated her, ‘and as a prize you’ll ask your master to stick in your nipple. Don’t you think that’s great? It will be irrefutable proof of your obedience … Pain through discipline. Control of your own emotions…’

Marianne started to cry disconsolately. I love it when she cries, it’s … How can I put it? So womanly … So feminine…»»

Now this text is certainly the horrid creation of a mind dominated by pain, desiring slavery, blind to the inner beauty and sacredness of what is before him. Unprepared to deal with freedom and enormous beauty he chooses to destroy it and chain its vehicle, depriving it of expression. It is even more obvious that a person, who would actually do something even remotely similat to this, can have no place in a free and open society, for the basic tenet of such a society is that our freedom ends when another's freedom begins. We cannot be tolerant with intolerance, we cannot be kind to those who are cruel. Free and open societies can only be composed of people are willing to respect other people's freedom. Those who disrespect the basic freedoms cannot be tolerated. This is basically how our society works, by putting away, in prisons, etc, those who do not respect ways of life, properties, the space that everyone has to have to live their life in freedom. Because they don't respect that space then the offender's space is restricted in a way as not to interfere with anyone else.

The above text goes a long way in disrespecting everything we hold sacred in our civilization, body integrity, freedom of movements, individual choice, freedom of thought, etc. It is also the reversal of everything we hold in high esteem, like compassion, understanding, altruism, etc. It does this to describe what it would be like to achieve complete control and acceptance in another. Now, this is just a story, a person that writes these stories might not do a single harmful act, even in a simulator, even if he knew it was a simulator. Playing with the idea of making a robbery, going to the moon or sailing around the world does not mean one would search for these things, even in a simulated world. When one thinks about a robbery or writes a story about it, one might be comfortably tucked in a cozy sofa, listening to beautiful music, in the quietness and protective environment of his own home. He can stop whenever he wants, he can explore just a part of the story, just an aspect. He has total control on what he imagines. But in a simulator things could be quite different, other aspects would constantly show up, people, circumstances, events, not planned, fortuitous. Would this enhance our interest or cast it away? Well, that depends on our interest. If we just want to experience the feeling of having lots of money on our hands, all the rest of the context might be a distraction, but if we wanted to know what it is like to steal a bank, then we might even search for all the extras that the simulator may bring.

Another consideration is, as I said above, that most of us actually respect other people, even if we would like to have their money we will not take it away, and not just because of the consequences but because we respect the person who has it, her path and beauty.

So, to really understand the role of "Hell" (the desire of suffering - of others or oneself, does not matter) we need to distinguish it from other more general considerations that are at the base of our social life. It is not simply a question of disrespecting another's rights because we want something. This disrespect can happen for many reasons (money, status, etc). What characterizes Hell is that the one that experiences it desires for "slavery". He does not need to actually hurt anyone, he does not even need a simulator, or even to write a book, or short story, or a poem... all he needs is to desire slavery, that is Hell.

So the talk about simulators and books and all, was just to distinguish the immediate impulse that leads us to criminalize all sorts of actions that interfere with the freedom of persons in our free and open society (designed for humans only - kings and wannabe controllers of everything else). Because this kind of attitude applies to all sorts of acts, from money extortion, to stalking or political persecution. But to live in Hell is a very different kind of thing, and we should analyze it for what it is.

Notice that someone desiring slavery, either living in a simulated world, or in his imagination, or simply unconscious desires, is condemned to the worst of chastisements: to be eternally away from what he desires. There are many levels in which this is true: the most obvious is that he destroys the person he tries to conquer, the more he conquers the less the person exists, the less value his control over her will have. A truly controlled person is nothing more than a puppet, a toy, it is not a "one" it is merely a thing. Her allegiance has no value at all, it doesn't say anything about us. It does not show in the least love, admiration, or even true acceptance or even recognition. She his reduced to an object, a machine. Like a car or a sewing machine. It would obey anything and anyone, once it is properly trained. So, what attracts the sadist in the first place: the fact that she is free and can choose and feel and think, is what is destroyed when control is achieved.

In a deeper level, the sadist, while a sadist, has no control over himself. He is not free but overwhelmed by his horrid desires. His obsessions make him a puppet, and he is like a puppet trying to transform others into puppets too. His gaining control over persons, sexual slaves, or entire populations (because dictators and those who have lust for power are these kinds of puppets too) will bring him nothing of value. He remains alone, fearful, a puppet in a puppet world, where all that is beautiful is removed from view.

By wanting to "control" the "other" he looses the chance of "being the other", he is condemned to live away from what he desires. Desiring slavery means also not seeing the sacredness of freedom in general. His own freedom succumbs to his impossible desires, that is truly hell.

We could expose many other levels, that express all kinds of insatisfactions at the emotional, sexual and personality level, and others. But the fact is, we have no control over the world, we don't even know what the world is (about). So this search for power and control is, at all levels, destined to failure.

If we want the world, we have to live the mystery, communicate with the mystery, try and be closer to existence in every way we can... But the desire to control is the desire of a puppet trying to live in a puppet world.

However, in the case of a puppet, this desire is also the desire for existence itself. Since a puppet cannot recognize himself simply by being free, (he is not his own) he cannot recognize himself, feel himself, unless he sees his mark on the world, on another. Seeing his actions reflected not only physically but emotionally, in the senses, in the mind, etc, only now does the puppet knows he is there, he exists, at least to the person with which he can interfere. It would be a cruel joke indeed if such a simulator came to exist and was used for the purposes we described above, for, in that case, the sadist would live all those things all to himself. No one would see him, or recognize him, no one would give him the reality he needs. In a simulated world the puppet would more easily see that no one can give him reality except himself.

How to save a puppet? Talk to the hand!

--

In sum: By trying to control we cast away our freedom, the only true bridge between us and infinity... The bridge that gives us ecstasy connects us all... in visions of sacredness, infinite beauty, and freedom.

1408 (film) - the intention is certainly real

This movie has an implausible story, however it is somewhat familiar. Here we have a man with all the comforts of daily life, as if living for comfort, but somewhere buried in his mind is a small room where all the doubts, fears, anguishes, traumas, are well hidden away. He searches for haunted houses, ghosts, for they are not only the door to hell but also a signal of life after death. After all, he lost his daughter.

Well, all his searching for the supernatural goes awry, but suddenly he gets into this room, where repressed memories come alive. At first he does not want to hear them, but slowly he cames to face them, and he ends up holding his child in his arms, giving her the last hug he could not give in the past.

To me this resonates with the contrast between normal, day-to-day life, all tidy and right, with what we know: nothing! We don't even know if we're living a dream, if it is a shared dream or a lonely one, if we are a the dream in a world of rocks and stones, if time and space are real or just the structures of our perception... we don't know why we came, how we came, what it is this "I", what will follow, if anything, after death... and, in the middle of all this uncertainty, of all this endless thick mystery, we live our happy lives, paying for mp3 players and recorders, listening to tv shows, going to work, living our whole lives in ignorance as if we knew, or, more to the point, as if we don't care, as if it doesn't matter.

Well, it does matter, because, without knowing who we are, we don't know how important things outside of us really will become. It is this kind of mind state that the movie suggests, from a certain point onward we don't know what is real... but the thing is: it just doesn't matter! Because, although everything else might be doubtful, of one think we may be sure: the intention is real. Perhaps I don't exist, perhaps the world does not exist, but my intention is certainly real.

To Thomas Paine - The Age of Evolving

Is God to be feared and obeyed or a wondrous mystery to be searched for?

This book, The Age of Reason, is well worth reading, at least due to its comical nature! ^_^ It's amazing how someone can be so bold by just saying things that are so plain to see, his analyzes of the Bible are clear cut and amusing because they throw away all the non-sense that has been fed to us for thousands of years. It's like going to church and start laughing at the strange clothes and hats that the men in the front are wearing, or tasting a bit of a consecrated host and leaving the rest saying: «I prefer cookies!». It's so plain everyone can see, it is just a piece of bread, but our fears transform the whole thing, it makes it something supernatural, which means: something that should be feared and obeyed and not in the least understood, even less criticized and not at all doubted. Or something baaaaad will happen!! ^_^

Thomas starts by looking at religious rituals and dogmas without the fear usually associated with them, obviously you get a somewhat comical image. It might certainly be offensive to people who identify with these dogmas and rituals, since they are thread to pieces, nothing survives except the utter ridicule of the whole thing. So, it is rather tragical for people who think they are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.

When you take all this trash from view you start seeing the real god. Now Thomas' main idea can appear: you can see God's existence and an infinitesimal part of his characteristics just by looking at the world, at creation, and trying to understand it. Nature is God's message, science is the true theology while the Bible and other "sacred" texts are just a reflection of man's fears and their consequent superstitions and fantasies. So true theology is indeed the fearless search for truth, every branch of science, for instance astronomy (today we'd say astrophysics) gives us a glimpse or an insight into the true nature of God, while the study of the Bible can only give us knowledge of man's vision of God, of the idea that man in some stage of his development made of God. From superstitions we can only learn either to be fearful or the nature of the people who have created them. By studying nature directly we can see much more directly the divine nature of everything. It is as if Thomas was saying: we live inside a giant Bible, the word of God is in every thing everywhere, we can study it by studying the world!

THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.

It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they may be. It is an ever–existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed! Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the Creation.

The only idea man can affix to the name of God is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And incomprehensible and difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.

In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the internal evidence that it did not make itself.

I find this idea very appealing, it reminds me of Carl Sagan's wonder while contemplating the mystery of the Cosmos that surrounds us. Indeed... it is when we are before the mystery that true confidence is tested, do we feel fear and try to hide from what we do not know (and hence religion is born) or do we feel wonderment and try to explore it (and hence philosophy and/or science are born). In other words, we will either conceive God as a mystery which must be feared and obeyed, or we will conceive a God who is a mystery to be searched for in love and wonderment...

To me there is only one thing in which this book fails, and it fails tremendously, it fails to see that man, along with everything else, is part of creation, and therefore a part as beautiful and perfect as everything else. Religion, fear and superstitions, lies, the will to have power over others, all these things, are also part of creation, and they have their role too. So, every religion plays a role in the development of men. It cannot be vilified without vilifying part of nature. Religion serves many purposes, among which is the purpose of elevating man's eyes from man to the divine, this explains why the following sentence is so incomplete (my italics)

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism– a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. ... It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, ... . It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.

Yes, to him and many others it does appear that way, but not to Saint Francis and millions of other people! I mean people are different and they relate to ideas around them in very different ways. When Thomas says, right in the beginning of his book that

I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine.

Well if we want to communicate, tolerance if far from enough, we need to understand each other. And understand the Christian or Jew or the Buddhist is not to see him only as a blind, terrified creature, turned away from the splendor of Creation by feelings of guilt and shame and unworthiness and blinded by fantasies... it is also to tell the story of the aspiration, the evolution of that person from becoming less attached to money and all sorts of material possessions, of having more regards towards others, etc. If people were already capable of contemplating the Universe and feel marveled at the existence of a single drop of water, well then there would be no need for organized religions and all those fantasies, but the fact is, we are not ready, we need these steps, we need religions and Santa Claus, and Christ, and Buddha, and Brahman, and all sorts of beliefs just to go on a little more, just to step up the ladder a little bit.

You were being a little crazy there my friend, it is like running towards a football field in the middle of a championship and shouting to everyone: «this game is absolutely futile, who cares which team might won if we're not even playing in the field?» Eh eh!! ^_^ It just doesn't make any sense. If we are engaged in a thing, be it a game, a political party, a religion, let us be, let us grow, let us grow out of it when we're ripe for something else. We will know, we know when we get tired... judging people like this is, from a Cosmical point a view, like criticizing willow trees for being so sad and praising pine trees for being so majestic. It doesn't make sense. There are both immensely and incomparably beautiful! Each has its own beauty. The beauty of the confession, of self-mutilation, of praying for salvation, etc... all these things are beautiful, if you were in another planet, observing this planet and all our customs, you would see this Beauty my friend. But you are too attached to see it: like St. Paul you'd like for everyone to be like you, in this case, not chaste, but clear in the mind. Well, lions are beautiful, religious people are beautiful and we must understand their beauty.

The only thing that is really wrong is when people interfere with our way. We must maintain the "right distance". If someone tried to convince me to be in some way or another, well, that would be like entertaining a war... but in religious communities you just have to maintain an outward appearance, what you really think or desire is irrelevant to others as long as it doesn't interfere with their goals!

Another think that amazed me was your belief in one God! Now that is to me truly amazing! Knowing there is an infinitely complex Cosmos we are inspired to think that there must be something more than pure chance that brought it into being, but what gives us the authority, the basis for saying exactly what this "first (set of) cause(s)" looks like? How do we know that this something resembles a God and that it is only One? Well that beats me, I don't profess to know any such things. In the rest, I think I agree with you and I hope you don't mind (being dead and all won't make much of a difference) if I call you my friend!

In any case I 'd like to develop an idea that I like a lot, in the above quote you said that we only need to look at nature to see God's traditional attributes, allow me to repeat once again what uou said my friend:

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed! Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful.

This is all very beautiful but we must not forget that after you came Darwin and that changed our perception of the world a little bit. It doesn't affect much this passage, but when we look at another one we see that something must be revised, at least in the wording:

The Almighty Lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. It is as if He had said to the inhabitants of this globe, that we call ours, “I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. He can now provide for his own comfort, AND LEARN FROM MY MUNIFICENCE TO ALL, TO BE KIND TO EACH OTHER.”

Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his eye is endowed with the power of beholding to an incomprehensible distance, an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or of what use is it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man? What has man to do with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with the star he calls the North Star, with the moving orbs he has named Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow from their being visible?

Now, my friend, it seems that you were not able to completely dispel the comical but tragical vision that the universe and what happens in it somehow revolve around men and its wishes. I find this idea as ridicule as the hats priests use in church or in the belief that Christ died for our sins (therefore denying free will, the people who fought for him, the people that condemn him, all had to do what they did!). When we look around and see the profusion of things that exist we easily understand that the pencil has its own story, that the cupboard has its own story, like me, like a star, like a planet. The Cosmos is also the encounter of these stories, each point of space time is an occasion for such a conversation. Nobody has to win, preferably we would all be transformed and enriched by one another. I can use my cupboard to create a certain aesthetic harmony in my house for instance. The different pieces of the cupboard were influenced by my history as I was by them.

Darwin has discovered this: that the world is huge, much, much bigger than it was ever imagined (except by the Hindus, as Carl Sagan as said: "The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still." Cosmos, chp.10). Moreover not only was the universe huge in time and space, human beings had almost never existed in it. In the long period of time in which our planet provided the stage for countless adventures and exciting events, man was not here, not even close. Lots of things were being determined, wars, births and deaths, fights, and all this was happening without man! More than that, our own appearance at the scene was not determined by no one of our species, and most likely not by any intelligent creature at all. We, human beings, are just a continuation of other species, we were born from human vaginas, but our ancestors were not. Some had primates as mothers and fathers and sons and daughters, and they were our ancestors. Some had even smaller mammals, and, in the end, we all come from the same primordial cosmic soup, we are all star dust". Well, this Darwin did not know, but he realized that we are not the product of some intelligent design, we were not designed at all, we are just the product of random change and the survival of the fittest. (A statistical principle valid over very long periods of time - over short periods it's mostly chance, for instance, the turtles that are eaten after leaving their eggs are probably not the less fit nor the surviving ones the more fit. Probably it has more to do with luck, but over the eons the more adapted have a statistical advantage. Every action has consequences.)

So, the fact that our eyes can see the stars have nothing to do with our having been "designed" to look at the stars and be so inspired by them. Probably most of the animals with eyes can see the stars and owls and most birds should see them much better than we can. The fact is, if having a good eyesight gives you a better chance of reproducing, then over millions of years, your species will have more numbers of elements with good sight. It is simple. So, where does this God, this designer ends up after Darwin?

Well, I must say I have no proof that God exists, nor do I have a concept of what that word means. Thomas gets the old argument of God as the first cause. Obviously we must ask: then what caused God? And if nothing did, then why not "save a step" (as Sagan said) and suppose that Existence simply existed since always. Nevertheless, the fact remains: the world around us, the Cosmos, has surprised us with its grandeur and complexity. It was certainly not made for man, but it was made for us, parts of Existence. Each of us, each part, can be grateful for Being. So we must reformulate the above sentence that Thomas puts in the mouth of God:

“I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. He can now provide for his own comfort, AND LEARN FROM MY MUNIFICENCE TO ALL, TO BE KIND TO EACH OTHER.”

It should state: "You have a time and space to be creative, and I have rendered diversity, so that you might evolve through it. Each thing has eternity at its door, is surrounded by eternity, and to reach another part of it, all it needs is to try. Each thing can learn from my creation what beauty and ecstasy and infinite bliss is."

Obviously, this applies to photons and electrons and atoms, and dogs and cats, even stray ones, and elephants and swordfish. We are surrounded by a beautiful world, a gorgeous world, to reduce it to an instrument for men to use or administer or step on, is like reducing a beautiful princess to a whore. It might be interesting, but only for a while...

Hey friend, I hope you're in Heaven! (I am!) ;)