My '10 Commandments' To A New Humanity

A friend on Facebook, Jerry Schirmer, suggested the following parlor game.  Below the quote are my 10 Commandments to a new humanity.

There is going to be an atomic war. All of humanity is going to be wiped out. The only survivors will be a group of 1,000 babies that will be raised by robots and given only knowledge of the English language, basic survival skills, and a firm belief in a vague monotheism.

On their 13th birthday, they will be brought above ground, and their first sight will be a giant stone tablet on which will be inscribed ten statements of some reasonable number of words apiece (something like ten, lets say). These statements will be said to be the absolute word of God. You are entrusted with writing these statements.

What do you put on them in an effort to create/preserve/restore the best society possible?

    I. These laws never expire.
   II. Debts and all other laws expire within 7 years.
  III. Patents, copyrights, and leadership roles all expire within 7 years.
  IV. War may be waged only with weapons powered by hand.
   V. Adults may ingest, copulate, and cohabitate as they see fit.
  VI. The best paid teachers and scientists must have equal pay.
 VII. No salary may exceed that of the best paid teachers.
VIII. You may each worship God, or not, as you see fit.
  IX.Anyone attempting to overrule these laws must die painfully.
   X. The maximum penalty for other offenses: 7 years humane imprisonment.

New Year's Eve - Or Is It?

We Interrupt This Holiday To Bring You A Special Announcement:

The calendar is a useful fiction, meant to serve us - not to be our master. In fact, the earth is not exactly where it was 365.25 days ago, because the Sun is also falling through space as is the Sun's star cluster and the Milky Way itself. It is not December or January or 2012 or 2013. It is "Now": the only time you will ever have.

Two immediate practical consequences of this observation are: You don't ever have to put your life on hold, waiting for a date on a calendar to come around in order to have a new start. And, you're always only as old as you feel you are.

You may now return to your celebrations with the people you love who imagine there are weeks and months and years to pay attention to.

Birthing the Books Inside Me

They say, "Competence happens in a moment," and I have observed this to be true for myself and for many of my friends. Have you ever held most of the pieces of a mental puzzle in your mind - yet there was one crucial piece that you couldn't quite put your finger on? Later, through some serendipitous circumstance, (an offhand remark, a book, a song, etc) the missing piece came to you and the entire puzzle was solved. Once a solution like this occurs to you, it seems like an epiphany - a moment of enlightenment that illuminates not only the original puzzle, but also numerous other minor conundrums that had been put aside in the cupboards of the mind for future inquiry.

Over the years of my adult life, I have held many of life's major philosophical questions (Who am I? Why am I here? What is truth? etc) in this state of mental suspension while living out various different lifestyle situations. Because I journal, I have been able to notice the essential things which have resonated within me as common and authentic among my experiences. Within the last twelve months, it has felt as if several "final pieces" to these puzzles have come to me.

As a result, I've got about five books inside me that are mostly written. By that, I mean that it would only take a few weeks of writing to get any one of them in manuscript form, ready for editing. One of them is actually fully written in my mind, but I want to find an artist to collaborate on the project. It is a short, illustrated, guided mental journey in book form that would also include a CD with the text of the book spoken in several languages.

There will be many details to work out over the next months, such as: who will be my publisher, what channels of distribution will I use (Traditional? My own web site? Amazon Kindle? etc) how will I promote my work? etc. But none of these concerns feels daunting, they are all just parts of the adventure of giving birth to my spiritual "children" - perspectives on life that particularly turn me "on" and that I believe in my heart will delight and benefit others. I'll keep you informed on my progress here, watch for it!

You've Never Seen Anything Happen

Some event happens before you in a lighted environment.

Light bounces off of the entities involved in the event and some of it meets with your eyes. It travels through your cornea, then the aqueous humor, the lens, and the vitreous humor. When it strikes your retina, cells convert the light into electrical energy and route these impulses to the optic nerve. After traveling the distance of the optic nerve, the electrical signals are processed by a special region of the brain into the sensation of seeing. Finally, other parts of the brain generate a storm of electro-chemical activity to recognize and classify the elements of vision that has been generated. Since all of this happens without your awareness, the conscious part of your mind is free to busy itself with rationalizing the classifications and their significance to you.

All of this happens at a rate of speed that is consistent among human beings. This rate of speed roughly corresponds to the 24 - 30 frames per second that film and video technology uses to fool the mind into thinking it is seeing things move on a movie screen or television. (instead of noticing the actual still images which make up each video frame) If activity happens at a speed faster than 30 times per second, all you notice is a blur - such as the beating of a hummingbird's wings or the spinning of the spokes on car wheel rims.

Think of all the processes visual information goes through in order to produce the experience of sight.

• Manipulation: The eye lens focuses the light, flipping it upside down in the process


• Conversion: the light photons are chemically converted to electricity


• Transmission: the electric impulses are routed to the optic nerve which carries them to the brain


• Synthesis: the occipital lobe of the brain processes the impulses at a coherent rate, producing the sensation of vision


• Filtering: the temporal lobe of the brain pre-screens the data to point out elements linked with our emotions (such as a spider if we are afraid of spiders)


• Analysis: the frontal lobe of the brain associates visual elements with memories and produces reasonings about their significance

What a wonderous mechanism! And all you ever do (in your conscious state) is concentrate on the reasonings and interpretations provided by the frontal lobe. The rest of it "just works" (most of the time). Now, all of this processing takes time and there is undoubtedly information lost at all of the junctures of the system. There is no doubt that you see something.

But you've never seen anything happen.