Supermoon Weekend

Of all the romantic comedies and chick flick movies and novels I've read, they all have one thing in common: the woman is an emotional train wreck and is no younger than 28, if not in her early 30's. So does that mean that typically most people actually find the right person they want to spend their life with once they hit that age? That all this love we experience in our teens and early twenties is doomed to fail? Or is the typical teen romance novel where fate brought the two star-crossed lovers at a young age and they are to spend the rest of their lives together?

There's this notion at a young age of Disney princesses, Romeo and Juliet and for all those following our new star-crossed lovers Edward and Bella. Even Belle in The Beauty and the Beast is 21. You get the notion that you're supposed to find your true love by the time your 21. And then you watch all these chick flicks and read all these chick lit books and its turned out that what they've been forcing down us is wrong and they're just retelling the same princess true love stories all over again, only that you'll be much older when you find it and when you do find it, you'll be blind, you may even miss it and then, voila at the end, you realize you're meant for each other, and there's nobody else for you. And then the story ends and you picture that they'll get married, have babies, buy a house and spend the rest of their lives together and one of them will eventually get sick and die and then the other to die shortly after. Think of the ladies from Sex and the City. They're all older. Is this even realistic?

Does anyone ever tell a true account of love? Of romance? Do we even want to read it? Do really only read them because we all lack romance in our lives and it's the only place we can get it? I can only think of two true love stories that are realistic: Elegy and Closer. And for some reason, what comes to mind is this movie from the 60's or 70's, which has dialogue and setting like a play, and it's about this group of gay men who are celebrating a birthday and it's all fun and games, alcohol and dinner, and as the tension builds up, so does the physical atmosphere as it storms outside and they play this game that suddenly rips these men apart and they go on about love and how lonely they are and the lengths we go to for appearance when we're all just broken underneath. Even Holly Golightly has some serious issues. But she finds her prince who loves her for exactly who she is. What's real and what's not?

With the divorce rate at what it is, is it because people aren't working at their marriages? Or is it because we're all romanced by these ideas that don't actually exist? Obviously it exists. I've seen it, but I rarely see it, do you? Are we all romanced by romance? Or are we finding people because we don't want to be alone? There are always these fantastic lines used in chick flicks. In The Wedding Date, "I'd miss you even if I never met you." Runaway Bride, paraphrasing that we're only mistaking attraction for love. I think true love is tragic, and it doesn't last, which is why it's true love and that's why we fabricate that these people live happily ever after. True love is an idea. An idea of perfection. Perfection doesn't exist. So therefore it doesn't exist, and if it does its doomed for failure because nothing that intense can exist at all times, because no one would be able to function in a relationship like that for the rest of their lives. Are we really just looking for a best friend? Anyone who's read the romantic poetry, we all know that it's tragic, and heartbreaking and everything less than lovely. I love you as big as the moon. My love grows for you like the ever expanding universe. My love for you consumes me like a blackhole. Our love is so big that when we die we'll be constellations and be together forever. The one I always picture, "I love you and all your reincarnations and every life we live we will find each other and be together in this eternity and the next." Maybe the majority of people don't feel this intensely, which is why they're always in a relationship and always find people. Maybe majority of people are fine with the next best thing and this is as good as it gets. That must be what it is.

I'm going to pick a toxic and awful example of true love. Don't hate me. I think Ronnie and Sam from Jersey Shore are the perfect example. It doesn't work because it's too intense. A lot of the time passion is described as fire. This makes me think of what I read about the Chinese Zodiac element fire characterization: "In Chinese Taoist thought, Fire attributes are considered to be dynamism, strength and persistence; however, it is also connected to restlessness. The fire element provides warmth, enthusiasm and creativity, however an excess of it can bring aggression, impatience and impulsive behavior. In the same way, fire provides heat and warmth, however an excess can also burn." With intense emotion obviously there is too much to burn which is why it doesn't work because the energy needs to be spent somewhere and there is no way that you can be making love and feeling love all day long and not have friction. The fire element is described the same way by the Tarot. I think there is some truth to this.

Even Sarte and Simone didn't believe in marriage. They made long-term leases on each other. They even discussed the idea of jealousy and disgust when describing love. I didn't keep that anthologie. It was probably one of the few essays I enjoyed from that class.

You can even think about love on a psychological level, think Oedipus or Freud. Or a physiological level, based on endorphins, making an emotional connection to perpetuate the species, to bond and create loyalty so that you know that the woman isn't going to make babies with someone else... blah blah blah. Even the sciences have a stake in this discussion.

Maybe it's everything. Maybe it's science and psychology and philosophy and fiction.

On a side note:

Yesterday's full moon was considered a supermoon. It is the closest to the Earth that it has been in 18 years and also the fullest moon of the year. Did anyone feel it's effects? I know that it was covered in cloud last night, so I didn't get to experience this supermoon and who knows how long I'll have to wait for the next one. And I hope that I get to see it.

I'm going to watch Closer, because I'm in the mood for some Julia Roberts and really great dialogue and emotional friction.

Where's The Line?

I just finished watching Never Let Me Go. I can't begin to understand why anyone would even think of creating a story such as this one. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed it. How could anyone i.e. Kazuo Ishiguro write this. Fathom it. Explore it? How could we even think about crossing the line of morality and ethics. It's like if it's science, it knows no bounds. For the sake of science, for the sake of discovery, nothing is without boundaries. To be honest, there are laws, and a lot of what we have learned has come from the scientific testing done in WWII. We wouldn't know what we know now if we hadn't of crossed these boundaries. Yes, knowledge is valuable, is precious and worth seeking, but at what cost, at what level do we pursue it? So undeniably despicable. Beyond the story line where people think that yes, I have the right duplicate myself, to duplicate my DNA, to give authority for it, but in no way do I have the right to the duplication let alone does anyone have the authority to own another living individual. The whole time I wanted to tell these people, you're 18, you are legally responsible for yourself. You have not consented to this. Why would anyone consent to this? I would fight this. Legally, these healthy sane people, who have been told their purpose and accept it. How could you? Why would anyone accept this? I'm disgusted by these fictional characters who raised these children, who lied to themselves, who told lies to their self that these children don't have souls. How can anything living not have a soul of some kind? The same thing that animates people made of a natural source, is the same thing that animates people made from an artificial source. Life is life. And whether it's artificial or not, it's life.

I believed this before my loss almost a year ago. I had researched PVS patients as a paper in high school. In fact, I even think it was a history paper. Even in high school I was introspective about ethics. Thinking about it now, it probably wasn't an appropriate topic to research for history. I can't even begin to wonder what my teacher thought of me and my choice of paper topic. PVS patients, such as the high profile case Terri Schiavo. These are people who aren't in a coma, but have experienced brain damage and are not on a ventilating life support system other than a feeding tube. What keeps these PVS patients alive is their lower brain is still functioning. The lower brain (brain stem) is essential for survival. It controls blinking, breathing, sleeping, moving and hearing. The "brain" can be dead and damaged, but if the lower brain still functions, so can life per se. In these special cases the heart beats itself, the body breathes on it's own, but what makes the person the person has gone, is left. In coma patients, they have all the same fucntions as a PVS patient, but they have brain activity. Brain activity is vital. People tend to think that body and soul are two different things. and in philosophy, epistemology isn't the easiest thing to argue. It's rather challenging. And from what I've learned, you can argue anyone who has a logical stance in epistemology and still defeat or show flaws in the arguement, thus defeating them. I agree with Searle. The body and the soul are the same thing, and are not separate entities. PVS patients are the exception to the rule. They have no brain activity, yet they continue to live, so how can they be without a soul? I argue that this is a natural phenomenon, because the lower brain functions regulatory skills that are essential to living. We associate our brain with thinking. Like anything, we don't think about breathing, unless we are consciously taking control of our breathing. Like taking deep breaths. These are chemical responses and are controlled by neurons and enzymes and all complex. As it's been said many times, we're machines, and when we're working, we're exceptional and when our machines stop working, nothing works as it should.

The cover article of TIME 2045 The Year Man Becomes Immortal is Singularity. Or singularitarianism is the philosophy. I spit on this philosophy. Not because it's preposterous, or unfathomable, but because it's outrageous in its ethics about life. I refuse to accept this as a reality. This is The Matrix. And yes, its cliche, and yes The Matrix is actually about Buddhism, but it's also about singularitarianism. The annoying thing about the human mind is that if it can be thought, then it is possible. Because the thought itself proves its existence. Besides singularity being about computers superceding human intelligence, it's also the notion that we can upload our consciousness, our self into a computer or robot. Yes I like the idea of putting myself in a robot and being in a space ship that extends to the outer ends of the universe or can go into different dimensions. Maybe it's because I'm slightly "alternative" in L's words, if you think about natural resources, and how they're being depleted, electronics use energy, and not the same kind of energy that organic beings use. As long as organic living things exist, then life will continue to exist. The beginning of the article is about a guy when he was 17 has a computer that creates music. Music is essentially sound. The huge flaw about singularitarianism, is that humans create computers. We make computers faster. Humans program computers. Even if one computer is smarter than one person, it's not smarter than the 10 people who made the computer. A computer cannot be any smarter than the porgrammer itself. Just because a computer can create music, does not necessarily mean that a computer can create its own programs. It can only create what we give it to create. We give the tools and since we programmed it to think like us as best as we can in an electronic way, it is essentially flawed. We as flawed beings create flawed things. We cannot create perfection. It is impossible. It is logically possible, but in reality it's impossible. Our thinking is limitless, our capabilities are not. This future of uploading my consciousness onto a computer to be immortal is impossible. You can't make something organic into something electronic, just as you can't make something electonic organic. It's physically not possible. And until we figure out this soul business and the meaning of life, or what gives life, will we not be in any position to plug ourselves in. Sorry, but its probably going to be one of those things that human beings will never figure out. And I'm glad for that. I hope we don't discover the meaning of life. Without that need to give life meaning or purpose, we would lose all ambition to live. What makes us human is that we're thinking animals. And to upload us, would essentially no longer make us human. Cyborg or not, we wouldn't be human. People want to be immortal because they want to do humanly things for the rest of their lives. Who on earth would only want to exist as a conscious being for immortality. The thing about being immortal is that its not eternal. Immortals can die. It's simple.

Plato's dream was to be in a continual state of contemplation. But because consciousness is linked to the body, we must fuel the body in order to make contemplation possible. If it were possible as singularity proposes, would Plato take it? If we were able to separate what we think is immaterial from the material, what would make us think that all the uploaded consciousnesses wouldn't converge into one super consciousness. I picture this as Brahman. We are all a part of Brahman as individuals, and Brahman exists as only one entity. One being. One super being separated from the physical. The physical being the illusion of our true selves. Our Karma, our souls are bound to this illusion of the physical, and all this meditating, and all this drive to achieve moksha, to achieve nirvana, would it be this superconsciousness? Would we really have separated everything, man from animal. Is our true self our consciousness or is it the combination of body and mind? Would we be free of suffering if we were without the body? Would we still have emotion? Where is the line?

Just like the movie, where is the line in creating things just to harvest them? It's bad enough we do this to animals, but to do it to ourselves? I hope I'm dead long before Kurweil's exponential growth comes true. And I agree with Lev Grossman that nothing gets old faster than the future. Look at movies that predicted the future. Some of these movies are 30 years old and I watch them and I see the date and I'm like "yeah right, this is so not what's going to happen in 5 years, not even 10."

I also wanted to discuss determinsm, which I have talked about before, but after watching The Adjustment Bureau, I wanted to delve further into the idea of life being planned out for us. That we don't have free will which I was going to tie into Never Let Me Go, where I thought why didn't these people refuse this? I would have committed suicide before ever "donating". I don't know how much money you paid for me, but suck on this. You're going to die and I'm relish in tthe fact that I wasted all your money and now I'm deciding when I die and I'm also deciding that you're going to die of your ailment. Why would they even bother to educate these children. The more you know, the more you question and you never stop questioning. When they turned 18 and left the schools and had access to the real world, what stopped them from going into a bookstore and reading a book? Why? Ishiguro set all his characters up to fail. He did not give them the full capacity of a real human being and our will to live. No one resigns to death at 18 who is healthy and has the whole world ahead of them. No matter how brainwashed you may be, any contact from the outside world would ultimately change you.

Determinism scares me. It scares me a lot. I keep thinking my rearended car from last night was an adjustment. Either for me, or for the man who drove away who is more than busted by the police. Or my car accident stopped someone from being on time and therefore their path, their determined course got back on track. I can't help but wonder. And sometimes it is nice to think that someone else is pulling all the strings, but that would be me not accepting that I am responsible for myself and that I don't believe in free will. I am responsible for myself and I do have free will. All these logical philosophies cloud my thinking and it's hard to be set on anything outside of an emotional response and conviction for how I think the world works and the world actually works. But at 24 soon to be 25, I think I have time to contemplate all this for much longer. And according to Kurzweil, I may be able to contemplate this for as long as I like.

Cheers to your Sunday afternoon.