Religious rants and the word god.

Religious rants and the word god.

 I am a poor Buddhist because I fear the quietness in my mind.

I am a poor Christian because I do not believe in old stories.

I am a horrible Muslim because I do not believe in old stories.

I am a horrible Mormon because I don’t trust white leaders.

I will never be a catholic because gold is gaudy and ridiculous.

I am not an atheist even though I do not believe in god. I actually have a problem with the word god. I don’t think it means anything and I think it can mean anything so it is useless. When someone thinks that they do not believe in god they are saying they do not believe in a word that has no real meaning. When you acknowledge that the word is blindingly ambiguous you can acquire better knowledge of what you are talking about.

Before there was a word god there was a concept of god. And that concept had a clear meaning the people using that word. But when they said it they did not say god. They said the word for god in their language and it was understood before anyone had to write it down. If you have a religion you think that you know what the word god means. You go to church and read books about your god but you do not know what that word means.

The concept of god came at a time when people had very few words and the word god was powerful and deep. In each culture a new concept would emerge that described important and powerful things and soon the concept turned into worship and adoration. Some people built statues and monuments to celebrate their gods; their concepts. To some, gods had to be named and organized and for some god is one thing and for others god means everything or is it nothing and to some it means the earth and yet to some others it means the sun or moon or money or sex or fame or anything. Seriously it is a useless word.

So when someone asks if I believe in god what do I say? Do I say I do not believe in god when I do not know what that word means?  I have concepts of things and names for things and I can be content to not know things and name things that I do not know things I do not know. I do not desire to do anything more than to try to know what others mean when they say the words god or gods and try to understand why it matters. I think that there are more precise and creative ways to explain things than to continue to use this word GOD.

I am a poor agnostic because I am unsure that there is an answer to be unsure of. Maybe even the placing of a yes or no designation to the existence of something is the first mistake. Seeking is not the mistake but maybe inferior words and thinking lead to useless things.   

I will always dream of what it would mean to know things.

I will always dream of what it would mean to know things.

If I had all the money and power in the world I would have dreams. These are these dreams:

I would build a time machine that was a huge spaceship and it would hold my collections of things that matter. Information technology would be the most important and possible video equipment as well and it would need food and life support systems, obviously. My spaceship would be able to go back and forth through time and travel throughout the universe evolving and my ship would adapt to new information about reality and interface with my mind and body as if it were part of my body but I could separate from my ship and move about the planets and times that I travel.

I would go back to the Egyptians and see how they moved such large stones and built such mighty structures. I would ask them why they did what they did and how their language came about.  I would ask them about their culture and I would record it all.

I would go the South America and see the Mayans and discover their secrets. I would ask them about the sky and about their mountains villages.

I want to see Pangaea from a satellite view and take a real picture. I want to set up a time lapse film from 20,000ft above the earth spanning the entire lifespan of the earth. I want to show this film to children in schools.

I don’t want to use anthropological theories or archeological evidence or geological timelines to create a digital representation of what the best western minds have to offer on the history of the planet. No, I want to see if happen. I want to watch the world grow and the plants evolve into animals and the animals evolve into oil.

I want to hear what a pterodactyl sounded like.

I want to take my ship into the ocean and watch islands form into continents and then go above the land and watch life grow and change.

I would see what it was like to be entertained by burning witches and fights to the death.

I want to film and record it all and travel in and out of time and throughout the fabric of space discovering the nature of things.

I want to see what things were like before the big bang. See if there was any big bang.

I suppose that with all the money and power in the world I would covet knowledge. I would seek to know everything even if that meant there was really nothing at all to know. I would want to be able to come back to the time I belonged to originally and be able to astound people with the things I know of the universe. 

But for now I have to be content with the theories and the philosophies that I find and research. I am content with the search for impressive knowledge here on earth and in my back yard and on TV. I will listen to interesting things that I find on iTunes or see on Youtube. I will listen to books on things that are informational and entertaining. I will be open to all ideas but I will filter out the things that don’t seem true to me. I will be wrong much of the time about most things but I will continue to learn things about the world. I will learn things about myself through the learning of things about the world and create a biased perspective.

Hippy Shit

Why loving others is selfish and being selfish is good:

When we love others we are expressing the love that we feel and wish for ourselves. We love ourselves and we love others when we can see ourselves in them. The “connection” that people talk about is a realization of similarity or a realization of the commonality of existence; a fading of the line between selves.  We see a glimmer of ourselves in another’s body and we become them for a moment.

We seek to love our own existence and we assume it is good to seek a binding between our belief in existence and our belief in love. Maybe when we can find love in ourselves it is then that we can get love from and give love to others. We must find something in ourselves that is worth loving or we cannot see the things that make people worth something. The more love there is in the self the more love the self can find in others.

This is why we must learn to find self-worth and inner love before we can see others as we see ourselves. We must learn to be humble and appreciate the failures and insecurities in ourselves before those things can be appreciated and loved in others. I think it is impossible to be completely selfless but if you can be selfish enough to love others as you love yourself then others would love you as much as they love themselves and then a maximum of selfishness would mean a maximum amount of love reciprocated amongst people.

Strings of words: String theory of words:

Strings of words:
String theory of words:
Words become strung together. They make things that mean things and some strings are not strings. They can be withered strings; weak and lean or they can be beautiful strings that mean beautiful things. Ugly strings have mixed up dreams of things in streams that mean nothing.  Bad strings and good strings, they are all strings unless words are alone. Lonely words are lonely things and words alone don’t mean a thing. Strings of words do many things but some strings are not strings; some things are not things.

Future Funerals

As I sweat and breath heavily on the exercise machine the future funerals of my precious loved ones flood through my mind in a series of horrible imaginings. I do not cry immediately but I feel a twinge of my future and imagine my emotional surrender. It is only an idea, only an attempt to predict and prepare for this inevitable reality. I can pretend that these things won't happen or that I might die before I have to deal with it but I know that is useless. I imagine my mom, sister, brother, best friend and imagine the news I will get one day and for each I experience just the smallest bit of what the real thing will be like. I slow down and close my eyes and remind myself that this morbid contemplation is just a thought. I clear my mind of these thoughts and try my best to forget myself and my fears. I hit the next button on the IPOD to something upbeat and positive.

You know your a Capitolist...

You know you’re a capitalist society when you lock up prostitutes but someone makes a fuck film and it’s a legitimate job. Making money is the only thing that matters in America. Even the most spiritually minded people seek riches, fame and power. America doesn’t have Buddhists, monks or meditators. You have to leave the US to find anyone whose dream life doesn’t involve wealth, fame or power or all these things at once. In America we are all taught the value of working hard to make money and maybe if you work hard enough and do what you can to support that consumer culture you can be rich and famous and powerful.  

You know you’re a capitalist society when weed is illegal because if it were legal there would only be one major market for it instead the two when it is legal and illegal at the same time. Cops make money off the stolen drugs and by taking the people with it to jail.  

You know you’re a capitalist society when cigarettes and cars are legal but weed and prostitution are illegal. How many people die from weed and prostitution every year? I think prostitutes get raped because it is illegal.  If it were legal then prostitutes could call the police or defend themselves or create communities and systems for safety and society could discuss behaviors that reduce the risks.

http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/news/20030918/marijuana-smoking-doesnt-kill

http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/fatal-accident-statistics.html

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/health/attrdeaths/index.htm

http://www.saferchoice.org/content/view/24/53/

Youtube has changed the internet.

Users will document their lives, hobbies, experiences and lively hoods.

Youtube has changed the internet. Really it is just utilizing the internet the way it is supposed to be, but Youtube has changed marketing and advertising and the culture of watching pictures. Before, with a simple cable service you picked a package of like 50 channels and you could watch whatever you wanted and commercials would play in between shows and there were way to many and it got really annoying so you flip between a few channels to avoid the ads. And most of the channels you will never watch, they are just there to get in the way. Your experience is diminished because you can’t focus on the show or movie or whatever. Then the internet came and now you can watch all sorts of shows with varying amounts of time allotted to advertising and more freedom to control your viewing experience.

Youtube is a website that keeps track of and posts “views” of each video. This creates a fair representation of how many people have watched or at least started to watch the video.  So you can gather for each video exactly how much it is worth based on views. You would have to subtract for certain variables such as partial views and views made by the owner. Actually I am not sure who the actual owner of the content is on Youtube but someone probably owns that stuff. Hopefully it is the up-loader and not the up-loadee. Then Youtube sells ad space to individuals with “channels.” Just like on cable, except that it’s the entire world worth of videos made by millions of people. Youtube is creating the biggest and best database for human culture and technology. Education, self-help, entertainment, diaries, drama, comedy, food, and anything else you can think of is documented by Youtube and people can make money on their own bullshit videos. J

This is horrible news to big companies that give you package channel deals. It is an old model. They say here’s what you get for this content with no bargaining except if you want more and other channels, and then you can pay more. And all the content provided is controlled by other huge corporations who are related somehow to the local cable provider. So they all get fed off of your need for content. But with this blanketed model they can’t measure very accurately what shows are being watched. They can do surveys and censuses but those are not direct measurements of the data they want. (Stupid model)  

Youtube captures data on everything that happens on the site. Individual up-loaders can view graphs of view histories, advertisers can see who clicks on which ads and Youtube can track what up-loaders are getting the most views. This business model says something different than the old model. This model says here is all the content in the world, ‘now what do you like?’ Now the ads are focused and streamline. Most videos are short and so ads are often very short and the majority of content is rubbish and therefore has no ads. Videos can also be rated and commented on by the audience allowing for a feedback loop between content providers and viewers. This would ideally lead to better content, more efficient processes, more focused marketing, and evolve around the people instead of around large corporations. Add in social media and applications and it cannot fail. Individual websites can fail but digital content will be distributed.

Now onto the hybrid model: EXAMPLES are Hulu and Netflix. These companies provide you with mostly professional grade entertainment. They charge a set monthly price for a variety of services depending on the kind of content the user wants. Hulu also has a free service which I find perfectly adequate although lately I am thinking about upgrading to Hulu Plus because it would allow me more access to more interesting entertainment. The advertisements on Hulu are still short but there are usually too many of them during a show. One good option on some Hulu shows is the option to watch one very long advertisement at the beginning and then you can watch the rest of your show without any comm breaks. Netflix on the other hand does not have any advertisements at all. Not during shows or movies and not on its website. Netflix allows you to stream content through almost all major media devices. From phones to movie theaters and every size, make and model in between the internet content providers are here.

Too bad you still have to pay for internet access. When that is free I will be happy about that.

Entertainment will keep changing but it will only get more mobile and more interesting. It will evolve around viewers instead of around large corporations. Well at least it could or it might just seem like it’s controlled by we the people but really some group is manipulating the system and controlling it from the inside and it’s all based on a lie. In any case it is evolving and creating its own economy and we are all a part of that system. We vote with our wallets and our mices.