We need a return to some sanity!!!
Poetry – Do Planets Dream?
Do Planets Dream?
Do planets dream as they embrace their moon?
Are galaxies dancing to a cosmic tune?
Is our sun prancing in great glee
As it hugs us with its gravity?
What is this beautiful music of infinity?
Something sublime including you and me?
I think I can hear it as I stare up into the sky.
It vibrates through me as I quietly sigh.
Opher 17.9.2019
I love to think of Gaia and the planets being alive. What is this thing we call consciousness?
Is there a universal vibration running through the universe connecting everything?
Poetry – Is it Dawn?
Is it Dawn?
Is it the dawn or the dusk
That I am seeing?
A birth or a death?
Are we digging graves
Or foundations?
Do we have a day
In which to live?
Or a night in which
To sleep forever?
Opher – 1.5.2019
Looking at mankind, such a recent species, I am undecided about our future. Are we still in the early stages of a long and illustrious time upon this planet? Or are we already in our death throes?
When I look at the mistakes we are making, the damage we are causing, the way we are blunderingly creating the very seeds of our own demise it is hard to image that we have much of a future. We are busy building weapons that could wipe us all out – nuclear, biological and chemical. We are wantonly destroying the very ecosystems we depend on. We are stupidly increasing in numbers beyond any sane sustainable level. We are polluting the environment we depend on with chemicals, radioactive isotopes and all manner of gunge. We are squandering irreplaceable resources. We are misusing antibiotics and not developing antivirals so that we will be vulnerable to a fatal mutation in a virus or bacterium. We are not protecting ourselves against a cataclysmic asteroid.
It is as if we have a death wish.
Yet we have the intelligence to solve the greatest problems and if we were to survive this adolescent period of mindlessness it is possible that we could go on to achieve great things.
The dice has been thrown.
Poetry – The Will, the Means or the Might
The Will, the Means or the Might
Gigantic cerebral power,
With electricity jumping neurones
In creative ways.
Huge invention and
Problem solving ability –
A progressive maze.
In a dichotomy
Of good and bad
Creating uncertain days.
We’re on the edge
Of disasters of our devise
And could go out in a blaze.
Can we use our giant brains
To solve the problems we create?
Or are they all too big?
Is it all too late?
I’d like to feel that we have the ability
To make it right.
But do we possess the will,
The means or the might?
Opher – 29.4.2019
I am always amazed by our ingenuity and ability to solve problems. When I look back over the last three hundred years what we have achieved is stupendous.
But in the process of developing our world of technology and science we have impacted greatly on the natural world and put our own future in jeopardy.
My frustration is that I am sure we possess the ability to put it right. I just don’t think we have the will.
While it doesn’t directly affect us we will remain complacent. When the impacts finally manifest themselves it will be too late.
Poetry – Leviathan
Leviathan
At peace,
Serenely cruising,
Contemplating,
In no hurry.
Effortlessly gliding along,
Lost in the quiet.
Thinking thoughts,
Lost in wonder,
In the moment of being,
Composing songs
To gently croon
Across the vastness
Of oceans
To family and friends.
At peace,
With no enemies,
No need for technology,
No need for weapons.
Traversing the globe,
In no hurry.
To the icy poles
To languidly feed
On the vast shoals,
The plentiful bounty,
Until sated.
Then to the shallow lagoons
To gleefully meet,
To frolic in the warmth
Of friendship,
To mate
And give birth.
To play.
A life of ease.
At peace.
Back to now,
To be one with the oceans,
To add to the song
Of life.
Under the stars,
The sun and moon.
In freedom.
A free spirit,
A guru of the unfathomable,
Chaser of mysteries,
An aesthete who craves
Nothing.
A wonderer.
A wanderer.
A mystic of the deep.
28.12.2018
Who knows what giant thoughts go on in the minds of such huge brains?
They have chosen a life of serenity. Not the hustle and bustle of cities but the quiet solitude of being at one with nature.
They live in a world without danger, without enemies and without limits. Food is plentiful. There is no need to shelter from the elements, to hunt, to starve.
They have no need for weapons, shelters or armies, for possessions, work or ownership. They have no war, crime or endless toil. They do not have to scratch a living out of a difficult terrain. They have all they need.
It is a quiet life of contemplation, composing intricate melodies to share across oceans.
They are exquisite musicians, artists and procrastinators.
Their garret is the sea.
They have all they could ever want.
They lived in their millions. There were estimated to have been a million and a half blue whales.
Then came man.
Poetry – Take Heart
Take Heart
Take heart from the ones whose hearts are large,
Whose eyes see with soft glow
And whose hands caress and care.
For they are the ones who know
That they live within a mystery,
On a journey within wondrous lands
Where everything is a marvel
And everything has worth.
Take heart from those who see and care
And adore all that they behold
For they would build and love and feel
And so turn everything to gold.
Take heart from the ones who appreciate
That everything has its place
From sun, moon and mountain
To gnat, flea and worm.
Opher 16.6.2018
We opened our eyes into a beautiful universe. We came from nothing and will return to nothing. In the meantime we have all this and we take it for granted. It is so wondrous.
There are those who can see that wonder all around us. Those are the ones we should take heart from. They are living.
There are those who would look to build, to make things better, to provide a pleasant word or helping hand. They are the ones we should take heart from. They are worth so much more than the mindless nasty types.
There are those who realise the incredible wonder of every living thing. They see the amazing wonder of our evolution and our place within the spectrum of life. We should take heart from them.
So here’s to the positive forces that live among us!
Poetry – Sparking with Eccentricity
Sparking with Eccentricity
I have this pink blancmange
Full of electricity
That houses the thoughts
That are the essence of me;
Convoluting tubes
Sparking with eccentricity;
Grooves and ridges
Retaining my imaginative
Elasticity.
I spark!
I light up!
And I fly!
That gelatinous
Jelly
Throbs
With the warmth
That is I.
Opher 1.1.2016
Sparking with Eccentricity
I sit and wonder where the thoughts come from, where the words appear. There is a process happening inside my brain but the manner of it is not clear.
Under my skull there is a large pink gelatinous mass that is my brain. It flows with blood and electricity – a jelly of cells with intricate neuronal networks of trillions. It throbs. I like to imagine it glowing even though I know it does not.
Within this jelly my thoughts and dreams are formed. My awareness of myself is constructed and my consciousness created.
When I stop to think about the physical and biochemical processes involved I am astounded. It is magical. To think that chemistry is the basis of my personality.
When I stood in front of others to speak I was so in awe of the process that I was never confident that the right words would ever form. I could imagine myself standing there with an empty head.
As I get older the words often play hide and seek with me. But I eventually track them down.
The wonder of consciousness is one of life’s great mysteries. But it does not make me believe in even more esoteric beliefs. Life is amazing. But I believe we will understand it in time to come. Science adores a mystery.
The incredible spectacle of the universe, life and consciousness are part of the phenomenon that gives life purpose and fills me with ecstasy. That’s enough.
Groupthink
We like to think that we are individuals, that we are rational, heuristic and logical. We like to believe that we weigh up evidence and make choices based on sound factual choices.
Unfortunately this is not how human beings work – particularly at this time when life is so complicated that not one single human being, no matter how clever, can possibly understand what is going on in the world. We are all semi-experts in a number of aspects and masters of none.
The reality is that humans are not rational; we are emotional. We buy into a view based on our gut feeling.
Having made that choice we then live in a bubble. We surround ourselves with like-minded people, tune in to news that reinforces our views, read books and interact with information that reflects our views and become more and more convinced of our position because our ‘group’ all thinks alike.
This ‘Groupthink’ is how all human beings operate.
Because these choices are not rational it is extremely hard to change anybody’s mind with ‘facts’. They have already chosen the ‘facts’ they are willing to believe. They search for evidence to support their emotional view and reject any ‘facts’ that do not support their group.
Hence we end up with Trumpists, Environmentalists, QAnon, Democrats, Republicans and all manner of conspiracy theory believers and cultists.
Thus we have newspapers and news channels, websites and internet propaganda, that feed their selected groups with the things they want to hear.
Groupthink is impervious to rationality.
Nobody is immune to Groupthink.
Wonder and Awe – Man and Intelligence.
The saddest aspect of being a human being is that there is only one species of us. It has led us to believe we are something special, something that is above all other life. Many people struggle to think of us as animals.
We are animals. We are intelligent animals. We have fabulous brains that give us consciousness. We think that sets us apart. It doesn’t.
We are not the most intelligent animal that has ever lived on this planet, let alone what intelligences may exist on other worlds. We are not even the most intelligent organism on this planet now. We are not even the most intelligent species of human who has ever lived on this planet.
Brains operate like super-computers. It is the size that is important. Our brains contain 85 billion brain cells – neurons – which is about the same number of stars as in a small galaxy. However each of those cells is connected via dendrites to between 10,000 and a 100,000 other brain cells. That is a staggering number of connections.
The human brain is between 1300 grams (the racists) and 1400 grams (the rest of us).
By comparison the brain of a chimpanzee (our closest relative with whom we share 99% of our genes) is only 400 grams.
There was a rapid evolutionary change occurred around 1.8 million years ago (very recent in evolutionary terms). Our brains grew from 400 grams to 1400 grams.
I said earlier that we are not the most intelligent animal on the planet. That distinction falls to the cetaceans. Not all of us consider them super-intelligent because they do not build cities and weapons. That is how we judge intelligence.
Whales and dolphins do not have limbs to create tools. They live in the sea and do not need shelter. They have plentiful food and do not need to work.
They play, sing, spend time together and enjoy themselves. They do not pollute, overpopulate or destroy one another. They are not cruel, barbaric and vicious. They do not create religions.
That sounds like intelligence to me.
The size of a sperm whales brain is a staggering 7800 grams. That is over five times that of a human.
The brain of a bottle-nose dolphin is between 1500-1700 grams – bigger than a human.
Of course you may like to suggest that intelligence is not all about brain size. The evidence from bird intelligence (with small brains) is that there are other factors though size is crucially important.
If you take into account body mass to brain ratio then we still do not come out too good. Even the tree shrew outdoes us.
The obvious intelligence of the cetaceans is extant in numerous ways and makes it even more disgusting when you consider the incredibly callous way we have treated them. We have deployed our technology to kill races of gentle, intelligent creatures. We have blown them up with explosive harpoons, stabbed and hacked them to death. In the Faroes they are still gaffing and sawing through their necks. The barbarity is appalling.
These creatures are probably more intelligent and sensitive than humans. Stop the slaughter!
It seems incredible to me that we spent billions trying to find even the most crudest form of life elsewhere in the galaxy while ignoring the obvious intelligent life under our own noses. Perhaps we should be trying harder to communicate?
Back to the subject.
I said earlier that we are not the most intelligent human that has lived on this planet. That accolade goes to the Neanderthals. We share a common ancestor and we even have some of their genes. There was some successful interbreeding. The Neanderthals, far from being the shambling cavemen of our cartoons, were more intelligent than us. Their brain size was 1500 grams to 1800 grams.
As more intelligent humans they were probably gentler. We – the moronic cousins – were more cynical and vicious. We lived side by side up until as recently as a mere 150,000 years ago. Then we destroyed them.
How I wish we hadn’t. Wouldn’t it be great if there were two intelligent species of human beings living on this planet now? It would blow all that religious superiority out of the water – particularly when we were clearly the lesser of the two in intelligence. The biblical stories would simply not hold water.
But that was not to be. We, the inferior intelligence, prevailed.
It goes to show that there is more to being human than intelligence.
The purpose of life!!
Human beings have evolved with intelligence. We are successful because our brains are hard-wired to seek out patterns and look for reasons. This is why we see faces in clouds, rocks and tree trunks. We are hard-wired to find shapes we can recognise. We are very good at it.
We have not evolved for very long.
Our intelligent seeking of patterns and reasons was brilliant when it came to hunter-gathering. We reasoned out the way animals behaved, seasons and where to find food, escape predators and organise our lives.
Unfortunately our intelligence is limited and what works for nice tangible subjects such as leopards and antelope, the planting of wheat and how to construct a shack, does not work so well on the big stuff – like what is that big yellow ball in the sky? What is life? What happens after I die?
But we are inquisitive and inventive. We made up reasons. Some of them were plain daft. Some we still believe.
I am an atheist. I do not believe there is any god, afterlife or mysterious purpose. That is all a product of our need to find patterns and reasons. Much of our religious and spiritual believe is nothing more than Skinnerian psychology. We repeat the patterns we have been indoctrinated with and the reward is security.
Hence – there is no purpose to life! – Sorry!
But then that is not quite true. What it means is that there is no purpose coming from outside ourselves. The purpose of life is the one we create for ourselves. It can be very fulfilling.
I would suggest the following are good purposes to adopt:
a. To save the planet from destruction by human beings – to deal with overpopulation, pollution, destruction of rainforest, cruelty, eradication of habitat and wild-life.
b. Creativity – writing, art, poetry, music, dance, film or design
The purpose of life is to live a fulfilling life, creating beauty, espousing passion, achieving personal goals and making the world a better place in the process.
Every single person needs a purpose and the pursuit of pleasure is never going to be sufficient in itself. Life does have purpose. We provide that purpose.