Reincarnation is a lot like Netflix

If the idea that we move from one lifetime on Earth to another, with a between-life interlude spent somewhere other than this material plane, is something less than settled science, there is a wealth of anecdotal evidence that reincarnation is the operating mechanism through which the individuated consciousness exists without finite end, particularly in the stories of young children whose recollections of other lives have later been confirmed as actually having happened to the person who may have reincarnated as that child.

The dilemma in considering reincarnation is that its terminology of “past lives” and “future incarnations” is inconsistent with the idea that linear time is non-fixed and malleable, according to Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, as well as the many spiritual schools of thought which hold that linear time is an illusion and that all moments exist in the ever-present now.

How can we begin to wrap our minds around the process of reincarnation if there truly is no past and no future, only the now?  If all moments occur simultaneously, how can the individuated consciousness live multiple lifetimes?

Then it hit me.  Reincarnation is a lot like Netflix.

When you log into Netflix, and just about any other streaming service, you can access a self-selected list of TV series and movies you’ve chosen to watch.  Click the link for My List, and you can scroll down through that list of dozens or hundreds of shows and films which you’re able to watch, in absolutely any order.  You can make whatever selection fits your mood, intellectual curiosity, emotional need, or intuitive pull, at that moment.

You might watch Stranger Things, set in the 1980’s, and follow that binge with one of early 20^th Century British crime drama Peaky Blinders, and after that you might choose to watch sci-fi drama Altered Carbon, which begins in the year 2384.

Similarly, as each soul reincarnates, it gives itself the opportunity to learn and grow by choosing to live when and where it can best experience those things most relevant to it.  Someone who needs to experience life as a soldier at a particular stage of their soul’s path would not reincarnate in a time of world peace.  If astrophysics or quantum mechanics fascinates you, you’ll likely choose to reincarnate at a time when the existent scientific knowledge includes that field of study.

But what if something to which you feel a strong magnetic pull is only present in human history for a century here or a few decades there, and one lifetime can’t possibly provide you with sufficient experience to fully know that which you feel compelled to embrace?

If we are not bound by linear time in reincarnation, then there’s absolutely no reason why we cannot live multiple, overlapping lifetimes in a single era.  After all, nothing prevents you from watching two or more period dramas set in the 1800’s on Netflix.

The individuated consciousness can just as easily move from lifetime to lifetime within a single era as it can move from past to future, or future to past.

Think of reincarnation as a matter of focusing your attention upon one particular life and signing on to that first-person narrative for the duration of that life.  Within the linear time construct, you may very well now be five or 187 or 2,481 currently-living people who are every bit as much “you” as the person you identify as right now. 

The Netflix analogy is very apt here.  While you’re focused upon the particular series that you’re binging, every other series that’s been saved to My List is still there, with all moments of each episode existing in the ever-present now.  You’ve simply chosen to focus your attention upon one series and follow that narrative in sequence.  Linear time is an agreement which you’ve signed off upon.  You’ve bought into the calendar and clock for the purpose of experiencing this life, even though every moment of each incarnation exists in the now.

In fact, it is this analogy which gives us the framework to comprehend the idea that linear time is an illusion, one which you’ve voluntarily agreed to adopt, and that all moments exist at once.

Do not go quietly into that good night...

If everything happens as it's meant to, that doesn't leave room for an iota of free will.  

The never-ending dance between free will and predestination inherently includes the possibility that not everything is as it should be.  

While incarnate as humans, we can never know with certainty what can and cannot be changed and improved.  Therefore, we owe it to ourselves and the greater good to always try to improve our circumstances and the circumstances of others, even if a particular action is doomed to futility.

The end game (and how to play it)...

Virtually every major world religion and spiritual discipline, as well as many secular philosophies, posit the purpose of human existence as a journey towards unification, whether with the divine or all of one's fellow men and women (Depending upon one's perspective, of course, both could be considered one and the same.)

What's missing, however, is a clear road map to this spiritual utopian ideal.

What we usually receive from artists, thinkers, philosophers, spiritual leaders, and dreamers are generalities and platitudes.  All You Need Is Love.  Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself.  Be The Change You Want To See In The World.

These feel good platitudes seem a million miles away from the challenges of daily life, whether those of an individual, family, community, nation, or all humankind.  They rarely suggest how we can, individually and collectively, implement those lofty ideals and get us closer to that spiritual utopia.

There's a way for all human consciousness and all consciousness in creation to take bold steps forward to the ideal we seek.

There's a formula which we can apply in our daily lives and in our society which moves us forward on our journey to unification with the divine.  A formula which can be applied to any aspect of individual and collective life, something which can help us get there from here:

"In all matters, seek the solution, state of balance, or paradigm which fulfills all. The only acceptable solution to any problem is one in which every want and need is met and fulfilled."

It's that simple.

The greatest obstacle which humanity has faced in its spiritual evolution is the lie of duality, and the accompanying binary thinking which reduces all things to two mutually exclusive diametric opposites.  We are taught to reduce all situations to two polar opposites and pick a side.  One side will win, the other will lose.  It's our business vs. our industry competitors, believer vs. non-believer, Ohio State vs. Michigan, two romantic rivals competing for the love of a particular person, right to life vs. a woman's right to choose....and the beat goes on.

We learn to shoehorn every aspect of life into this duality and force opposition and conflict into situations where none need exist.

Binary thinking, and how it impacts our decision-making processes, is a tenacious beast.  We've thought this way for so long that changing our thought processes is akin to changing who we are on a fundamental level.  But it's a change which we need to make.

Instead, we need to ask ourselves in every area of life whether there is a course of action which not only fulfills our own wants, needs, and desires, but also those of every other conceivable party.  Whenever a suitable course of action which fulfills all needs can be identified, it should be taken instead of any other paths which involve lack, loss, or the diminishing of one to the advantage of another.

While few people possess the wisdom of Solomon, the simple intention to seek out the solution which benefits all is the first step.

For example, I live in a neighborhood where around half a dozen Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and pan-Asian restaurants compete for business within a two block radius.  There's quite a bit of overlap between their respective menus and, invariably, one or two of these restaurants goes out of business every few years, only to be replaced by another Asian restaurant.

The business proprietors lose out because they're dividing up the neighborhood market for Asian cuisine, while people who live and work in the neighborhood lose out due to a lack of diversity among dining spots in the neighborhood.

What if the next person who thinks about opening yet another Asian restaurant in the neighborhood decides, instead, to look for a storefront in an area where his culinary offerings aren't already available.  He wins because his menu is more unique elsewhere, the restaurants which otherwise would have been his competitors win because they've got less competition, and neighborhood folks win because a cuisine not already well-represented in the neighborhood is served in that storefront instead.

The interests and needs of all who are impacted by the business decision are taken into account, resulting in a solution which benefits all.

It's not a matter of any sort of central planning or governmental edict.  It's the simple willingness to alter our own thought processes on an individual level which will begin to change every aspect of life as we know it.

Why seek this paradigm shift?

The belief that someone has to win and someone else has to lose -- in business, in affairs of the heart, in governance, and in all other matters -- is at the root of most unhappiness and discontent.  Even if you're entirely satisfied with your life and you want for nothing, the unfulfilled wants and needs of others potentially threaten to tip over your own apple cart, whether a stalker takes an uncomfortable interest in you or someone you love, or someone desperate for cash robs your home. 

Beyond the surface cause and effect playing out in the lives of the unfulfilled, unhappy, and unloved among us, the dissatisfaction of those around us can and does effect the very fabric of reality, through the energies which create and comprise that reality.

It's not simply a matter of Anakin Skywalker choosing the Dark Side or Carrie showstopping the prom, so to speak.

Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and energy needs to flow.  Even without conscious ill intent, energy which is not provided with an appropriate conduit will move in random and consciously unintended directions, creating unintended effects.

As I wrote in my essay How art works (or my rejection of the high school English teachers' objectivist theory of art):

If thought, will, emotion, and conscious intention can influence others for the purpose of creating art, the same dynamic may very well apply to the creation of physical reality as we know it.  For example, author Masaru Emoto has written a series of published books detailing experiments involving the impact which words, music, and images can have upon water crystals.  Experiments conducted by Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR), conducted under traditional empirical methodology, have demonstrated the effect of thought and consciousness upon mechanical, electronic, optical, acoustical, and fluid devices to a degree which their website labels "highly significant statistical deviations from chance expectations."

Former PEAR Coordinator of Research, Roger Nelson, Ph.D., has also directed Princeton's Global Consciousness Project since 1997.  Their work provides empirical evidence of the ability of thought and emotion to have an effect upon someone or something other than the thinker.  Random number generators placed in 65 locations worldwide have displayed results deviating from expected norms immediately before, during, and after significant world events, such as the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/papers/pdf/GCP.Events.Mar08.prepress.pdf

I've seen examples of the impact of non-physical energy upon the physical environment and electronic systems in my own life.  I began meditating and working with crystals in the mid-1980's.  I purchased a few crystals and stones, as well as a book about crystal energies which noted that you should cleanse stones in sea salt for a day before working with them.  Well, after doing exactly that, I sat down on my couch, crystal in hand, closed my eyes and began to meditate.  Very soon, I felt an uncomfortable fever-like heat and then...the smoke alarm in my apartment went off.  The same thing happened again a day or two later.

I went back to my friendly local New Age bookstore, where I bought the crystals and the book.  The proprietor mentioned that newly-acquired stones should be cleansed in sea salt for a week, with a day-long cleansing appropriate to refresh a stone long since in your possession.  Once I cleansed my recently purchased stones in sea salt for a full week, I stopped setting off the smoke alarm while meditating with a crystal.

Around the same time, I would also meditate by lying down on my hardwood living room floor, while focusing upon a mantra or playing a guided meditation tape.  I usually ran a box fan, also on the living room floor, while I meditated to drown out ambient noise from the apartment building hallway. 

When I began each meditation session, the box fan was four to six feet away from my head as I lay on the floor.  Imagine my surprise when I opened my eyes at the end of the meditation session and saw the box fan touching the edge of the pillow I placed beneath my head before meditating.

This happened around half a dozen times to me.  I wanted to ascertain whether these events were telekinetic in origin or simply an effect of my body weight creating a slight tilt on the hardwood floor, sufficient to cause a running box fan to move a few feet.  I took a suitcase and trunk, and loaded them with sufficient items to approximate my own weight at that time.  I set them on the floor and in the same spot where I'd lay down to meditate, started the fan running in it's usual location, and then left my apartment for a while.  When I returned, the fan had not moved an inch, compared to the four to six feet it moved during my floor meditations.

Telekinesis is portrayed in movies like Carrie and Chronicle as something consciously willed or intended.  Maybe some have mastered the ability to consciously direct this energy to cause an intended effect, but that's never been the case with me.  Things just happen. (Often, while working in my home office, nearing my lunch hour and absolutely ready for a break, I'll lose connectivity with my employer's remote network.  The irony being that I end up delaying my lunch break because I need to finish whatever I'm working on before breaking for lunch, as I wait to reconnect.)

I believe that the art of living well consists of creating suitable conduits for the many different forms of energy which comprise our selves and our reality: physical, emotional, intellectual, sexual, aspirational, psychic, ethereal, etc.  When people feel unfulfilled in one or more areas of their lives, and a suitable conduit (such as a fulfilling career and a loving, romantic relationship, to name two) is not created, conduits will form of their own accord, much like ice crystals on a winter's day windowpane.  Conduits which form without conscious design will channel and direct various forms of energy in consciously unintended directions, and the results can be...well, anything.

If thought and emotion, individually and collectively, can impact the physical and non-physical environment, it's ultimately in the best interest of all for the energy projected into every level of reality to be as positive, nurturing, and enhancing as possible.  The hate, fear, loneliness, anguish, and despair felt by any one person effects the whole. Ultimately, your happiness should be my concern and my happiness should be your concern because we're all swimming in the same energetic streams.  Seeking solutions to problems and paradigms which satisfy the needs and wants of all helps to replace negative and destructive energy with something far better.

While it may take humanity hundreds or thousands of years to fully adopt this new way of thinking and living, taking that first baby step of being willing to think about solutions to problems which meet the needs of all concerned when we encounter potential conflict or dispute is a great place to start.

And it might be possible to bring about the paradigm shift from binary, conflict-based thinking to meeting everyone's needs faster than you'd think.

I may have been too young to have been a flower child, but I was a child in the 60's, and the conventional wisdom about dating and relationships back then and for a few decades to follow was that women like older men.  Girls in junior high liked high school boys, high school girls liked college guys, and so forth.  Growing up in the 60's and 70's, it wasn't unusual to see couples around town where the man was 10 or 20 years older than his wife or girlfriend.  You'd even hear about the occasional teenage girl who received the legally-required consent from her parents to marry a slightly or significantly older man.  Conversely, it was extremely rare to see an adult woman dating a man noticeably younger than herself.

Social dating and relationship conventions stayed much this way through the late 1990's in the U.S., when long-simmering social change began to intersect with an underrated social force.  The result was powerful enough to change dating and relationship paradigms which had existed for centuries.

The welcome result of the women's equality and rights movement which picked up steam in the 1960's was the empowerment of women to stake their claim to the same career achievement and resulting financial reward which men had always enjoyed.  As women made great strides in the workplace through the 70's, 80's, and 90's, the social conventions and unwritten rules surround love and romance stayed the same, however, in regard to which gender played which role in a May-December romance.

In the late 90's and early 00's, a social tipping point was reached and middle-aged women began dating slightly and significantly younger men.  In 2013, check out any personal ad site upon which advertisers are required to list a preferred age range and it seems like the number of women in their 40's and 50's who prefer younger men outnumber women of that generation who prefer to meet men who are their own age or older.

While the economic self-sufficiency gained by women enabled them to no longer rely upon a men for sustenance, something else must have created a tipping point which caused this widespread change in dating behavior which began in the late 90's.  That tipping point was created by a confluence of one premium cable sitcom, a raunchy series of comedy movies, and a single tabloid romance.  That's all it took.  Combine the Samantha/Smith romance on HBO's Sex and the City, the portrayal of middle-aged women as attractive to young men in the American Pie movies, and the Demi Moore/Ashton Kutcher relationship, and the lightbulb collectively went off over the heads of both middle aged women and younger men that this could work.

If that much social change could be triggered by a relatively modest entertainment and media footprint, imagine what could happen if artists and entertainers work the concepts of non-binary thinking and "meeting the needs of all" into their work.  Presentation of this concept in literature, film, television, music, and other artistic media plants the seeds which enable this new approach to grow and gets people putting the formula into practice.  Every person who walks into a business meeting, singles bar, family dining room, holding fast to the idea that the only acceptable solution to a problem is one which meets all needs brings us that much closer to that spiritual ideal we seek. 

Of course, the internet (and, specifically, social media) provide us with a wonderful means through which to broadly communicate with people throughout the world, without a gatekeeper, such as a publishing company or television network, needing to anoint a particular message or messenger as being worthy of broad dissemination.  If what I've written has struck a resonant chord within you, I encourage you to share this writing with others through social media and otherwise.

Thank you for reading this essay and considering the ideas presented here.

How art works (or my rejection of the high school English teachers' objectivist theory of art)

Growing up in suburban Rochester, NY, I had a couple of very good English teachers at Irondequoit High School in the mid-seventies.  Donna Byers and Marianne Letro turned me on to a handful of great authors, especially Kurt Vonnegut.  I worked my way through all of Vonnegut's work which had been written and published by that time.

When novels were discussed in English class, the teacher invariably asked the class for the meaning of a particular work of literature.  She wasn't asking for your interpretation of the artwork, or how the artwork made you feel.  She was looking for the single meaning consciously intended by the author.

The underlying a priori assumption was that any work of art derives meaning from the conscious intent of its creator and that your job, as perceiver of that artwork, is to ascertain and comprehend the creator's intended meaning.

Around ten years later during my law school tenure, the late, lamented Musician magazine ran a contest for unsigned singer/songwriters and bands.  Submit your cassette and hope for the best, as notable musicians and producers listened to the entries.  I recorded my song Foreign Script with the help of a keyboard-and-guitar-playing classmate with a home studio.

I submitted a cassette entry, but, alas, never heard back from Musician regarding my entry.

I hadn't heard of any of the contest's top finishers, but recognized a name from that list while checking out the listings for Harvard Square's legendary folk venue Club Passim a few years later after moving to Boston.

Having wanted to check out the coffeehouse where Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne cut their teeth in their younger days, and curious about who or what actually impressed contest judges, I checked out the contest winner's gig there.  His music didn't do a whole lot for me, but I hung around to hear the headliner.

The headliner's songs displayed a bit more talent and gravitas than those of the contest winning opener, but his set was dampened for me a bit by his annoying habit of describing each song before its performance.  He'd tell the audience what the song is about, so that his consciously intended meaning would inform the experience of listening to the song during his set.

My high school English teachers and this unnamed folk singer couldn't have been more wrong, however.

The creative process through which any artwork is created encompasses more than the conscious intent of the artist or artists whose names are credited with the work.

Actually, all art is created through a collaborative process which models, in miniature, the way in which we collectively create our reality and everything in it.

Sometime between the first sentient thought and next Tuesday, God/Goddess/All That Is/Fill In The Blank dropped needle on spinning vinyl and this thing of ours began.

Inherent in the design are a thousand flavors of pain.  We needed something to get us to the next mile marker.  "Reason to live, reason to continue," sang the Beach Boys.

The powers that be gave us art.  Something which can provide a powerful catharsis (as Jeff Tweedy put it, "a sonic shoulder for you to cry on"), a wonderful distraction, and, most importantly, a finely-tuned resonance through which you see yourself and your place in creation with intense clarity.

That song or movie or novel or painting strikes a responsive chord within you and you think to yourself, "That's exactly how I feel."  The work of art aligns perfectly with the very core of your being and it all makes sense.

That center may or may not hold, but at least you know where you can get that feeling, that insight, again later when it's needed.

Whether they recognize it or not, all artists are psychics, of a sort.  They've got satellite dishes, you might say, picking up on the needs, wishes, fears, and desires of people who need that resonance with an artwork. The signals which end up in their dishes inform and influence their own creative process by creating a paradigm through which a single visual image or turn of phrase can carry multiple meanings...meanings which meet the needs of all those who cry out for them on ethereal levels.

No single meaning, whether consciously intended by the artist or picked up like some radio frequency and then absorbed by the artist, is the sole true meaning carried by the artwork or reason for the creation of the artwork.  Every possible and perceived meaning within an artwork existed from the moment of that work's conception, as the souls or higher selves of artist and audience exchange notes, so that everyone gets exactly what they need.

A single line within a song lyric may have popped into the songwriter's head because exactly, say, 54 people needed to hear that line.  Those needs were subconsciously projected into the Mighty Mighty Whatever by all 54 people and the songwriter picked up on it, likely without conscious realization of that fact.

In a moment's inspiration, the exact words which would take on precisely 54 different intended meanings found themselves voiced by the songwriter, committed to paper, tape, or digital chip.

If, as quantum physicists have theorized, linear time is an illusion and all moments in time exist simultaneously, perhaps some of the 54 haven't yet been born (within the linear time construct) and someone will first hear that song and find that needed resonance with the artwork a hundred years from now.

Those same quantum physicists have also theorized that an infinite number of parallel realities exist, in which every possible turn of events which could conceivably take place does occur in one reality or another.  (Now known as the Many Worlds Theory, advanced physicist Hugh Everett articulated the theory in the late 1950's.  The theory has since worked its way into popular culture within the Star Trek canon and FOX's Sliders and Fringe, to name a few examples).  Perhaps the artist's own parallel selves inform the creative process and provide the raw data which winds up in the satellite dish every bit as much as the artist receives information from others.

Reincarnational lineage may play a role in this paradigm, as well.  Perhaps certain people become muses or transmitters of information to artists because the roles were reversed between artist and audience member in a past or parallel reality. 

The nature of the artistic process, as described above, also serves as a model for the creation of all reality.  If thought, will, emotion, and conscious intention can influence others for the purpose of creating art, the same dynamic may very well apply to the creation of physical reality as we know it.  For example, author Masaru Emoto has written a series of published books detailing experiments involving the impact which words, music, and images can have upon water crystals.  Experiments conducted by Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR), conducted under traditional empirical methodology, have demonstrated the effect of thought and consciousness upon mechanical, electronic, optical, acoustical, and fluid devices to a degree which their website labels "highly significant statistical deviations from chance expectations."

Former PEAR Coordinator of Research, Roger Nelson, Ph.D., has also directed Princeton's Global Consciousness Project since 1997.  Their work provides empirical evidence of the ability of thought and emotion to have an effect upon someone or something other than the thinker.  Random number generators placed in 65 locations worldwide have displayed results deviating from expected norms immediately before, during, and after significant world events, such as the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/papers/pdf/GCP.Events.Mar08.prepress.pdf

"Thought Creates Reality" is more than just a New Age homily.  Viewing this law at work within the artistic process shines a light upon how this concept works within systems larger than the creation of a painting, poem, or song.

I first began to gain insight into this process from events surrounding the writing of one of my songs in the early 1980's.  As detailed in my blog post here, The other internet, I awoke from a vivid dream one morning, having seen myself floating above an operating table where I viewed an operation.  Soon after awakening, I wrote a song filled with references to transcending the human form.  Within a week, I found out that my best friend from college had been in a serious car accident during the same night that I had that dream.

Clearly, a psychic event occurred during which my consciousness and/or the consciousness of my injured friend connected in some manner and influenced my own artistic output.

Over the course of the following three decades, I have witnessed countless examples of synchronicity between my own life (and my own art) and the creative output of other artists whose work holds special significance for me.

Even when anything which I've said, done, or written in any remotely public forum is excluded -- after all, anything put on the internet is freely available to anyone in the world with internet connectivity -- I've seen many examples of synchronicity beyond coincidence in and around the work of artists to whom I pay attention.

Here's one example:  During the mid-90's, I struck up a platonic friendship with a young woman for a couple of years which crashed and burned a few years later in fairly messy fashion.  I wrote a very nasty song about her in 1997 called Turpentine.

Our friendship briefly resumed a few years later in the early 2000's.  During that time, I gave her a copy of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.  She quickly became a devoted Wilco and Jeff Tweedy fan; she even traveled to NYC to see one of the few performances ever of Loose Fur, a side project involving two members of Wilco.

She and I soon drifted apart again, albeit in a more tranquil way this time around.  (I never did tell her about the song).

Anyway, in June of 2004, Wilco released A Ghost Is Born, which contains a song titled "The Late Greats," which contains this line:

"The greatest lost track of all time: The Late Greats' Turpentine.

Coincidence?  The more skeptical among you will certainly say so.  Then again, the more skeptical among you probably stopped reading a dozen or so paragraphs ago.  (For what it's worth, my song Turpentine was not recorded or performed in public.)

I've been an avid Elvis Costello fan since I heard the import single Alison in late Spring/early Summer 1977.

I've seen Elvis perform 33 times since 1978, as of this writing, and I traveled from Syracuse to Boston to catch his three shows at the Orpheum Theatre in October 1986.

I had a seat in the front row of the mezzanine for the final night of the engagement, which turned out to be one of the best concerts I've ever seen anyone perform. 

The whole of Costello's album King Of America had been performed at the Orpheum earlier in the engagement, except for Jack Of All Parades.  I was disappointed that he omitted the song, since I found a lot of personal significance in that song.

Well, even though the song had been recorded with the Confederates, with whom Elvis Costello performed earlier at the Orpheum, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Elvis and the Attractions perform Jack Of All Parades at the third Orpheum concert.

During the song, Elvis sang the lines "But from my chequered past/To this shattered terrace."

As he sang the lines, I looked to my left.  The illumination spilling from the stage lighting into the house was just bright enough for me to notice that a huge chunk of plaster was missing from the exterior of the mezzanine's overhang.  It looked as if it had been damaged by a grenade or some other armament.  It looked like...a shattered terrace.

Don't take my word for it, though.  Look at your own personal history as a patron of the arts and you just might find similar examples of synchronicity which evidence a guiding hand and master plan greater than mere chance or coincidence.

As I wrote in my song A Tennis Match some years ago...

Faced with numerous impending wishes
There are satellite dishes in a few backyards
One becomes a transmitter when life shatters to shards
Inspiration to the painter and a balm to the bard

The other internet...

In the early 1980's, I had a tremendously vivid dream immediately before awakening one Monday morning.  I was floating above an operating table, watching a surgical staff operate upon a patient.

Not long after I woke up that morning, inspiration hit and I wrote a song, Doctor Moses, the lyrics of which I present for your consideration:

I got this thing about modern art
When I grow up, I want to be a part of the process
I'm gonna travel to a sandy beach
And read each grain of sand like it was a page in a guidebook
Or be a line in a TV screen
A single colored line that becomes part of an image
That's a privilege

Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast

I might just grow up to be a peach
Sitting in a tin can on a shelf out of reach of the children
I want to live to be a ballpoint pen
A hand will pick me up and then set ideas on paper
Or merchandise on a showroom floor
A single giftwrapped item which can be purchased and taken
Or forsaken

Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast

I got a yearning for the conga drums
That will be played as part of a movie's soundtrack
I might evolve into a pane of glass
Flags at half-mast, I'll be peered through on a day of mourning
Or turn myself into the planet Earth
Spending twenty-four hours giving birth and knowledge to everyone
That would sure be fun

Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast

Anyway, the following weekend I called my best friend from college and his girlfriend picked up the phone.  She told me that he had been seriously injured in an automobile accident the previous Sunday night and had been operated upon early Monday morning...which was the same morning that I had the surgery dream.

I was taken aback, not only by the synchronous timing of that dream, but also by the fact that I wrote a song that morning in which nearly every line refers to some sort of transition from the human form into something else.  The line, "Flags at half-mast, I'll be peered through on a day of mourning," felt particularly poignant months later when my friend died after being in a coma or near-coma since the accident.

The seeming communication between myself and my friend during the morning of the accident and operation was the first hint I received that mind, soul, or consciousness can transcend the physical world and touch something else entirely.  The lyrics written that morning took a highlighter pen to that concept, so to speak, as well as providing me with an unexpected glimpse into the workings of the artistic process.

Marshall McLuhan was right.  The medium is the message.

An altruist's lament...

It's been said that there are no atheists in foxholes.  I suppose that it's also true that there are no altruists in churches.

Most spiritual and religious teachings and traditions place a high value upon doing good for your fellow man, woman, and child.  The believer is given something between a hint and an assurance that the good one does eventually benefits the giver is some way, shape, or form.

This paradigm raises an interesting question.  Once someone believes that the good they do will improve their own lot in this life, the afterlife, or their next life (or some combination of the above), can any act truly be considered selfless, if the actor benefits from the act?

Are we being intrinsically good if we do good for others, or are we only consciously or subconsciously looking to put brownie points up on some karmic scoreboard?

I suppose that the only true test of one's intrinsic goodness could be determined if God/Goddess/All That Is/Fill In The Blank paid someone a visit one day and told that person that nothing they did for the rest of their life, for better or for worse, would have any effect whatsoever upon the course of their current life or any future existence.  Good deeds would be unrewarded by man or angel, and bad deeds would go unpunished.  Your possibilities from this moment onward could not be shaped by your action or inaction.  Only under these circumstances could one's true nature be revealed.  Would you murder your most hated enemy, knowing that you would never face arrest, trial, and incarceration in this life or die at the hand of another in a future incarnation?  Or, knowing that there was nothing you could do to change your own fate in any particular direction, would you help others in a sort of nihilistic altruism?

We need to embrace the fact that our best, most noble actions and intentions may be chiefly motivated by the selfish desire to have a pleasant life, afterlife, or future incarnation, whether we admit it to ourselves or not.

Of course, the motivation behind good deeds is more or less irrelevant so long as the good deed is performed.  Imagine a world in which every person, consciously motivated by the idea that doing as much good as possible for others would being some kind of karmic payoff, began to do as much good as possible.  Despite less than noble intentions, this world would soon be rid of violence, corruption, intolerance, injustice, and hatred, as each one of us, individually and collectively, sought to better our own lot in life and afterlife by doing as much good as possible.  The result would be much the same as if we all really were that selfless and full of unconditional love for everyone and everything.

Embrace your inner selfish bastard.  It's the right thing to do.

Darwin in outer space...

Sentient lifeforms on other planets are usually portrayed in sci-fi movies & TV as being remarkably similar to human beings.  While they may look very different than we do, they eat, sleep, procreate, work, fight, pray (and prey) much as we do.

I suspect, however, that sentient life on other worlds may be so different from our own that we could not begin to fathom the essential stuff of their daily lives, nor could they begin to imagine the human experience...and that's due to evolution.

Let's consider a hypothetical sentient species living on some planet orbiting one of those little lights in the starlit sky.

1) To begin with, let's say that this species receives all needed nutrients from the atmosphere, soil, and light of their own sun, much as plants do on Earth.  All needed nutrients are plentiful and readily available to all regardless of location and circumstance.

2) The species adapted quite nicely to the climatic conditions on its home world, and the organism is comfortable outdoors in all weather conditions.

3) There are no predators which threaten our hypothetical species.

4) The species reproduces asexually, with sperm and egg residing in each individual and enabling reproduction without the joining of separate male and female partners in any fashion.

How might this life form differ from our own?

There is no scarcity for this species on their home world.  Anything which is needed to survive is present and readily available, so the need to barter or trade one needed item for another doesn't exist here.  The concept using of coin & currency as a symbol of value for use in commerce would probably be quite foreign to this species, as well, since there's no need to trade a bushel of hay or a metal coin which represents the worth of a bushel of hay.

Similarly, work (as we know it) wouldn't exist on our hypothetical world.  There's no need to trade labor for currency, if there's no need to trade currency for food, clothing, and shelter.  (Remember, with both a comfortable climate and a lack of predators, you really don't need a dwelling...or clothing).

Violence and aggression could very well be non-existent in this hypothetical species.  Without the need to secure food, a desirable dwelling, or a desirable mate, the "fight or flight" response may have never evolved in this lifeform.  The concept of competition, in any form, could be beyond the scope of the imaginable for our hypothetical alien race.

Scientific thought may be radically different on this world.  If the need to quantify items for the purpose of trade and commerce never developed, it's quite possible that this species never developed the need for symbolic representation of quantity through the use of a numeric system. 

Most human scientific fields rely upon mathematics to some degree.  A species which never needed to rely upon numbers as a way of quantifying their world would not have developed mathematics.  Would a different symbolic language or system, based upon something other than quantity, have developed as an aid to scientific thought and development, or could the sciences have progressed without one?

We can only wonder which aspects of their own lives are so foreign to the human experience that they could never be understood by the human mind, just as they may be unable to wrap their minds around the concepts of money, work, or mathematics.

It's interesting to consider how evolutionary differences between sentient lifeforms can lead to such vastly different outcomes that the essential stuff of life which one species takes for granted could be entirely beyond the conception of another species.