Codified Rambling

I'll be gone the rest of the weekend, so this is what you get. By the way, the last post is still up for discussion.

I spent some time riding along the rim of a canyon. I stopped at the crest of the box end and found a rock to sit on.

Due, I'm sure, to the exhaustion and pain of sweat seeping into a scraped knee and abraded calf, several profound thoughts occurred to me, or at least vague notions I've been working on I can now codify. I once listed as a hobby "thinking." It is a hobby I never lost. Sitting in an inspiring place and reading my thoughts on the pages of my brain is beautiful and bountiful. One of those thoughts is mine and mine alone, but the others I will share in order of appearance.

1. All Life Is Sacred

Truly, whatever mystery we hem and haw and turn into religion must return to the point of life. Life is unlikely. Actually, extremely unlikely, especially in the form of awareness. Think for a minute about your consciousness. Why do you have it? Where does it come from? I am aware of the selfless theory in vogue now, the one that says identity is a coping mechanism and a fallacy. I don't accept that particular thought as it leaves much to be explained. The Buddhist ideas of selflessness on the other hand, though coping mechanism they may be, I find sort of romantic. A freedom is available to those who believe they are truly not.

2. Causality is Bullshit

There are no causes.

3. Pseudopodia

I am a physical person. I live a lot of my life between my ears, but I live a sizable minority of that same life between my legs and between breaths of action. I find that five minutes of motivation can easily replace twenty minutes of preparation. Consider the machines we use to assist our lives. At my former employment, I always found it easier to just get in and move the heavy and large objects that made up my day. We had a plethora of mechanized assistance, but by the time you went to grab the machine, chased everyone out of the area, and moved the behemoth to your work site, you could have been up and down an old fashioned ladder ten times over. My personality is such that I'd rather just grab the ladder and grunt and struggle and get it over with.

Sometimes, my coworker was Bill. Bill was in a wheel chair. I would be constantly up and down ladders, carrying heavy products from a random here to a random there. I often broke a sweat at work. Bill did not. Bill was in a wheel chair. Many other men I dealt with during my day were overweight, or old, or had some malady that angered me. Men with sickness or disability anger me. I don't know why, and I know it's wrong, but they anger me. I still have incredible empathy for them. I believe strongly that at this point in history, we have room for everyone. We don't have a herd to slow down, and regardless, humanity is descended of pack animals, a completely different mentality from a herd.

When I pass these wheelchair-bound or obese people on the street or when they see me with a bike helmet or with my forehead beaded with sweat and my bulging quadriceps, do they think I am showing off? It feels like I'm showing off when I feel my body's mahinery bulging up and straining so close to the surface of my skin in their presence. That makes me sad. Why should it make me sad? I am no more responsible for my genetic stock than they are. And don't pretend that even the obese are to blame. Any number of factors can contribute to sedentation. Remember:

Causality is bullshit.

4. Population

At this moment, humanity is stretching the limits of their home. I should not say humanity, as that makes it sound as if the species has blown past the checks of carry capacity. We have not. The Earth can accommodate us as an organism. What it can not accommodate is the damage of our wills. Were I to eat a deer, the tragedy to that dear, and one could argue to the immediate herd, would be great, but Deer in a platonic sense would be unaffected. When my body turned the deer into fuel and did not perform the task with greater than 45% or so efficiency, I would have to get rid of the deer inside me. The Earth could absorb and reuse what I would discard. Life would explode out of the nitrogen I did not use.

However, this plastic lid to my cup of coffee will find its way into the system. It will not die or be reabsorbed very quickly. For the first time in the history of large individuated life, an organism's discards will outlive the organism. You could argue that the discarded oxygen of the precambrian forms of life did much the same thing, but the stakes are higher now. And as such:

5. Humanity

As in Humanity can no longer change. Think on this: at this point in history, the further speciation of the genus homo is no longer possible. Humanity is too connected for a separation event to last long enough for the nucleic acids to mutate that much. We can no longer evolve. People the world over are mating with diverse other people, which I think is great. I participate in the activity myself whenever possible. Racism won't be possible when we're all the same shade of caramel. On the other hand, it also hands us a standard and unified truth. This is the only humanity we will have for a long, long time. There will be no waiting around for better people. We are all there will be. This is our one shot.

Shot to do what? Improve, I guess. Improve our lives, our culture, our species. We have the ability, we do not have the will. We need to get our heads out of our global asses.

6. Causality is Bullshit

There are no causes.