Grateful Dead

A sweet and dear friend of mine came to me this week while I was at work and gave me a piece of paper. I was so filled with joy to see her! She is amazingly kind and loving. She is 83 years old and is still completely able just only a little slower physically. She volunteers at the local hospital and helps people cross over with perfect love and comfort. She told me to read what was on the paper when I got home and to share it whenever I felt it necessary. She put the paper in my pocket and we hugged and she left. Later that night this is what I read: "My God and God of my ancestors, accept my prayer; do not ignore my supplication. Forgive me for all the sins which I committed in my lifetime. I am abashed and ashamed of the wicked deeds which I committed. Please accept my pain and suffering as atonement and forgive my wrong-doing, for against You alone have I sinned. May it be your will, O Lord my God and God of my ancestors, that I sin no more. With Your great mercy cleanse me of my sins, but not through suffering and disease. Send a perfect healing to me and all who are stricken. Unto You, O Lord my God and God of my ancestors, I acknowledge that my life and recovery are depend upon You. May it be Your Will to heal me. Yet if You have decreed that I shall die of this affliction, may my death atone for all sins and transgressions which I have committed before You. Shelter me in the shadow of Your wings; grant me a share in your world to come. Parent of orphans and guardian of widows, protect my family, with whose soul my own soul is bound. Into Your hand I commit my Soul. You have redeemed me, O Lord God of Truth. To everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under Heaven. A time to be Born, and a time to Die. Mystical liberal Viddui and Shema I acknowledge before the Source of All that life and death are not in my hands. Just as I did not choose to be born, so I do not choose to die. May it come to pass that I may be healed, but if death is my fate, then I accept it with dignity and the loving calm of the One who knows the way of all things. May my death be honorable, and may my life be a healing memory for those who know me. May my loved ones think well of me and may my memory being them joy. From all those I may have hurt, I ask forgiveness. Upon all who have hurt me, I bestow forgiveness. As a wave returns to the ocean, so shall I return to the Source from which I came. Hear, O Israel: that which we call God is Unity Itself, All and Every are One! A baby enters the world this closed hands; a person leave the world with open hands. The first says: The world is mine; the second: I can take nothing with me." -anonymous Delivered by Anna the Beloved I Love You, All May Peace & Lovingkindness be at your every grasp and if you are in absence of it, just think of me, xo! It is my every hope that the bliss and joy of lovingkindness be yours. Do know it is indeed everywhere but often hidden by a veil of darkness. I hope this is okay in this new topic and a good place to start, a gift sher'd. All goodness to You, All-forevermore. Rock On, however you do IT, xo! Time to Play, Grown-Up Style. It's Monday morning and that could only mean one thing, right? Ha! OFF with Me to the Taper's Section. Monday is my Sunday and services are @ 9 am attentively. Click.

Most people believe in dualities. Their whole life is filled with polar opposites and they buy into the perspective. They believe in good and bad. Some like to be good, some like to be bad. But, consider this: There is no good and bad. There is only energy, or power if you wish. Once you understand this power and come to wield it, the only thing that matters is your intention. Are you trying to help or hurt? The universe is patiently trying to point you in the right direction. Don't buck the trend. Subvert the dominant paradigm!

I was working with a group of students a couple of years ago who were enrolled in an SAT prep course at a Christian academy. They were mostly 12-13 year olds who had a lot of questions about life, the universe and everything, and especially when these questions got me talking about subjects that were not on the official curriculum. One day, one of the students told me that he was having a hard time with the idea of Faith; he said he didn't know if he could trust Jesus. I told him that I was not a Christian, but for the sake of discussion, I was willing to concede that God had created me. Then I said that what I knew about God's creation (myself) was that I come to questions very easily, but answers not so easily at all. The student seemed to understand and relate to my answer, which taught me a lot about the power of questioning versus answering.

> Most people believe in dualities. And for 'good' reason: we determine our identity through our relations with others. The phenomena of duality doesn't necessarily produce value judgements such as 'good' and 'bad'; it's just the framework within which we perceive all that we encounter, including ourselves. ☯

Chary though I am of labels as they tend to cause people to view others unidimensionally, there is one label I'm often tagged with that I take particular exception to. That is the term Athiest. I am not "from or away from Theism," as though it were the default condition, which it isn't. I never bought into it from the get-go. Instead, I studied the origins of this apparent mass psychosis and now see it as merely an outdated socio-political control technology whose deployment and adoption were successful because it preyed on humans greatest fear: The Unknown. Humans abhor the feeling of Not Knowing so deeply that they routinely proxy in all manor of hallucinatory, unfounded and convenient alternatives just so they can feel "safe." I, for one, am quite comfortable with the reality that the set of what I can't prove and therefore don't know is much, much larger than what I can. Not only that, but in fact I'm quite happy about that. How much would life suck if there was nothing new to learn, no alternative experiences yet to explore? I suspect that many of us also share this perspective. Why is it that we so enjoy the unpredictably of Dead shows, especially the jamming aspect? The Unknown is only scary in our own minds if we choose to look at it that way. I don't. As for the label thing, I'm much more comfortable with the word Realist. I rely on things that can be proven, and avoid acting on things that can't. I certainly know the difference between mere belief and truth. Truth implies proof. Proof requires a rebuttable presumption supported by independent corroboration. Concepts whose sole support is limited to "quod erat dictum" are merely begging the question, as anyone who has ever studied classical philosophy would understand. So, while it's tempting for me to consider labeling those who ascribe to Theistically based views as Arealists, I try not to because that term should be as offensive to them as Athiest is to me. And I do try to avoid intentionally offending others because that just makes the world a more pleasant place for everyone. And that should be all the motivation anyone needs to "Do The Right Thing," and perhaps more importantly, avoid doing the wrong thing. A short side note on that "Creator of All Things" notion. Ever heard of a guy named Craig Venter? If not, google him up. He and his team have successfully fabricated DNA out of raw chemical ingredients and programmed it to construct previously nonexistent organisms that feature aerobic respiration and cellular mitosis. Hmmmm. Guess there's more than one "Creator of Life" after all. And no, I don't think he's a god. Not surprisingly, he doesn't think he's a god either. Just a bright guy who's paying attention and not afraid of The Unknown. *man I am just loving this new editable posts feature! *and shuddering over my pathetic proofreading skills!

Relying on the provable as guiding principles in life hardly precludes being open to other perspectives. In fact, exploration of the unknown requires acceptance of the potential validity of the as-yet unproven. You can only learn what you don't already know. It's merely just of question of what weight you give to the concepts you encounter in your journey. I tend to give greater weight to the readily demonstrable.

“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”~ Winnie the Pooh

Oh how I love it when those wacky Creationists try to dismiss evolution as "just a theory." Guess what? Gravity is "just a theory," too. What they seem to be missing is that in a scientific context, a fully vetted Theory consists of (wait for it...) a Rebuttable Presumption, Factual Evidence in support of said presumption, and Independent Corroboration. The term Theory is used instead of loaded terms like "Law" or "Rule" because it specifically accommodates potential for future understanding as we learn more. Unlike Theological dictates which usually dress themselves up as be-all and end-all arrogances that often end up having to be absurdly defended once proven to be wrong, Science views its understanding as an evolutionary process. The longer we keep at it, the more we will eventually come to know. A Theory is merely a cumulation of what we have been able to prove to date. Thanks for the vid post, jonapi. When I have a spare hour, I'll be back to watch it.

I have read it, Jonapi, how do you think I learned how wise Pooh is? :)

I don't call myself an atheist, but then I wouldn't call myself a realist either. Push me, and I'll say that I'm a Groucho Marxist; I would never join an organization that would have someone like me as a member. But reliance only on things proven doesn't sit well with my experience of the world. There's much of life that can't be explained or proven, such as love and hope, that I rely on at least as much as matters more easily shown. Heck. We don't even know for sure if we're 3D or not: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=200303

"Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul"

If I'm an aetheist, then I'm likely something less general and more specific: probably a Catholic aetheist. I was raised in a devout Catholic family, was a devout Catholic myself, so my path from believer to nonbeliever informs my nonbeliever beliefs to no small degree. Who knows? I am who I am. My mother is no doubt very disappointed in my deconversion from true believer to nonbeliever, though she's never broached the subject -- at least not directly. Indirectly, though, enough to lay some Catholic guilt on me, let me assure you! Some of my friends who don't want to accept this about me have told me that I'm agnostic. To the extent that no one knows beyond a doubt about the existence or nonexistence of a deity, I suppose they are correct. In a technical sense, that makes me an agnostic aetheist, as one who doesn't believe that a deity exists but who cannot rule it out as a possiblity. But "agnostic aetheist," that just confuses people, doesn't it? Even "nonbeliever" is a little misleading, since I do believe that there is no deity. Is belief in a negative actually a belief, or is it really just the absence of belief? Screw the labels, ditch the stinkin' names; I don't want to be pigeonholed anyway, by anyone, including myself. You can call me Al, though, if you like.

"Screw the labels, ditch the stinkin' names; I don't want to be pigeonholed anyway, by anyone, including myself. " I LOVE that statement!! Betty

I've been reading a book by an MIT professor named David Kaiser that's titled How the Hippies Saved Physics and thinking a lot about Bell's Theorem lately, which holds that "quantum objects that had once interacted would retain some strange link or connection, even after they had moved arbitrarily far apart from each other" (Kaiser xxiv). Now, my understanding of the origin of the universe is that its expansion emerged from a point of singularity, meaning that everything in the universe was in one place, which is nowhere, in an unknowable state just before time began. This leads me to think that quantum entanglement, as described by Bell's Theorem, is a phenomena well-known to many who have taken psychedelics or practiced meditation and come to the conclusion that we are indeed all one. There's still the difference of arbitrary distance to be considered, of course, but more fascinating to me is the connection that initial proximity appears to retain. We are all different and yet we are all the same; we are body and we are spirit, we are particle and we are wave.

A man walks down the streetHe says, why am I soft in the middle, now Why am I soft in the middle The rest of my life is soooo hard... Enjoying the science discussion, guys. To follow up on "theory" from Mr Pid, unfortunately in common usage, people say "theory" when they really mean "hypothesis." As they do not understand the difference, the "only a theory" crowd tends not to understand exactly what kind of rigor a hypothesis is subject to in order to graduate to theory land. And given that many of their own hypotheses fit more into "wild-ass guess" territory than anything else, it's pretty frustrating when those kinds of theory-bashers start their bashing.

> have you read The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot? No I haven't jonapi, but Talbot's idea that we may not be 3D seems to be what they're looking into at Fermilab. Here's the thing though: when I was telling a friend about this idea recently, we were standing on her 3rd floor balcony and I was looking down over the rail to the sidewalk below; that's when I remembered what it feels like to fall from a height and land hard. If we're only 2D, I wonder why our landings end in trauma.

Moving on to more earthly matters, and since the topic is Life, the Universe and Everything, I thought I'd share this bumper-sticker that I saw in the grocery store parking lot the other day in Castaic, California:

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

--Margaret Thatcher

There's at least one logical fallacy at work here, but I haven't had a chance to parse it to bits just yet; hence, I submit it for crowd-sourcing.

3D? More like 4D at least. Time is a dimension, and the trauma caused by the tumble from the third story balcony provides a cogent argument. There is no physical trauma suffered until the moment in time when the sidewalk is encountered, and any psychological trauma suffered before then is only due to the readily foreseeable future likelihood of that event.

> 3D? More like 4D at least. Or the 13 flavors proposed in some versions of String Theory. But it's the collision of theory and praxis, the Thud Factor, that's got me thinking this morning and recalling my sixth grade math teacher, Mr. Kruger, and the lesson he taught us one day with the following scenario: if you are standing one foot from the wall and then move closer to the wall by half of the distance, and then again close the remaining gap by half, and then again close the remaining gap by half, etcetera--you would never reach the wall, in theory. He then kicked the wall and ended the lesson.

Over on one of Blair's recent blog posts, as well as several other places on the 'net there has been much hue and cry about Phil's choice of a price point for the initial run of shows at his new digs in San Rafael. This, and Mike's post here leads me to contemplate three of the most thoroughly misunderstood related concepts, two of which are peculiar to humans: Value, Money and Markets. Let's start with Value. The most frequently overlooked truth about Value is that it exists only as a concept. There is no physical property "Value." Sentient creatures perceive Value in things around them because they determine those things to be important to them for various reasons and in varying degrees. The more importance they see in any of those things, the more they are willing to risk to keep or make those things available to them. So Value is not only conceptual, it is also relative. What is this Money stuff anyway? Well, money, specifically units of any particular sovereign currency, is merely a physical manifestation of a fraction of the commonly held perception of the aggregate value of the underlying economy of that sovereignty. That's right, I said perception. Money is only "worth" something because people choose to believe so. Since it is a proxy for Value, it too is purely conceptual, a complete abstraction. It only works as long as people keep drinking the Kool-Aide. Case in point would be the global effects of the subprime mortgage fiasco. Approximately one third of all the accumulated capital on the planet disappeared simply because people stopped believing it was ever there at all. So it's not like one scoundrel made off with a large chunk of your 401K, it was the whole mob. And the sad part is that they didn't even realize that they were doing it to you. Or themselves. But such is the nature of Markets. Markets are where the current relative value of things are determined. A finite valuation point is reached when one party determines that they are willing to part with something they have for some other thing, and they find someone else who feels exactly the opposite about those things. That coincidence determines the relative value of those two things, at that point in time for those two entities. Others can and most likely will have differing perceptions of the relative value of those things at other times. Whether one is fulfilling the role of Buyer or Seller depends entirely on the motivation of the party to the transaction. In the case of Phil's shows, one could argue that Phil has taken the Sell side by creating an Offer (give me $150 and you can get in to see my show) in the belief that people will perceive that the opportunity is worth more to them than the money. If he's right, he'll sell out his shows. If not, the potential audience will establish an alternative price point at which they are willing to sell their dollars in exchange for a show or Phil will allow his volatile inventory to just evaporate. Hard to imagine anyone finding much value in the right to attend an event in the past. Well, at least until we get that whole time travel thing worked out. Anyway, circling back around to the question that sparked this diatribe, we run out of other people's money just as soon as we stop believing that there's any more of it to get, and not one moment sooner or later. Simply because it only exists because we choose to believe it does. Want to know what a dollar is worth? Try to give one to a frog for his lillypad and see what they think about it. That's what a dollar is really worth.

(or alternatively, Gimme Back My Margarine, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor) Thanks, jonapi, and not to go all Miss Anne Elk on you but deadlifting my content as your own would be a violation of this site's TOS. And I've never even been to Nakano's Pancake Breakfast, I swear! Well, now that we've got that unpleasantness put aside, perhaps a link to this thread over on Blair's post might be a better answer than the ol' cut and paste. Especially as I'm not real big on repeating myself, and I find it kind of irksome when others post identical content repeatedly in multiple threads. Besides, I think that my comments are broader in scope than just the issue Blair is raising. Am I the Pot or the Kettle? Only my hairdresser knows for sure. In any event, I only want to be one of them.

> Want to know what a dollar is worth? Try to give one to a frog for his lillypad and see what they think about it. Mr. Pid, your poetic substitution of a dollar for a lilypad made me smile broadly. Both are known for their greenness and they're roughly the same size, but, as our friend the frog knows, it's nearly impossible to keep that dollar afloat.

so if money is a proxy for value, does everything then have a price? I have argued about this over many bottles with my dear economist friend L. She believes yes, it is possible if required to put a financial value on anything and, like it or not, that is what makes our (human) world function. I reply that hers is an attitude which explains so much of what is wrong with the place. We normally split the bill.

...and I usually am...but...my favorite price is free.

> if money is a proxy for value, does everything then have a price? Yes, but not until a buyer determines what the thing is worth. For example, if I invent a new gadget, before I bring it to market, it has a value of zero. I might see potential in the thing, but until someone else determines that the thing is worthy of an exchange, it has realized no value. I'd like to add that my understanding of the ways of the world does not imply an endorsement of these things, cosmicbadger; I'm with you in thinking that the human need to to profit and accumulate, to CAPITALIZE, will long be the bane of human development. Like incognito says...my favorite price is free...but that doesn't mean I'm looking for things that have no value. Like these Bob Dylan lyrics. Just sitting on the web waiting for a prankster to turn the spotlight on, royal tea free: Old lady judges watch people in pairs Limited in sex, they dare To push fake morals, insult and stare While money doesn’t talk, it swears Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony

Dang Mr Edwards ..now I've been wandering around singing 'It's alright ma..' to myself :-) Marketable things have a price, but what about non marketable things, like a beautiful sunset, a kind thought or a smile from a stranger. Those pesky economists have even devised a technique for assigning prices to such non market values; they call it (I kid you not) 'Hedonic Pricing'. 'I went to inquire just about how much pain Was needed to purchase the keys to the rain'

 

42? It bears mentioning, at least. Do you know if you Google "the meaning of life the universe and everything" and click on the I Feel Lucky button, it links to directly to the Wikipedia page entitled "42"? I rest my case. Mike Edwards, are you now going to edit your post and make this one appear to be a non sequitur?

I left post #42 blank as a space upon which anyone may project their desire, which is the short form of my take on meaning; it's what we make of it.

The thing about that currency stuff is that it is just one possible proxy for economic value. There are many different implementations of currency, and many perceptions of value that aren't simply economic in essence. So what is the value of things "like a beautiful sunset, a kind thought or a smile from a stranger?" How about the time and cerebral energy taken to notice, process and appreciate those things. Certainly they have some value, too. And I would dispute assertions that there is no market for the economically intangible. If there weren't, then no one would notice or care about such things. Just because the "payoff" isn't in cash doesn't mean that those things aren't important. In my mind, many of those payoffs are far more valuable than any currency could ever hope to be, simply because there is no way to liquidate them into currency. I certainly hope things never get so bad off that someone can get away with selling tickets to The Sunset. Now wait a minute there, Pidsterama, I thought you said Time was a dimension! Well, yesindeedledoody I did, but who ever said that a dimension couldn't have value? Time is valuable because it is volatile. Once it's gone, it's gone and nothing's gonna bring it back, it's gone. Well, again, at least until we sort out that whole time travel thing. Then we'll have to revisit this notion and, armed with additional data, those interested in either acquiring or disposing of time will get together and determine what it's worth. To them. At that time. And a minor structural note on Market Roles, Mr. Edwards. Neither the Buy Side nor the Sell Side determines price exclusively. It takes two to tango (and whether that tangoing happens in Paris or involves butter or margarine is beside the point) and Price occurs at the intersection of two diametrically opposed perceptions of relative value. This holds true regardless of whether the nature of the exchange is goods for cash, goods for goods, cash for cash, or experience for experience. I did enjoy your recent succinct summary of our topic though. As a long-time IT guy, "." to me is shorthand for "current directory." *edit - [Well, the post was just a dot when I had seen it last prior to penning(keying?) this tome. But I applaud and concur with your use of blank instead. Especially the reasoning behind it. Bingo. Sentience, it's a beautiful thing.] As far as the notion of Capitalism goes, I'm always troubled when people confuse the symptoms with the disease. I don't find Capitalism as a concept to be inherently evil. The formation and deployment of capital to increase perceived aggregate value and produce greater ease and efficiency for all as well as return for investors is one of the most transformative technologies humans have ever come up with. Much of what we now take for granted in the world, including this medium we are communicating with, is a direct result of applying that technology. It works because it provides an easily understood incentive, a chance to "do better," and boy, do we humans love to "do better." The problems, at least as I see it, arise when some lose the plot on what and why that currency stuff really is, and start to view its accumulation as the point itself. The only point in accumulating proxies for value is to redploy them to create more perceived value. The only way we can get more and bigger slices of pie is to create more pie. Unfortunately, some people seem to think pie is for warehousing instead of eating. Those people, or more appropriately their additudinal attitudes are the problem. Progressive tax rates on accumulated net worth and anti-trust/anti-monopoly laws should help keep that sort of behavior in check. Absolute rather than representative democracy would go a long way in that regard as well. Splitting checks is fine. Hell, splitting hairs is fine. Just don't split infinitives!

Oh...missed that. I have my settings such that the most recent posts appear at the top of the page, so yours was Post #1 when I read and responded to it. Change in context = change in perception?

and tying in with the DaP #1 cover art theme, Obi-Wan was right. Not surprisingly, so was jonapi regarding trauma as well as Hunter: "Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right." Perception is bound by perspective.

Here is an inexcusably tardy but heartfelt Thank You to marye for adding this topic.

> heartfelt Thank You to marye First, I'll second that emotion. > Neither the Buy Side nor the Sell Side determines price exclusively Secondly, on first principles, I must have misplaced my sense of interdeterminedness when I was writing that post, Mr. Pid. Thanks for helping me get back on that circular track. I'm a generalist, generally, and a poet in particular, who sees the universe as his domain, but more than that, I'm a human being bound by a system of representation, so it's more often than not that I violate Wittgenstein's seventh proposition and select speech acts over passage in silence. I'm not sufficiently caffeinated to consider a defense of capitalism just yet, but it's percolating on my back burner, right next to the coffee, but not the pot. I will say though that you must have hit my period post 42 in the 30 seconds or so while it existed. As soon as I saw that lone not-blue dot, I knew it had to die, so I inserted a blank in its place, which required a < td > tag, somewhat surprisingly; this system wouldn't allow a non-breaking character on its own.