A while ago, I decided to consider alternatives to Atheism.  I wound up creating my own religion.  I didn’t do it for the chicks, for the fame or for the chance to be crucified.  Nor did I do it because I have grown disillusioned by science.  Science does a great job of explaining the world, our history, the laws of Nature, and even what our near future might look like.  It is essential to our survival and it must continue unhindered, with the full support of humanity.  But what of the big questions that science still cannot answer?  Are we not allowed to wonder why we are here and what our struggle through life is for?  It is for this reason I developed Etheism.

Throughout history, philosophers and preachers have searched for a meaning, some clue as to what it’s all about.  To know this is to know God.  Well, are we getting closer to knowing God yet?

Etheism holds that God is energy.  Using this simple substitution, I dare you to read the ancient biblical texts and see if they don’t make more sense.  What was always most imbecillic about mainstream religion was its view that God was some kind of father figure sitting up in the clouds, listening to what humans do, meddling in their affairs.  Unless you are a young child or a complete and utter moron, this will obviously be insulting to your intelligence.  Defining God as energy allows us to clearly define Him by the natural laws we have for how energy functions in the Universe.  There is still much to learn if we are to become fully enlightened, but at least we are on the way.  As we come to expand our view of the Universe, so too will we expand our definition of God, from petty father figure, to omniscient deity, to Universal constant.

But why define God at all?  There has been, thus far, no evidence to support any theory of a higher consciousness having created any of the phenomena we see around us.  Existence is not evidence of creation.  Even if there had been creation, it must’ve occurred billions of years ago, as our most advanced techniques for dating the age of the earth and of the living creatures who have lived on it indicate.  The absurd idea that the world is but a few thousand years old and that woman was created from man with one of his ribs is childish nonsense which ignores so many facts about the world we have come know.

If you really are religious and are still reading, consider:  God gave you a brain, so why don’t you use it?  You have been given the amazing gift of volition, of choice, of understanding and knowledge.  You are conscious, self-aware and capable of understanding the mysteries of the universe.  You can know why the sun and moon appear to move across the sky, or how people came to look different from each other, some with dark hair and black eyes, others (like me) with fair hair and a fragile relationship with the sun.  God, if He exists, surely doesn’t want you to treat your brain poorly by ignoring the voluminous amounts of evidence supporting the theory of evolution on the one hand, with a book authored by God-knows who, compiled by a bloodthirsty dictator about a prophet none of the authors ever met.

Let me put it another way.  I’m sure that if I put a bag over my head, I could eventually learn how to get on with my life.  But for God’s sake, why not just take off the bag?

Yet, in spite of the horrors committed in its name, religion has been the greatest cause of human population growth in the history of humanity.  The prescription religion has dispensed throughout the Ages has been to “go forth and multiply” and the multitude has obeyed.  Where poverty and religion have combined, the effects have been especially pronounced, generating generation after generation, perpetuating paternalism, all the while passing religion on.  We have assumed that religion was indoctrinated into children early enough that they weren’t able to rationally comprehend it, thereby accepting it as a part of their lives.  But what if it wasn’t just nurture that helped religion to grow and flourish?  What if there was a genetic factor involved?  If there was a genetic link between genes and suceptability to religion, then the religious may well give birth to naturally religious children.  As those who are most religious would quite possibly pass on their genetic material with a greater urgency, the numbers of the religious would be increasing compared to the non-religious.

This may sound like the rantings of a maniac.  “Genetic link to religion?  Such a thing has never been proven!”  And it hasn’t.  But there is good evidence to suggest that there is something in human psychology that gives rise to belief.  You just have to look at it from another angle than religion.

Look at a group of people.  Tasked with a job to do, the group naturally falls into a team of leaders and followers, as each member finds its political place within the group.  We call this politics, but it is actually just an effective way to manage the group dynamic and achieve the result desired.  If a group has too many leaders, it’s focus is diluted and the group can splinter into factions.  Unless some members can switch to a follower mentality, allowing themselves to “follow the leader” as it were, the group will be unfocussed.  Unless other members can lead those other members, giving direction and balance to the group, the group will be doomed.  It seems that, like bees, a person can adopt either role in order to achieve the higher purpose of the group.  Throughout history, those who have been able to follow their leader precisely, by aligning their own goals, dreams and desires with the group have had an uncanny ability to win.  Independence of mind and spirit have traditionally worked well for the leaders of the world, but have fared poorly in group dynamics.  Hell, I have a hard enough time living with this kind of mindset in these supposedly independent and free times.  I would’ve probably been burned on the stake before my 15th birthday, had I been born a couple of thousand years prior.

I think it is not a coincidence that political fervour often mimics religious fervour.  Our tendency to follow has protected us in the past, allowed our groups to function more effectively (though quite often being murderously effective).  It gave humanity strength, yet it is at the same time its weakness.  In the evolution of human thought, it is natural that we would transition from a group to an individualistic mentality.  Trouble is, it seems we are going backwards.  Back in the 4th century BC, Aristotle and Socrates were chatting philosophy, trying to derive the nature of the universe.  Artistotle himself could be said to be the founding father of Science.  Yet, it took almost two thousand years for scientific thought to actually take hold.  Had we not been afflicted with the mind-stunting ignorance of religion for centuries, where might we be now.

I’m pretty sure we’d have flying cars.  Leonardo da Vinci would have invented them for sure.

I created Etheism in the hope of creating, not another closed dogmatic system of belief, but an evolving, inclusive vision of a universe which would one day welcome us into its arms.  As our technology and our knowledge increase, as we come to learn more and more secrets of this amazing universe, we may well give birth to creations which allow us to explore the cosmos (or at the very least fly to work).  Who knows what intelligence we may find, given the means of conducting a more thorough search.  But even if we remain alone in the universe, we will advance or die together.  Our own small roles in continuing the delicate spark of life will remain, even after the circumstances of our birth, death and all that happened in between fades into eternity.

Etheism is a celebration of Life.  A unifier, not a divider.  It is a religion which is pro-science, pro-life AND pro-choice, pro-rational individual and pro-understanding.  It is inclusive.  If you’re alive, you can join.  Those who we disagree with, we feel compassion toward, never hatred.  We feel connected to the universe and relish the joys of life.  We understand that God may fill our bodies and world around us, but this universe is a self-determined one.  We live and die by our own choices.  There is no supernatural force, guiding the outcome.  We are not disappointed by this, as we understand that the natural world is so full of wonderful and amazing things that there is simply no need for the supernatural.  As for the purpose of humankind, perhaps one day it will achieve harmony.  That is our goal.  When we learn to form a synnergy with our natural world, we might discover a higher form of existence, leading to still other higher and higher forms.

The answers to all of our questions are right there in the puzzle we call life.  It’s up to us to solve it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Problem: My laptop, after an incomplete hibernation, left me with a blinking cursor and me cursing when all the usual tricks didn’t work.

Solution: After Googling, doodling and racking my brain, I finally just thought like a computer.  As a result, I’m typing away again.

This Toshiba Satellite M200 has been pretty good until now.  I’ve had it for almost 2 years and apart from overheating on warm days, it’s been a pretty solid machine.  I do lots of video editing on it and the speed at which it renders is quite impressive for a tiny laptop.

However, impressed I was not when, during a long night of tapping out a script, my battery died.  It made a feeble attempt to go to sleep just prior to this, but as the battery gave out it’s last squirt of power, Windows wrote about all the lovely things I had been typing and how it wanted to remember them later, but then all went black.

My natural recourse was to plug in the power.  That I did.  I saw a flash screen for Phoenix Labs, as one might see while the computer wakes up.  No boot options or suggestions to hit the Delete key.  Then a black screen, a flashing cursor and nothing happening in the hard drive department.  No worries, I thought.  Corrupted restore file is the problem.  I’ll just shut off the power and hold the button a really long time.  This is how I show my laptop I really mean business.

After that didn’t work, I still wasn’t worried.  I’ll take out the battery.  If things get serious and button pushing doesn’t work, start the strategic withdrawal phase.  Know that this phase, once started, could lead to the computer’s destruction, as each increasingly integral component is taken out and yet the game goes on.  Battery comes out easily.  Goes back in seconds later.  There, the hardware will be power starved, not remember anything and the system will reboot from scratch.  But after another boot, there is that damn black screen and cursor, blinking at me as though taunting me.  Off, on, off, on, you don’t treat me well… on, off, on, off,  you suck at computers.

Here was I, trying to work this out in a civilized way.  I push a button here, I push a button there, computer works.  We don’t have to create a scene.  We don’t want anyone to get hurt.  But you made me pull out your battery because you still didn’t work after I had tried so hard to be polite.  And now we’ve already crossed over to the dark side.  Now I have a taste for this game of torture.  What will it take for you to work for me?

I took out, then replaced the RAM.  Blink, blink, ha, ha.
I pulled out the hard drive, plugged it back in.  No, no, blinked the screen.
I inserted said hard drive into a portable unit and checked to see it was working.  All was well.
I racked the internet, which told me to hold the power button for a minute, run boot disks (obviously no boot menu so can’t boot), change Windows power options (hello, not booting!) or update my BIOS.  The cursor actually found the last one quite amusing.  Blink, blink, go ahead and try, it said.

I have no idea where the nearest Toshiba shop is.  I really didn’t want to have to find out.  I had to come up with another solution.  I spend a good part of my day sitting in front of my computer and if that vast stretch of time is gone I might start reading books or doing something productive.  As you can see, I desperately needed a solution.

Toshiba laptop, turns on.  What happens?  What would I do if I were that laptop.  The first thing I do of a morning is check to see that I’ve got all my bits.  Legs, arms, face, dick, balls, OK.  It really is all a man needs to be a man.  Everything else is extraneous.  Sure, I’ll put a T-shirt on and may even wear pants, but first I’m checking to make sure I have some legs to put in those pants.  So, if I’m a computer waking up from a deep sleep, I think I’ll be checking to see that my parts are all cool.  If they are, then move on to the hard disk boot sequence and let Windows do the rest.

I’m going to pause here to mention that my approach to problem solving my computer is to FBM.  First blame Microsoft.  There’s no passion there.  It’s all for show.  I guess companies are a lot like their founders.  In this case, bland.  That’s how I see Microsoft.  I’m going to have a little rant about my phone with its Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system in the very near future, I can feel it.  When a problem arises, I assume that it’s a Windows fault.  For example, when going to sleep, have a tag to say not complete.  When the session saving has finished, change that tag to finished. When the system boots up, if session saving tag reads finished, restore it.  If it reads not finished, do a fresh boot.  Simple.

So in my mind, it’s the point after the system check that everything goes wrong.  So I try to make the security check fail.  I pull out the hard disk again, but this time leave it out.  I turn on the computer.  The now-familiar Phoenix logo flashes, the little blue bar down the bottom fills, then…

Black screen, flashing cursor.  Its blinks seem slower this time, as though it was an effort to blink them out.  It says, “you got me”.  Suddenly, a bunch of white writing appears.  Hardware failure!  Blah, blah, blah!  I reset the computer, plug in the hard drive and voila! We’re back to standard boot-up.

The whole process from start to finish took almost 2 days.   I am most unsettled when Google can’t solve my problems.  It has become like a big brother to me and when it doesn’t come through, I’m left vulnerable, having to use my own brain for a change.  But my brain proved that it is still working and that it, with the help of a little Microsoft distrust, could still save me from a life of productivity.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Once again, I have let eons slip by between updates.  Let’s see, I’m in Korea with 2 months to go before heading home.  Keith and I have released The Unshow International 2 (and currently working on number 3).  Oh yeah, and I’m engaged.

Yes!  Engaged!  Can you believe it?

At the top of Mt. Bukhan, I popped the question and made her cry again, but this time the good kind of crying.  We are planning to head back to Australia together in early September.

But actually this has been a plan more than a year in the making.  When I arrived in China, I knew I had left something precious behind in Korea, and no matter how fun and awesome living in Shanghai was, I couldn’t escape that feeling.

All I can really say about the matter is, man do the years fly by.  Here I am on the verge of 30.  Me.  30.  How did that happen?  I have come a long way from 20.  Then, if you asked me about marriage I would’ve said that I didn’t plan on getting married.  I always wonder what would happen if I talked to my 20-year-old self.  Would I teach me all the valuable lessons or would the younger me lecture the current me about my lack of idealism?

Stepping toward 30 reframes your life, like it or not.  The equation changes, the factors change and shift their weights.  Things which weren’t important are important.  Things which were, aren’t any more.  Youthful idealism turns into mature pragmatism before you even really notice.  Yet the equation balances itself.  We find a higher plane on which to dwell.  We color our worlds with shades of nuance we were unable to see before.  I heard it said once that our eyes yellow as we age turning our world a different shade.  Is there also a yellowing of our intellects?  Of our sense of certainty?  Of our own perception of the meaning of life?

The trick is to perceive 30 as though you were really 40, looking back.  What lessons may I learn from that future me?  My thought is that the answer would be the same as my message to 20-me:  Be true to yourself.  It has worked well for you so far.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I have always had a keen interest in psychology.  Motivation is a curious psychological phenomena.  A person may struggle to get off the couch and exercise, yet that same person will jump up for a piece of cake.  The expense of energy to get off the couch is the same in both cases, but the perceived reward determines whether the action will happen or not.

It’s like money.  Some people will hesitate to spend money on a new pair of shoes, whereas they will happily sink their money into a gadget they could probably live without.  Marketing is based on creating a desire and making it appear like a need.  After envisioning an enriched life with the new product, we feel loss when we go back to the real world.  That loss creates a buying urge.  That buying urge lasts momentarily, but it’s why telemarketing and infomercials do such great business.  They create motivation by promoting a reward.

I am motivated by dissatisfaction.  I may have a streat of obsessive compulsive running through me.  It’s controllable, but I can definitely feel it’s pull.  Once I am aware of something better, I am consumed by the desire to get it and implement it in my life.  This is useful and a huge burden, for I spend a great deal of time being intensely dissatisfied with the way things are.  For the things that are easily changeable, like my hairstyle or clothes, it’s a useful way to motivate that next haircut or shopping trip.  On the other hand, when it involves the superfluous, like my desktop wallpaper or defraging my computer hard disk, it just wastes time.  But when it really hurts is when I confront things which are nearly impossible to change, for that is dissatisfaction with no payoff and no viable chance of resolution.  It’s an emotion only inches from despair and feelings like these things can make life miserable.

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

This is the mantra for Alcoholics Anonymous and it’s wisdom can’t be overlooked.  Yet it’s the last part, the wisdom to know the difference which stumps me.  Some things are impossible and we can easily know they are impossible.  But life is filled with people who accept too many things as being impossible, when in fact they are possible.  Often, we can’t know what’s possible or impossible until we try.  Edison had 1000 failed attempts at making the light bulb, Churchill lost every election for public office until he was 62, Sigmund Freud was booed off stage when he first presented his ideas, Michael Jordan was kicked off his high school basketball team, Henry Ford went broke five times before he succeeded and history is filled with scores of other such tales.  Click here if you’d like some more examples.

Van Gogh sold only one painting during his life. And this to the sister of one of his friends for 400 francs (approximately $50). This didn't stop him from completing over 800 paintings.

I have lived by the saying:

EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE

because I would rather attempt the impossible and fail than to resign myself to accepting that some things just can’t be done.  It’s an exciting outlook and it’s the only way to achieve the impossible.

So, I feel motivated to change the things which I feel could be improved because I believe that everything is possible to change and make better.  I am motivated to do so by my strong feelings of dissatisfaction.  Seems good?

Then why am I not in the gym?  Why am I not well-versed in the Korean language?  Why don’t I keep my bike, room or shoes neatly cleaned and polished every day?  Because the dissatisfaction I use as a motivator is not motivation enough in small doses.  Eventually that dissatisfaction may grow until I force myself to really do something about it, but then I’ll only do it until the feeling subsides and stops bothering me.

If we motivate ourselves through negativity, we are creating a place for negativity in our lives.  The things which we want to get done rely upon emotions of guilt or sadness which we seek to avoid.  It goes without saying that this is a less than ideal state in which to live.

If we spend our lives backing away from negativity, we are facing the wrong direction and have no hope of finding and catching our dreams.

The solution then, is to transform those negative thoughts into a positive vision of the future.

Popularity: 63% [?]

I’m sorry America, but you seem to be screwed.  In future, when people apply to become citizens of the United States, there will be a $100,000 fee which will be thrown toward the national debt. This will be added to the fact that each taxpayer and that taxpayer’s children will already have a lifetime of payments to make toward a deficit which increases at a faster rate than it can be paid.  Eventually, the benefits of being a United States citizen will be outweighed by the costs, though it is hard to imagine there are very many benefits even now.

As it is, U.S. students score well below other developed nations.  In a 2006 international science and mathematics test, U.S. 15-year-olds scored 30th in Science and 35th in Math (behind Latvia and Estonia).   The money for Social Security has been spent.  One in every 31 Americans is either in jail, on parole or on probation.  Meanwhile, the government keeps handing out trillions of dollars to corporations who had a hand in the current financial crisis.

Internationally, the US government (on behalf of it’s largely ignorant populace) has carried out simultaneous wars around the globe, maintained its military presence in over 70 countries and has engaged in assassination and torture.

The revolution is coming.

How long can a population have their productivity taxed, their savings stolen, their good name tarnished and their children retarded by an ever-growing system of incompetence and corruption?  How far will the American Empire stretch before it totally collapses?  All I know is, it can’t be much longer.

America is a geographical location, no longer an idea like it used to be.  However, the principles America was founded on are no longer visible, except as a horribly disfigured Dorian Gray contortion of themselves.  Freedom used to mean something, not just the right to shovel as much food in your face as possible.  Somewhere along the lines, true freedom was bartered for 24-hour movie channels and the strong, independent-minded American just became the loud, obnoxious know-it-all whom everyone despises, yet no-one will tell to shut up.

So where did it all go wrong?  We don’t know the exact date, but we do know that the system was broken long before either of the Bushes, though they did more than their fair share.  What we do need to focus on is the solutions.  Here are my top ten:

1. Wake up.  Address reality, not the fiction you mistake for reality.  Americans have long believed that they were number one, that what they are doing is right, that they can do no wrong and live however they please.  Rationality over mysticism, facts over opinions and science over religion.  

2. Halt the income tax, replace it with a flat tax on spending.  Why, oh why do we tax income?  Hard work should be encouraged, not punished.  Income tax is not only unnecessary and immoral, but it’s also the reason your politicians can redistribute obscene amounts of money to their corporate friends.

3.  Tie down the currency.  You must realize that as you read this, you are being taxed invisibly.  Each time the Federal Reserve prints new money (ie. all the time) the value of your money goes down.  That’s a tax on savings.  It’s immoral and it’s like a credit card with no limits in your name being spent on your behalf by politicians.  Link the currency to a commodity like gold and then the politicians can’t spend money they don’t have.  Simple.  Surprisingly it’s our old commie friends Russia and China who have offered this up as a logical way of bringing stability to international markets.  You know things are bad when the communists know more about capitalism than you do.

4. Bring home your troops.  Yes, all of them.  America, you do not own the world.  Nor can you afford to maintain your world empire.  Even if you could, you’re not welcome.  If your presence was a positive influence, then maybe.  However it has long been known that you have long conspired against foreign governments to further your own interests while creating more conflicts than you solve.  Your military help would be better on-call and then, only if it’s absolutely necessary.

5. Update education to a 21st century methodology.  Old laws and regulations keep new thoughts and ideas from being implemented.  Teachers’ unions make the education system both bloated and ineffective.  Any field in which competition is discouraged suffers from the same falling standards.  Less regulation, more independence and the demolition of the DoE.  Allow the market to provide schools which will be rewarded or punished depending on their quality.  Just like we do with food.

6. Decriminalize drugs.  Where in your constitution is the right to dictate what others do with their bodies?  In the interests of “public safety” your legislators have helped the drug lords to get rich.  Were drugs legal, they would be placed on shelves and served to adults in controlled amounts and of a predictable quality.  Contrast this to now, where people of all ages are dealt drugs of unpredictable quality to be used in secret for fear of discovery and legal consequence.  Drug dependence is a health issue, not a criminal issue.  Addicts need help and adults in a free society need not be told what they can or can’t do with their own bodies.  It does seem that this one is catching on in the mainstream media, albeit slowly.

7. End the culture of violence and paranoia.  In line with #4, you have a lot of work to do at home to correct the pervasiveness of weapons and violence in your own culture.  It’s almost impossible to find an American movie that does not have a gun featured at one time or another.  Gun control is one answer.  Education and a culture of brotherhood addresses the bigger picture of aggression.  We have lost our sense of community, not just in America, but in most modern societies.  We need to find ways to repair the social fabric of which we are all a part.

8. Stop blaming capitalism and let insolvent companies fail.   The system of capitalism is the fairest and most efficient economic system devised by man.  ’Capitalism run amok’ has been blamed for the current crisis.  Companies have been bailed out because of some apparent shortcomings of the system.  Excuse me, but capitalism is just fine.  Capitalism is a system whereby foolish moves are punished.  If you’re a bank and you bought some bad assets, then you lose.  When you fail, others will capitalize and then grow in your stead.  Capitalism made America great and gave you the lifestyle you currently enjoy.  Learn what it is and what it’s not.  Bailing out companies with public money is the very antithesis of capitalism as it rewards stupidity.  It should come as no surprise then that the current system is not capitalism and hasn’t been for a long time.  We live in the age of corporatism where companies lobby to receive favors and funding from the government.  Where excess legislation creates barriers to new entry, thereby reducing competition.  Your Founding Fathers would turn in their graves to know that the majority of Americans today still think they live in a capitalistic society.

9. Take personal responsibility.  Educate yourself on politics, the correct way to educate your children, on healthy eating, on philosophy, the world, on history and science.  Reality is all around you and you are personally capable of understanding it all.  You just have to open your eyes and try.

10. Get on the metric system.  If anything is a more glaring indicator that America is still way behind in science, it’s the fact that they still use the arbitrary notions of feet, inches and gallons when the entire world uses metric (Myanmar and Liberia excepted).  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a system of measurement which is easily convertible between units and which is based on the dimensions of the world, not of some ancient king’s shoe size?  Are you guys just jealous because France came up with the idea first?

Popularity: 77% [?]

Geniuses are just those who have no sticking points. Their engines are running smoothly at full capacity. Us non-geniuses have sticking points which stop our engines running. If we can clear these, we will be able to become geniuses ourselves, roaring ahead with an unencumbered engine.

‘Mental Block’ by Elif Ozkoc

Inspiration is just a momentary clearing of one of the blocks. Drugs, alcohol sometimes allow us to temporarily clear these blocks, but we must find a way to clear them permaently by a study of their underlying causes.

Imagine something you do well. Maybe you can hit a tennis ball well, maybe you can peel apples or maybe it’s just wiping your own ass. Actions we are good at run smoothly from start to finish, as soon as we have the inclination to instigate them. A geniuses process is the same. A genius writer might turn his mind to create a new play. His mind will leap to selection of a striking idea to base his new play on. He draws from his experiences and chooses an idea that stands out. He then relishes in selecting an appropriate scene on which to display that idea, a scenario that would show all the qualities of the idea. His mind dances around it, a dreamlike fantasy as he composes places and characters, all the while drawing from his experiences to flesh out the scene. Having shaped the story in his mind, he then sets out to write it down, to play with words, searching out the right one in an instant. In his mind, there is no effort. Everything is balanced and has no weight. His mind is free from doubt, just as your legs are as they walk along. Just as you could stop walking at any time, or change course or break into a run, this genius writer’s mind is free from the fears, doubts, worries or shames that would silence or crush his ideas. Writing, to him is a pleasure.

To me, and most of the world’s other writers, we find ourselves blocked at various stages of the process. To clear these sticking points, we need to examine ourselves very hard. We must look into our own psyche and find the fears, doubts, worries we have had, the automatic assumptions that we have made which shut down our engines. For some of us, it may just be a lack of knowledge. Even the genius may need to expand his knowledge and experiences to flesh out his idea.

Acquiring knowledge and excorcising demons are all ways to convey our ideas. And conveying our ideas is just one more way of communicating a part of ourselves to the universe.

Popularity: 16% [?]