I am ocassionally overcome by awe at how our minds have evolved....And most of the time I get to this point by observing and assessing a new invention......very simple inventions especially.
With my over-a-year-long obsession now with fresh water aquaria, I am learning how not to kill certain types of fish (unfortunately done so by trial and error) Freshwater fish are either goldfish (including koi), or tropical, and the 2 cannot typically cohabitate (most tropicals are aggressive and goldfish are not, and goldfish produce large amounts of ammonia in their waste which tropicals cannot handle) Feeding these 2 classifications is a bit involved as well.
Gf will eat anything, need goldfish food because it has a higher caloric content than tropical food...Certain tropicals do well with flakes, but many require special food as well in order to remain healthy, etc.....Cichlids, in their varying forms (African, southAmerican, Angels, Oscars, Parrot fish) require cichlid pellets, but are hoggish like goldfish and will eat just about anything.
I have an eel....He is a recent addition to my show. a fire eel.....He is gorgeous. He looks just like a piece of wood with red and yellow lines.....I have yet to see him eat. but, Ive had him now for a little over 2 weeks, so I feel certain he's eaten something, I just haven't seen it.
I've read up on fire eels and while they will eat pellets and flakes, they do require live food from time-to-time.....I can't stand feeding live things to others. They all know and can sense the impending doom.......even the little invertebrates know something's not kosher.
I bloody tried to feed the eel some ghost shrimp, live ghost shrimp. Did as advised and put him into a bucket with an air source and put 7 really really cute ghost shrimp in with him. Left him for about 6 hours....thought of the poor souls a lot while I was gone. Came back, certain that at least 2 or 3 would have been devoured while the others huddled together in nailbiting terror over what they had just witnessed....I lifted the towel from off the bucket and saw all 7 transparent crustaceans forming a semi-circle around the eel.....notta one was gone.....
And within the tank in which the eel resides I have a good sized Albino African BlackClawed frog.....He will eat nonstop once any form of food hits the water.....so, my point....inventions....simple inventions and our evolution......
The little man at the fish store is so so so helpful and accomodating. He gives me lots of things to try.....different kinds of fishfood, containers to hold aquarium salt, lots of advice.....
I've told him of my fish that I never see eating and how certain tankmates devour everything before others can get to it.....He gave me samples of krill ( i think) in a gel that can be injected into a hiding place to be certain that whoever is in there will get their chance to nibble.
He handed me a plastic medicine syringe/spoon/ thing with a very very long skinny tube popped over the end....He told me it specifically will shoot the gel into these hiding places......
So, the syringe is why I am not ready to give up hope on our species just yet.
and I started to wonder about why we demean ourselves in the name of worshipping deities/ or mono......
I know why, but I think it is contradictory......If we are created in the image of God, why would we not want to praise our ability as "children" of this creator to......find the beauty in how our minds work and create and honor this process......Not belittling ourselves in places of worship, telling this invisible man how great he is.......God is the ultimate father figure, but I don't constantly tell my daddy how great he is and that I'm not worthy to be in his presence.....
That was an arguemnt i had with mymother inlaw about the goin'to heavean thing.
She also made a correlation between God and his children, and how we all treat our own children. I was picking her brain about why she believes that you have to pronounce Jesus as your saviour from sin or you don't go to heaven......And I said that I think that's a very mean God who has dictated that to us.......And why toy with us by giving us free will????? you (God) are saying I have these choices, but if i choose the wrong one I'm doomed....And she made the connection between raising your own children and God's rules for us......But I said that we don't abandond/banish our own children if they make a bad choice.....We love them, try to redirect them, and always offer to take them back in to be cared for if need be.......she didn't say much after that.......mumbled something then went to brush Georgia's hair and tell her to ask for salvation....
thinking
still
I wish I was sitting at a computer instead of this stupid phone. I cannot even hardly see what is being typed. I have missed these musings. Both because what you might be (trying) to reveal and how they make me reflect on my own beliefs. And you had this hidden in a story on fish. I was reading about the fish intently as I was interested in your experiences while I try to decide what to do.
ReplyDeleteJesus as your savior. Reason to pronounce? Some man wrote it in a book. There is a lot of dispute but mostly this stuff is believed to have first been carried by oral tradition, and then recorded. Maybe even a couple of hundred years later. How reliable was this oral tradition? I think this is one of the arguments philosophical Islam makes against Christianity; the oral tradition is flawed; Jesus was a great prophet. Mohamed Was the final prophet and his teachings were recorded instantly. That might be how they would argue against Christianity. At some point, In any case, the thing got perverted. Remember Sunday School? Martin Luther 95 theses?
What if someone in Africa never was told about this need to profess? Hell. Really? That's how it works? Is that just? I am catholic. And I (mostly) practice. And we claim to be the carriers of the Christian tradition at least from the apostles to 1517 (Luther). And lot at what my leaders are up to. At the lowest level, abusing boys. At higher levels, moving abusers, covering up. A higher levels, failing to act. I saw that there is a time mag with the pope's back on the cover. I cry when I give too much thought about such boys.
Free will. Don't get me started on this topic. Everyone is a slave to at least something. Are you in a relationship/married? Do you have kids? Job? Social network? If you belong to a performing group, you have to show up at a certain frequency or you can not participate in the performance. There is no free will. Duty. Obligation. I am not using these as dirty words and mean no disrespect to anyone providing service to our great country, past or present. But because we have duty, obligation, we have no free will. Unless we decide to reneg on what ever contract, spouses/partners abandoning, mothers or fathers walking from children, quitting your church, baseball team or choir, what ever commitments you make, you are going to have to keep. Sure, you maybe able to fudge on some of the commitments, like skipping a baseball practice, but some, like not feed your children are still not going to be tolerated by society, as controlled by law. We are a nation of laws. We incarcerate more people then any other country. We are 5% of the population and have 25% of the world's incarcerated population.
There is no free will. From the moment we are born, decisions are made for us, about us. Think about what they have learned about learning disabilities. For example, dyslexia. When I was a kid, someone with dyslexia would be marked retarded. Best hope given: get to high school and get vocational training. No free will. However, I do believe in self determination. That is something best left for later.
well the free will thing, JOe, is how Christians who don't understand why God would allow awful things to happen to good people, (babies and such) justify that...
ReplyDeleteMy girlfriend Karen, who is incredibly devout with her Christianity, but is so not judging of others because of it, told me that her belief is because God gives us free will, when people choose to do bad things, someone innocent will always suffer.
The free will is more related to how we choose to treat others.
I'm reallly grappling right now with this.
I really love metaphysical stuff, all of it, but it becomes complicated too, and that's always my disclaimer for not believing in the ridiculousness of the Judao/Christian mythology...My reasons contradict the philosophy about my own spirituality.
I'd be curious to know about the CAT scans of someone experiencing religious ecstasy and some meditating or exercising or anything that helps to stimulate and relax your mind...
ReplyDeleteLIke what areas of the brain light-up....
The answers lie within our noggins....Our minds are God. And I really believe in the collective conscience....That, to me, makes so much more sense...there's a physics to it all.
Like some type of cosmic ripple effect? I put oilDown the drain here and Israelis beat up people on a Turkish supply ship?
ReplyDeleteI'm not that smart. I never studied philosophy. I never studies religion. But I read a lot of stuff. My own lienings (sp?) are that (based on the similarity of the stories) these are either myths or (worse) elaborate systems to control populations. Look at the timing of Christianity. Roman occupation. Let's give the people hope. Claim a bunch of miracles, tied to a bunch of old prophesies. Maybe to critical. That is my faith. But over time, decisions were made by men about what this or that meant. Sanctity of life? That was later St Augustine or Thomas aquainas.
Dark ages. Inquisition. Oops, the Crusades. European Christians slaughtering moslems, in their own lands. Here we are, centuries later and they, from displaced locations, are bringing it to us, the inheritors of that "Christian" tradition. Think of those protesters, now at ground zero, protesting a mosque being placed there, while here in Jacksonville, we are struggling with issues of tolerance with the bombing at that southside mosque. I drive by that everyday. If the burning of Hendrick's Baptist was a hate crime, this is to. It just appears that these criminals were a little bit stupider in that they could not execute their plans.
Free will is a myth. Wear your seat belt, click it or ticket? Myth.
free will, though, to find something good in everything....I try. but I feel stupid....A LOT....being a jester is so natural though.
ReplyDeleteWe do have more and more rules being placed upon us, and it's because there are more andmore people, and disparity between the classes, and more and more people trying to get away with shit and work the system...it's fucking nuts!!!!! i love a lotta libby stuff, but a lotta conservy stuff makes sense too...economically speaking....like the business stuff and sickening capitalism that gives us freedom, Mikey (and he and Lee are more liberal with their politics lately) and I talked about the economic structure of our gov once and he said how capitalism is what makes this country what it is...I guess meaning a democracy.....But, with all the scams, and schemes, and greed, and collapses that have surfaced, I fear that THAT system may be crumbling.
My concern, though, is for small businesses....I don't think they can start up/survive anymore.....a lot of government interference.....taxesout the ass.....And that, is what i think, is like the american dream thingy......coming here from an impossible place to thrive and working your fingers to the bone and creating your own business from nothing except sweat and determination, but i don't know if that's possible anymore....and i think that's been happening for awhile, not just an Obama thing, even though they are taxing businesses even more...I don't know. Too taxing for me.
Yeah, free will is more to do with your actions toward others, other living things, etc.....and in that case, I got some kharmic retribution coming from some Bovine, Poultry,and Pig.....they taste so damned good.
I am not smart. I am having a hard time making the link between free will, about how you are towards others, and what that has to do with a profession about Christ and Salvation?
ReplyDeleteSo I looked it up. Wikipedia (I have to use electronic sources, typing here on my phone)- FREE WILL- Free will is the purported ability of agents to make choices free from constraints. There was some philosophy there, which was very interesting to me, but I will have to go back to look at it as I cannot have multiple browsers here on the phone.
But your MIL position on Free Will, (or was that your friend Karen?) that there are other consequences seems to come from ancient Greek thinking, a Stoic philosopher. I do not want to tread into philosophy too deeply as I have never really had an interest in it. He held that single uncaused cause could destroy the universe. He said something like (I have to paraphrase) everything that happens is followed by something else which depends on it. Everything that happens is preceded by something with which it is connected. For nothing exists or has come into being without a purpose. The universe will be disrupted and be destroyed if something wrong is added.
I don’t want to be mucking around in philosophy. So that is all I am going to say about free will.
I am a big believer in capitalism. I think it is what has really allowed our country to thrive after Manifest Destiny. Are there imperfections? Anything of man will have imperfections. Didn’t think of all the scenarios. But what is capitalism? Business owners decide what and how to produce goods (and services now) and offer these wares on an ‘open’ market (misnomer) where consumers will purchase- did you take economics?- at the point where the supply curve meets the demand curve. The goal of the business owner is to get the demand curve to shift to the right, so that the point the demand curve intersects the supply curve is at a higher price point.
But capitalism, as good as it is, is not a perfect system. Why? People. They will cheat, lie, steal. You know these people. So regulation is important. There are the liberals, regulate, regulate, regulate. The conseervies, no regs, no regs. Neither is right but it is one of the reasons our system works so well. Them that wants to make so many rules get in, they make rules, but it goes too far and things start not working, so then those that want no rules get in, start stripping rules, go too far and you know what? It is like a pendulum.
As much as I love capitalism and as good as it is, can it last? History would tell us no (plus star trek). Where is the next system coming from? If we consider that the idea of capitalism comes from the 18th century age of enlightenment, where is the next system going to come from? It is almost as if ideas (and control) seem to move around the earth as in the path of the sun, east to west. We went through the Middle Eastern rule (Persians) to the Greeks (Alexander the Great) to the Romans, to the holy roman empire, to the europeans (Sp., Port., and your Torries), to America, to ?? I bet Russia thought it would have been them and communism. But the problems with communism (Besides the fundamental lack of incentive) is that there were people that skirted the rules. The difference was that (btw the communist exp. and our capitalist model) the cheating people were in charge. Therefore, no one to regulate them.
One of the big problems with our capitalist model is this credit problem. The thing is we want but cannot afford. So we then ‘purchase’ money. I shake at night sometimes thinking about how much Treasury paper the Chinese hold. Did you see what happened recently with the Euro because of the Greek Gov’t spending woes?
Taxes- do you want services? Well they cost. The tax situation in this country is ridiculous. You don’t have to complain to me about taxes. I am a single, no dependent tax payer. No deductions. Health costs are not even enough to qualify. I get an exemption and personal deduction, like a 20 year old. That would lower her tax liability to next to nothing.
I am writing too long. there is a 4096 character limit (sounds like something having to do with bits and bytes). Anyway, I did want to include this prophesy of doom:
ReplyDeleteThe system is crumbling—you are right to fear—but it is crumbling because we are unwilling to say no to ourselves, our kids, we spend, spend, spend; the gov’t spends, spends, spends and eventually there is going to be a price to pay. Someone (the Chinese) is holding those notes. Right now, it is in their interest to let it ride, but someday, when there is no credit because things get so bad, and they start turning those notes in for cash, only they are not going to be willing to accept dollars… what then?? Maybe that is how the Mayan 2012 apocalypse is going to come about. WWIII between the Chinese and the US (and maybe Europe).
Hope the kharmic retribution wasn’t too bad. I guess Poultry and Pig from the Krystal Chik, but whence the Bovine?