Odd Mood

Odd Mood

I already posted on this, sort of, but as the title implies, I'm in an odd mood.

"Odd mood."

What a funny phrase.

It sounds Entish. It's earthy and resonant, with loamy, peaty notes and a gentle yet plosive finish. It almost evokes a vast cavern, or a large dark corrugated steel grain silo. It's slightly offensive if spoken too quickly, but improves with elongation. (Try it. Say "oddmood" really fast, then "ooooood moooooooood". The "oooo" sound expands to fill the available space.)

I almost need a shovel to move that phrase around. It's sort of lumpy and not very cohesive, but in a sandy rather than runny, oozy sense.

I could write volumes on the word "oozy" alone. Or how the word "volumes" seems to start small, swell apropriately in the middle, and shrink again at the end. Or how the word "middle" seems to trip over itself, but in a moving forward rather than falling down way. But I won't.

Suffice to say, the preceeding discussion describes my odd mood with almost entertaining clarity. Let me proceed to aggravate the subject with more words.

Multisensory Mentation

For waybackstory, please read some of my previous posts, specifically "A Diversity of Joys" (The rest of them may help you understand it as well, if it needs clarification as to the type of personality that would author such nonsense.)

The backstory of this.post (in the object-oriented sense) is one of great contemplation and insight, full of brain-wracking, wrestling and wrevelation.

Just kidding. It was fried chicken and a fruit tart.

I was cruising Windsor dining court (a frequently berated, yet underappreciated, institution at Purdue) at about 3:30 after having spoken with Dr. Draper (my philosophy professor) about ontology, and particularly that described in "Ockham Seeks a Raise+ The Dance", the previous post on this blog. (which I ought to have mentioned in the waybackstory.) (parenthesis.)

As is the custom in most publicly funded feedlots, the food was delicately arranged in piles. The salad bar was piles of cucumber slices, cherry tomatoes and spinach greens. There would have been piles of ranch dressing if it was the kind of thing capable of piling. The fried chicken had been cast carelessly into a stainless-steel steam-heated tray without regard to presentation, and the "whipped potatos" ("reconstituted starch paste") were whiter and pastier even than an engineer's thighs in winter.

As I peroused the perilous piles of perishables, I pondered the purpose of presentation. Shouldn't my salad score solely on succulence instead of superficial shapes and shades? Why would I chose food that looks good? It's all going to the same place, and it certainly won't look good there. (sidenote: "good", I have decided, is not a pleasing word. Henceforth, I shall use "pleasing" or "pleasant". These also convey the sense of sensory delight without overtones of moral rectitude.)

Suddenly, I realized that asthetics is one of the main reasons I chose food. Who doesn't consider flavor as of key importance? Even people with barely any food will season it, seeking flavor. In fact, it seems almost as important to us as the nourishment it provides.

I know that Asian foods are often judged, not for taste, but texture. The stickyness of the rice, the slipperyness of squids, foamy egg-foo-yung, all are valued in addition to flavor.

If it is important to enjoy my food through taste, why not also visually? I usually appreciate visual things much more than other senses, being a visual animal, so shouldn't it be of equal value?

A dining court being a very poor circumstance in which to produce visually appealing meals, I decided to investigate another sensory vehicle: my ears.

Listening with your Mouth Open

I collected food that looked like it would sound pleasant, and I tried to see if it sounded like it tasted. I collected crunchy yet succulent fried chicken, extremely nondescript whipped potatoes, a salad of turgid spinach with crisp cucumbers and viscous, gloppy bleu cheese dressing, and a flakey fruit tart.

Every slice with the side of the fork was a simphony, speaking volumes about the nature, history, even flavor of the food. Chopping the salad, a crisp crunch muffled by dressing. Biting into fried chicken, a crack through the hard breading into a saturated, juicy meat, even the eerie silence of chewing mashed potatoes and gravy.

It was weird.

It felt weird.

It was amazing.

Previously, I never thought to appreciate things through all possible sensory media, possibly because I never thought it possible. Now that I know it is possible, I have to purposefully distract myself from it, or I will be greatly distracted by it.

Isn't that interesting? You try it. See if it doesn't improve your experience.

The Appreciation of Uncontrolled Substances

 I have recently been warned by my friend Tim Kleyn that what I say smacks of hedonism. This is true, but hedonism is the hyperextension of this concept. In fact, I believe that this would be an appropriate way to introduce the next section.
There are, of course, foods and other sensory delights of which the ability to appreciate is spoken highly. In this country, you have to be at least 18 to purchase some, and 21 to purchase the others.

There are many collectors of fine cigars. Some have humidors full of thousands of dollars worth of specially cultivated, curated and cylinderized tobacco leaves, and take pleasure in the shape and color of the leaves, the texture of the wrapping, the scent of the freshly cut end, the start-to-finish flavor of the smoke.

There are many collectors and sommeliers of fine wines, who can deduce the vintage of a fine wine from a single sniff. They swirl it gently to conjure a bouquet of fragrances, they sip it, then roll it across the tongue, then spit it out to better enjoy the delicate sweets, tarts and bitters without being overwhelmed by the warming of the alcohol, then they appreciate even that.

Then again, there are many more people who buy  machine-produced tar sticks and smoke cartons of them a day. There are people who buy boxes of wine like it was Hi-C. People drink Keystone Light, if you can believe it. People also buy and consume giant quantities of bacon, Coca-Cola, Twinkies (R.I.P.), cinema, video games, and cocaine. Does that mean these things are bad? No. They are beautiful things that have been turned into commodities and uglified. (Well, okay, cocaine is probably bad no matter how much you do. Don't do cocaine.)

Some of these things have worse reputations than others, and the overconsumption of these particular items can be extremely harmful to the user or others, hence requiring regulation. Consider secondhand smoke, or the inebriation and lapsed judgement produced by excesses of alcohol.

Sadly, this is our natural tendency as humans: if some is good, more must be better. In fact, I believe the opposite. Some is good, but more is worse because good stems in part from special. A dog is excited to eat the same dry kibble every day, but even they have to go on a sniff from time to time for variety.

But many things can be appreciated, if their appreciability is acknowledged. Appreciating a cloud, an overdone hamburger, or a nice old brick wall are all equally full of possibility, but nobody forms clubs to go look at brick walls. They'd be too busy, and if they were tired when they started, they'd be mortared when they finished.

Get it?

"Mor Ta'red"?
"Mor Tird"?
"More Tired"?
Eeeeeh?

Puns, Poems and 'P's

If you are familiar with me, or have conversed with me for more than fifteen seconds, you have discovered my aptitude and affinity for puns. Wordplay is one of my favorite types of play.

I appreciate puns for the same reason I don't appreciate spoken word poetry: If a thing can be said, it ought to be elocuted. The appreciation of a concept is fine, but why not appreciate the form in which the concept is brought, the gentle babble of sound on the ears, the shape of the letters on the page? Spoken word generates of itself the opinion that anyone can do it, and so everyone does, including many who oughtn't. It can be beautiful, but in most cases it isn't.

I much prefer the rhythm and rhyme of strictly metered poetry. It feels like swimming efficiently, where every stroke is the same length, every splash sounds the same, and a breath after every fourth stroke. Or dancing, in step and in time with a partner. Most of all, like music, where the snare falls on the three and the bass matches the kick. Most spoken word is like trying to watch a toddler walk on golf balls.

I don't feel the same about rap music. Excellent rap is like drunken boxing: the words tumble out in seeming chaos, but balance is maintained and you somehow end up flat on your face after being kicked in the back of the head.
 
Analogies, (another of my favorite verbal practices) are also worthy of great respect. In order to see how two things are alike, you must pay very close attention to both of them, which is the heart of art.

I've heard it said that pun is the lowest form of humor. I strongly disagree. Larry the Cable Guy is the lowest form of humor. Puns and rhymes are the meta-enjoyment of language. They appreciate language, not merely for the content communicated or the efficiency of the data compression, but for the beauty of the sounds themselves. They're essentially audible calligraphy, and ought to be recognized as the parallel art  form they are.

The Admonition

Now you know what you must do.

You must eat a fast food meal as though it was worth eating.

You  must find ten things in your house that you can appreciate with every single sense.

You might want to pick up a bottle of nice wine on the way home and start learning about that.

Make a pun or two. Get good at it, and get addicted. (Most people who try it do, because it is surprisingly easy to enjoy.)

It'll make you a better person.

Enjoy!

Occam Seeks a Raise + The Dance

I expect someone to misunderstand this post. I expect someone, sitting alone in front of their computer to hold a very eloquent argument with an imagined me and to logically reduce a straw-man effigy to chaff.

Actually, I hope this happens, because I want people who disagree with me to read my blog, and read it as though they thought I believed it.

Which I do.

But to anyone who finds themselves engaging in imaginary debate with what they think I'd say, what I'd actually say is, "shut up and listen". I do that all the time when I read things I disagree with, and it never gets me anywhere either. If I wanted you reading things I didn't write, it'd be easier for me not to write anything, and it would give you more to read.

And if you make it all the way through, there's a poem there which might make your reading worthwhile. You can read it first, if you want.

Having said that...

Some Scientists Seem Silly

See? There you go. I make one three-word statement and you're already reading into it. Maybe I'm reading into you too much. I'll cordially desist and get on with defending the preceeding statement.

I assume you believe science works. I believe science works. If science didn't work, engineering would just be a bunch of guesses, and I would have paid a whole lot of money to be taught about guessing. Science has described the universe to incredible detail, from the motion of galaxies and planets to the transmutations of the smallest of particles. I think it's wonderful the way science is able to talk about how plants grow, how rocks fall, how tides work, how light bounces, how gas diffuses (*breathe*) how stars burn how ice melts okay I'm done.

Notice what I said, and compare it to what somebody else (the effigy of your choice) would have said. Notice my terminology: I used the words "described" and "talk about". Many other people would say "discovered" or "told us how". The public opinion holds science to be a thing that reveals the world; I hold science to be a thing that describes it. And this is a much larger difference than you may realize.

How to Speak Math

Mathematics is a language, written with letters and symbols on paper just like English . It is possible, in some cases, to translate everyday sentences in this language. For example,

"I have four rocks and Eric throws two at me. How many do I throw back at him?"

becomes

4+2-400=-394

because I have to teach Eric a lesson.

But seriously, to translate English (or your language of choice) into mathematics, you have to make some assumption (4 refers to four rocks, not four chickens), chose the correct symbols and put them in the right order. We do all this stuff when we translate into other languages as well.

Mathematics is simply a way to describe the world. Science is a systematic (sometimes) method by which to describe the physical world in a language (usually mathematics), and scientists are the people who do this.

Most people, however, seem to think that science actually tells us how the world is, not just how it seems (which would be a description.) They think this because science has predictive power: I can drop a rock and tell you exactly how long it will take to hit the ground. I can mix two chemicals together, and my roommate Austin could tell you what they would make, and how quickly. (I'm not very good at chemistry.)  They think that this means science has penetrated the black box of nature, not only describing its actions but deducing its nature.

This is not necessarily true (I think not true at all), and to demonstrate this inconsistency, I'm going to take it to an extreme. It's what I do.

A Most Entertaining Enlightenment

Picture a world exactly like ours. (That wasn't too tough, was it?) Now imagine each of these scenarios: immerse yourself in it. We're going to do a thought experiment, and I invite you along!

Imagine that, in this world, everything is dumb, in the sense of "not aware or free". They're just a bunch of particles (or waves, whatever) that bounce around interacting in random ways. Basically, imagine the world as most people think it is. We call this the "dumb universe".

Now, compare it to a world where everything is alive, in the sense of "aware and free", basically that everything in the world has a mind. Imagine that these minds have received a set of commands that describe what their actions ought to be, and that they find complete fulfillment in obeying these commands. We call this the "free universe".

Would you be able to tell the difference? I think you would not. We judge things to be free when we cannot predict their actions: I can't be sure what my fiancee will do in every situation, so I think she is free.

But if she was completely happy to walk around the pond behind her apartment at a leisurly pace, I could predict her motion. She'd be walking around the pond. I could also, given her initial velocity and position, predict where she would be at any point in the future. I couldn't tell her to do something else, because, being content, she wouldn't want to. I could model her mathematically to any degree of accuracy you paid me to achieve.

Now imagine not a fiancee around a duck pond, but an Earth around a Sun. The pond is a slightly different shape, but the same logic applies: we couldn't tell the difference between the Earth as a dumb, spinning sphere and the Earth as a free, contented sphere. But this is exactly what science assumes.

But many scientists (materialists we call them) go even further. They say that, since every particle in the universe is dumb, and our brains are made of particles, that we are not free. When I (whatever that means in this context) complain, "but I feel free", they say that this freedom (and, indeed, all my experience) is simply an illusion. "An illusion to whom?" I ask, but the scientist has already deemed my questions beneath his answering.

I think this is dumb.

The only thing I really know is that I have a mind, that I have experiences and feel things. To tell me otherwise sounds an awful lot like the claims that the world is hollow and run in secret by lizard men who control us through vaccines and it just seems like everything is normal. That's fantastic stuff for Mulder and Scully and web sites with black, starry backgrounds, low-rez government logos and green text, but none of that stuff is taken seriously, so why should this be?

Actual Reason

And in fact, which is more reasonable? We have never seen a "law of nature", nor could we in principle. We do not know what it's like "to be" an elementary particle as a current physicist would talk about an elementary particle, nor could we in theory experience it, since an elementary particle, in current opinion, is not the kind of thing that has experiences. And so we postulate the existences of things like "laws of nature" (we don't know what kind of things they are, just what they do)

But you might say this thought is dumb. Doesn't Occam's Razor rule out the assumption that every single thing in the universe has a free will of its own? For those of you out of the loop, Occam's Razor is a principle of logic, which states that, given two hypotheses, the one requiring the fewest assumptions is the better hypothesis (until proven otherwise).

Well...

For the "free universe" model, we must have minds and things which the minds perceive as as physical ( whether or not there's real physical things is a different topic which I think I ranted about earlier.) Notice that, if we go with what we intuitively know, we already have both of those things. There are minds (I am one, at least), and there are other things with which they interact (because I'm typing this on the internet.)

For the "dumb universe" model, however, we not only have to assume the existence of "dumb particles", which we can't directly experience [1] and "physical laws" which we can experience even less, and which interact with these dumb particles in some unknown manner, but we also have to assume the non-existence of the things with which we are most closely aquainted, our minds and their experiences.

For one, we don't have to assume anything. For the other, we have to assume everything. Which does Occam really raze?


[1](in the sense that, when I sense a "green chair", I really just see a bunch of colors and shapes, and feel some textures and maybe lick it (?) but can't experience the chair for itself, if it is a thing which triggers these experiences)

[EDITOR'S/AUTHOR'S/MY NOTE: There may be one way to tell if the particles in the universe were free. If they were given leeway at some small scale, not large enough to throw everything into utter chaos ("freedom") but small enough to maybe be noticed, things at that scale would be uncertain. Here's a blank space where you can draw your own conclusions.


That is all.]

The Real Reason

If you've made it to the bottom of this post, congratulations! Hopefully you didn't smash your straw man, and if you did, I sincerely hope you don't have hay fever, because that itches something fierce.

But now, why I actually believe that the universe is free, either consisting of innumerable free minds obeying a single mind or of the outporings of a single omnipotent mind.

From what I read, the most brilliant mathematicians and scientists don't do science the way they're supposed to. Instead of starting from the beginning of things and working their way up through logical and mathematical deduction, they take giant flying leaps that they know to be true and prove them afterwards. Many times, these leaps don't even come while during math, but while waiting for a train or walking through a garden. Sometimes they're so certain it's right (coming as it did from nowhere) that they don't even write it down until it's convenient.

This, to me, sounds like they were told, like they're building the Stairway to Heaven from the top. I think this because I have had similar experiences, where knowledge was imposed upon me without my deduction or wisdom. One of these times I was made certain that God exists.

And one of these times I wrote a poem that triggered all the preceeding thought.

Here it is.

The Dance

"The matter is solved", so the scientists say
"By the facts our conclusion is clear.
Your brain is a set of material points
Just like coffee, and couches, and air.
And physics determines the motion of these,
So by logic, we surely can tell
Your spirit's a spectre, your mind is made up
Your freedom's illusion as well.
 
It ate at my mind, but was not satisfied
For my mind was shown not to exist.
"Wherefore," then I cried," if I'm atoms inside,
Does my mind find the means to persist?
I must find a solution, must quell this debate
But whose wisdom my thought should imbue?
And what if I find my mistake of a mind
On this quest never thought to pursue?
 
But as I in my madness stepped into the night,
By concerned contemplation consumed,
A nearby door opened, unleashed beaming light
And the sound of a rollicking tune.
I stepped to the portal and through it advanced
And the scene set my soul free from glum
For there on the floor was the liveliest dance
Danced in perfect accord with the drum
 
The masses were moving, and flawless in form,
Each second step flowed from the first,
And the men spun the women. The women, they spun
As though they'd been spinning from birth.
They dipped and they ducked, and they twirled and lept
Each knew the next step he should take
And he took it with glee, and the rhythm was kept
Synchronicity free from mistake.
 
But they did it with joy. This awakened a thought
Which was absent upon my first glance
They were able to stray, and yet stray they did not
Though none was required to dance.
They frolicked so freely, yet so well in step
The wills in accord with the ball
Almost as though dance marked their movements with power
Which wasn't a power at all.
 
At that moment I knew just the mage to pursue
And where for my wisdom to go
I cried, "You, oh Universe, I will ask you,
For you of all people should know."
Are you determined, is your future so bound
By the chain of events in your past?
How could my perception be so turned around
As to freedom be holding so fast?
 
The universe answered, much to my surprise,
"Of course! It's our joy to explain
Why all of our courses seem fixed to your eyes,
And why our strict routes we maintain.
You must have such sorrow to know not the joy
To never decide to fulfill
The call of the Master and step to His song,
And dance to the tune of His will.
 
"Why must you keep budding," I questioned the tree
"For winter will always destroy
The leaves on your branches. Does it sorrow thee
This Sysiphian, aimless employ?"
The tree bent his boughs to the breeze blowing sweet
"I never have felt such a thing!
My crown of red-gold I would lay at His feet,
A thousand times more for my king!"
 
I asked of the cloud of his watery wealth,
"Why empty yourself of your rain?
You fill yourself full, then you pour out yourself
Why could you not chose to refrain?"
"Refrain?" asked the cloud," Why I certainly could,
But I chose to remember my source.
He who created intends me for good
I am fully content with His course."
 
"Why do you keep spinning, wherein is your mirth?
And are you forbidden from fun?"
I asked of the moon as he turned 'round the earth,
And the earth as he turned 'round the Sun.
"How can you continue, it surely seems old,
This regular daily humdrum?
Is there something at issue inside of your soul?
Insane, uncreative, or numb?"
 
They guffawed at my folly, continued to spin
And the planets joined in their elation.
"You reason us dumb by a premise so thin
As the absence of our deviation?
How dare you assume we could be malcontent
In our calling? For nothing is greater
But to freely revolve in the Dance of the Spheres,
Choreography of the Creator!"
 
"Why do you continue?" I asked to a rock,
"He gives you no thanks nor reward?
Why would you keep sitting there, stiff as a stock
How are you not utterly bored?"
"No Thanks?!" cried the rock,"What more thanks could we want!
We could have no more gracious reward,
'If these were kept silent, the stones would cry out!'
We were praised by the mouth of the Lord!"
 
Then all of creation joined in with one voice,
Singing, "Glory and Honor to He
Who is scribing our dance and is calling our steps
Makes us graceful, and beautiful; free!
Come and join in our concord, our pure promenade
Which the Heavenly Father commands! 
For the nature declareth the glory of God
And creation the work of His hands!"
 
Such pure adoration! Such perfect content!
The universe hears and obeys
The Will of the Word, every whisper and hint
To the end of the Ancient of Days!
Such sorrow for us! Unabashed regret
We are selfish and wicked as well
Why give we not glory where glory is due
And join in the dance for ourselves?

 

A Diversity of Joys

Provocation
Last night was quite a catalyst for me, which is why I anticipate several posts to follow this in rapid succession. For those unaware, Purdue hosted a debate between Dr. William Lane Craig, preeminent Christian appologist, and Dr. Alex Rosenberg, a famous athiest reasoner of whom I had never heard.

There were ideas, there were conjectures, it was fantastic.

This post, however, only concerns one of the panoply of fantastic statements made during said debate. During a discussion of the "Problem of Suffering", which, stated, is that a nice, all-powerful God wouldn't allow bad things to happen to people, but bad things happen to people, so either God isn't nice or powerful.

Many Christians (including Dr. Craig himself) respond to this with some variation of, "if there wasn't any evil/suffering/pain, we wouldn't know what joy is."

I Disagree.

and I have numerous, diverse examples. I disagree because of wine, birdwatching, and the smokers of fine cigars. I disagree because of people who like "every kind of music", because of the Detroit Auto Show and the existence of art museums.

All these things have in common an appreciation of subtle and not-so-subtle differences, but they also show that we appreciate good things not because they aren't bad things, but because of properties of the good things themselves. A sommelier appreciates fine wines, not because they aren't the kind of wines you can buy at the Circle K, but because this one has a fruity aroma, this one has a woody finish, and all manner of other differences I am unaware of. (I am not a sommelier).

If someone goes to the Detroit Auto Show and comes back saying that all the cars were "cool", it's obvious they know nothing about cars. If they come back comparing and contrasting the differences between the cars, the ingenious door designs or the extraneous horsepower (I'm not much of a car guy either), they have appreciated it fully. You don't have to know how poorly designed production Dodge interiors are to appreciate how well-designed concept Dodge interiors are.

Commodities
We have a tendency to commoditize joy, the same way we have commoditized food, drink, clothing, vehicles, everything we can get our grubby mass-producing hands on. It's efficient, but I'm sure it's not good. After the debate, a friend of mine described "times in his life when he really lived", or when he had felt joy. Times like marriage, the birth of your child, and the calm before passing on, he said, were experiences of the full joy. Being about to experience marriage myself, and so being embroiled in speculation as to its nature, has made it clear to me that someone who equates the joy felt in these situations has never experienced them.

The nervous excitement to start a new job, the utter adoration/abject terror of being expected to raise this slimy, writhing person-shaped thing into a speaking, walking, respectable adult, the complete calm of knowing that you are at the end of life and that there is nothing left for you to do, good or bad, these are all joys and are all completely different. If we lump them all into the vague category of "joy", as though they were all the same sensation, we might as well lose that sensation alltogether.

The Sin of Boredom
I am forever indebted to Colleen Whitver, who, in the normal everyday course of our middle school writing class stated that "being bored is a sin". She said that the ability to do nothing, not reading, not writing, not even particularly thinking, just being and appreciating without analysis, is crucial to our well-being as people, and that the inability, boredom, is detrimental to the point of transgression.

Yet some people look at Heaven, described as all-consuming joy, and think, "won't I get bored?"

NO!

Joys in our everyday experience are juxtaposed against pains, yes, but that juxtaposition is not necessary for us to appreciate them. The variety which defends against boredom in heaven doesn't come from the blackgreywhite gradations from pain to joy, treating each as a single point on a one-dimensional scale, but from an appreciation of the true colors, each fully saturated, brilliant each in their own way and different from each other as morning from evening.

If we ignore this, we will never know joy.