Entries in energy (2)

Wednesday
08Apr2009

BEWARE: GOOD PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SIGHTED

My dear Friends, I have something really important to share with you.

I just listened to a debate, entitled "Major reduction in carbon emissions are not worth the money", where a panel of distinguished speakers argued in favor or against devoting large sums of money to the prevention of global warming through funding research and development of alternative energy production and limiting or eliminating carbon emissions.

On the side in favor of the motion panelists argued that we should use our resources to solve compelling problems, such a poverty and lack of sanitation, before throwing money into expensive, speculative propositions such as prevention of global warming. On the other side, panelists made a case for the opposite view, that is, devoting all of our resources to climate research and management.

If I were some kind of ET listening in to this debate, with no personal history on this planet and nothing at stake in relation to its future, I might have believed that every panel member was concerned about the same thing, i.e. earthlings' long term best interest.

However, since I am not an ET, I couldn't help but to notice an underlying current of unspoken content , often referred to as "personal agendas", reverberating in the background of some members' rhetoric. Id' go as far as saying that this content came through louder than words, in many cases, to the point of obfuscating the message, at times, entirely.

To make my point clearer, I'll give you an example of what I mean.

One of the panel members, Ms. L. Hunter Lovins, president of Natural Capitalism Solutions, is passionately in favor of spending trillions of dollars to possibly offset future consequences of global warming, and she became so overheated about defending her side that, in a fit of contempt for her opponents, she couldn't think of a better way to attack their credibility than addressing them as "boys".

As a representative of the female gender, I was embarrassed and saddened by such blatant sexism (can you imagine what would happen if, in an Oxford style debate, a frustrated man called a panel of highly educated, respectable women "girls"? We wouldn't hear the end of it, would we? And yet, men are willing to let comments like this slide and for that, they deserve an acknowledgement).

But I will leave my indignation behind for now and return to my commentary.

Obviously, Ms. Lovins is not only rude. She is also ignorant.

If she had done a bit of reading beforehand, she would have found out that no one knows how climate works and those of us who have taken the time to actually check what the real scientists are saying about it (and by "real scientists" I mean those who are qualified to speak on this subject and are NOT on the payroll of some political celebrity PR campaign), have dismissed the whole thing long ago.

Why? Because there isn't one, scrawny, single chance that we could take into account all of the factors involved in regulating the earth's climate, even if we spent every penny we have in a futile attempt to do so.

Therefore, to buy into the skillfully packaged "global warming" media blitz, (guess who packaged it? That's right! A Bunch of Good People!), whose fabrications would have us believe humans can:

A) understand,

B) affect, and

C) predict the earth's climate,

is comparable to buying the idea that, if we really put our minds together, we can prevent continents from shifting, mountains from colliding and earthquakes from happening. And that is a dog-wagging tail.

True: we might develop a technology sophisticated enough to predict and maybe even prevent random planetary events that might cause a disaster. But to take this possibility and call it a certainty, about every event, every time, and then even have the nerve to ask for money in order to fund such technology...well, need I say it? That would be pure Bologna, with all due respect for my ancestors or, alternatively, it could be attributed to incipient dementia.

Easy enough to figure out, right?

Not so. This kind of unimaginable distortion is exactly what people are buying into, as if it were the truth.

How can it be? One asks oneself. How can thousands, no... millions, of college educated people swallow this lump of BS, believing they are feasting on Lasagne?

But let me get back to Ms. Hunter Lovins who, as one can gather, is currently considered one of the good guys, along with many celebrities whose endorsement this cause has secured for itself.

Ms. Lovins passionately denounces the "other side", the side of science, accusing her opponents of standing in the way of simple solutions, like turning off unneeded lights, then proceeds to explain why we should invest everything we have in developing clean energy technology.

However, towards the end of the program, when everyone is just trying to speak louder than their opponent, she looses her composure altogether and announces she is in favor of nuclear energy, which she considers clean, since its waste can be disposed of (and I quote): "a million miles away, somewhere!".

OOOOOPS!

********************************************************

My father always told me: "The Devil will teach you how to make a pot, but he will not teach you how to make the lid!". We like culinary proverbs in Bologna and besides, I couldn't think of a more apt analogy for underscoring what I am referring to.

Right here, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a great example of the "Good People" logic, or lack thereof.

Let us NOT underestimate the global threat a handful of such "Good People" represent, or we might be headed for big trouble.

They are extremely dangerous and hard to spot, since they camouflage superbly.

They infiltrate every human community and are almost impossible to distinguish from us.

Once they establish some degree of control over an individual, and usually the most vulnerable ones are infected first, they quickly spread their poison using their victims as a vehicle, eventually overtaking entire communities.

They are, in my view, one of the greatest danger facing humanity today.

They are capable of shameless deception and destruction of human values, but somehow manage to slither away from personal responsibility and succeed in assigning blame to someone else, usually one of their victims.

Sadly, once a victim's mind has been infected the "Good People" bug, the syndrome can take just about any form, thereby defying diagnostic efforts as well as prevention.

Worst of all, there is no cure. Once the bug takes residence in a human host, he or she becomes a carrier  and is no longer capable of personal discernment, independent thinking, logic and reason.

How can we ignore the incongruence in Ms. Lovins' argument? How can she expect us to believe in her vociferous concern for future generations, when, in the same breath, she endorses the spreading of millions of tons of practically indestructible radio-active waste, whose half life could be hundreds of thousands of years?

And where exactly is this "millions of miles away", Ms. Lovins?

Out in the middle of the ocean? In the Gobi Desert? How about on top of Mt. Everest? Or maybe in some underdeveloped country, where it will poison and kill only poor, useless people?

Tell you what, Ms. Palin..... sorry, I meant Ms.Lovins....let's just launch it out of the solar system altogether and let them "greenbrains" worry about it!

Am I the only one who sees through these charades?

Where is the outrage, people?

How can we let these impostors continue to insult and contaminate the human mind with lies, confusion and images of doom?

I think I made my point. Enough ranting, for now, or I'd be indulging in self-righteousness and that has never helped a cause.

I'd love it if some of you took the time to listen to that debate and then got back to me with your take on it.

And, in any case, thank you for reading this piece.

Yours truly,

rma

 

 

Wednesday
18Feb2009

Quantum Quirks: who's observing whom?

Here is one of my favorite short videos about one of my favorite subjects.

I call it the "Q2s" (pronounced cue-too's), for Quantum Quirks. The whole thing lasts about 45 minutes, and it is remarkably interesting (although I could do without the preamble, which drags on a bit). I am grateful to the Center for Sacred Sciences for putting it out, as I'm sure you will be, after you watch it.

I find that, many of these cute little educational pieces, often have titles like "Quantum Weirdness" or "A Quantum Paradox", implying that it is the Quantum theoretical approach that's kind of cooky, originating as it does, within a branch of the scientific community that is notoriously populated by really smart blokes with unmanageable hair and no sense of fashion.

But this is highly misleading. It isn't Quantum Physics that's weird. If you were a scientist who works with these ideas, you too wouldn't care if your socks matched, since you'd have to face, day in and day out, what your chosen field of research reveals, i.e. that it's all a great big joke.

What is a great big joke, some may ask?

Everything. Especially since... actually.... there is nothing.

What do you mean there is nothing? (I'm making up a dialogue now, but it's still just me, answering my own questions).

Well, when we look at what things are made of, and by things I mean objects, people, trees, cats, French Fries, stars, black holes, wheat grass juice, etc. etc., all matter, in other words, we discover that everything is made of empty space. Except that, when we look into this empty space, trying to find the actual "thing" we are looking at, a few specks of stuff show up, here and there, more or less where we expect to find them.

The whole thing is so empty, that one is left wondering if these few subatomic particles showed up out of pity for us, the observer, just so we wouldn't walk away from our "experiments" totally empty handed.

That's it, in a nutshell.

If that's all true, what happens when we don't look for things? Do they disappear? Are they still there while we are gone? And if not, where do they go? Is there an objective reality we can count on to exist independently from our observations? One that is always there and is exactly as we see it?

Yes and no.

What do you mean yes and no?

I mean just that. The answer is yes, but it's also no, at the same time.

That can't be.

You heard what the great physicist Bhor said: "If you aren't shocked by the implications of this theory, you didn't really get it".

That is precisely as it is. You, me, your favorite aunt, you dog, the person you have a crush on, your grocer, bank teller, your plumber, your childhood, our lives...the whole universe, exist ONLY in the mind of the beholder, you, even though appearances make it look otherwise.

What? How? Who? Where? Why?

I know, the questions keep coming, and there is no end in sight.

But you see, that's precisely how I feel about it.

With this newly acquired awareness of reality staring at us in the face all the time, I don't know how anyone can take in this information and go on living as if its implications didn't mean much on the practical level. To me, they mean everything! I mean...nothing! I mean...both!

Well, anyway...

Maybe it's easier to live a life on solid ground, even if that ground exists only in our imagination. Personally, I prefer to build cognitive bridges between my perceptual experience, still functioning as if I lived in a Newtonian world, while knowing for a fact that none of it is real and that things exist only if and when I decide to believe that they do.

Fascinating? I agree.

Interested in exploring it in depth?

Absolutely. And that's one of the main reasons why I started the now famous:

"Every Other Thursday Night Group in NYC!"

 

We initially called ourselves "The End of Suffering Group", but that sounded too Buddhist, so we decided for "The Power of Ciao", and hopped over to the side of silliness, just to cover all of our bases, with one  single, graceful leap (which, among other results, accomplished the goal of scaring away anyone who might have joined us in order to attain any kind of spiritual development).

But that name doesn't really explain why we gather.

And so, even though at the moment we don't have a permanent name, we persist, convinced as we are that we don't need a clever name in order to continue in our explorations. All we need is coherence of intention, and that, we seem to have plenty of.

Join us, if you dare, tomorrow night, Thursday February 19th, from 7 to 10 PM, at 301 West 55th Street, in NYC, buzzer # 4. After watching a video of entertaining Quantum Physics experiments, we'll continue our journey of self-directed self-discovery, in honor of our true selfhood, and motivated by entirely selfish motives.

Our current goal?

Understanding and mastering human intentionality, a study based on the work of Lynne McTaggart, author of The Field.

I really hope you'll join us, tomorrow and in the future.

What future?

Yes, I know. That's for another post.

rma

 

Quantumbytz: who's observing whom