Life and Death, what happens?

Hi readers!

Today I want to delve into a slightly deeper subject.  The idea of a soul.

Traditionally in western culture, we accosiate the word soul with christianity, and the idea that our bodies are just a confinement in which our true spirit reside, before moving on to a secondary life in another plane of excistense after our mortal shell have outlived it's purpose, and we die.

I'm not much of a christian, and I'm not a very religious man.  I respect all religions equal, and I understand the need many people have for religions, so I'm not interested in attacking anyones beliefs, believe whatever you want, and aslong as that makes you happy, and enables you to make other people happy I will not interfer with your believes.  However, when it comes down to what I believe, I think religions are short-sighted, and often twist and turn the truth.  Again, this serves a purpose for those who don't care for philosophy and deep thought, as it will still provide them with the essence of what logical reasoning will tell you, and give the society a moral standard.  (Be good, treat other people well, take care of yourself, be hygienic, etc...)  This is the essence of every religion, even though when misinterpreted religions can also be used with malicious intent to lead people astray, and cause wars and conflicts.

Back to the idea of a soul however, in what I'd like to call the scientific era (1800-Present) such ideas has been more and more abolished, as men and women have sought to free themselves from the confinements of religion, and thus also abandoned many of our religious traditional ideas.  Instead we've been taking on a similar perspective to that of David Humes, that only what we can sense, and scientifically prove, is real.
Logic and reasoning has been abandoned for a world where only mathematics and physics count.

At this point the scientific world has failed to compromise, there should be a little bit of Decartes in us all, and reasoning through logic should be our primary research tool, aided by mathematics and physics.

I cannot tell whether there is life after death, yet it would seem illogical as then death would not be what we define as death, as much as a transition phase to the next life, which it might very well be.
However, I do know as much as this.  When a man dies in his sleep, if his heart just stops overnight(This has happened to perfectly healthy people, without any sign of illness being shown in advance.), then his biological composure is practically identical from the moment he was alive, to the moment he is dead.  In a matter of mere milliseconds a person has done what should be physically impossible.  I say it's impossible because of one of the most natural laws of physics, energy is constant.  Energy can not be generated from nothing, and energy can not become nothing.  Energy can move from one object to another, or to several, but the amount of energy in the universe will always be constant.

So in the beat of a heart, a man has gone from being full of energy, to having none.  That is why I believe some sort of soul, some sort of Life Energy has to be present in a man who is alive, and be what seperates that man from the person you know, to the familiar stranger laying in the coffin.  Whether this life energy disintegrates into the air around a dying person I do not know, but that's what I would consider a soul, a mind, a person.  The difference between the living and the dead.

But, where does it all go in the end?

- Phillip O. Sauffer

Limitations of the brain, and mind

Ever heard a piece of music, seen a piece of art, or seen a street performer so magnificent you'd think there was some kind of sorcery involved?  Wondered why you can't possibly do the same?
Well, whilst some of that might be true.  As you will never be that person, and you will never do the same movements exactly the same way, and even more importantly, you will never again be in that precise moment in time.  (Unless you take an eternal standpoint and believe in time relapsing, but then again, that would require events to happen the exact same way over again.)

However, taking a less way-over-my-head thinking point of view, the brain is an amazing thing, and the mind even more so.  They say you can't teach an old dog a new trick, however, neural connections in your brain never seize connecting in new ways, and aslong as you allow it to, your mind will always seek out new ways to perform actions.  An example of which can be found in this study performed by the Pittsburgh University:

The issue at hand is that adults think like adults.  As children we learn quicker and easier, as we think like children, and act like children.  With an open mind, a fresh view, you can learn anything regardless of age.  (Given physical conditions allow you to of course, but even those bridges are being gapped by technology.)  What's important as an adult, if you want to learn something new, is to go about it like a child.  You need to completely lose yourself in what you're doing, and don't be afraid of anything, just like a child would.  As adults we let past experiences affect how we learn new ones, as children we have too few past experiences to let them shape our new experiences.

Personally, I've been teaching myself to play the piano in my spare time, over the past 6 months.  I've unconditionally been testing and trying, purposely avoiding everything I thought I knew about music, and about learning.  Not being afraid of sounding like a complete moron hammering the keys randomly, just like most children would go about it if they got an instrument.  Today, when I sit by the piano I quickly pick up new pieces as I hear them off the radio, and play them pretty accurately both according to my own ears, and people around me.  Sometimes I improvise, but it still fits the music.  The point is, that whilst I'm still far from perfect, and still have a long way to go, I've learned to play much better then I would by following my traditional learning patterns, and I constantly learn more as I'm much more open-minded to picking up/discovering new transitions and chords.

This has led me to realise that anyone could do this, anyone could learn to play the piano given that dedicate themselves completely to it, when they sit by the piano.  When you play, it should be what you want to do for the rest of your life, you should be willing to give up everything to become the next Ray Charles, until you're done practicing for the day, when you return to the real world.  Let every session be like that, dreams are important to learn.

And that's also why adults are biologically better fit to learn new tricks then children, given that they overcome that psychological obstacle in their mind, their brain, their senses, and their body is fully developed, whilst a child will more likely have physical obstacles to overcome aswell.   Learning is not about focus, dedication and hard work.  It's about dreaming to get inspired, and chasing those dreams to become the best, fully giving into your feelings there and then.  And being able to make the transition between your dreams and your "real" life.

That's why I believe everyone can become a master, regardless of age.

- Phillip O. Sauffer

Space Travel

One issue I've been pondering for awhile, is the issue of Space Travel, and the colonization of the galaxy.  How can it realistically be attempted within the next 100-200 years?  This article is the first in a series regarding space travel.  I will later discuss issues like debris, how creating masses of spacecrafts will affect our own planet, and how some of these issues could be countered before they even arise.

1. Engineering planets

Searching for earth-like planets to colonise is a very time-consuming task, and we don't even know if we'll be able to find anything within a remote travelling distance before our own planet gets over-populated, and human kind will have to change our concept of moral and ethics, or die.

That's why we need to look for ways to apply our technology to change currently inhabitable planets into habitable planets.  One of the most common examples of this, is the idea of nuking Mars to smelt the polar ice caps, and with the water we will hopefully be able to create an atmosphere, in which plants can grow, and eventually the planet becomes self-sustainable.  Other similar ideas could be cooling down over-heated planets like Venus, and transporting ice from Neptune to be smelted into liquids on Venus.  Water isn't a necessity for life, but liquids are.  (Or are they?)  Or burrowing deep into the ice on Neptune to escape the icy winds, and slowly engineer methods to capture larger amounts of solar light to sustain life below the ice.

2. Nanobots

Whilst this is an easy applicable method for colonizing our own solar system, that's like Columbus reaching the Caribbean and saying: "Hey guys, there's a bunch of nice little islands here.  Lets settle down, make this our colony, and tell people we found all there is.  We don't need to explore for more land now."  We want to colonize the galaxy, perhaps even create the basics for life on a couple of planets in far off solar systems to be able to study how life evolves, and learn more about ourselves in the process.

To colonize the galaxy we need vessels and travellers who can travel for thousands upon thousands of years at most.  Human astronauts just wont cut it then.  What we need is nanobots, they go from planet to planet, and get instruction from the earth on how to engineer that planet for human life.  And they set up everything we need to travel there ourselves.  Nanobots are much lighter then conventional spacecrafts, and can be slingshot from magnetic fields surrounding planets to reach speeds up to 10-20% of the Speed of Light (SoL).  They are a key ingredient to colonize space.

3. Human Light Travel

Still there's the issue of how to finally get to the planet.  We've had our nanobots engineer a planet 10 lightyears away into the perfect copy of the earth.  They have even created arcologies, huge megacities where a self-sustaining society can live and prosper whilst studying life evolving on the planet.  But we still lack the society, still lack the humans.  This is where laser technology and computer technology come into the picture.

When breaking a human being up into small enough parts, what it becomes is basically information.  A bunch of electrical and chemical connections building up atoms, molecules, cells, body parts.  Every little thing that is you, could theoretically be encoded into a computer, into bits and bytes.  Even those things that make you into the individual person you are.  Everything that are you is confined in your body, that's the whole concept of you being you.  So, by having a 3-dimensional radioactive scanner, scan your body, all of you would be turned into a computer file.  0's and 1's.  Beaming that information by laser to a recieving computer and printer built by the nanobots on the other planet would be a piece of cake.
Laser off = 0
Laser on = 1
It would take some time, but eventually all the information would be beamed to Planet X, and an exact copy of you, so real it would even think it was you, would be created by an atom-printer on the other side.  Of course, it's very likely you would never be allowed to build a second copy of yourself, as that would just be immoral and unethical, but even the possibility of creating exact clones would then be real.

And that's how, I think man one day will colonize space.  The technology is still perhaps a few decades away, but incredible as it may sound, all of this technology is currently under development around the world.

Beam me up Scotty!

- Phillip O. Sauffer

The Japanese Problem

So, to start off with my first blog entry, I've decided to air a few thoughts with regards to recent events in the Pacific Ocean.  As most of you illuminated readers would probably know, Japan has recently seen a disaster of unprecedented scale as the country was hit by an earthquake of large proportions last week.  After the earthquake a large tidal wave known as a Tsunami rammed the coastline, taking thousands of lives, and destroying property for such high values the $-value could probably feed a few African countries for centuries.

I wont be delving into the bigger issues regarding the disaster, as enough people have already done so, and I don't believe anyone haven't been affected by this in one way or the other.  So yet another discussion of the subject isn't really necessary.

However, I would like to bring up a question me and some friends were discussing the other day, a question that arose as we were discussing the Tsunami in Japan.  When does a disaster get old enough, for jokes to become socially acceptable?

People deal with disasters in different ways, some people grieve, while others appear more humorous as they don't want to honor the lost lives by grieving, but rather by enjoying their own life.  Jokes are also commonly used as a way to enhance memory, if you make a joke about an event, you are less likely to forget it.  And of course, joking often lifts some of the Taboo and the general bad mood that is generated by talking about a sad subject, making it easier to process information, and ask those important questions that you have gnawing away inside.   Decreasing the likelihood of developing fears, traumas, and depressions after something massive like this has happened.

Yet in many societies joking about something that just happened is just not socially acceptable, reading the fine print, finding that fine line between when it's disgusting, and when it's an acceptable way of dealing with issues can become a problem for many people.  Which is why I suggest we find a set time period in which grieving should be the main conselation, and when cracking a joke about it is no longer Taboo.

My suggestion is a prolonging of the famous dating rule, the "three-day"-rule for calling.  I suggest, depending on the size and type of the event, we prolong this rule to the:

- Three-week rule
- Three-month rule
- Three-year rule
- Three-decade rule

Three weeks should be appropriate for any minor, local accidents.  Such as a car crash, a robbery, or any accident where no lives were lost.
Three months would be more appropriate for local accidents where someone died.
Three years is any local or global incidents where alot of lives have been lost.  Anything that have affected a larger community.
Three decades are necessary for processing crimes agains't humanity.  Such as the Holocaust and Muammar Al-Gaddafi ordering his own people to be killed by jet-fighters.  Thus the three-decade rule should only be used for crimes agains't humanity.

Of course, any perpetrators, such as Al-Gaddafi or Hitler themselves could and should be victimized in jokes at any time.  It's never too early to show that a horrible person is a horrible person.

These are just my thoughts on the subject, and I would love to hear from anyone else who have any thoughts on how long one should wait before making jokes about disasters, to stay within the social etiquette of our globalised society.