A talk with mom over dinner....
Ken, 6/15/06

and then she said to me, "you are a good person"
to which I thought,  no I am not,  

"yes you are"

well, how do you figure?  I mean,  it is all relative

"subjective you mean"  

No, I mean relative,  

"For example,"

For example, If i do not kill another human,  I might be considered good in a circle of prisoners,

whereas,  if I do not help another person,  I might be considered bad in a circle of judgmental Christians.

"Yes, like in this book I am reading  where a non-jew was held at gunpoint by Nazis and forced to divulge the religion of Jewish friend.  Is he bad?  How does he live with himslef even though he was'good the rest of his life"

Is he bad?  Perhaps it is a better question to ask if you should judge at all?

Is he bad,   Before considering the scope of the action, (for example, are you bad for killing an ant?)   why do we have the right to place ourselves at the top of the value chain of one of billions of creatures?  

Then,  what criteria should be used to evaluate 'worth'?    Intelligence?

"No"

Ok then,  Anyway, whales are more intelligent than humans... 

"Whales are not as intelligent as humans"

How can you say that?  Let's say, humans have some fixed intelligence, x.  Defining intelligence as 'the abiltiy to learn'.  Then, the maximum possbility of intelligence is near infinte, ie to learn all things in close to zero time.  So we are perhaps 1 inch from the beginning of a chain that extends from here to the moon. Now,  what evidence do you have about the whale?  We know they communicate - and perhaps with feeling.   A team of divers recently rescued a whale from its entanglement and then the whale turned and nudged all 9 of the divers in what is assumed to be gratitude before swimming away.  

"Yes,  but that can not be assumed to be communication"

Let's go s astep further.  Add to this your envirronment...

Imagine living in the water, comfortable, 70 degrees all year round,  no need for food,  you just swim along and food comes to you.  Would you have need for  the 'progress' or 'economic development'?  Would you have a need for a house,  a mortgage?  For  excavating oil?  For war?  For cars?   

Now think about the whale,  a perfect life at the top of the food chain.  Is the whale any less intelligent than the human simply because you can not see a  creation of the whale in the sea - some obvious by-product proving it is intelligent, like a house? Is the whale stupid because it has no technology?  No,  it simply has no need for technology.  I can say that about half the world of humans who live like the whale.  

"What humans live like a whale?"  

How about everyone who lives in a non-temperate zxone,  like central America.  Are all central Americans stupid because they have no technology or obvious by-product of creativity?    The answer is quite simple.  If you have a comfortable climate and plenty of food, you have NO need for agricultural specialization, no need to "Buy" food, no need for an elaborate house - because the temperature is perfectly warm all the time.  NO need for a heater, no need for A/C  no need to burn oil, no need for a car becasue the food is on your property already and therefore no need for money!!!!   This is not stupididty - this is paradise!!!   -  Those who live in the temperate zones of the United States are often classes as 'hard-working' innovative - '1st world'   But what is the reality?  We work our asses-off becasue we have to!  Because we live in a hellish climate inhospitable to life without solid houses, and importation of food, and hospitals to survive our awful diseases induced by cold winters and overpopulation!   We are all creatures of necessity, and frankly if you live in Costa Rica - in days of old,  nature has already provided much of what is needed - I would say then,  that living in paradise does not breed laziness, but rather those who live in environments where everything is already there - have no need to produce 'innovative' solutions, because there are no day to day life problems solve!   

Now,  close your eyes,  and envision your life as a whale in a perfect environment of warm water - or water thart is perfect for your body.  You are never warm, you are never cold and you are never hungry!  Are you going to need shelter?  Are you going to need a mortgage?  Are you going to need a car?  Are you going to need technology!!!!  NO, NO, NO!   The question to ask,  then, is not 'are whales that intelligent?'  but "are humans that intelligent?"

"But whales spend there whole life looking for food?"

Don't we?

"No",

Sure we do,  you spend your whole life worrying about money to pay the mortgage and buy the food!  

"Yes,  but gone are the days of hunter/gatherer.  We are no longer in need of finding food every minute?" 

But is threre a really a difference between finding food every minute,  or worrying about making money, and working your whole life to make money - to buy food.   

"Yeah, well I do not spend all of money on food?"

So, you spend it on the house - but what if you did not need a house,  or much of one,  because you lived in a perfect climate? and you had your own fruit trees?  Changes everything doesn't it?  Now consdider yourself an observer, looking down at a society in New York and another in Costa Rica.  Before this conversation you might say that the New Yorkers are more 'evolved' because you see little evidence of 'productivity' or 'development' in Costa Rica.  But now after this conversation, you might say,  look at the poor slaves living in New York!  All of this technology, and destruction of environment, and work, work, work!  Just to live in an otherwise hostile environment of heat and cold - and NO FOOD on anyone's property!!!  All food is bought!  What a shame!  Perhaps those Costa Ricans and other 'third world'  inhabitants are pretty bright after all!!

"Yeah,  well what about disease?"

First of all,  Costa Rica has a life-span that equals New York!  Second of all, most of the disease in Cental  America and other third world areas was brought there by outsiders,  Aids, plague, small-pox, malaria!  We are creatures of necessity, and in regions of warm climate, without masses of humanity (without overpopulation), with plenty of fruit trees and fresh waters,  there is little need for most technology and no need for 'modernization of agricultural techniques  - that is until the onslaught of Spaniards,  Germans and North Americans... have changed their persepctive through invasion and destruction - much as we have done with our own lands - and overpopulating,  by abusing our "right" to have children.

And does intelligence make value?   Let us consider the ant.   The ant may be more valuable or equal to the life of a human.   Why should I be considered more right or more wrong killing an ant vs. a human?

Certainly, the ant may be equal in intelligence,  but who are we to judge or attribute value? In fact,  we are exactly like ants,  

"How?"

First of all have you ever been in a plane and looked down on humans?  Looks pretty quiet.  From a distance,  you can not even see us little humans,  only the green that is still left on the planet,  some whisps of white and blue water.    Then upon a little closer inspection you see that we all follow little paths on the highways to and from our little shelters leading very orderly, "dumb" lives.  From the air, it is silent, no communication,  only little paths of little humans, destroying and moving about in little paths.  Just like ants.  And on an even closer inspection you might notice communication.  In the same manner, upon patient inspection, we see the ants communicate.  We see them stopping to communicate with eachother as they pass one another.  We see them all gathered together to help the queen.  How noble!  We see sub-classes of ants, workers and guards, and fighters.  

Yes,  but Ants are all controlled,  they can not think for themselves."

All 'controlled' perhaps by a queen - but how dirfferent is that than us?  We are controlled by our preseident,  our king or queen and our laws.  The ant would give its life for its queen.  We would not generally give our lives for our president.  (Who would!)   Thus,  perhaps the ant - by all religoius accounts might be considered to be more worthy of life than the human, by willing to give its life for another?

 "But we can think for ourselves, the ant can not"   Oh really?   The ant must make many decisions every moment,  but uses the queen's signals to help quide it.    Still,  I can argue how the ant is more evolved than the huma.

As humans,  once we were all able to subsist by ourselves.  Hunter/gatherer,  cavemen etc.  But what have we become?  We are so dependenet on our society (as the ant is dependent on its society)  that I can argue that not only can we not think for ourselves,  but each of us would die outside of our society in a heartbeat.  If I placed you in the desert - or even better if I kept you right where you are, wandering the streets of wealthy East Hampton you would not surviuve more than 5 or 6 days.   

Look at an ant.  Take it away from near its trail  and it will die in a few days without the signals and protecion of the queen.   You say that is because the ant is stupid?  Consider that the ant will travel and wander unable to compete for food and without shelter to live, much as the human would do in search of shelter and food. 

Now consider yourself,   I will put you on the streets of East Hampton.  (Erase compassion - who says that compassion is value - I do not - certainly not if you judge that compassion for humans is so much more important than compassion for the ant - simply because you are  human!  That is not compassion, that is selfish and narrow-minded.)   Never the less,  no one will take you in.  If they did,  you are back iun society so we must assume they do not.  Much as no other ant society will take in the orphan ant - becasue oit smelss different.  (This is a known fact)   How do you get food?  Can you find any on the trees that other humans have not eaten already?  Can you find water - untainted?  Can you live?   No society,  no shelter, no food...   Can you compete against the animals?   No,  you would die in a few short days.  Why?  Because you have forgotten how to survive on your own.  Millions oif years ago,  you have forgotten this basic survival tactic.

So, perhaps has the ant, because the ant - like us - has evolved to depend on its society with rules and classes and very efficient means of accomplishing its goals, from food gathering to clustering and removing their dead.

Can we think for ourselves?  Should we judge anything or anyone at anytime?   Why do we choose to forget that we live in little micro-worlds with almost no understanding or repsect for what is outside of ourselves?  

We have the audacity to introduce God and put ourselves at the top of God's list!  Simply because  some meteor destroyed the dinosaurs a few short years ago thus giving rise to a tiny little glitch of a solution - which will last only a cosmic-second in the scheme of all creation!!!!!!!

Talk with my ex, now in a new relationship...

We still have parallel lives.  Both of us are now involved in lifestyles that are completely different than what we are used to because we see something we like in the midst of many odd circumstances.  For her it is the emotion,  for me it is a young girl and the love of nature.   

"Would you drive all the way out to the ghetto by yourself"    Would I fly all the way to Costa Rica and then drive 8 hours through hostile terrain to get to a place that is 20 minutes from the Panamanian border, in searing heat and calamitous roads from hell just to get something that fulfills a basic need? So, what is the answer? 

"I think I can teach him but would like him to already know.  I need stilmulation."  How odd that I find her to be similar,  exceedingly intelligent yet very unknowledgeable.  Except that she has the gift of being able ot learn not only what I can teach her - but anything at alll.

"We see something we like, and then we realize we want more...."
"Probability density function" she said... Is that a real thing?   "Markov Chain... Monte-Carlo processing.... to chase him away.  This the guy, I am going to marry"

Are you going to marry him?  "I don't know,  he can't take care of me.  He never has any money, ever.  I don't know."

"Not one point in the 5 days we were on our trip to ()  could he take care of me.  He did spend $14 on me at Taco Bell though.  It was very kind.  It was actually quite exciting."

"My mom said she saw a drunkard that looks just like him today at the hospital."  Well he does have that generic, clam digger look.  You know,  right off the Mayflower...

Polygimist variables, unfolding metric

People discover something wonderful for mankind in a simple, often accidental experiment.  They take years to figure out the equations that define the reactions that created what they just found and then they expect us to learn it all in a classroom in half hour.

They are kind of red neck.
"and all their friends are there."  

so it is like a red neck convention?   "Do not say that about my future husband."  

You sound so happy.  "I'm always happy".  I know but now you sound giddy, happy.  "I could be dieing and I would be happy."  

That's remarkable.  "Because then I wouldn't have any bills to pay and I'd least I'd be going to heaven."