I had the great good fortune the other day to see not only
a rainbow but a double rainbow, rare in this part of the
country altho common enough out West. As usual the
second (top) rainbow was paler than the first (bottom)
but almost all of it was showing save for a bit on the left-
hand side.
Rainbows are archetypal, i.e. it is easy to see them as
being charged with supernatural power. In Christian
mythology, the rainbow is God's sign that he will never
flood the Earth again.
Of course, 'archetypal' can mean different things to dif-
ferent people. As i stood at the door of the natural food
store i was working at, gazing at a rainbow over Troy
and wishing i could be watching it in nature, a man
with a cigar noticed me and said that he saw it while
driving past Troy so he drove into town and immediate-
ly placed a bet. He didn't say whether he won or not.
A rainbow is also an example of an argument about the
nature of reality. Consider:
A rainbow consists of three things: moisture in the sky,
sunlight, and someone to see it. Arguably, if there is
no one to see the rainbow, it remains merely the inter-
play between sun and moisture. In other words, if
there is no one to see the rainbow, it doesn't exist.
Sound crazy? Consider that in modern quantum (sub-
atomic) physics a quantum 'packet' is neither energy
nor matter until it is observed. Then when it is ob-
served--or more properly, measured--it can be either
energy or matter. What this says, according to my
limited understanding of the subject, is that nothing
is real until it is observed.
This has tremendous consequences in that theoretic-
ally the universe does not exist until it is 'seen' by
someone or something. Does that mean that the
world as we know it doesn't 'really' exist? I don't
know because the rules of the everyday world seem
to be different from the subatomic world and thus
i feel like Alice in Wonderland. On the other hand,
when i put my hand on my desk it feels securely
solid.
And whatever they might ultimately be or not be,
i still love and cherish rainbows.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
IT'S WILD, ITS PRICKLY, ITS LETTUCE
It's wild prickly lettuce, but not a lettuce like you'd buy
in the supermarket; it's a weed (=an unwanted plant)
that can be found thruout most of the US. It wouldn't
be particularly noticeable except that it is taller than
most of the plants around it. And in this rainy Summer
it looks like the Beanstalk of 'Jack and the _'
My plant book says that it can grow up to 10 feet tall
and in my yard there are three of them at least that
tall. 10 feet---that's as tall as a one-storey building.
Apparently they are edible as young leaves; they're
of the same genus as commercial lettuce (lactuca).
But i'm not going to eat mine; i'm going to have the
tallest one bronzed, so i can remember how power-
ful Mother Nature is---just add water.
in the supermarket; it's a weed (=an unwanted plant)
that can be found thruout most of the US. It wouldn't
be particularly noticeable except that it is taller than
most of the plants around it. And in this rainy Summer
it looks like the Beanstalk of 'Jack and the _'
My plant book says that it can grow up to 10 feet tall
and in my yard there are three of them at least that
tall. 10 feet---that's as tall as a one-storey building.
Apparently they are edible as young leaves; they're
of the same genus as commercial lettuce (lactuca).
But i'm not going to eat mine; i'm going to have the
tallest one bronzed, so i can remember how power-
ful Mother Nature is---just add water.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
PLATO WAS QUITE A GUY
Plato was quite a guy. Probably the single most impor-
tant philosopher in Western history, he has been given
a status above all other philosophers. It was said of him
by a 20th century philosopher (Whitehead?) that all of
Western philosophy is merely a series of footnotes to
Plato.
Still, Plato had some strange and even scarey ideas. (or
was he only quoting Socrates?) For instance, he thought
the ideal form of government was by oligarchy---the rule
of a few, backed by an army, who would hold lifetime off-
ices. Shades of fascism!
He also thought that every object in the world was an ex-
pressed instance of an ideal that existed outside the
realm of space and time. Thus, any particular horse was
merely the reflection of an ideal Horse that was not di-
rectly available to the viewer. Plato was an idealist; i.e.
he thought that ideas were more real than the ordinary
manifestation of everyday physical objects.
Another belief of his was that knowledge was not some-
thing we gain, but rather something we remember---
from a pre-vious lifetime. This is an idea that is central
to Eastern thought but is scarcely found in the West, at
least among philosophers.
But Plato had another idea that astounds me because
however marginal it might be to the Western world, it
is a mainstay of the East. It is also to me one of the few
images that reflect something of what the world is really
about. This is Plato's Cave Analogy:
A man is in a cave, chained so that he can only see the
back of the cave, not the entrance. Between the man and
the entrance of the cave is a fire that throws the man's
shadow on to the back of the cave. Thus the man can
never see the reality of the world beyond the entrance,
only a distorted view of reality that reflects the shadowy
world that he can see directly.
This is an extremely radical idea. It says that the ways
we view the world are not ultimately real but only im-
perfect manifestations of reality. What? Our families,
our friends, our possessions, our jobs---these are mere-
ly distortions?
Well, yes and no. (This is me talking now.) Our every-
day realities are real in a sense but also not real in
another, deeper sense. We are all like the man in the
cave, seeing reflections when we could be experiencing
reality directly by breaking our chains and looking be-
yond the fire to the entrance of the cave, where the real
reality lies.
What if we believed this preposterous idea---what then?
Then we could take steps to break the chain of unreality
and view ourselves and our world in a simple, direct
manner.
And how do we do this? Meditation is the only way
i know of, altho there might be other ways i don't
know about. But the impetus to meditate comes
from a belief in the truth of the cave analogy, which
is not a matter of faith but a gut level of understand-
ing in which the cave analogy seems to make sense.
tant philosopher in Western history, he has been given
a status above all other philosophers. It was said of him
by a 20th century philosopher (Whitehead?) that all of
Western philosophy is merely a series of footnotes to
Plato.
Still, Plato had some strange and even scarey ideas. (or
was he only quoting Socrates?) For instance, he thought
the ideal form of government was by oligarchy---the rule
of a few, backed by an army, who would hold lifetime off-
ices. Shades of fascism!
He also thought that every object in the world was an ex-
pressed instance of an ideal that existed outside the
realm of space and time. Thus, any particular horse was
merely the reflection of an ideal Horse that was not di-
rectly available to the viewer. Plato was an idealist; i.e.
he thought that ideas were more real than the ordinary
manifestation of everyday physical objects.
Another belief of his was that knowledge was not some-
thing we gain, but rather something we remember---
from a pre-vious lifetime. This is an idea that is central
to Eastern thought but is scarcely found in the West, at
least among philosophers.
But Plato had another idea that astounds me because
however marginal it might be to the Western world, it
is a mainstay of the East. It is also to me one of the few
images that reflect something of what the world is really
about. This is Plato's Cave Analogy:
A man is in a cave, chained so that he can only see the
back of the cave, not the entrance. Between the man and
the entrance of the cave is a fire that throws the man's
shadow on to the back of the cave. Thus the man can
never see the reality of the world beyond the entrance,
only a distorted view of reality that reflects the shadowy
world that he can see directly.
This is an extremely radical idea. It says that the ways
we view the world are not ultimately real but only im-
perfect manifestations of reality. What? Our families,
our friends, our possessions, our jobs---these are mere-
ly distortions?
Well, yes and no. (This is me talking now.) Our every-
day realities are real in a sense but also not real in
another, deeper sense. We are all like the man in the
cave, seeing reflections when we could be experiencing
reality directly by breaking our chains and looking be-
yond the fire to the entrance of the cave, where the real
reality lies.
What if we believed this preposterous idea---what then?
Then we could take steps to break the chain of unreality
and view ourselves and our world in a simple, direct
manner.
And how do we do this? Meditation is the only way
i know of, altho there might be other ways i don't
know about. But the impetus to meditate comes
from a belief in the truth of the cave analogy, which
is not a matter of faith but a gut level of understand-
ing in which the cave analogy seems to make sense.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
GLOBAL INVADERS
The Asian longhorned beetle is a recent invader
centering in New York City and surrounding area.
Originating in China, the ALB was first spotted in
the city in 1996 and is believed to have arrived in
the 1980s in wood-packing material. Since that
time it has spread to 16 states from California to
Massachusetts, Ontario and British Columbia in
Canada, and Britain, Austria, and Germany in
Europe. It weakens and destroys trees by boring
holes in the bark to lay eggs which become adults
and in turn bore more holes.
This course of events is unexceptional. One web
site lists over 300 invasive species, both plant and
animal, thruout the globe, and there may well be
more, perhaps many more. Our world is being
transformed and there seems to be no way to stop
the process.
Nor is this global event unique. There have been
five previous major disturbances of the worldwide
biome in the history of our planet, and more lesser
ones. One metaphorical explanation for this is that
our Mother Gaia is a gardener and sometimes gard-
eners pull up their gardens and start all over again.
This explanation may or may not be a source of con-
solation; for those who love our Mother's creation,
the loss is painful.
But this process, universal transformation of the
Earth in multiple ways, is the major characteristic
of our times.
centering in New York City and surrounding area.
Originating in China, the ALB was first spotted in
the city in 1996 and is believed to have arrived in
the 1980s in wood-packing material. Since that
time it has spread to 16 states from California to
Massachusetts, Ontario and British Columbia in
Canada, and Britain, Austria, and Germany in
Europe. It weakens and destroys trees by boring
holes in the bark to lay eggs which become adults
and in turn bore more holes.
This course of events is unexceptional. One web
site lists over 300 invasive species, both plant and
animal, thruout the globe, and there may well be
more, perhaps many more. Our world is being
transformed and there seems to be no way to stop
the process.
Nor is this global event unique. There have been
five previous major disturbances of the worldwide
biome in the history of our planet, and more lesser
ones. One metaphorical explanation for this is that
our Mother Gaia is a gardener and sometimes gard-
eners pull up their gardens and start all over again.
This explanation may or may not be a source of con-
solation; for those who love our Mother's creation,
the loss is painful.
But this process, universal transformation of the
Earth in multiple ways, is the major characteristic
of our times.
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