Naturally people are interconnected and marginalised into a system that connects people in the way that they do not want to be connected; nothing is improved for the lonely people by visiting the venues whereby social interactions are meant to happen - in fact it can cause a lonely person to feel more isolated than that of before. Throughout the course of this blog post my intention is to address why forming relationships can - of course - be a very difficult endeavor for lonely, reasonably intelligent people.
Firstly people are the products of their own presupposed shyness or will to be outgoing. What you'll come to recognise within shy people is that of the product of years upon years of being too scared of interacting with other people out of fear of being rejected from social circles (to over-analyse such requires time to oneself and the ability to engage at such a height of thought). Is it surprising how the failure to establish meaningful connections between people is often the culprit of depression? You may ponder upon life and death and neither of the two may seem appealing, life truly only has a meaning if there is something worth your death - however for the recluse that can believe - to some level - that things will improve, their present state of existence should exist in that, relatively transcendent, area between life and death. Quite often it is necessary for the person that has been grounded to shyness by the twist of the pessimistic coil to immerse themselves into a new culture, where one can re-invent their image, before they're able to adopt the outgoing frame of mind. This is because existence at this plane - the human - is only given the substance from within the minds of other people from within what would appear to be the space caused by the collision of heaven and hell; in physical existence there may be a lot of versions of a person per se, but that is only an existence as interpreted by the minds of other people, and the person may be approached by the by-product of thinking. Some people, however, are naturally deluded.
Furthermore to the point people can be deluded into believing that their lifestyles are what brings them satisfaction and perhaps joy at one level or another - the stereotypical, bland middle class lifestyle coupled with the occasional dilatation set in by little pleasures such as purchasing a new car, engaging in sexual intercourse or having coffee with a friend. Such people are neither right nor wrong in what they do, but it does raise a very valid point to my attention - these people are very well conditioned to the prisons for their minds, the social structure has within itself an axis which is a system of related objects - suggestible, seductive yet perishable and potent. To the person who can cast their attention to that which is out with the box this aforementioned truth can be distressing - it extends therefore that your existence is only meant to be geared towards goals that are superficial; can YOU be a unique snowflake in the blizzard? Your heart, it is slowly filling up like a landfill site. However if you wish to live the popular life then you have to be a likable person and that can mean appealing to what most people enjoy (ever envy people who enjoyed sport day at school?), you don't have to patronise if you're naturally a wordsmith (monosyllabic words and not a lot else in a sentence can become uninteresting quickly) yet you need not give a thesis to one as to how they can overcome their cataracts - even if you have a PHD and are a qualified clinical optician. The consensus here is that if you can be humble, warm and approachable in appearance and ever-so-slightly mysterious (few people like the recluse that hardly speaks a word yet is rumoured to read Being & Time and also Descartes) then people should come to you, yes? You could try, but do you ever just walk up to friendly looking people and let ad libbed conversation ensue between you both? Perhaps but there's only a handful of people who have this glow, this charm or this charisma. This glow appears to be an inherent factor, one hard coded right from the deoxyribonucleic acid but who knows? Commitment is a two-way street and both parties must be willing to do their bit if the association is to flourish, and what a way to bring me onto my next point of discussion - love.
Love is basically the act of desiring the whole, as both males and females would wish for - it concerns the neurology of we. Artistically love can be called the movement of the heart, however the difference between the who and the what (read some Derrida if this concept captivates you) causes a split in the presupposed heart of either the male or the female; does your heart shift itself because you fancy someone who is an absolute singularity, or because of what you love about the way that person is through their actions, their personality and possibly their fruition? Whoever starts to love, is loving or is ceasing to love someone else is really caught within the battleground, the void, between the who and the what of the fancied person. One wants nothing more to be irreplaceable and quintessentially attractive to the one they desire, but fidelity can be threatened by the division between the who and the what, of course. Relationships of any category, however, are at the base level the flow of information and energy between two people and love - after all - is a type of relationship. Genuine love derives itself from a person's vast knowledge of their beloved object, whether it is a person, representative entity of a human, at any plane, a music band, a TV show, some fetish or attraction to an inanimate object or a subject at school, but love on the level of a human relationship is a game of two players; oftentimes it can be difficult for socially challenged persons to display the desirable qualities to the opposite sex - as these attributes are crystallized within the somewhat painful chore of appearing confident within oneself. Perhaps if the two people walk far enough, with a decent pair of shoes, then a mutual attraction could occur - but let’s not regret what we were too scared to try. There's a myth perpetrated by the media and it is that of which tells us that "there's someone for everyone." This, of course, is a fallacy; it is like a doctrine of religious belief that single, confused people cling to because they're convinced that all that determination and hard work will pay off, some day. They're always receptive and vigilant towards the possibility that the next man or woman that they meet could be the one, but then again whoever is "the one" now may not be "the one" in - say - five years time from now. Love is something that appears to be disposable, but I blame first world society for that. These days it is all too easy for us to replace our broken kitchen appliances, computers and mobile phones without giving repair even a thought. As we look back to British history and we focus on the anthropological aspects of love, therefore commitment, we can conclude that people repaired what was broken.
In conclusion, to keep it short and snappy, my latest blog post hopefully threw some light on a neglected facet of the human condition. I know my point wasn't really theological on the surface, but I do - however - recommend that you do read Psalm 139 if you're a Christian.
Anyway, I've wrote more than I had an intention to write ;)
Saturday, 26 January 2013
Wednesday, 9 January 2013
Computing and philosophy (and what this could mean for theology)
Today my intention is to relate this post to the science of computing. More importantly I will attempt to relate the theories explored by a computer scientist to that of a philosopher (and some of the following notes of philosophical pondering may have their theological implications, watch this space!)
Firstly I'd like to raise the notion of existence and identity to your attention. Within a computer, some entities are physical (like the processor, the RAM chips and the motherboard) whilst others are purely conceptual and immaterial (like the software, the algorithms and the operating system). Paradoxically a physical entity (like a CD-ROM) contains the immaterial entity (like the video game); therefore all the instruction for a computer game will be readable from a reflective disc-shaped piece of plastic! However we must realise that singed into the microscopic pits of a compact disc is not pictures, videos etc... But rather a base-two notation of files and software. This binary code is structured in such a way that the file allocation system of the targeted computer can translate the physical (ones and zeros) into a logical order (JPEGS, software, folders etc...) and actually make use of it. Everything required to reproduce the images and sound (a graphics card, a sound card, a processor with a decent pipelined architecture etc...) is within the computer, and the software on the disc, coupled with the computer's operating system, contains the instructions - the algorithms - to do such a task. A computer never thinks or reasons, it is just a machine - after all - that follows interpretable tasks. Computers are what we can refer to as finite-state automata, or rather two-way machines. Put it this way, presuppose there once was a healthy man who was able to walk and could read and understand the English language; if we were to give this man a sheet of paper that read: "walk to the local church" then he could do it, for he is equipped with such facilities to interpret and carry out such a task. However if this man was to apply reasoning then he could ask why or rather defend his right to do as he pleases - this is something a piece of automata will never do. Opinion is a by-product of thinking. This is strange as a piece of automata (like a computer) has a pseudo-brain entity (like a microprocessor) whereby its instructions are interpreted and carried out, by the rules of logic (like Boolean logic). Isn't the man's brain just like a biochemical microprocessor? This perspective of human cognition is called monism of the mind and matter, and infers that all thinking is the result of chemical reactions. Chemicals react, they do not reason - if monism is true then free will is a myth and you're driven by impersonal forces (read up on my article entitled "Is Free will a myth? Think Descartes..." please for more on this, you'll find it elsewhere on my blog!! I will now assume prior knowledge of it from this point onwards). Would you trust computer software that was just assembled by the interlocked system of nature (hypothetically, of course, unless you associate the binary with some pattern formation on some sort of animal or whatever)? No, software with an intelligent mind behind it would be far more trustworthy!
Furthermore the study of automatic computing has lead us to the design of algorithms. Algorithms are really just steps of the concurrent processes being contended with by a microprocessor, and are generally written in the notation of either a high-level programming language with scope for advanced syntactical structure (like C++) or a low-level programming language (probably mnemonic-type instructions like LDA 56, STR 47 etc... for inner-processor orientated instructions associated with the registers, the MAR, the MDR etc...) and can be written to sort, search, stack, queue and heap data as well as that of other tasks! Oftentimes an academic programmer will use big-O notation, whereby O is an algebraic constant, to compare these algorithms together, as many are different by means but are mutual in end results (just to give you a heads-up on how seriously this field of research is taken!). One thing we can see from algorithm design is that it is difficult for us to build software that tells a computer to compute a random number! We can try by assigning each number to a tick of a timer, and stopping the timer once an event is triggered, but that would only seem random! What is randomness? Some event with no actual cause, or rather is there a cause but the cause is not apparent or even consensually appropriate? The absolute constraint of the law of cause and effect for the physical objects of reality supports the first two of St Thomas Aquinas' five ways - and in fact Bayes (a Presbyterian church minister and avid fan of mathematics) devised a formulae that could imply constraints onto certain computable events (like allowing the sweat of one's hand to influence how a dice they throw rolls). Anyway, algorithms are usually written in the syntax of a high-level programming language (like one of the C languages), oftentimes follow an implementation methodology (like object-orientation) and are not what a computer really works with: this is where a complex piece of computer software called a compiler comes into play. A compiler forms what is called a lexical analysis on the code and this parses all the lexemes etc... and turns them into a base-two notation of the software, ergo the software is now compatible with the computer architecture of the targeted system (oftentimes compiled software is referred to as a binary file). This is akin to the translation of a Bible, or rather not? Translators such as those who work for Wycliffe can either perform a static (word-by-word or verbatim) or dynamic (tailoring the translation for the targeted culture) translation. Static translations can be difficult to comprehend (the difference in sentence structure between English and many Romance languages, like French or Italian, is great - for example in French there is the formal version of "you," viz. "vous," but there is also an informal version of "you," viz. "tu") therefore most people desire a more dynamic translation for their Bible (the NIV and the KJV are both written in English, but are very different in sentence structure and vocabulary). However a dynamic translation does have the potential to be flawed by theological bias, and it would be apt to say that when a compiler compiles it is doing a static translation by parsing tokens of entities and swapping them for other entities (semantic version of source code) - only a programmer is to blame for faulty software.
In conclusion all I can say is that this is a really brief introduction to the overlap between computing and philosophy (and perhaps theology). For further reading I'd avoid anything that portrays machines to be partisan-like creatures that rule the human race (that should always be classified as science-fiction anyway) and I would recommend reading up on the Church-Turing thesis (Alan Turing often wrote about hypothetical Turing machines, which parallel the operation of microprocessors to this day), anything factual about artificial intelligence (you may wish to check out the algorithm for a game of the "towers of Hanoi") and also anything to do with the relationship between mammalian cognition and automata! Who knows, maybe that French philosopher called Descartes was on to something when he proposed hi theory of the dualism of the mind and matter? It could imply that all human reasoning derives from an ineffant soul... Some basic neurology such as the association of the different lobes to functions of the human body, the cerebral hemispheres, the automatic nature of the medulla oblongata etc... may also be worth some of your time to read.
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Does your faith isolate you?
When it is all said and done, one must realise that the likes of Twitter & Facebook are just mediums of communication - ways in which we can transfer information from one part of the world to another. This mustn't be confused with the real, empirical world though if one wishes to assert their place in reality from the perspective driven by the will of the almighty. The border between the two isn't always clear, I mean social networking is not but a mere transfer medium of something far greater and I intend to show you what that is.
Firstly you can consider the advent and evolution of social networking to be something that forms a layer that makes the previous state of reality seem subordinate; it is not but a holographic entity from within the conceptual relational schema of reality - simply put symbols are taken for reality thus the original entity of reality is replaced by some kind of substitute (probably because people deem it to be more satisfying than that of the original) - this is evident because a lot of young people these days are self-conscious about how they appear, what they do etc... and pretty much everyone that was in their class at school will know what their occupation is, what their field of study is and whether an exotic holiday for them is either a trip to Blackpool or Rhyll or a trip over to one of the Caribbean islands (hence self-conciseness can be a rather huge bane of the human existence!). As I've aforementioned elsewhere on my blog, this is affirmative to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man - it is easy for a rich man these days to become immersed by social media, icons, symbols, adverts, films, music etc... and that leaves little in the way for a man to realise that he may actually want God's salvation; the rich man feels a false glow of satisfaction from the likes of seeing a thumbs up on his latest Facebook posting to being a complete and utter perfectionist (thus distorting his perception of perfect, finitude will always be less than perfect). Subconsciously, most people become integrated into the entity of reality seen as the silent majority, symbolically recognised by the likes of market statistics and the like. Escaping the constraints (or being a deaf-mute, that is how JD Salinger puts it - maybe then he, or rather the protagonist of Catcher in the Rye, will not have to make the obligatory "small talk" as people come up to him to be served) that are seemingly unwillingly placed upon us by the media and realising the benefits of utilising the crutch that is God can seem like a foreign, and sometimes arcane, chore to those part of the silent majority (for a bit of further reading look to the orders of simulacra as written by Jean Baudrillard. An anime called Stand Alone Complex, an extension to Ghost in the Shell, may also be worth a watch - the point conveyed isn't really theological, but it has a paralleled theological truth behind it once you delve into the implication of the whole "the laughing man" take over situation).
However I also feel as if you should realise that people will always judge you, no matter what. It is what we as humans do in order to assert who our allies and enemies are. These perceptions, however, are not exactly absolutes. People do only have substance from within the memories of other people. You may feel, at times, that there are different kinds of you. There isn't a lot of you per se, you are one person, all there is just a lot of conceptual ideas about you rooted from within the minds of your peers - they have to do this or else they couldn't build their immaterial map of reality thus navigate and actually survive. Your body exists in a totally different plane than your mind (Cartesian dualism) because if it didn't then how can you trust your reasoning? I can infer that chemicals only react, they do not reason. This, however, should only be used to show you that your potent body within reality will last for a finite amount of time only. You are the one staring into a shifting picture from within the transcendent gallery for the souls, but you take the picture as reality. Tell me, how do you define what is real? Anyway I'm digressing; I address that elsewhere on this blog you know! Oftentimes conditioned people will label you as an extremist, of some measure, if they do not agree with your point of view. Every one of us is conditioned anyway, for example one may associate the kitchen aromas with homeliness, kindness, comfort and cheeriness but take that at face value and you discover that one associates the unholy stench of blood coming from the juicy steak within the oven with comfort and cheeriness. If one gives you an insight into what they believe to be true for them then they are only trying to stick up for what they believe in. Now would not life be rather boring if we all shared the same ideas about things (do not confuse with morals though, those are absolute and if you want to know why then read some more of my blog - you'll discover your answer soon if you do that!!!)? Anyone and everyone is an extremist of something in my opinion anyway, even if they are in denial of that - you cannot be a thinking being if you hold no opinion about anything at all (to think presupposes opinion). Some meat eaters would freak out at the thought of the likes of dogs and cats being killed for meat yet these commonly domesticated animals are often eaten in parts of Asia. Yet these same meat eaters may not think twice about visiting a McDonalds, a KFC or Burger King and tucking into some flavoured carcass (or whatever body part it happens to be) that was once part of a cow grazing in a controlled field or a chicken (either free or confined to a small cage whereby its lack of exercise and therefore obesity crushes its legs) eating birdseed or whatever. A lot of what we deem to be acceptable comes from society and the symbols we're exposed to. I can guarantee that someone brought up on the Isle of Arran lives a different life coupled with different ambitions when compared to someone of the same age brought up in inner-city Glasgow. The Glaswegian will be used to the melting pot society and the hustle and bustle of the large megastores selling expensive electronics and articles of clothing whereby in Brodick (relatively large town, albeit village by Scottish standards, on the Isle of Arran) all a person would really be exposed to is a post office, a small paper shop and not much else other than Scottish people and the occasional tourist. You can call someone an extremist though for not blindly following the norms of the localised society though, just remember that you sow what you reap - be cognizant of that!!
So on that note I think that there is indeed a stigma associated with anything you do. Computer programmers may be judged as geeks, history teachers may be judged as boring, knitters may be judged as old-fashioned, sailors may be judged as polygamists (a woman at every port?), unemployed people may be judged as lazy and/or unambitious, crying people may be judged as attention-seeking, Guns 'n' Roses fans may be judged as loud and shallow, Boney-M fans may be judged as feminine, wine boffins may be judged as alcoholics, bankers may be judged as greedy and as for Christians - does it matter (go read Psalm 83:16! The Psalmist here implies that hiding your faith from people will shame you and as a result you'll seek God anyway. Oh, and this may be yet another digression but Genesis 9 verse 20 onwards is about Noah getting into a drunken stupor and making a fool of himself in front of his son called Ham - need an ark? I Noah guy - OK that may not be that applicable, but the aforementioned verse does relate to embarrassment in general)? You can be what you be and yes it is possible to strip away the constraints society places on you if that is what you want to do for you have free will (but you sow what you reap, remember? I'm not saying that you should break the law or commit a sin or whatever!!!), you are always doing x because you are always chasing y and oftentimes society helps you to achieve your goals! Although people judge, you can get over it! :)
P.S. for a bit of food for thought, ask yourself about what you need. You may say something like food or clothes but do you really? Is this more of a want than a need? Do we need anything? Even air? Not really, man needs nothing because the concept of need without a defined - or more likely implied - goal is obsolete. Man needs air because he wants to live makes more sense than man needs air (but in most cases the living part is implied anyway). Man needs God? Unless you subscribe to the notions implied by nihilism, I will attempt to turn the whole aforementioned concept on its head by saying yes, from a theological perspective - man needs God's love because man was designed to be coupled with a soul that would eternally despise the alternative to heaven, and theologically this is an absolute rule of thumb.
Firstly you can consider the advent and evolution of social networking to be something that forms a layer that makes the previous state of reality seem subordinate; it is not but a holographic entity from within the conceptual relational schema of reality - simply put symbols are taken for reality thus the original entity of reality is replaced by some kind of substitute (probably because people deem it to be more satisfying than that of the original) - this is evident because a lot of young people these days are self-conscious about how they appear, what they do etc... and pretty much everyone that was in their class at school will know what their occupation is, what their field of study is and whether an exotic holiday for them is either a trip to Blackpool or Rhyll or a trip over to one of the Caribbean islands (hence self-conciseness can be a rather huge bane of the human existence!). As I've aforementioned elsewhere on my blog, this is affirmative to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man - it is easy for a rich man these days to become immersed by social media, icons, symbols, adverts, films, music etc... and that leaves little in the way for a man to realise that he may actually want God's salvation; the rich man feels a false glow of satisfaction from the likes of seeing a thumbs up on his latest Facebook posting to being a complete and utter perfectionist (thus distorting his perception of perfect, finitude will always be less than perfect). Subconsciously, most people become integrated into the entity of reality seen as the silent majority, symbolically recognised by the likes of market statistics and the like. Escaping the constraints (or being a deaf-mute, that is how JD Salinger puts it - maybe then he, or rather the protagonist of Catcher in the Rye, will not have to make the obligatory "small talk" as people come up to him to be served) that are seemingly unwillingly placed upon us by the media and realising the benefits of utilising the crutch that is God can seem like a foreign, and sometimes arcane, chore to those part of the silent majority (for a bit of further reading look to the orders of simulacra as written by Jean Baudrillard. An anime called Stand Alone Complex, an extension to Ghost in the Shell, may also be worth a watch - the point conveyed isn't really theological, but it has a paralleled theological truth behind it once you delve into the implication of the whole "the laughing man" take over situation).
However I also feel as if you should realise that people will always judge you, no matter what. It is what we as humans do in order to assert who our allies and enemies are. These perceptions, however, are not exactly absolutes. People do only have substance from within the memories of other people. You may feel, at times, that there are different kinds of you. There isn't a lot of you per se, you are one person, all there is just a lot of conceptual ideas about you rooted from within the minds of your peers - they have to do this or else they couldn't build their immaterial map of reality thus navigate and actually survive. Your body exists in a totally different plane than your mind (Cartesian dualism) because if it didn't then how can you trust your reasoning? I can infer that chemicals only react, they do not reason. This, however, should only be used to show you that your potent body within reality will last for a finite amount of time only. You are the one staring into a shifting picture from within the transcendent gallery for the souls, but you take the picture as reality. Tell me, how do you define what is real? Anyway I'm digressing; I address that elsewhere on this blog you know! Oftentimes conditioned people will label you as an extremist, of some measure, if they do not agree with your point of view. Every one of us is conditioned anyway, for example one may associate the kitchen aromas with homeliness, kindness, comfort and cheeriness but take that at face value and you discover that one associates the unholy stench of blood coming from the juicy steak within the oven with comfort and cheeriness. If one gives you an insight into what they believe to be true for them then they are only trying to stick up for what they believe in. Now would not life be rather boring if we all shared the same ideas about things (do not confuse with morals though, those are absolute and if you want to know why then read some more of my blog - you'll discover your answer soon if you do that!!!)? Anyone and everyone is an extremist of something in my opinion anyway, even if they are in denial of that - you cannot be a thinking being if you hold no opinion about anything at all (to think presupposes opinion). Some meat eaters would freak out at the thought of the likes of dogs and cats being killed for meat yet these commonly domesticated animals are often eaten in parts of Asia. Yet these same meat eaters may not think twice about visiting a McDonalds, a KFC or Burger King and tucking into some flavoured carcass (or whatever body part it happens to be) that was once part of a cow grazing in a controlled field or a chicken (either free or confined to a small cage whereby its lack of exercise and therefore obesity crushes its legs) eating birdseed or whatever. A lot of what we deem to be acceptable comes from society and the symbols we're exposed to. I can guarantee that someone brought up on the Isle of Arran lives a different life coupled with different ambitions when compared to someone of the same age brought up in inner-city Glasgow. The Glaswegian will be used to the melting pot society and the hustle and bustle of the large megastores selling expensive electronics and articles of clothing whereby in Brodick (relatively large town, albeit village by Scottish standards, on the Isle of Arran) all a person would really be exposed to is a post office, a small paper shop and not much else other than Scottish people and the occasional tourist. You can call someone an extremist though for not blindly following the norms of the localised society though, just remember that you sow what you reap - be cognizant of that!!
So on that note I think that there is indeed a stigma associated with anything you do. Computer programmers may be judged as geeks, history teachers may be judged as boring, knitters may be judged as old-fashioned, sailors may be judged as polygamists (a woman at every port?), unemployed people may be judged as lazy and/or unambitious, crying people may be judged as attention-seeking, Guns 'n' Roses fans may be judged as loud and shallow, Boney-M fans may be judged as feminine, wine boffins may be judged as alcoholics, bankers may be judged as greedy and as for Christians - does it matter (go read Psalm 83:16! The Psalmist here implies that hiding your faith from people will shame you and as a result you'll seek God anyway. Oh, and this may be yet another digression but Genesis 9 verse 20 onwards is about Noah getting into a drunken stupor and making a fool of himself in front of his son called Ham - need an ark? I Noah guy - OK that may not be that applicable, but the aforementioned verse does relate to embarrassment in general)? You can be what you be and yes it is possible to strip away the constraints society places on you if that is what you want to do for you have free will (but you sow what you reap, remember? I'm not saying that you should break the law or commit a sin or whatever!!!), you are always doing x because you are always chasing y and oftentimes society helps you to achieve your goals! Although people judge, you can get over it! :)
P.S. for a bit of food for thought, ask yourself about what you need. You may say something like food or clothes but do you really? Is this more of a want than a need? Do we need anything? Even air? Not really, man needs nothing because the concept of need without a defined - or more likely implied - goal is obsolete. Man needs air because he wants to live makes more sense than man needs air (but in most cases the living part is implied anyway). Man needs God? Unless you subscribe to the notions implied by nihilism, I will attempt to turn the whole aforementioned concept on its head by saying yes, from a theological perspective - man needs God's love because man was designed to be coupled with a soul that would eternally despise the alternative to heaven, and theologically this is an absolute rule of thumb.
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