Category: Commentary


A few random statistics gleaned from this morning’s television:

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May 12, 2013

98% of clothes sold in America are made overseas.

 

A New York garment worker’s daily pay equals three months salary in Bangladesh.

 

Approximately 60% of young people in Greece and Spain are unemployed.

 

49% of American women are afraid of becoming homeless.

 

I’m not trying to make a particular point with any of these.  Feel free to draw any conclusion you wish.  But the current world seems to be a bit askew, and I think there’s something to be said for life back in the stone ages.

 

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More to demographics than meets the eye, part two

Filed under: Commentary, Old Europe, the Americas — 1 Comment
November 10, 2012

 

 

 

To read part one first, click here.

 

The Western world was not always the western world, as we know it.  Once, thousands of years ago, long before the middle ages and the dark ages, Europe was a land of myth and magic, a land of mystery, of ancient legends – a different world, one that can still be sensed among the ten thousand stone circles and ancient megaliths that dot the European countryside – from Malta to the northernmost islands of Scotland.  But something happened – a dark wave took over, casting out the myth and magic of the mists and bringing in the hard glare of a more cruel light –  and there began the rule of the crusaders, of conquistadors, of the Inquisition, of witch-burnings, of conquering and subjecting – of domination – and of the spreading across the earth of tides of oppression and destruction of lands and peoples.

 

With this onslaught of domination, came not only the oppression of all the peoples of the earth, but also the destruction of the planet itself.  Mining and oil wells, hi-tech wars, pollution, industrial waste, and relentless development have brought death to the rivers and oceans, to the air we breathe, to the land, the forests, and the animals, as the natural world too has been dominated and oppressed – along with women (the “witches”), and the peoples of the earth (disparaged as “primitive”).

 

To come back to the present moment, and the recent election, it has been remarked that the most extreme aspects of the Republican party are a throwback to the fifties, but really the mindset of domination goes back to a time several centuries earlier, and is a continuation of the dark spirit of the conquistadors and their ilk.  (This doesn’t mean that teaparty Republicans can’t be pleasant, decent people, in fact, quite fine people as human beings go; they generally are.  Conquistadors probably were too when they weren’t busy conquering foreign lands. Many people become, unthinkingly, part of whatever culture seems to choose them.)

 

Still, the desire to plant oil wells in Alaska and all along the coasts, the perception of the environment as something that must be beaten into submission, the wish to unleash rampant deregulation that will permit the full-scale annihilation of nature – all this combined with the drive to fight more and bigger wars, which are also sort of a way of “punishing” those perceived to be “evil” – all these methods of exercising dominion over everyone and everything are really opposed to all that is life-giving.  (None of this has anything to do with being genuinely and honestly conservative, in the normal sense – it is instead an aberration.)

 

Perhaps this aberrant trajectory of domination and oppression has come to its final, last stand.  Surely, it will limp along for a while, no doubt still wreaking havoc wherever it can, but it’s doom is sealed. (And when it goes, those who have been possessed by it, will also feel a sense of relief.)

On one level this election is just another election, one of many, yet there is a sense, on another level, that there has been a turning point – the emergence of a will for developing alternative energy to save the planet, for showing compassion rather than derision, inclusion rather than exclusion, for extending a word of encouragement and a helping hand to all. This is a spirit that values the life of people, all people, of nature, animals, plants, and the soul.  And it is a stepping stone toward the future – on a road that no longer barrels downwards to a baser and more corrupt world, but instead turns upwards to a world of light – of peace.

 

This unkind world that has been so prevalent over the last many centuries of our history, did indeed need to come to an end, and as it has begun to end, and as it still stumbles along on its last steps, another world beckons — a world of sunlight, of trees in the mists, of birds flying in the clouds – a world we had almost forgotten in our cities of clogged traffic and artificial existence.

 

A human political process cannot create heaven, and the people we have just elected are not angels dancing in the clouds, but fallible human beings. There will be many more struggles and battles to come.

 

Yet, all the same, we can glimpse a clearer light shining from the heavens, now that some of the oppressive clouds have been blown away, and a spirit of kindness and peace is poised to grow again on the earth.

The months and years to come will not be free of suffering. There may be tides of destruction and karmic repercussion from the actions of the past.  The seas may continue to rise, and the storm winds may still blow. But there has been an affirmation of a positive direction – towards life, kindness, and goodness.

 

What is important is the innocence in the souls of the animals, the beauty in the trees and the clouds, the survival of kindness in the hearts of some of the earth’s people, the presence of peace in the heart of God, and the awakening of creation to a more blessed state, freed from the dominion of evil that has beset us for so long.  The important thing is the victory of kindness, the diminishing of the world of corruption and oppression, and momentum toward the rebirth of an age of innocence and magic, where wildflowers can bloom in the sunlight and fish swim in the sea.

 

 

Top image: Author: Matty781  (Matthew Brennan) / “I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain.” / Wikimedia Commons / Stonehenge

 

Second image: “This image or recording is the work of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee, taken or made during the course of an employee’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.” / Wikimedia Commons /  Bald Eagle landing.

 

Third image: Author: Larry Aumiller / Kodiak brown bear with her cubs in McNeil River Sanctuary / “This image or recording is the work of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee, taken or made during the course of an employee’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.” / Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

 

 

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More to demographics than meets the eye, part one

Filed under: Commentary, Old Europe, the Americas — 1 Comment
November 10, 2012

 

Apart from Mitt Romney’s very gracious concession speech, his campaign over many months was dismissive of, and not very pleasant towards, just about everyone –  women, Latinos, all other minorities too, poor people, and the rest of the world.

 

Despite attempts to suppress the vote that haven’t been seen in this country for many decades, voters turned out in record numbers, waiting in long lines for up to eight hours. It seemed that the more the right to vote was threatened, the more determined people were to vote.

 

As many others have noted, the key factor in this election was not the economy at all, it was demographics – the changing population of America.  Those who voted for President Obama were overwhelmingly the young and a huge percentage of Latinos, African-Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and other minority voters – and just 39% of the white vote, which was this year only 72% of the whole, down from around 90% in the 1970’s.

 

This has been noted by many observers, yet these demographic facts are a significant source of dismay (or, to be more blunt, fear and terror) to some white people. This fear, conscious or unconscious, leads to a compulsion to hold on to the status quo for dear life, even while one perceives it to be slipping away.  And, in a few people, the impulse to dominate, to subjugate, to oppress, bully, invalidate, deride, and dismiss — takes over – and leads to the sorts of endless absurdities that suggest that President Obama is somehow “other” and “not one of us.”

 

The impulse to dominate is a very fascinating thing. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived on the shores of the New World in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they committed horrific atrocities, slaughtering and enslaving Native Americans.  At the same time, in Europe, the Inquisition was in full swing, and women were being burned as witches in towns all across the European continent.

 

Later on, when the British arrived in America, a similar sort of vicious behavior toward native people continued, on down through the centuries.  The Age of Discovery was really no such thing, since people were already living in all the lands being “discovered,” so “discovery” wasn’t really needed. Nonetheless, the European powers felt obliged to colonize the rest of the world – Asia, Africa, North and South America, nearly every tiny island in the oceans – all must be given the gift of “civilization” – nevermind that some of these countries; like India, Egypt, and China, had been civilized for at least 5,000 years and possibly many thousands of years longer than that.  Certainly, they were civilized long before Rome attempted to curb the hordes of Vandals and Goths making their way through Europe.

 

If we are feeling that things have taken a better, more progressive turn since those dark days, that isn’t so. The wars of the twentieth and early twenty-first century were of unparalleled brutality.

 

After the Colonial Age, as the European powers were forced to withdraw, with regret, from the lands they had occupied, a new form of colonization arose – this time it was cultural and economic. And this is where we are at the moment – the invasion of CocaCola and McDonalds – and the insidious belief that creeps into the mind of people all over the world, that perhaps their own culture and traditions are somehow backwards and not quite modern enough.

 

The same individuals who are fiercely loyal to their own nations may still fall subject to a kind of unconscious drive leading them to cast off their own traditions and seek instead what seems “modern” and “western.”  I remember with sadness that in Kenya, I met so many people who were very proud of their Christian names and their Christian faith.  When I asked them about their heritage — their stories, myths, and traditions, bits of wisdom their grandparents might have passed on to them, they looked bemused or slightly embarrassed; they had no idea, they knew no traditional stories, and there was the sense that they felt that all these things were to be left behind, as somehow unworthy or best forgotten. What a sad way to lose one’s language and culture.

 

One could write many books outlining the ways that ancient, traditional medicine has more healing power than modern, allopathic medicine, or the ways that traditional agriculture is more sustainable and healthier than western agriculture, or ways in which traditional artisans and artists create art that is much, much more beautiful than anything the modern world can produce, or how even the oldest science, mathematics, astronomy, and knowledge of the universe is really not at all inferior to modern knowledge; how, in short, human “progress” is a myth that only serves to disguise the devolution and progressive ignorance of our present civilization.  This may be a minority view, not generally accepted, but there is something to be said for it.

 

A great loss of culture and true civilization has happened, one way or another, all over the world, as this western wave has swept over the earth, despite the valiant efforts of many people to preserve their own culture. It is only these courageous efforts, like a mighty flame in the darkness, that have kept alive the beauty, truth, and knowledge of ancient traditions that have been under such fierce attack. Now the tide may be turning.

 

To be continued in part two.  To read part two, click here.

 

Top image: Author: Margaret Duncan Coxhead / Source Romance of History, Mexico Date 1909 / The conquistadors entered Tenochtitlan to the sounds of martial music. / Wikimedia Commons / “This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923.”

 

Second image: Author: D.F. Barry / Sitting Bull / This image is in the public domain in the United States. A Sioux holy man and chief who led his people in resistance. / Wikimedia Commons / “This image is in the public domain in the United States.”

 

Third image: Artist: Nicolaas Pieneman (1809–1860) /The submission of Diepo Negoro to Lieutenant-General Hendrik Merkus Baron de Kock, 28 March 1830, which ended the Java War (1825–30). / Wikimedia Commons /”This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less.”

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Looking for life on other planets

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September 15, 2012

The program “The Universe” on the H2 Channel describes new rocket propulsion systems that are being worked on, one of which might cut the trip to Mars down to a few weeks.  Scientists are also combing the sky looking for exoplanets and hoping that some day we may be able to visit far-away worlds and find new forms of life.  For their sake, let’s hope we don’t find them.

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A word for fish

Filed under: Animals and the earth, Commentary, Tales of India, the Americas — 3 Comments
September 9, 2012

One might have hoped that CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, who has a kind, gentle manner, and who is an American with an Indian background, might be more in tune with the tradition of ahimsa.  Promoting fish farming in the oceans on his program The Next List, on September 9, 2012, isn’t going to do anything to help the world’s hunger problems.

Alleviating the hunger crisis can be done by humans eating less meat (less of all kinds of meat, including seafood, fish, and chicken) and fewer dairy products – and relying more on plant-based diets.  We’d be healthier too.

Helping the planet (and ourselves, because we live here as well) won’t be accomplished by imprisoning fish or by further extending humanity’s sphere of dominance over the seas as well as the land.  Since we’ve usurped and destroyed much of the earth already – air, water, and land – and killed most of the fish in the sea, it might be good to leave the remaining fish alone to live in peace.

Photo: © Dmitry Bairachnyi / Dreamstime.com

To leave a comment on the webpage of the The Next List, click here.

For more on the negative impacts of aquaculture, click here.

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The Thalidomide tragedy: animal research gone awry

Filed under: Animals and the earth, Commentary — 2 Comments
September 1, 2012

With the Thalidomide tragedy back in the news again, we are reminded that medical research on animals is detrimental to humans as well as to animals.

In the 1960’s an estimated 10,000 children, mostly in Europe, were born with crippling birth defects as a consequence of their mothers’ being prescribed Thalidomide during pregnancy.  The survivors (many of the children died) and their families still suffer today.

Thalidomide, like all modern allopathic drugs, was tested on animals, and the animal tests did not provide any warning of the impending tragedy.

Animal experimentation is cruel to animals.  The animals are innocent, sentient beings; however, for those for whom this fact may not be relevant, animal experimentation also provides false results, not applicable to humans, and therefore it is cruel to humans as well, so there is no logic or justification for continuing this barbaric and ineffective practice.

It’s also worth noting that the vast majority (there are a few exceptions) of charities which raise funds for “curing “ diseases are using the funds to support research on animals.  Despite all the TV appeals showing sick children with their families, the funds collected go towards research, which means research on animals, and not to the people who are suffering from the disease. This fact is well hidden, but with a lot of perseverance, the truth can be uncovered.

To read a complicated, but interesting article, THE THALIDOMIDE TRAGEDY:
Another Example Of Animal Research Misleading Science, click here. 

 

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“The Illusion of Time” and a thought or two

Filed under: China, Commentary, Tales of India — 1 Comment
July 23, 2012

 

 

A star-forming region known as N90. See credit below.

Brian Greene’s “The Illusion of Time, part of the series “The Fabric of the Cosmos” aired Sunday evening, July 22, 2012, on “Nova” on PBS.  Here’s a summary, followed by a couple of thoughts.

 

“Time is not what it seems…There may be no distinction between the past, present, and future.” Discoveries in quantum physics suggest that time is entirely different from how we perceive it to be in our daily lives.

 

All cultures, including very ancient ones, have found time fascinating.  The Maya for example calculated time with three different, interrelated calendars; for the sun, the moon, and Venus.

The Crab Nebula. See credit below.

 

 

In our search to measure time, the rotation of the earth and its revolution around the sun became our first clock.

 

Today, instead of measuring the earth’s rotation, the atomic clock measures the frequency of the cesium atom, which, in one second ticks 9 billion, 192 million times.

 

Asking the question, “Time is a mystery.  What is it we’re actually measuring?” Brian Greene recalled the work of Einstein.

 

For Newton, time had been absolute and immutable.  But with Einstein, time is experienced differently by each of us, and is affected by motion through space and time.  Time and space are linked, and one person’s time is not the same as another’s.  Although time moves more slowly for a person in motion, this is not something that we can observe in our everyday lives, but scientific experiments have proven that this is true.

The Orion Nebula. See credit below.

 

By an experiment in which a jet plane circled the earth and time was measured by atomic clocks on the plane and on the ground, it was demonstrated that time moved more slowly on the plane, which was in motion, than it did on the earth.

 

The sharp differentiation that we make between past, present and future is an illusion because, Brien Greene explained, according to Einstein, “Time and space are fused together as space/time.”

 

In a different galaxy thousands of light years distant, an alien who is riding on a bicycle away from us, would not (assuming that he could look at us through his telescope) see us as we are in the present; instead he would see us in the past – perhaps during the time of Beethoven.  If the same alien were riding towards us on his bicycle, he would see us, not in the present, but in the future – perhaps as we will be 200 years from now. So, says Brian Greene, “Past, present, and future are all equally real….the future is not non-existent….Einstein shattered the distinction between past, present, and future.”

 

Just as, in a movie, every frame already exists on film, the flow of time, from a past that exists to a future that does not yet exist, is an illusion.

 

Though we think of wormholes as something belonging to science fiction, Einstein’s equations actually predict them, and they would provide gateways through both space and time.  Perhaps even if we don’t jump into them, we might just peer through them as a window to view what is far, far away, what has been, or what will be.

 

One of the most puzzling aspects of time is that it is one directional, though there is theoretically no reason why time should not flow in both directions.  There is simply the fact that it doesn’t.  The laws of physics do say in fact that time could go backwards, so the question asked is “Why doesn’t it?”  If one drops a wine glass and it shatters, one can’t reverse the action and have all the pieces streaming back together again.  Our lives go irreversibly in one direction, which leads to the question, “What is responsible for the arrow of time?”

 

Entropy is randomness, meaning that everything has a tendency to move toward disorder, like the pages of a book that fall apart, but do not fall back together again.

Billowing smoke becomes disordered.  Degrees of messiness increase.

 

The Mystic Mountain in the Carina Nebula. See credit below.

 

This problem of the directionality of time seems to be solved by taking entropy into account. The arrow of time comes from the tendency of nature to move towards increasing disorder. If one goes all the way back to the Big Bang, one arrives at a highly ordered situation.

 

At a single moment at the beginning, all matter was compressed neatly into one single point, all precisely ordered. After that came the beginning of disorder.  The universe expanded and spread out.  It can’t be put back, like the genie can’t be put back into the lamp.  So, at the Big Bang, the arrow of time was given its direction toward disorder. “Time is a 13.7 billion year old drive toward disorder.”

 

Scientists, who used to assume that the expansion of the universe was slowing over time, had a rude awakening a few years ago, with the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating – going faster and faster, and the galaxies are hurtling away from each other.  One day, our descendants will see no other galaxies, and the cosmic past will be out of reach.  Eventually there will be no movement and no time.  Brian Greene summed it up by saying, “The flow of time is an illusion…We are part of a far richer and far stranger reality.”

 

A thought or two

 

“The Illusion of Time” is very fascinating and brilliantly presented, though it does come to a rather grim ending. (We can’t, of course, hold scientists responsible for how the universe ends.)

 

However, interestingly, the idea that time and space are illusory is not new at all.  It is at least 5,000 years old – maybe 10,000 – maybe it is a timeless concept that has always been there.

 

The ancient texts of India describe time and space as illusory, as maya, having the appearance of reality, but not having the quality of ultimate reality.  We do not see the world as it truly is because of the veil of maya, just as, on a cloudy day, we do not see the sun hidden behind the cloud cover.  We do not see the true nature of time and space, until the veil is removed from our eyes.

 

Concerning the concept of entropy, long ago Hindu seers wrote that there are four ages – each on a lower, baser level than the last, until one arrives at the fourth, last age, the Kali Yuga, the age where we find ourselves now—an age of dishonesty, corruption, and negativity. This is an example of entropy – of traveling inexorably from order to disorder.

 

The concept of time as linear is, by and large, a western concept. In eastern thought, time tends to be not linear, but cyclical.  The four ages, the yugas, are one day in the life of Brahma, the Creator.  At the end of this day, Brahma goes to sleep, and then at dawn he awakens, ready to start a new day composed of another four ages.  Of course it’s somewhat more complicated, but that is a rough outline of what happens.  The four ages are one day in the life of Brahma.

 

This concept has a few things to be said for it – for one, it is not grim; for another, it has not only a poetic quality, but also a truthful quality.  And it transcends the problem of being stuck in a purely physical reality.

 

Brian Greene is a brilliant physicist who has taken us on an amazing journey into a strange world, a very thought-provoking journey.

 

Physicists of today are by no means limiting themselves to a linear view, quite the contrary.  There is the concept of multiverses.  (Brian Greene examines this in other programs, as part of the “Fabric of the Cosmos” series.)  This is the idea that there may not be just one universe, but countless or infinite parallel worlds; and one individual may exist in many of these at the same time or different times.  Have you ever felt that you were in more than one place?

 

A book that takes a look at this possibility is “2012” by Whitney Strieber.

It’s basically a horror novel, but if you don’t mind the horror bits too much (I did actually mind, but found the book intriguing anyway), it is fascinating reading.

 

Then, from another angle altogether, there is the legend of the Chinese general who lost a very important battle. It is said that the reason he lost the battle is that many years later, mistakes were made in the liturgy of his funeral.  The mistakes caused his life to be less auspicious and therefore led to the loss of the battle.  I suppose, if we are not too confused already, we could meditate on this as an alternate view of time and destiny.

 

In all societies of the past, ancient spiritual traditions recognized many levels of reality. There is the material level of everyday life where we walk along on our journey from day to day, but there are also the broader, more sunlit levels above, of mystical or magical realities from which we see with different eyes – seeing farther and more clearly—beyond the bounds of time and space. The things we cannot see from this earthly level, can be seen from other levels, as if we are looking out the window of an airplane or riding on a magic bird that flies above the clouds.

 

Photo credits:

“ESA/Hubble images, videos and web texts are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided they are clearly and visibly credited.”

Top photo: Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration / A star-forming region known as N90, on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Second photo: NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University). Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble) / The Crab Nebula. Observers in China and Japan recorded the supernova nearly 1,000 years ago, in 1054

Third photo: Credit: NASA,ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team / The Orion Nebula

Fourth photo: Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI) / The Carina Nebula: The Mystic Mountain

For more Hubble images and information, click here. 

For more on the Nova series, “The Fabric of Time”, click here.

 

 

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Looking elsewhere?

Filed under: Animals and the earth, Commentary — Leave a comment
June 28, 2012

Red Junglefowl

Having just written about the pros and cons of the Egg Products Bill now in the U.S. Congress, one is led necessarily to a broader thought about our treatment of animals. The underlying difficulty, of course, is that we, as the human race, do prey on other species, with little thought or concern for their well-being.  Rather than getting better, the fate of the billions of animals sacrificed in factory farming simply grows worse over time, with greater suffering on the part of the animals.

The explosion in the human population of our planet, the “advances” of technology,  the entrenched behavior patterns of the developed world and the economic rise of the developing world, all conspire to ensure that this trend will continue – like an unstoppable, relentless march.

Influencing the nature of human beings, bit by bit, a few at a time, which is certainly being done, even very successfully, by the countless dedicated groups and individuals at work throughout the world, through education and raising levels of awareness – is very much work worth doing. It awakens the consciousness of a few humans, greatly alleviates the suffering of some animals, lessens the misery of many, and brings a better life to a few. Helping a few of the earth’s animals is far, far better than doing nothing or than helping no animals at all. If we can help only one in a hundred, then let us focus on that one.

However, as we all suspect, though we are probably not saying so out loud – we are not actually winning in the battle to modify human nature, and there is no actual indication that any winning is going to happen ever on a grand scale.  (Though there is no denying that change for the better happens often, even dramatically, on a more modest scale.)  If the human race were, on the whole, becoming more compassionate and more enlightened with each passing year, surely we would be noticing fewer, less violent wars; kinder, more civil conduct; and a steady diminution of suffering for animals and for humans.  But none of this is happening.

This may sound fatalistic and entirely depressing, but there is no need for depression at all.  These are just the facts, and seeing them allows one to step beyond a level of mystery and confusion. “Human progress” is a myth, and a confusing myth at that.

If we seek clarity, we’d do better to focus on another perspective – on being open to any insight from almost anywhere and almost any other time, except here.  Any insight that may arrive from other worlds, other visions, other dimensions, or from the most ancient civilizations on our own planet – from their perceptions and realities, often so profoundly forgotten, which may lead us back to a kinder world, would be welcome.

This concept, though at first glance it may seem irrelevant and incomprehensible, is the link between the search for wisdom in ancient cultures and the doomed and bereft state of our own current existence as humans.  The pathway lies elsewhere, not here in our hollow, modern perceptions, and elsewhere is where we need to look.

It is noteworthy that many ancient traditions see the world as manifesting in several succeeding worlds, in cycles.  As one world comes to an end, another begins.  As the most degenerate and cruel age is dissolved finally into nothingness, then a kinder, more noble age is born. It would seem that this would be the direction to look in to glimpse the way through the fogs of the desolation of our present age.

Photo: Lip Kee Yap / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.” / “Red Junglefowl at Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India.”  The Red Junglefowl of India is the ancestor of the domestic chicken.

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From quantum physics to the concept of Maya

Filed under: Commentary, Old Europe, Tales of India — Leave a comment
January 6, 2012

The Whirlpool Galaxy

Did you know that sub-atomic particles can communicate with each other instantaneously over a distance?

Well, they can.

If you think about it, this is kind of amazing.

In quantum physics, there is something that physicists call “entanglement”, which refers to the relationship between two sub-atomic particles. (I don’t understand this very well, so one or two details may be amiss, but you can read more about it at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test_experiments)

All this is interesting because of the implications of the theory. A number of actual physical experiments have been conducted, the Bell test experiments, which scientifically proved this.

Sub-atomic particles have a spin – either clockwise or counterclockwise – and this can be measured. When two particles are “entangled” or connected, one will have a spin opposite to that of the other.  When the spin of the first one is changed, say from clockwise to counterclockwise, then the spin of the other will automatically reverse as well.

Now the really weird thing is that this happens even when they are not near each other.  It happens across distances.  In the experiments that have been done, in which the spin of Particle A is changed from one direction to the opposite – the spin of Particle B, which has been moved to several kilometers away, then changes automatically, by itself, at the exact same moment in time – even though there is no possible line of communication between the two.  Somehow information has passed instantaneously, faster than the speed of light, from one particle to the other.

Max Planck, who discovered quantum physics

To actually understand this properly and be convinced, you’ll need to read an explanation from an authoritative source, which is not me – so I would suggest you look it up online – or read any of many books on quantum physics or watch any of several TV programs.

In any case, it is an accepted scientific observation in the real world.

These experiments are intriguing – and what seems most intriguing, though this is a leap from the scientific world of measurement to the philosophical world of speculation is that it would seem that the only way to explain this is to say that space and time do not have any absolute existence – indeed that the entire physical universe is not really real in quite the way we have always imagined it to be. This is generally accepted by physicists as true too, since the last time the physical world seemed to actually correspond to the “common sense” way of perceiving it was in the days of Isaac Newton (although even Isaac Newton had his own peculiarities, being obsessed with topics like prophecy and alchemy, but that’s another story).

Anyway, this lack of substantiality of the physical world cannot help but remind one of some of the concepts of ancient Hindu thought that evolved hundreds or thousands of years ago – like the concept of Maya – sometimes translated as “illusion,” but it certainly seems that the concept of Maya is much more complex than that.  It is associated with ideas of “magic” and “power” and the bringing into existence of a field of limitations which cause one to see only the physical reality that we live in every day – and to mistake this for the ultimate reality, which we are generally blind to – except in flashes of great, clarifying insight.

The example used often is that of a rope. In the darkness, a rope lying on the ground can be mistaken for a snake, which can be a great cause of fear.  But when daylight shines, it is seen clearly to be just a rope.

Adi Shankar, ninth century Hindu saint who wrote about “Maya”

There are higher levels of reality, and we have glimpses of these – intuitions, inspirations, visions, and dreams – moments of clarity and insight, which come to us from a higher source or a higher world, where the things that are are not at all separate, distinct, and isolated – but where reality is much more fluid, where there are millions of unseen connections, not explainable by the simple laws physics as we think we understand them.

This awareness leads to a perception of art, myth, spiritual traditions, history and prehistory, as having a more profound, more pervasive reality than we might have thought – where “truth” is of a higher level – where we are not isolated individual beings – but instead are all interconnected – where, for example, the environment and the human are not in opposition, but are one – where, ultimately, the trees, the stars, the clouds, the butterflies, the rabbits, and the tigers are not separate from us.  We are they, and they are us.

In the end, scientific and mathematical theory and also the knowledge passed down in the most ancient writings point the way in the same direction – that there is a mystical, spiritual reality – that there are levels infinitely more real — clearer, brighter, and more luminous than the foggy world shown to us through the cultural lens of our current world civilization.

Dr. Michio Kaku has some interesting, sometimes similar, observations.  Here is the link to his website: http://mkaku.org/home/?cat=59

Top photo: Wikimedia Commons. “This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA.” / (Spiral Galaxy M51, NGC 5194) is a classic spiral galaxy located in the Canes Venatici constellation.

Second photo: / Wikimedia Commons / “This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or fewer.” / Photo of a 1904 painting by Raja Ravi Varma.

Third photo: ”For photographic pictures (fotografiska bilder), such as images by the press, the image is public domain if created before January 1, 1969.” Wikimedia Commons / source: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1918/planck-bio.html 

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A study of wolves in the Chernobyl area

Filed under: Animals and the earth, Commentary, Old Europe — Leave a comment
October 23, 2011

I just watched the program Nature, on PBS, about the environment around Chernobyl 25 years after the nuclear accident.  It featured two Russian scientists, one of whom has spent his life studying wolves.

 

Following the Chernobyl accident, the forest in the immediate area turned red.  Now it is green again.  They observed the wolf packs and the young cubs.  They also watched the doormice.  They found that 4 to 6 percent of the doormice had abnormalities, presumably caused by radiation.  The rest of the dormice population was healthy, normal, and thriving.

 

The two scientists did not remain in the area for long at a time because of the radiation danger, and no humans live there.

 

In two weeks of observation, they located 17 wolf packs and around 120 individual wolves.  The one wolf expert had an extraordinary ability to call the wolves by howling.  Wolves appeared out of the trees, howling as well.

 

White-tailed eagles, ravens, songbirds, and the carp in the river seemed well and healthy. They spotted a large boar.

 

The beaver were not doing too well since they are prey to the wolves.

 

The scenery and the beautiful winter light on the trees and the rivers gave the impression of a magical world.

 

The conclusion the scientists drew was that the population of wolves and the habitat in general was exactly the same, no better and no worse than other natural, undisturbed wilderness areas.

 

This is an area where humans cannot go because of the high levels of radiation. It is interesting to recall that, as humans, we are the weakest of the earth’s creatures, having lost much of our original physical strength over the course of the centuries while we have removed ourselves further and further from the natural world, and as we make a habit of living in artificial environments.  Other primates for example, even the small ones, are much stronger than we are.  We are no longer well adapted to living in nature.

 

This study, done by the two Russian scientists, seemed, in its own way, remarkably hopeful and uplifting, for the future of animals and the earth.

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