One last time in 2016, dusk is falling, and the golden horizon looks beautiful from behind the window... it's been a cruelly cold day though, barely climbing into the 30s, and will be a brutally cold night. I'll be staying right here, watching fireworks from my balcony as usual on New Year's Eve. It's not a season to leave shelter overnight, not for me.
I've heard many complain that 2016 wasn't a good year, but to me it wasn't that bad. Much better than 2015 when I suffered those severe back problems - severe for a young warrior like me anyway, but once more I learned not to trust in the opinions of doctors but to trust in Satan instead.
Sadly the winter will still last for a long time when the new year has come, but hopefully it will leave when it's due to leave according to the calendar. The winter of 2016 lingered all the way throughout June and into July, that's what I disliked about the year. But my health has been much better again than the year before.
The journey continues, steadily on toward more power and clarity, and what more could I wish for also for the coming year. More milestones in my physical performance, and also spiritual progress on the path of Black Flame and cold heart, and unbending intent of a warrior. Onward I shall march with all my devotion to Satan, and Him I wish to serve in everything I do, each of my days.
Ad Majorem Satanae Gloriam!
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Extraterrestrial, and free of parasites
Only three days to the solstice now, and then another ten and the year will be done.
The coming year 2017 for me will mark a happy 10 year anniversary of being parasite free!
Not of lice or tapeworms or any other small bugs, but the noxious type of psychic vampires otherwise known as "family". 10 years of free thinking without this toxic burden polluting my waking life - just the troubled dreams are still quite frequent.
Free thinking... the sad thing is, I even thought I was doing that before while still afflicted with those leeches.It took me a long time to break free, and it's probably still in progress. There are other patterns of indoctrinated thinking to rid oneself of, it's a task that's never really done.
My rebellion started early, and although a worthy and necessary thing, rebellion may often lack direction when born out of sheer desperation.
I'm an alien from outer space who ended up in a human body by accident.
This is what I used to profess perfect conviction of when I was 13 years old. I never really believed it was true although I desperately tried to convince myself that it was true because in a way it was my only hope, and I would never admit to anyone then to have even the slightest doubt that it was true.
The weird thing is, in some way it even is the truth - of course not literally, but in a metaphorical way it's still closer to the truth than I'd ever have imagined back then. My "family" wanted me to be one of them but I wasn't, and it was the last thing in the world I wanted to be!
So I chose to be an alien because that's what I was and am. But back then I didn't know the difference between literal and metaphorical; I was existing in some awful hole exiled from the world about which I didn't know anything much then. I had no one to talk to, let alone to learn from, and no one to ever take me seriously, so it didn't matter at all what I told them or whether they'd think I was insane, I was completely on my own either way.
And that I was trapped in a body that was absolutely unacceptable to me, nothing could ever have been more true than that!
When thinking back it remains an unintelligible conundrum how I could ever have eventually found my way out of that tremendous mess, that utter disaster, which was then my existence (and certainly not a life).
But the conundrum appears to my rational mind only, the part that has learned a scientific way of thinking with its continual demand of evidence. But some varieties thereof are inaccessible to this way of thinking, they only can be found internally and are incommunicable to the outside world.
For instance, do colors really exist? Reductive materialist science says they don't: They're only our brains' interpretation of different wavelengths of light. But how do you measure those wavelengths?
Sure, there are instruments to do it with, but how can we know the measurements of these instruments, or know even the instruments themselves? When all we can ever really know is our brain's interpretation of the instrument, as well as of the measurements taken by it!
Of course, these are not new ideas that haven't ever been thought before by anyone, and yet they are important realizations.
It is as important as ever to question everything, all the stuff presented as self-evident when in fact it is not.
Here's to continually freeing the mind...
HAIL SATAN!
The coming year 2017 for me will mark a happy 10 year anniversary of being parasite free!
Not of lice or tapeworms or any other small bugs, but the noxious type of psychic vampires otherwise known as "family". 10 years of free thinking without this toxic burden polluting my waking life - just the troubled dreams are still quite frequent.
Free thinking... the sad thing is, I even thought I was doing that before while still afflicted with those leeches.It took me a long time to break free, and it's probably still in progress. There are other patterns of indoctrinated thinking to rid oneself of, it's a task that's never really done.
My rebellion started early, and although a worthy and necessary thing, rebellion may often lack direction when born out of sheer desperation.
I'm an alien from outer space who ended up in a human body by accident.
This is what I used to profess perfect conviction of when I was 13 years old. I never really believed it was true although I desperately tried to convince myself that it was true because in a way it was my only hope, and I would never admit to anyone then to have even the slightest doubt that it was true.
The weird thing is, in some way it even is the truth - of course not literally, but in a metaphorical way it's still closer to the truth than I'd ever have imagined back then. My "family" wanted me to be one of them but I wasn't, and it was the last thing in the world I wanted to be!
So I chose to be an alien because that's what I was and am. But back then I didn't know the difference between literal and metaphorical; I was existing in some awful hole exiled from the world about which I didn't know anything much then. I had no one to talk to, let alone to learn from, and no one to ever take me seriously, so it didn't matter at all what I told them or whether they'd think I was insane, I was completely on my own either way.
And that I was trapped in a body that was absolutely unacceptable to me, nothing could ever have been more true than that!
When thinking back it remains an unintelligible conundrum how I could ever have eventually found my way out of that tremendous mess, that utter disaster, which was then my existence (and certainly not a life).
But the conundrum appears to my rational mind only, the part that has learned a scientific way of thinking with its continual demand of evidence. But some varieties thereof are inaccessible to this way of thinking, they only can be found internally and are incommunicable to the outside world.
For instance, do colors really exist? Reductive materialist science says they don't: They're only our brains' interpretation of different wavelengths of light. But how do you measure those wavelengths?
Sure, there are instruments to do it with, but how can we know the measurements of these instruments, or know even the instruments themselves? When all we can ever really know is our brain's interpretation of the instrument, as well as of the measurements taken by it!
Of course, these are not new ideas that haven't ever been thought before by anyone, and yet they are important realizations.
It is as important as ever to question everything, all the stuff presented as self-evident when in fact it is not.
Here's to continually freeing the mind...
HAIL SATAN!
Monday, November 28, 2016
Female serial killer
I awoke in the night, about 1:30 AM, from a very interesting dream.
The serial killer was held at some institution which didn't resemble a jail very much, unless perhaps a very advanced version of the future or simply of that non-physical realm. Locks and bars were entirely absent; the institution consisted of a complex of concrete buildings but the girl was located outside of them. There only were massive numbers of micro cams everywhere, not even really hidden as they glowed faintly green in the dark.
Perhaps it was just a visiting area, but it consisted of an arrangement of sofas and comfortable chairs in an open air setting,sparsely lit under twilight skies on some remote hill.
I got there with a group of other visitors - journalists? psychologists? - who all timidly settled on one side of the arrangement of sofas while the girl sat on the other side. They were terrified of her.
I didn't sit with them. Instead I circled around and approached her from the other side.
The girl was very young, no older than 20, short curly hair, light brown skin, very pretty. I greeted her, talked to her, said how all this security around here would drive me so nuts I'd feel obliged to flip the bird to those cams all the time, which I did. She smiled at me, seemed to like me or at least to find me amusing - the least I could do for her, to make her understand I was on her side. I sure liked her a lot.
But unfortunately I woke up before she could answer me. Only then I really noted the fact that she hadn't been one person but an at least five-fold presence - the group of other visitors sitting on one side, separated from the "group" of her. All her identical, quintuple representations smiled at me as I alone was walking into her midst with my antics. She was wearing a neon-pink shirt with something printed on it - all five of her were wearing that, of course - and it looked much like a summer shirt I have in waking life, printed on it is a skull and in letters shaped like bones the words "LIVE FREE OR DIE".
I think that's what she was wearing, and the statement matches - she actually appeared very much in control of the situation and the others had good reason to be scared, she was very dangerous and they couldn't really confine her.
This dream, although too short, made me feel really good, it came like the answer to my yesterday's frustration about all that white-light bullshit. For here was a person who was living proof that the darkside is also represented and very powerful out there, beautiful, aloof, and absolutely terrifying.
The serial killer was held at some institution which didn't resemble a jail very much, unless perhaps a very advanced version of the future or simply of that non-physical realm. Locks and bars were entirely absent; the institution consisted of a complex of concrete buildings but the girl was located outside of them. There only were massive numbers of micro cams everywhere, not even really hidden as they glowed faintly green in the dark.
Perhaps it was just a visiting area, but it consisted of an arrangement of sofas and comfortable chairs in an open air setting,sparsely lit under twilight skies on some remote hill.
I got there with a group of other visitors - journalists? psychologists? - who all timidly settled on one side of the arrangement of sofas while the girl sat on the other side. They were terrified of her.
I didn't sit with them. Instead I circled around and approached her from the other side.
The girl was very young, no older than 20, short curly hair, light brown skin, very pretty. I greeted her, talked to her, said how all this security around here would drive me so nuts I'd feel obliged to flip the bird to those cams all the time, which I did. She smiled at me, seemed to like me or at least to find me amusing - the least I could do for her, to make her understand I was on her side. I sure liked her a lot.
But unfortunately I woke up before she could answer me. Only then I really noted the fact that she hadn't been one person but an at least five-fold presence - the group of other visitors sitting on one side, separated from the "group" of her. All her identical, quintuple representations smiled at me as I alone was walking into her midst with my antics. She was wearing a neon-pink shirt with something printed on it - all five of her were wearing that, of course - and it looked much like a summer shirt I have in waking life, printed on it is a skull and in letters shaped like bones the words "LIVE FREE OR DIE".
I think that's what she was wearing, and the statement matches - she actually appeared very much in control of the situation and the others had good reason to be scared, she was very dangerous and they couldn't really confine her.
This dream, although too short, made me feel really good, it came like the answer to my yesterday's frustration about all that white-light bullshit. For here was a person who was living proof that the darkside is also represented and very powerful out there, beautiful, aloof, and absolutely terrifying.
Sunday, November 27, 2016
...all else is just crap
Although we have a new president by now and things are mildly interesting (but don't bug me with politics), there's nothing new really in my world. I'm still on my same quest, yet hitting all but dead ends in seeking spiritual advancement, as all the paths I come across are headed in the wrong direction and therefore to be shunned.
After getting a recommendation on Amazon for a book about OBE (out-of-body experiences) I researched that author and found a video in which he talked about his experiences and his path; I watched the whole nearly 1 hour video (which was only part 1 of 2) and afterward I felt nearly physically sick.
I don't blame the man for simply being who he is, but myself being who I am that basically makes us completely different species, in a spiritual sense, his path being the opposite of my own, and I simply can't help feeling sick whenever coming up against that white-light, compassion and one-ness stuff.
This is such a dead end, there is nothing for me in it. Even though he did mention that all of reality is so much vaster than the tiny fraction of it that we experience, a statement I fully agree with, all the rest sounded as if there was just his one narrow, one-dimensional path to go, one of subservience and self-denial and, although he never expressly mentioned God, I'm under the impression to say, of utterly shameful submission to that tyrant.
There are a number of similar publications out there, all apparently of the same movement, and for the sake of curiosity and "the more you know" I've read a few.
The video left me feeling agitated and depressed.
So where do I turn? Where do I find help? There can be only one answer, the one that has always been: SATAN.
And this is the one positive aspect about it all: At least this much is above and beyond any doubt. The more I see and learn of the other side, the more glaring the certainty that my own spiritual home and refuge is with Satan. Everything that's worthwhile is of Satan or at least has some of His powerful essence within; all else is just crap.
So instead of posting the video lecture here (the author's name is Jurgen Ziewe, if interested you can easily find him) I'll be leaving this beautiful song here which soothes my soul and makes me feel much better.
After getting a recommendation on Amazon for a book about OBE (out-of-body experiences) I researched that author and found a video in which he talked about his experiences and his path; I watched the whole nearly 1 hour video (which was only part 1 of 2) and afterward I felt nearly physically sick.
I don't blame the man for simply being who he is, but myself being who I am that basically makes us completely different species, in a spiritual sense, his path being the opposite of my own, and I simply can't help feeling sick whenever coming up against that white-light, compassion and one-ness stuff.
This is such a dead end, there is nothing for me in it. Even though he did mention that all of reality is so much vaster than the tiny fraction of it that we experience, a statement I fully agree with, all the rest sounded as if there was just his one narrow, one-dimensional path to go, one of subservience and self-denial and, although he never expressly mentioned God, I'm under the impression to say, of utterly shameful submission to that tyrant.
There are a number of similar publications out there, all apparently of the same movement, and for the sake of curiosity and "the more you know" I've read a few.
The video left me feeling agitated and depressed.
So where do I turn? Where do I find help? There can be only one answer, the one that has always been: SATAN.
And this is the one positive aspect about it all: At least this much is above and beyond any doubt. The more I see and learn of the other side, the more glaring the certainty that my own spiritual home and refuge is with Satan. Everything that's worthwhile is of Satan or at least has some of His powerful essence within; all else is just crap.
So instead of posting the video lecture here (the author's name is Jurgen Ziewe, if interested you can easily find him) I'll be leaving this beautiful song here which soothes my soul and makes me feel much better.
Sunday, October 30, 2016
God vs. God, and Einstein's immortality
I've been dealing a lot with the "war" between theists and atheists, the questions why atheism nowadays is most often taken to imply not to believe in anything other than the physical universe instead of merely not believing in any gods, and why a nonphysical consciousness (soul) and its survival after the death of the body should necessitate a religious concept.
To myself, the terms "soul" and "consciousness" are perfectly interchangeable and really mean the same thing, and although being a Satanist means I am religious in a way, having (or more precisely, being) a soul/consciousness has by itself nothing to do with either God or Satan or religion in general.
Regardless, in the majority of cases those who do profess, as do I, the view that consciousness is fundamental and transcends physical existence sooner or later arrive at talking about "God".
But another curious thing I couldn't help noticing is that God is not the same as God.
That is, the one God is the Abrahamic God of mainstream religions: the God of the bible, Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, or as the Jews write simply G-d; he is a personal god who gives out laws for people to abide to and who can cast you out into Hell if you don't.
The other version of God is more like a universal consciousness which is creator-god in so far as he/it actually became the whole universe, this God is infinite and encompasses everything in existence.
Yet strangely, they usually don't seem to see any conflict between these two versions.
Believers in the Abrahamic God will readily say, "oh yes, God creates everything so he truly is in everything."
And the not traditionally-religious people will say, "yes, the universal God is the one that inspired all the great religions." And both kinds of people will usually say that God represents good, love, compassion and kindness.
You could say that in both cases this can't be true - the God of mainstream religions waged wars, inspired crusades, the Inquisition, torture, slavery and genocide.
Maybe the distinction isn't so great at all in that the Universe does much the same.
The Universe though does not favor compassion over cruelty (etc.), the universe is impersonal and unbiased. The Universe is not good or love - at least not only; it incorporates these just as much as it does evil and hate and it has no preference for either.
An infinite, "universal consciousness" version of god would certainly also include evil, darkness, and every other trait conceived as "negative" and absent in the god of mainstream religions.
Ok... the great commonality though seems to be that in both cases believers appear to be blind to this negative side of their God or to simply deny it.
In this aspect at least, the materialists appear to be more honest. To them, there is only evolution,both cosmological and biological, without true cause and without purpose, and they will freely admit that especially in the biological part, war and violence are great driving forces.
Myself being a Satanist, I'm not biased against any of these negative forces, nor do I embrace human values such as love, compassion and kindness; I see need for these latter ones as weakness just as much as falling victim to any of the former. Human nature is not something to be elevated or celebrated but something at all costs to be overcome, to break free from. To celebrate humanity means celebrating weakness and vulnerability. Once you overcome weakness and vulnerability you won't have any need for compassion or kindness. I wish to overcome the need for anything, because becoming truly free means free from any need - need for food, water, sleep, shelter... free from incarceration in a weak body that depends on all of these. A goal which can only be reached beyond this earthly life, obviously.
I figured out a long time ago, somewhere in the back of my mind, that even if I should be wrong about the primacy of consciousness and the concept I have of a nonphysical afterlife, there is one way in which eternal existence is virtually guaranteed; this being an idea that arose from everything I learned about cosmological spacetime from a purely scientific point if view but which I had never realized in any real concrete way until I chanced upon the video below, and I'd had no idea that Einstein held this belief.
Obviously it can't be proven experimentally and yet I'd think it follows logically from the scientific view.
To myself, the terms "soul" and "consciousness" are perfectly interchangeable and really mean the same thing, and although being a Satanist means I am religious in a way, having (or more precisely, being) a soul/consciousness has by itself nothing to do with either God or Satan or religion in general.
Regardless, in the majority of cases those who do profess, as do I, the view that consciousness is fundamental and transcends physical existence sooner or later arrive at talking about "God".
But another curious thing I couldn't help noticing is that God is not the same as God.
That is, the one God is the Abrahamic God of mainstream religions: the God of the bible, Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, or as the Jews write simply G-d; he is a personal god who gives out laws for people to abide to and who can cast you out into Hell if you don't.
The other version of God is more like a universal consciousness which is creator-god in so far as he/it actually became the whole universe, this God is infinite and encompasses everything in existence.
Yet strangely, they usually don't seem to see any conflict between these two versions.
Believers in the Abrahamic God will readily say, "oh yes, God creates everything so he truly is in everything."
And the not traditionally-religious people will say, "yes, the universal God is the one that inspired all the great religions." And both kinds of people will usually say that God represents good, love, compassion and kindness.
You could say that in both cases this can't be true - the God of mainstream religions waged wars, inspired crusades, the Inquisition, torture, slavery and genocide.
Maybe the distinction isn't so great at all in that the Universe does much the same.
The Universe though does not favor compassion over cruelty (etc.), the universe is impersonal and unbiased. The Universe is not good or love - at least not only; it incorporates these just as much as it does evil and hate and it has no preference for either.
An infinite, "universal consciousness" version of god would certainly also include evil, darkness, and every other trait conceived as "negative" and absent in the god of mainstream religions.
Ok... the great commonality though seems to be that in both cases believers appear to be blind to this negative side of their God or to simply deny it.
In this aspect at least, the materialists appear to be more honest. To them, there is only evolution,both cosmological and biological, without true cause and without purpose, and they will freely admit that especially in the biological part, war and violence are great driving forces.
Myself being a Satanist, I'm not biased against any of these negative forces, nor do I embrace human values such as love, compassion and kindness; I see need for these latter ones as weakness just as much as falling victim to any of the former. Human nature is not something to be elevated or celebrated but something at all costs to be overcome, to break free from. To celebrate humanity means celebrating weakness and vulnerability. Once you overcome weakness and vulnerability you won't have any need for compassion or kindness. I wish to overcome the need for anything, because becoming truly free means free from any need - need for food, water, sleep, shelter... free from incarceration in a weak body that depends on all of these. A goal which can only be reached beyond this earthly life, obviously.
I figured out a long time ago, somewhere in the back of my mind, that even if I should be wrong about the primacy of consciousness and the concept I have of a nonphysical afterlife, there is one way in which eternal existence is virtually guaranteed; this being an idea that arose from everything I learned about cosmological spacetime from a purely scientific point if view but which I had never realized in any real concrete way until I chanced upon the video below, and I'd had no idea that Einstein held this belief.
Obviously it can't be proven experimentally and yet I'd think it follows logically from the scientific view.
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
I want to know those WHO WANT TO KNOW
It's been just over a week now since I deactivated Facebook. It feels a bit lonely but I know it's an illusion that it would be lonelier than before in any meaningful way because I'd be easy enough to find for anyone who cared to; I'm right here, after all. Up until the post preceding this one I always shared every single one of my blog posts on Facebook, and as a rough estimation I received an average of 0.5 "likes" and 0.05 comments per post. (That is, occasionally one "like", rarely more than one, most often zero; comments being exceptionally rare, even on posts where I explicitly asked for feedback.) Most popular were posts containing photos, especially such of my person at the FIBO and such. People hate reading, as it appears - and why would they be more interested in looking at the vessel I'm embodied in that they are in my person?!
Humans are still difficult to understand for me, and yes I'm certainly aware that there are different levels to "understanding". Myself I happen to be all intellect and very little emotion. I do possess a high level of a sort of intuition, but I'd call this sort a "philosophical intuition" (the word philosophy means "love of knowledge"): it derives from reasoning and experience, not from feeling. My "interpersonal skills" are very low, I wouldn't have needed any psychological test to tell me that; it's pretty natural for a reclusive loner.
I may be a hardcore misanthropist to boot, hating the overpopulating human pest species for what it's doing to the rest of all lifeforms on Earth - to the oceans, the rainforests, the planet as a whole. But my vision is certainly wide enough to see that I also need humans - no, not in that silly way! - I need them on my quest for understanding and to expand my knowledge. As you can see I like to frequently put hyperlinks in my posts, which means in turn that I like to use the internet a lot (which was made by people), to read a lot and to search for information, which was written and put there by someone. Intellectual advancement is impossible without communication of some sort, even if not necessarily personal communication - I rarely know the authors of books and articles I read and rarely interact with them besides reading and sometimes sharing their writings, but everything has been written by someone. Reading and writing always is a form of communication.
People sometimes tend to take words too much at face value. For instance, being a true Satanist (that is, one who worships Satan) I have so often railed against LaVeyan (pseudo-)"Satanism", and I've made myself very clear when saying that "a thing like “LaVeyan Satanism” doesn’t exist. Yes, they wrongly call themselves that - but Satanism is the worship of Satan, and LaVeyans are atheists." On which I once received the incredibly asinine comment: "I’m sorry that LaVeyan Satanism doesn’t exist in your world, but in the real world, it does."
Obviously I wouldn't ever dispute that something called "LaVeyan Satanism" does exist - if it didn't then I'd have no reason to rail against it! - but their use of this very term is virtually the only quarrel I have with LaVeyan "Satanists". I'm generally a very tolerant person who understands that everyone has their own reality tunnel and needs to find their very own paths - I even tolerate Christians! (...and found that can I often relate to their views much more than I can to those of materialist atheists, including LaVeyans.)
They simply shouldn't use the term "Satanism" for it since they don't believe in, let alone worship, Satan; that's all of the problem I have with them. The term "Satanism" should be reserved for the belief in Satan, period.
If there's no worship of Satan involved then it's not Satanism, and that's why LaVeyan Satanism does not exist - in particular not in the real world! But only in the world of meaningless words, or in a world that also contains stationary transportation, soundless music, and most notably atheistic Christianity. A world where the sun shines all throughout the night and by daytime it's always pitch dark.
I think this is a major part of the problem: that words all too often are confused with their meaning (or sometimes their meaninglessness, as it is). The advancement of knowledge depends on communication, and communication usually relies on words, which often turn out a rather crude and unreliable instrument of conveying meaning. Yet we have little choice to try and use it anyway as best as we can.
And those are the people I'd like to meet and communicate with: The ones who WANT TO KNOW in the way I do - to look beyond mere words and appearances, to try and figure out consciousness and reality, to know the true nature of existence.
Humans are still difficult to understand for me, and yes I'm certainly aware that there are different levels to "understanding". Myself I happen to be all intellect and very little emotion. I do possess a high level of a sort of intuition, but I'd call this sort a "philosophical intuition" (the word philosophy means "love of knowledge"): it derives from reasoning and experience, not from feeling. My "interpersonal skills" are very low, I wouldn't have needed any psychological test to tell me that; it's pretty natural for a reclusive loner.
I may be a hardcore misanthropist to boot, hating the overpopulating human pest species for what it's doing to the rest of all lifeforms on Earth - to the oceans, the rainforests, the planet as a whole. But my vision is certainly wide enough to see that I also need humans - no, not in that silly way! - I need them on my quest for understanding and to expand my knowledge. As you can see I like to frequently put hyperlinks in my posts, which means in turn that I like to use the internet a lot (which was made by people), to read a lot and to search for information, which was written and put there by someone. Intellectual advancement is impossible without communication of some sort, even if not necessarily personal communication - I rarely know the authors of books and articles I read and rarely interact with them besides reading and sometimes sharing their writings, but everything has been written by someone. Reading and writing always is a form of communication.
People sometimes tend to take words too much at face value. For instance, being a true Satanist (that is, one who worships Satan) I have so often railed against LaVeyan (pseudo-)"Satanism", and I've made myself very clear when saying that "a thing like “LaVeyan Satanism” doesn’t exist. Yes, they wrongly call themselves that - but Satanism is the worship of Satan, and LaVeyans are atheists." On which I once received the incredibly asinine comment: "I’m sorry that LaVeyan Satanism doesn’t exist in your world, but in the real world, it does."
Obviously I wouldn't ever dispute that something called "LaVeyan Satanism" does exist - if it didn't then I'd have no reason to rail against it! - but their use of this very term is virtually the only quarrel I have with LaVeyan "Satanists". I'm generally a very tolerant person who understands that everyone has their own reality tunnel and needs to find their very own paths - I even tolerate Christians! (...and found that can I often relate to their views much more than I can to those of materialist atheists, including LaVeyans.)
They simply shouldn't use the term "Satanism" for it since they don't believe in, let alone worship, Satan; that's all of the problem I have with them. The term "Satanism" should be reserved for the belief in Satan, period.
If there's no worship of Satan involved then it's not Satanism, and that's why LaVeyan Satanism does not exist - in particular not in the real world! But only in the world of meaningless words, or in a world that also contains stationary transportation, soundless music, and most notably atheistic Christianity. A world where the sun shines all throughout the night and by daytime it's always pitch dark.
I think this is a major part of the problem: that words all too often are confused with their meaning (or sometimes their meaninglessness, as it is). The advancement of knowledge depends on communication, and communication usually relies on words, which often turn out a rather crude and unreliable instrument of conveying meaning. Yet we have little choice to try and use it anyway as best as we can.
And those are the people I'd like to meet and communicate with: The ones who WANT TO KNOW in the way I do - to look beyond mere words and appearances, to try and figure out consciousness and reality, to know the true nature of existence.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Dress rehearsal... of sorts
I'm dead to the world - a little bit more now than I've already been usually.
I rode to a fleamarket today, one of the last times before the long, dead winter months - technically that was yesterday as it's nearly 3 AM now and I can't sleep once more. I always used to think of night time as "in between yesterday and tomorrow", but without a "today": October 9th was yesterday, October 10th will be by morning; right now it's "in between days".
My bouts of insomnia happen about every other night and usually I don't get up but just keep lying around for some hours. But maybe it's time to change a few things; fortunately I can sleep or wake at any time I like, and even my gym is open 24/7, so I could go there right now.
I didn't talk to anyone all day, just like on most days. Except when praying to Satan and when talking a bit to myself, the latter I think is done by most people who spend most of their time alone.
The reason I'm more dead to the world than usual is because I just deactivated my Facebook account. All of a sudden FB wouldn't let me use my name anymore, I couldn't log in anymore without changing it, nor could I change it in any useful manner. When I first registered there, about 5 years ago, I tried to use Diana the Warrior just like here but it didn't work (wouldn't be "approved"), so I settled for my alternative name, Gladiatrix Satanae, which is Latin for "she-warrior of Satan".
(Technically, gladiator/gladiatrix means "sword fighter", there's another more general Latin word for warrior, bellatrix, but I find it unfortunate for a name because "bella" also means beauty in Italian and some people might confuse the meaning there, and calling oneself beautiful would be the most ridiculous and embarrassing thing; it's something done by the sort of people who wear dresses and makeup, not warriors!)
When forced to change the name I tried "Diana Satanswarrior" but that didn't work either; I was about to give up but then it turned out when I changed only the first name I could log in again. Now that gives "Diana Satanae", which makes little sense. It's "Diana of Satan", but the warrior part is missing and it sounds quite ill matched. And anyway, what's a "real" name? Diana is not my real name, it's a name given to me by the hoe that once shat me into this world and the memory of whom contributes quite a good deal to my insomnia and bad dreams.
I never really liked the name, especially for the horrible shit the Germans make of it, they pronounce it more like the -diana part in "Indiana", but more German sounding: "dee - ahna", with a very long "ah" sound in the middle, it sounds very, very ugly and I often have to correct the same person several times in a row which gets extremely tiresome.
I don't have any name more real than Gladiatrix Satanae, or Satan's Warrior, because that's what I am. I'm a warrior and belonging to Satan; furthermore I don't know who or what I am. I'm glad I know at least this much, and life is a quest of finding it out.
Being more dead to the world... being off Facebook is like a dress rehearsal for my actual death, of sorts. A good exercise, I guess. I said so often that I meant to update this blog more often and it's in fact a more reasonable place to put my thoughts, even if no one reads it. I have practically no contacts outside of Facebook. Will anyone miss me? I highly doubt it. Will anyone try to contact me by other ways? Even much more doubtful. But who cares - I'm here for Satan and for myself, and there's no one else to ever rely on. I never really needed anyone else, and no one ever needed me, and at least in this regard I'm fortunately truly free, unbound by anyone or anything, free to move on whenever it should happen.
Needing to breathe, to eat and drink, to sleep, are obligations enough. I've never really been of this world and can't relate to the pleasure most people seem to find in it. I am truly alien to it,and still I don't know why, or how I ended up here although I don't belong.
The quest continues.
I rode to a fleamarket today, one of the last times before the long, dead winter months - technically that was yesterday as it's nearly 3 AM now and I can't sleep once more. I always used to think of night time as "in between yesterday and tomorrow", but without a "today": October 9th was yesterday, October 10th will be by morning; right now it's "in between days".
My bouts of insomnia happen about every other night and usually I don't get up but just keep lying around for some hours. But maybe it's time to change a few things; fortunately I can sleep or wake at any time I like, and even my gym is open 24/7, so I could go there right now.
I didn't talk to anyone all day, just like on most days. Except when praying to Satan and when talking a bit to myself, the latter I think is done by most people who spend most of their time alone.
The reason I'm more dead to the world than usual is because I just deactivated my Facebook account. All of a sudden FB wouldn't let me use my name anymore, I couldn't log in anymore without changing it, nor could I change it in any useful manner. When I first registered there, about 5 years ago, I tried to use Diana the Warrior just like here but it didn't work (wouldn't be "approved"), so I settled for my alternative name, Gladiatrix Satanae, which is Latin for "she-warrior of Satan".
(Technically, gladiator/gladiatrix means "sword fighter", there's another more general Latin word for warrior, bellatrix, but I find it unfortunate for a name because "bella" also means beauty in Italian and some people might confuse the meaning there, and calling oneself beautiful would be the most ridiculous and embarrassing thing; it's something done by the sort of people who wear dresses and makeup, not warriors!)
When forced to change the name I tried "Diana Satanswarrior" but that didn't work either; I was about to give up but then it turned out when I changed only the first name I could log in again. Now that gives "Diana Satanae", which makes little sense. It's "Diana of Satan", but the warrior part is missing and it sounds quite ill matched. And anyway, what's a "real" name? Diana is not my real name, it's a name given to me by the hoe that once shat me into this world and the memory of whom contributes quite a good deal to my insomnia and bad dreams.
I never really liked the name, especially for the horrible shit the Germans make of it, they pronounce it more like the -diana part in "Indiana", but more German sounding: "dee - ahna", with a very long "ah" sound in the middle, it sounds very, very ugly and I often have to correct the same person several times in a row which gets extremely tiresome.
I don't have any name more real than Gladiatrix Satanae, or Satan's Warrior, because that's what I am. I'm a warrior and belonging to Satan; furthermore I don't know who or what I am. I'm glad I know at least this much, and life is a quest of finding it out.
Being more dead to the world... being off Facebook is like a dress rehearsal for my actual death, of sorts. A good exercise, I guess. I said so often that I meant to update this blog more often and it's in fact a more reasonable place to put my thoughts, even if no one reads it. I have practically no contacts outside of Facebook. Will anyone miss me? I highly doubt it. Will anyone try to contact me by other ways? Even much more doubtful. But who cares - I'm here for Satan and for myself, and there's no one else to ever rely on. I never really needed anyone else, and no one ever needed me, and at least in this regard I'm fortunately truly free, unbound by anyone or anything, free to move on whenever it should happen.
Needing to breathe, to eat and drink, to sleep, are obligations enough. I've never really been of this world and can't relate to the pleasure most people seem to find in it. I am truly alien to it,and still I don't know why, or how I ended up here although I don't belong.
The quest continues.
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Apeirophilia - because anything is possible
Yes, apeirophilia seems to be a new word I just made up. I couldn't find it anywhere yet but it's a legitimate word nonetheless since it conforms to the rules for every phobia there may be a philia.
Example: Arachnophobia -> arachnophilia. Who doesn't love spiders?! :D
Apeirophilia is thus the love of eternity and infinity, and I have it.
This is a continuation of the topic of my previous post, which was centered on the article about apeirophobia I had found.
As opposed to sharing such a phobia, myself I'm absolutely fascinated with the infinite. To explain my fascination, let's look once more at some of the reasons given in the article for the fear of eternity:
"Where does this fear come from? A realization that an eternal afterlife could become infinitely repetitive? The recognition that one lacks control over their own destiny?"
Lack of control is something I dislike as well, but one way or another there's nothing we could do about it. If instead of having an eternal existence it would turn out the materialists were right and there's nothing after death then we'd have no control over that either - or in that case even less control, I should say, since there'd be no more chance to ever again control anything at all (since you obviously first need to exist in order to control anything).
But as for eternal existence becoming repetitive... here's a guy explaining in this interesting video that mathematically, infinity does include infinitely many copies indeed. But note that the numbers he's talking about are absolutely crazy huge - vastly larger than a googol (10^100) and even vastly larger than a googolplex (10^10^100), and see for yourself in the linked Wikipedia articles how insanely huge those already are.
But note that the video is titled "Is anything possible?" (and also that his name is "Sharkee", which is just a coincidence I guess and I don't know why, LOL). And this is the reason why I love infinity: for the infinite possibilities! Just ignore the copies, why bother with them? No harm in them, just let them be... instead focus on the rest.
In order to fill up an infinite universe, those infinite possibilities will certainly come into play too. As Sharkee says in the video, anything that has a probability higher than zero to happen will happen. Since I'd think a multiverse is a distinct possibility, even in the opinions of many physicists, infinity means the multiverse exists. Which means if anything is impossible in this universe due to its physical laws, there could (and probably would) be other universes in which the same thing would be perfectly possible- and thus the title of the video could be answered with Yes, anything is possible!
Anything. All the wonders and all the horrors. And being the dark soul that I am you know I'm not biased against the latter. I'm a free and forever rebellious spirit, and a good measure of rebellion is needed, and of some creative "thinking outside the box", since I'm still caught in my rather lonely position:
- On the one side, materialism: "Only matter exists. After death there is nothing."
- On the other side, mainstream religion: "We all are one in god."
NO!!! Both are the same bullshit, and I reject them both, nearly equally. I do hate the tyrant god a lot more though than the prospect of nonexistence, but in both cases my current existence would be meaningless.
I do believe in my future life, and in a place for myself - which can not be with the tyrant god! - and therefore I love infinity.
How narrow minded is it to believe there are only two possibilities.
When there can be INFINITE possibilities!
Example: Arachnophobia -> arachnophilia. Who doesn't love spiders?! :D
Apeirophilia is thus the love of eternity and infinity, and I have it.
This is a continuation of the topic of my previous post, which was centered on the article about apeirophobia I had found.
As opposed to sharing such a phobia, myself I'm absolutely fascinated with the infinite. To explain my fascination, let's look once more at some of the reasons given in the article for the fear of eternity:
"Where does this fear come from? A realization that an eternal afterlife could become infinitely repetitive? The recognition that one lacks control over their own destiny?"
Lack of control is something I dislike as well, but one way or another there's nothing we could do about it. If instead of having an eternal existence it would turn out the materialists were right and there's nothing after death then we'd have no control over that either - or in that case even less control, I should say, since there'd be no more chance to ever again control anything at all (since you obviously first need to exist in order to control anything).
But as for eternal existence becoming repetitive... here's a guy explaining in this interesting video that mathematically, infinity does include infinitely many copies indeed. But note that the numbers he's talking about are absolutely crazy huge - vastly larger than a googol (10^100) and even vastly larger than a googolplex (10^10^100), and see for yourself in the linked Wikipedia articles how insanely huge those already are.
But note that the video is titled "Is anything possible?" (and also that his name is "Sharkee", which is just a coincidence I guess and I don't know why, LOL). And this is the reason why I love infinity: for the infinite possibilities! Just ignore the copies, why bother with them? No harm in them, just let them be... instead focus on the rest.
In order to fill up an infinite universe, those infinite possibilities will certainly come into play too. As Sharkee says in the video, anything that has a probability higher than zero to happen will happen. Since I'd think a multiverse is a distinct possibility, even in the opinions of many physicists, infinity means the multiverse exists. Which means if anything is impossible in this universe due to its physical laws, there could (and probably would) be other universes in which the same thing would be perfectly possible- and thus the title of the video could be answered with Yes, anything is possible!
Anything. All the wonders and all the horrors. And being the dark soul that I am you know I'm not biased against the latter. I'm a free and forever rebellious spirit, and a good measure of rebellion is needed, and of some creative "thinking outside the box", since I'm still caught in my rather lonely position:
- On the one side, materialism: "Only matter exists. After death there is nothing."
- On the other side, mainstream religion: "We all are one in god."
NO!!! Both are the same bullshit, and I reject them both, nearly equally. I do hate the tyrant god a lot more though than the prospect of nonexistence, but in both cases my current existence would be meaningless.
I do believe in my future life, and in a place for myself - which can not be with the tyrant god! - and therefore I love infinity.
How narrow minded is it to believe there are only two possibilities.
When there can be INFINITE possibilities!
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Apeirophobia - a Fear of Eternity and Infinity
Lately I came across this article which at the same time both greatly puzzled me while on the other hand it also explains a lot.
I'd been wondering for so long now why all these materialists so vehemently insist on the idea that after physical death follows complete nonexistence, although it would evidently render the existence prior to it entirely pointless, and their insistence never seemed a purely rational, fatalistic concession, as in having no hope to survive the death of their bodies, but much more like the dogged defense against who-knows-what unthinkable corruption... or terror.
The latter must be the answer then, and this terror is called apeirophobia.
I never even heard of this word before;Wikipedia doesn't have it, not even in its comprehensive and partially very bizarre list of phobias. (A fear of flowers? Of certain colors? That's weird. But one of the most ridiculous to me is a very new phenomenon called "Nomophobia" - I don't even have a mobile phone! LOL)
What is described in the article about apeirophobia is truly curious to me, needless to say that no such sensation ever occurred to me and it's very hard for me to conceive of it. I've never been scared of open spaces but rather the opposite, I'm very prone to claustrophobia, both in a literal and figurative sense: the fear of being trapped, hitting dead ends, having no way to go.
The author of the article, Bobby Azarian, says in it, "The largest number of years I could imagine failed to make a dent in infinity. My primitive brain filled with an existential angst. The idea of living forever was even more unsettling than the idea of no longer existing after death."
This appears to me somewhat contradictory (which isn't saying anything really, as being contradictory is normal human nature) in that the idea of ceasing to exist is also unsettling him - but eternity even more so. Yet in this case there probably can't be any further alternative besides these two possibilities...
He goes on to quote someone else as saying, "Now I’m in my 30s, and the thought of eternity still freaks me out. It usually hits at night when I’m trying to sleep."
This notion is quite familiar to an extent - I think we all have such certain things that creep up as we're trying to sleep. Different things for everyone I guess. For me it's often memories of my tormented childhood and my so-called "family". Other times it's about being trapped in a human body. To an extent the exact opposite of the materialists. I think about all that awful goo inside. A jelly-like mass confined on the inside of a skull - and they think this mass is what they are?! And they don't mind that?! I don't know. And do you ever think about that we're literally full of shit? No, I'm not saying we're all a bunch of liars. What I mean is, when you go to the bathroom and take a dump - there's lots more where that came from, and it's in there all the time. Wherever we go we're carrying a load of poop around inside us. I think that's pretty disgusting. I wouldn't want to be such an organism forever. It's actually pretty humiliating to be something like this, and I hope to have a more dignified existence someday. This as an aside - so to me it's bad memories and thoughts the disgusting nature of the human body which creep up in sleepless nights.
I may look further into the subject of apeirophobia though as it kind of fascinates me. I can see it can be quite tormenting to people and I don't mean to belittle that, but I think it doesn't need to be. Because what people don't take into account is that with the death of the body we will inevitably change. Life is a process, death is a process, and both are not processes we're merely observing but they happen to us, which means we're part of the process - part of the change taking place. Like, when you think back of your childhood, back then you probably thought about what it will be like when you grow up, and you may have had a bunch of very unrealistic ideas about it because you couldn't really imagine being an adult - because it was outside your own experience. But eventually it simply happened that you grew up, and now you may think back of "what silly ideas I had back when I was a kid!"
As a kid you probably couldn't have imagined the way you'd be now as an adult - I know I couldn't have.
I missed out on so many things I only realized or learned about much later, and they have changed me. But the change doesn't stop there. It probably never stops, probably not even once we reach the afterlife.
The article further quotes someone as saying, "I feel that we are all insignificant compared to the universe," and, "The thought of the distance between galaxies is unbearable.”
This idea of feeling insignificant next to infinities of space and time is something I've heard quite a lot - but never felt that way. Rather in the contrary: Having the ability to contemplate these concepts, to mentally grasp them, actually makes me feel quite empowered. The knowledge that there is so much more out there than this sad little human-infested world, such vast, infinite space, is a very comforting thought. I'm not afraid of losing myself in the infinite. I feel the need for so much more space, smothered by this overpopulated world, so overpopulated and light-polluted that I still haven't been able to really stare out into cosmic infinity at night and finally behold the Milky Way.
(Warning: If you happen to suffer from apeirophobia you might rather not want to watch this video. It's called "Powers of Ten", a brief journey from the subatomic level out to the edge of the observable universe and back.)
Nearly as an afterthought: I found this bit here about an interview with Richard Dawkins (one of the most famous proponents of materialism) which surprisingly seems to confirm my idea that apeirophobia may be what motivates them.
(Hubble Ultra Deep Field. May not be suitable for apeirophobics either...)
I'd been wondering for so long now why all these materialists so vehemently insist on the idea that after physical death follows complete nonexistence, although it would evidently render the existence prior to it entirely pointless, and their insistence never seemed a purely rational, fatalistic concession, as in having no hope to survive the death of their bodies, but much more like the dogged defense against who-knows-what unthinkable corruption... or terror.
The latter must be the answer then, and this terror is called apeirophobia.
I never even heard of this word before;Wikipedia doesn't have it, not even in its comprehensive and partially very bizarre list of phobias. (A fear of flowers? Of certain colors? That's weird. But one of the most ridiculous to me is a very new phenomenon called "Nomophobia" - I don't even have a mobile phone! LOL)
What is described in the article about apeirophobia is truly curious to me, needless to say that no such sensation ever occurred to me and it's very hard for me to conceive of it. I've never been scared of open spaces but rather the opposite, I'm very prone to claustrophobia, both in a literal and figurative sense: the fear of being trapped, hitting dead ends, having no way to go.
The author of the article, Bobby Azarian, says in it, "The largest number of years I could imagine failed to make a dent in infinity. My primitive brain filled with an existential angst. The idea of living forever was even more unsettling than the idea of no longer existing after death."
This appears to me somewhat contradictory (which isn't saying anything really, as being contradictory is normal human nature) in that the idea of ceasing to exist is also unsettling him - but eternity even more so. Yet in this case there probably can't be any further alternative besides these two possibilities...
He goes on to quote someone else as saying, "Now I’m in my 30s, and the thought of eternity still freaks me out. It usually hits at night when I’m trying to sleep."
This notion is quite familiar to an extent - I think we all have such certain things that creep up as we're trying to sleep. Different things for everyone I guess. For me it's often memories of my tormented childhood and my so-called "family". Other times it's about being trapped in a human body. To an extent the exact opposite of the materialists. I think about all that awful goo inside. A jelly-like mass confined on the inside of a skull - and they think this mass is what they are?! And they don't mind that?! I don't know. And do you ever think about that we're literally full of shit? No, I'm not saying we're all a bunch of liars. What I mean is, when you go to the bathroom and take a dump - there's lots more where that came from, and it's in there all the time. Wherever we go we're carrying a load of poop around inside us. I think that's pretty disgusting. I wouldn't want to be such an organism forever. It's actually pretty humiliating to be something like this, and I hope to have a more dignified existence someday. This as an aside - so to me it's bad memories and thoughts the disgusting nature of the human body which creep up in sleepless nights.
I may look further into the subject of apeirophobia though as it kind of fascinates me. I can see it can be quite tormenting to people and I don't mean to belittle that, but I think it doesn't need to be. Because what people don't take into account is that with the death of the body we will inevitably change. Life is a process, death is a process, and both are not processes we're merely observing but they happen to us, which means we're part of the process - part of the change taking place. Like, when you think back of your childhood, back then you probably thought about what it will be like when you grow up, and you may have had a bunch of very unrealistic ideas about it because you couldn't really imagine being an adult - because it was outside your own experience. But eventually it simply happened that you grew up, and now you may think back of "what silly ideas I had back when I was a kid!"
As a kid you probably couldn't have imagined the way you'd be now as an adult - I know I couldn't have.
I missed out on so many things I only realized or learned about much later, and they have changed me. But the change doesn't stop there. It probably never stops, probably not even once we reach the afterlife.
The article further quotes someone as saying, "I feel that we are all insignificant compared to the universe," and, "The thought of the distance between galaxies is unbearable.”
This idea of feeling insignificant next to infinities of space and time is something I've heard quite a lot - but never felt that way. Rather in the contrary: Having the ability to contemplate these concepts, to mentally grasp them, actually makes me feel quite empowered. The knowledge that there is so much more out there than this sad little human-infested world, such vast, infinite space, is a very comforting thought. I'm not afraid of losing myself in the infinite. I feel the need for so much more space, smothered by this overpopulated world, so overpopulated and light-polluted that I still haven't been able to really stare out into cosmic infinity at night and finally behold the Milky Way.
(Warning: If you happen to suffer from apeirophobia you might rather not want to watch this video. It's called "Powers of Ten", a brief journey from the subatomic level out to the edge of the observable universe and back.)
Nearly as an afterthought: I found this bit here about an interview with Richard Dawkins (one of the most famous proponents of materialism) which surprisingly seems to confirm my idea that apeirophobia may be what motivates them.
(Hubble Ultra Deep Field. May not be suitable for apeirophobics either...)
Friday, August 19, 2016
I don't exist, and if I did I'd be a tree
Well yes, I'm writing this blog so it seems I do exist after all... but apparently a lot of people believe that people like me don't exist.
I received the link to this article a little while ago and meant to write about it myself ever since. (Much workout, much fatigue, much stuff going on.) Because this article is about me - not personally, but about people who are asexual just like I am.
When I read it I recognized much of myself in it, although this guy in the article realized amazingly quickly that "asexual" is the term for what he is. Myself I may have had lots of additional complications going on - being very introverted, even autistic-leaning, and suicidal for hating my then weak and useless body, etc.
But what once more shocked me about the article, even now, is the extent to which asexuality is still unknown, so much even that lots of people seem to have never heard of it or it never even occurred to them that it exists at all!
It really puzzles me how this can be so, since virtually everyone spends at least their first decade of life in this same state! In fact when asked about my sexuality, which happens sometimes since I'm obviously gender-nonconforming or at least extremely masculine (and probably most often deemed a lesbian), this is what I usually tell people when they can't make sense of "asexual": Just think back of your own sexuality when you were about 5 years old. You didn't have any sexual feelings then? See, and in me this just never changed. It's this simple really.
It's good to see that by now there's some information available, but you'd probably rarely come across it unless you search for it.
Definitions may vary slightly, and I personally strongly disagree with the statement, as given in this info sheet (PDF), that asexual people "may experience arousal and orgasm". In my opinion, if you have anything at all going on down there then you're by definition not asexual.
Even more recently I chanced upon this article explaining "graysexuality", a term I'd never heard before, and I think it's in fact a neat description for all those people who are, unlike myself, not 100% asexual.
Everything is not that simple, obviously, and I've been puzzled myself to read that there are asexual people who are interested in dating, and apparently even a number who are willing to compromise for a non-asexual partner... something which would be absolutely beyond unthinkable to myself, but then again, I'd never have any interest in dating in the first place. Frankly, I find humans to be physically quite repulsive animals.
I wouldn't want to live forever in such a body, and so I'm glad we don't...
I don't know if other asexuals also feel like this to some extent, but personally I've always felt somewhat indignant about having to eat, to sleep, and excrete wastes... getting hungry, getting tired so easily, being cold most of the time...
It's a bit of a comfort that there are other animals who all share the same predicaments, although in very much prettier bodies. The ones with pointy fins and pointy teeth...
I received the link to this article a little while ago and meant to write about it myself ever since. (Much workout, much fatigue, much stuff going on.) Because this article is about me - not personally, but about people who are asexual just like I am.
When I read it I recognized much of myself in it, although this guy in the article realized amazingly quickly that "asexual" is the term for what he is. Myself I may have had lots of additional complications going on - being very introverted, even autistic-leaning, and suicidal for hating my then weak and useless body, etc.
But what once more shocked me about the article, even now, is the extent to which asexuality is still unknown, so much even that lots of people seem to have never heard of it or it never even occurred to them that it exists at all!
It really puzzles me how this can be so, since virtually everyone spends at least their first decade of life in this same state! In fact when asked about my sexuality, which happens sometimes since I'm obviously gender-nonconforming or at least extremely masculine (and probably most often deemed a lesbian), this is what I usually tell people when they can't make sense of "asexual": Just think back of your own sexuality when you were about 5 years old. You didn't have any sexual feelings then? See, and in me this just never changed. It's this simple really.
It's good to see that by now there's some information available, but you'd probably rarely come across it unless you search for it.
Definitions may vary slightly, and I personally strongly disagree with the statement, as given in this info sheet (PDF), that asexual people "may experience arousal and orgasm". In my opinion, if you have anything at all going on down there then you're by definition not asexual.
Even more recently I chanced upon this article explaining "graysexuality", a term I'd never heard before, and I think it's in fact a neat description for all those people who are, unlike myself, not 100% asexual.
Everything is not that simple, obviously, and I've been puzzled myself to read that there are asexual people who are interested in dating, and apparently even a number who are willing to compromise for a non-asexual partner... something which would be absolutely beyond unthinkable to myself, but then again, I'd never have any interest in dating in the first place. Frankly, I find humans to be physically quite repulsive animals.
I wouldn't want to live forever in such a body, and so I'm glad we don't...
I don't know if other asexuals also feel like this to some extent, but personally I've always felt somewhat indignant about having to eat, to sleep, and excrete wastes... getting hungry, getting tired so easily, being cold most of the time...
It's a bit of a comfort that there are other animals who all share the same predicaments, although in very much prettier bodies. The ones with pointy fins and pointy teeth...
Monday, August 8, 2016
The quest to see the Milky Way
I still haven't succeeded in it, but although the Terschelling plan has been abandoned since the climate has taken a turn for the worse here in Europe (and the northern islands are generally even colder than here at home), there is new hope. I found a new dark sky map with previously unseen resolution, and thereby found that not too far from home there's a spot in the woods which, albeit not ideal, is considerably more favorable to stargazing than the closer vicinity.
So I rode there yesterday - twice; first by day to explore and then in the evening to wait for nightfall.
I was thwarted by cloudy skies. But I hadn't been in the woods by night in a long time and it was good to be back once more, sitting on a bench in the darkness, listening to the nocturnal insects and having a large moth buzz around my hair.
I soon decided to venture back homeward though since the cloud cover only kept increasing. When reaching an unlit, open field, I saw pools of intense light pollution reflected off the distant clouds to the north, presumably from downtown Bonn and possibly Cologne.
But back in the woods I also saw some glowworms, I had one crawl over my fingernail.
I had a flashlight in my backpack but I didn't use it a single time, I had no trouble finding my way through the nocturnal woods. Only on the most difficult parts of the trail (more potholes and gullies than trail) I rather pushed my bike as riding was too tricky in the dark. I was back home around midnight.
According to the map, even further south from here there are places just as dark as on Terschelling. For the most part they seem to be in the Eifel mountain region and possibly inaccessible, but another one southwest of Rheinbach would be a close second. I have to keep an eye on the phases and rise & set of the moon as well, but I'll keep trying. Clear nights are rare though, and sadly they're usually even colder than under overcast skies.
As usual, I meant to post again much sooner and more frequently but as usual I've been busy...
For at least a month I meant to write a blog post about being asexual, because that's what I am (and so yes,it exists) and it's so difficult for me to imagine how difficult most people find this to imagine - apparently.
More about this next time though.
So I rode there yesterday - twice; first by day to explore and then in the evening to wait for nightfall.
I was thwarted by cloudy skies. But I hadn't been in the woods by night in a long time and it was good to be back once more, sitting on a bench in the darkness, listening to the nocturnal insects and having a large moth buzz around my hair.
I soon decided to venture back homeward though since the cloud cover only kept increasing. When reaching an unlit, open field, I saw pools of intense light pollution reflected off the distant clouds to the north, presumably from downtown Bonn and possibly Cologne.
But back in the woods I also saw some glowworms, I had one crawl over my fingernail.
I had a flashlight in my backpack but I didn't use it a single time, I had no trouble finding my way through the nocturnal woods. Only on the most difficult parts of the trail (more potholes and gullies than trail) I rather pushed my bike as riding was too tricky in the dark. I was back home around midnight.
According to the map, even further south from here there are places just as dark as on Terschelling. For the most part they seem to be in the Eifel mountain region and possibly inaccessible, but another one southwest of Rheinbach would be a close second. I have to keep an eye on the phases and rise & set of the moon as well, but I'll keep trying. Clear nights are rare though, and sadly they're usually even colder than under overcast skies.
As usual, I meant to post again much sooner and more frequently but as usual I've been busy...
For at least a month I meant to write a blog post about being asexual, because that's what I am (and so yes,it exists) and it's so difficult for me to imagine how difficult most people find this to imagine - apparently.
More about this next time though.
Friday, July 22, 2016
Naar de haaien in Maastricht!
"Naar de haaien (gaan)" is a Dutch expression whose meaning is along the lines of our "(going) to Hell", but literally it translates as "going to the sharks". And I definitely had to see de haaien!
I hit the wrong week for my trip to Maastricht from July 12th through 14th, it was cold and rainy; summer would come the next week only. Anyway, there I was, traveling by train (on the cheap, so having to change trains 4 times on the relatively short trip of ~3 hours) and staying at the Stayokay hostel on the river Maas for 2 nights. I was lucky to have the free choice of beds in a dorm of 6,so I picked the top bunk by the window from where I could watch the barges passing on the river. Two other girls, about my age, arrived later to share the dorm, speaking Dutch.
Dawn rose to a nearly flawless sky the next day but which would change all too soon, and it was cold. Wearing a longsleeved shirt, a hoodie plus a jacket and fingerless gloves, I told myself that it wasn't so bad for April. Of course it wasn't April, but I'd just have to pretend it was...
So I set out on my bike, rented directly from the hostel, which to my surprise had 7 gears but they wouldn't be too much use since the handlebar was so high and close to the body that it forced my hands into an awkward angle at the wrist, making it very uncomfortable to hold especially when riding all the cobblestone roads of Maastricht, so that it wasn't possible to go really fast anyway.
The rest of the museum was also very interesting, having lots of fossils many of which had been excavated in the local region, including skeletons of mosasaurs and a lot else. Samples of extant species of butterflies and many other creatures as well, and there's even a small but really lovely botanic garden in the museum's backyard, surrounded by a tiny canal. I sat on a bench by it to have a little lunch break (just a banana actually) but then quickly had to go back inside as the thunderstorms arrived...
I waited out the rainstorm inside, looking at some Dutch books about haaien (sharks) that were actually meant for kids. I was a bit disappointed they didn't have any more shark merchandise there, I only found myself a bookmark and a magnet. But of course there's still the free booklet about the exhibition which was included with the visit! It's 40 pages with comprehensive information and photos.
Later I still found that "Hoge Fronten" Park, which used to be part of the ancient city fortifications but nowadays is a nature preserve - poorly managed though as I found it to be severely rodent-infested! I've never seen such massive numbers of rodents in my life before, flitting from the path in front into the shrubbery as I walked; the vermin was everywhere and so was its poo.
With more rain coming, I already returned to the hostel around 5 PM. After spending a while on my bunk reading and talking to two older ladies having newly arrived at the dorm (pointing out a rainbow above the river Maas to the one of them), I realized the weather had markedly improved, and so I set out once more, although it was already about 7 PM by then, to ride my rented bike one last time.
This final ride was pretty much my best time there, certainly making for the best photos too (more of which will be posted on my Facebook).
I hit the wrong week for my trip to Maastricht from July 12th through 14th, it was cold and rainy; summer would come the next week only. Anyway, there I was, traveling by train (on the cheap, so having to change trains 4 times on the relatively short trip of ~3 hours) and staying at the Stayokay hostel on the river Maas for 2 nights. I was lucky to have the free choice of beds in a dorm of 6,so I picked the top bunk by the window from where I could watch the barges passing on the river. Two other girls, about my age, arrived later to share the dorm, speaking Dutch.
Dawn rose to a nearly flawless sky the next day but which would change all too soon, and it was cold. Wearing a longsleeved shirt, a hoodie plus a jacket and fingerless gloves, I told myself that it wasn't so bad for April. Of course it wasn't April, but I'd just have to pretend it was...
So I set out on my bike, rented directly from the hostel, which to my surprise had 7 gears but they wouldn't be too much use since the handlebar was so high and close to the body that it forced my hands into an awkward angle at the wrist, making it very uncomfortable to hold especially when riding all the cobblestone roads of Maastricht, so that it wasn't possible to go really fast anyway.
 |
| "Witches' Street"! (Escape in either direction? LOL) |
I went to find the main objective for my trip: the Natuurhistorisch
Museum, housing a temporary exhibition about sharks! The latter was only
one single room, but it was nicely done,especially with the large video
walls above that had a great white shark and a manta ray swimming
around, giving the impression of being underwater with them. A selection of teeth and jaws, one set of jaws even open to touch, as well as a sample of skin from a zebra shark with its denticles, giving it that sandpaper-like texture.
 |
| Jaws. |
The rest of the museum was also very interesting, having lots of fossils many of which had been excavated in the local region, including skeletons of mosasaurs and a lot else. Samples of extant species of butterflies and many other creatures as well, and there's even a small but really lovely botanic garden in the museum's backyard, surrounded by a tiny canal. I sat on a bench by it to have a little lunch break (just a banana actually) but then quickly had to go back inside as the thunderstorms arrived...
 |
| Some very extraordinary ammonites. |
I waited out the rainstorm inside, looking at some Dutch books about haaien (sharks) that were actually meant for kids. I was a bit disappointed they didn't have any more shark merchandise there, I only found myself a bookmark and a magnet. But of course there's still the free booklet about the exhibition which was included with the visit! It's 40 pages with comprehensive information and photos.
Later I still found that "Hoge Fronten" Park, which used to be part of the ancient city fortifications but nowadays is a nature preserve - poorly managed though as I found it to be severely rodent-infested! I've never seen such massive numbers of rodents in my life before, flitting from the path in front into the shrubbery as I walked; the vermin was everywhere and so was its poo.
With more rain coming, I already returned to the hostel around 5 PM. After spending a while on my bunk reading and talking to two older ladies having newly arrived at the dorm (pointing out a rainbow above the river Maas to the one of them), I realized the weather had markedly improved, and so I set out once more, although it was already about 7 PM by then, to ride my rented bike one last time.
This final ride was pretty much my best time there, certainly making for the best photos too (more of which will be posted on my Facebook).
 | |
| Last evening in Maastricht, just about 2 sunny hours. |
The next day, of my departure, I walked through the old city center one last time and then across the bridge since the station is located on the far side of the river Maas. On the way there I strolled, looking at some stores, especially one curious one selling lots of extremely useful essentials, such as giant pencil sharpeners but used to sharpen carrots and other vegetables. LOL
I arrived at the station hall just in time before the next downpour. Inside, there was a grand piano free to be played by anyone, and a lady who was no doubt a professional played wonderful music on it.
I arrived at the station hall just in time before the next downpour. Inside, there was a grand piano free to be played by anyone, and a lady who was no doubt a professional played wonderful music on it.
 |
| A last look back at Maastricht from the bridge. |
 |
| Carved shark with magnet on the back, a souvenir from the museum. |
Monday, July 4, 2016
Happy 4th of July!
Once again I didn't post in a while, and there's both good & bad news.
By far the best news is this:
It's been mine for just over a month now, for a relatively low price at a place selling used bikes - all the other ones were far over 100 €! But I think this one wasn't popular because boys won't like it for the pink and girls won't because it's a men's bike. For me it's just perfect though.
So I already took it on a tour when summer finally came to Germany, it was beautiful, over 90 F that day...
...and now the bad news: That was on June 23rd, and summer lasted only that one day.
So far it hasn't come back. No idea if it will. I wouldn't even mind all the rain, but can't it be raining at 80 F (or higher)? Most days I have to wear gloves when riding to the gym in the morning. :(
I meant to travel to Terschelling this summer, which is an island in the North Sea, but since there is no summer I had to cancel it as it's even still a bit colder there than it is here.
But the other week I'm traveling to Maastricht instead, and on that trip I'll be going by all means because there's something there that I absolutely have to see. It's an exhibition about my favorite animals, those with fins & many sharp teeth...
And I'll certainly have to post again about that.
By far the best news is this:
It's been mine for just over a month now, for a relatively low price at a place selling used bikes - all the other ones were far over 100 €! But I think this one wasn't popular because boys won't like it for the pink and girls won't because it's a men's bike. For me it's just perfect though.
So I already took it on a tour when summer finally came to Germany, it was beautiful, over 90 F that day...
...and now the bad news: That was on June 23rd, and summer lasted only that one day.
So far it hasn't come back. No idea if it will. I wouldn't even mind all the rain, but can't it be raining at 80 F (or higher)? Most days I have to wear gloves when riding to the gym in the morning. :(
I meant to travel to Terschelling this summer, which is an island in the North Sea, but since there is no summer I had to cancel it as it's even still a bit colder there than it is here.
But the other week I'm traveling to Maastricht instead, and on that trip I'll be going by all means because there's something there that I absolutely have to see. It's an exhibition about my favorite animals, those with fins & many sharp teeth...
And I'll certainly have to post again about that.
Monday, May 9, 2016
360 degrees, gender, and other conventions
I
meant to write this for a long time now (once more), inspired to it by a
controversy with a friend of long years whom I'd never have expected to
hold such extremely reactionary views as recently displayed, and I
didn't yet anticipate that shock I was in for when first I came across
the following meme on Facebook which I then shared because I perfectly
agree with it, although it doesn't stop there:
A fiction is sure is!!
Another thing that definitely belongs in there with the "fiction" is gender, which is exactly what the controversy with my friend is about who claims that "chromosomes determine your gender and you are that gender," irrevocably. This is so wrong on so many levels, obviously - well, at least to me it couldn't possibly be more obvious, and I'm absolutely puzzled how it can be less than obvious to my friend, especially since there's been other confrontations involving racism in the past in which I've always made clear I won't condone such bullshit.
(The only times I'm all for "white power" is when it's really Great White power!)
I'm certainly not one of those who get easily offended or "butthurt", and I'm tolerant of people having very different opinions. But what startles me is that I've had this friend for nearly 10 years, we've even talked on the phone so she has heard my less-than-feminine voice, my voice which is this way because I've taken the testosterone injections even longer than 10 years, these injections which have been the only thing to save me from the verge of suicide back then in my more than troubled teenage when I despised my then weak and wimpy body more than words could ever tell.
Back to the baby meme - yes, we all have been thrown into this,born into these vessels with minds like perfectly blank pages at birth, to be filled with anything that starts pouring into them from then on, unceasingly. And it's perfectly normal to believe whatever your are told when you're a young child. Children have no concept of truth and untruth until they are at least about 5 years old, and then it's only the beginning.
Name, religion, nationality... I've disowned all of these things and more. I don't have a true name for myself except "Satan's warrior", and that's not a name, but that's the one, truest thing I feel I am. "Diana" isn't really my name... I go by that name, yes, but how can it be "mine" if thousands or millions of other people on Earth share the same name?!
"Diana" says absolutely nothing about who I am. I don't know who I am, and I'm here to find it out. "Warrior", "Satan's warrior", at least that says something. Including the fact that I replaced the religion I was born into with one of my own choice - with the faith in a God of rebellion, in the struggle for freedom and quest for truth, and in these efforts I see it as a very fundamental step to see through all these pseudo-truth pushed upon me by others.
It was hard to sort out, especially this gender issue. I certainly don't want to be a man - but back as a teen that's what I thought I wanted, because the common people make you believe there were only those two alternatives, and I knew I didn't want to be a woman. And I still don't. I absolutely don't care for the parts that make me female, I've never liked them and I usually ignore them. Well, I've had breast reduction surgery, and the rest I ignore.
I think in a strange way it even makes it easier for me than it is for others to see through the delusion - I've never identified very much with my body. I never hated myself, I only hated my body - I strictly distinguished between the two; it was my adverse circumstances that taught me to do this.
Name, religion, nationality, race; all these things are handed to you by your family, and as far as I'm concerned I have no family; I disowned them along with these things more than they've ever disowned me, they would have never understood anything, they frankly weren't very bright.
As I see it, the body I currently inhabit is borrowed from their genetic material, I'm living in it, but that has little to do with who I am except for the life experience I've had in it.
Amid all the adversity, it may have been these circumstances that forced me to keep questioning in ways as some smart children will but that most adults eventually cease to do, and to their detriment. They lose the ability to see the forest for all the trees.
A while ago the famous physicist Dr. Brian Greene posted on Facebook some new findings about the planet Pluto, in which he also confessed that he will continually regard Pluto as a planet indeed. Some of the comments on the post criticized this view as "unscientific", or even as "dismissing science in favor of a personal belief", which struck me as most ludicrous and I felt compelled to add my own comment, as follows:
"Oh dear. This has NOTHING to do with either science, truth, or personal belief. WHY is Pluto either a planet or not a planet? Because of arbitrary classification! It's as if I'm saying, "even when everyone else says a week has 7 days, to me a week has 10 days." I would be neither right nor wrong because a week has been made up, it doesn't correspond to any cycle in nature. If I said that to me a year had either more or fewer days than 365 I'd either be wrong or I'd have to move to a planet where my chosen amount of days in a year was true. Because a year is one full orbit of a planet around its star, and one day is one full revolution of the planet around its axis. The duration of a year or a day can be objectively measured. But the duration of a week, an hour, a minute, or which day is Christmas, have all been made up by humans and therefore can't be true or false, they're purely a matter of consensus, nothing else. Same goes for Pluto being a planet or not. And to me it always will be a planet as well, because that's what I learned when I was ~5 years old and I see no logical reason to revise it. It's like using either the Fahrenheit or Celsius (or Kelvin) scale for temperature, one can prefer one or another but none of them are wrong."
That's how it is - conventions, conventions. In case you wondered, the 360 degrees naturally also fall into this category. Have you ever wondered why a circle has 360 degrees? If not then you really should - just another convention!
I'm not saying conventions are always necessarily bad, in the contrary, they often prove indispensable for effective communication. Errors in translations can lead to grave misunderstandings, and confusion about the use of the metric system vs English units can cause the very expensive loss of a spacecraft.
Still it should be kept in mind that they are but conventions, but in this digital age the fallacy to adopt a binary way of thinking, just as like a computer system, may come easily. Only a while ago I chanced upon a video on the subject of consciousness in which this was brought up, and the lecturer related that in some other cultures people use more categories than only "true or false", that in addition to these two something can as well be either neither true nor false or both true and false. I imagine it might be pretty difficult sometimes to distinguish between the latter two... but right now I can't think of any examples nor will I bother to even try and find back that video, as it's already pretty late at night here in Germany.
Instead I'll ask you this question: How many colors are there in a black and white photograph?
Some people will say, "that's easy, it's called black and white, that already tells you how many: there is black and there is white, so it's two colors!"
Someone else will say, "but that's bullshit, you can see that most of the picture is neither black nor white but a shade of gray, and there's an uncountable number of shades, so there's an infinite number of colors in the photo."
The next person may agree for the most part but says, "ok, but humans can't distinguish an infinite number of colors, let alone of only shades of gray. My Photoshop program has 20 shades of gray in the default palette, and even in those the difference between one nuance and the next is barely perceptible to me, so I'll say there are about 20 colors in it."
Another one comes along and say, "but that's all bullshit - black and white are not even colors, so there are no colors at all in a black and white photograph!"
That's four different answers to a simple question, and I don't think any of them is true or false. Pick one that you agree most with, or find your own. But keep an open mind to different options... the photographer might have had a different number of colors in mind.
And when it comes to gender there certainly is much more than only black or white.
A fiction is sure is!!
Another thing that definitely belongs in there with the "fiction" is gender, which is exactly what the controversy with my friend is about who claims that "chromosomes determine your gender and you are that gender," irrevocably. This is so wrong on so many levels, obviously - well, at least to me it couldn't possibly be more obvious, and I'm absolutely puzzled how it can be less than obvious to my friend, especially since there's been other confrontations involving racism in the past in which I've always made clear I won't condone such bullshit.
(The only times I'm all for "white power" is when it's really Great White power!)
I'm certainly not one of those who get easily offended or "butthurt", and I'm tolerant of people having very different opinions. But what startles me is that I've had this friend for nearly 10 years, we've even talked on the phone so she has heard my less-than-feminine voice, my voice which is this way because I've taken the testosterone injections even longer than 10 years, these injections which have been the only thing to save me from the verge of suicide back then in my more than troubled teenage when I despised my then weak and wimpy body more than words could ever tell.
Back to the baby meme - yes, we all have been thrown into this,born into these vessels with minds like perfectly blank pages at birth, to be filled with anything that starts pouring into them from then on, unceasingly. And it's perfectly normal to believe whatever your are told when you're a young child. Children have no concept of truth and untruth until they are at least about 5 years old, and then it's only the beginning.
Name, religion, nationality... I've disowned all of these things and more. I don't have a true name for myself except "Satan's warrior", and that's not a name, but that's the one, truest thing I feel I am. "Diana" isn't really my name... I go by that name, yes, but how can it be "mine" if thousands or millions of other people on Earth share the same name?!
"Diana" says absolutely nothing about who I am. I don't know who I am, and I'm here to find it out. "Warrior", "Satan's warrior", at least that says something. Including the fact that I replaced the religion I was born into with one of my own choice - with the faith in a God of rebellion, in the struggle for freedom and quest for truth, and in these efforts I see it as a very fundamental step to see through all these pseudo-truth pushed upon me by others.
It was hard to sort out, especially this gender issue. I certainly don't want to be a man - but back as a teen that's what I thought I wanted, because the common people make you believe there were only those two alternatives, and I knew I didn't want to be a woman. And I still don't. I absolutely don't care for the parts that make me female, I've never liked them and I usually ignore them. Well, I've had breast reduction surgery, and the rest I ignore.
I think in a strange way it even makes it easier for me than it is for others to see through the delusion - I've never identified very much with my body. I never hated myself, I only hated my body - I strictly distinguished between the two; it was my adverse circumstances that taught me to do this.
Name, religion, nationality, race; all these things are handed to you by your family, and as far as I'm concerned I have no family; I disowned them along with these things more than they've ever disowned me, they would have never understood anything, they frankly weren't very bright.
As I see it, the body I currently inhabit is borrowed from their genetic material, I'm living in it, but that has little to do with who I am except for the life experience I've had in it.
Amid all the adversity, it may have been these circumstances that forced me to keep questioning in ways as some smart children will but that most adults eventually cease to do, and to their detriment. They lose the ability to see the forest for all the trees.
A while ago the famous physicist Dr. Brian Greene posted on Facebook some new findings about the planet Pluto, in which he also confessed that he will continually regard Pluto as a planet indeed. Some of the comments on the post criticized this view as "unscientific", or even as "dismissing science in favor of a personal belief", which struck me as most ludicrous and I felt compelled to add my own comment, as follows:
"Oh dear. This has NOTHING to do with either science, truth, or personal belief. WHY is Pluto either a planet or not a planet? Because of arbitrary classification! It's as if I'm saying, "even when everyone else says a week has 7 days, to me a week has 10 days." I would be neither right nor wrong because a week has been made up, it doesn't correspond to any cycle in nature. If I said that to me a year had either more or fewer days than 365 I'd either be wrong or I'd have to move to a planet where my chosen amount of days in a year was true. Because a year is one full orbit of a planet around its star, and one day is one full revolution of the planet around its axis. The duration of a year or a day can be objectively measured. But the duration of a week, an hour, a minute, or which day is Christmas, have all been made up by humans and therefore can't be true or false, they're purely a matter of consensus, nothing else. Same goes for Pluto being a planet or not. And to me it always will be a planet as well, because that's what I learned when I was ~5 years old and I see no logical reason to revise it. It's like using either the Fahrenheit or Celsius (or Kelvin) scale for temperature, one can prefer one or another but none of them are wrong."
That's how it is - conventions, conventions. In case you wondered, the 360 degrees naturally also fall into this category. Have you ever wondered why a circle has 360 degrees? If not then you really should - just another convention!
I'm not saying conventions are always necessarily bad, in the contrary, they often prove indispensable for effective communication. Errors in translations can lead to grave misunderstandings, and confusion about the use of the metric system vs English units can cause the very expensive loss of a spacecraft.
Still it should be kept in mind that they are but conventions, but in this digital age the fallacy to adopt a binary way of thinking, just as like a computer system, may come easily. Only a while ago I chanced upon a video on the subject of consciousness in which this was brought up, and the lecturer related that in some other cultures people use more categories than only "true or false", that in addition to these two something can as well be either neither true nor false or both true and false. I imagine it might be pretty difficult sometimes to distinguish between the latter two... but right now I can't think of any examples nor will I bother to even try and find back that video, as it's already pretty late at night here in Germany.
Instead I'll ask you this question: How many colors are there in a black and white photograph?
Some people will say, "that's easy, it's called black and white, that already tells you how many: there is black and there is white, so it's two colors!"
Someone else will say, "but that's bullshit, you can see that most of the picture is neither black nor white but a shade of gray, and there's an uncountable number of shades, so there's an infinite number of colors in the photo."
The next person may agree for the most part but says, "ok, but humans can't distinguish an infinite number of colors, let alone of only shades of gray. My Photoshop program has 20 shades of gray in the default palette, and even in those the difference between one nuance and the next is barely perceptible to me, so I'll say there are about 20 colors in it."
Another one comes along and say, "but that's all bullshit - black and white are not even colors, so there are no colors at all in a black and white photograph!"
That's four different answers to a simple question, and I don't think any of them is true or false. Pick one that you agree most with, or find your own. But keep an open mind to different options... the photographer might have had a different number of colors in mind.
And when it comes to gender there certainly is much more than only black or white.
Monday, April 25, 2016
Amsterdam photo blog (another)
Last Saturday I once more went on a day trip to Amsterdam.
Perhaps this "Sensation Express" bus should be more aptly names "Surprise Express", since you're always in for some. Keen eyesight helped me to spot the bus at the very far end of the station, the opposite end from where it had been last time, at least 100 meters away - that is, to spot a bus that looked different from the regular public transport ones, more like a travel bus, and so I walked over to inquire and it turned out to be the one. Other people apparently kept calling the driver on mobile phones, having trouble to find it.
I felt grateful and kind of proud that, having no such gadgets, my keen warrior senses once more proved to be all I needed instead.
It kept raining on and off, but all in all the weather kept improving the closer we got to the destination. There was some traffic jams and slow going on the highways too, and eventually the driver stopped the bus on Piet-Hein-Kade, next to the Ij-Tower, and announced he wasn't going any further. I asked him to be sure he'd be back in this same spot for the return trip at 8:30 PM. At first he had trouble understanding my English but then he told me to be there by 8:20.
Personally I didn't really have any problem with the odd place of arrival (and pick-up) he'd chosen but it did bewilder me and I was wondering how the other people might feel about it - I had no problem because I know the city well enough, I wouldn't have any trouble to find my way around from here nor my way back here in the evening. But had I been a stranger to Amsterdam and here for the first time, I imagine I'd have felt quite a bit taxed by the situation and worried about finding back later. I'd have searched for a sign with the street name and then bought a map somewhere - but as it was, I didn't even consult the old map I had with me already, and not a single time for the rest of the day; I had the advantage of familiarity with Amsterdam and so it wasn't a thing for me to complain about. But I'd understand perfectly well if the other passengers would complain! But maybe their fancy gadgets helped them along again.
I decided to walk all the way to Waterlooplein and then rent a fiets (bicycle) at the MacBike rental there, and to pass by "Knuffels", the plushie store where once I bought my sweet Sharky - years ago, my first one, and they've never had such a pretty sharky again.
This time they had spiders. LOL
At Waterlooplein I strolled the market for a bit, then went to MacBike to get a fiets on which I rode on to Albert Cuyp Market. Sadly I found no more of the warm "winter" leggings of which I bought a pair there back in December and which I was in fact wearing. They're certainly NOT fit for actual winter, of course, at least not without an additional pair of thermo-leggings underneath, they're only a bit plushy inside, similar to tennis socks. Outside they're printed to look like jeans. But this time around they only had the regular, thin ones, so I didn't buy any as I already got enough leggings that can be worn with long underwear only (unless it's summer, which rarely happens in actuality - not only on the calendar).
Interesting tidbit: At a drugstore I noted that painkillers (which in Germany you can't buy at drugstores at all but only at pharmacies) are ridiculously cheap there while hair dye is ridiculously expensive - at least 3 times the price it is in Germany!
I rode on to Vondelpark. As I settled down there on the trunk of a willow that extended nearly horizontally over the pond where I intended to have some lunch (brown bread with honey & diet coke, bought at supermarket) it suddenly started hailing. Fortunately it lasted only a few minutes.
As it was closing in on 4 PM I decided to return my fiets already so I'd have to pay for 3 hours only - beyond 3 hours you have to pay a whole day, which isn't even that much more (about 15 € instead of 11 or so), but it wouldn't have been worth it since I'd have had less than 2 hours more because MacBike closes at 5:45 PM. So I returned it & even got a discount again as a regular customer - even if only once or twice a year, but MacBike is that cool. :)
I walked on toward my next stop: The English book store in Kalverstraat! I browsed the store for about an hour and eventually found two books of sci-fi short stories that I bought.
Later I still bought some very nice plush ear muffs at a souvenir store by the Flower Market, and they're the kind of things you really need in these climes.
About time to slowly move in direction of the central station again - passing by Dam Square which I found transformed into a fairground. The occasion I'm unsure about, it may have been for the upcoming King's Day celebrations already - formerly Queen's Day, which used to be right on Walpurgis, but they recently changed it and I think it's a couple days earlier now too. (26th? But that would be Chernobyl anniversary... whatever. LOL) I didn't go on any of the rides but only took photos of them since they were expensive and I'd already spent so much on the books & ear muffs, and my backpack would have hindered me anyway.
Last I went to the public library building which is seven stories tall with a cafe terrace at the top one, from where I took a few more photos. (I took a ton - more will be on Facebook.)
I was at the pick-up location on Piet Hein Kade early and was amazed that everyone else had found back there in time as well and we were in fact already departing by 8:20 PM.
Perhaps this "Sensation Express" bus should be more aptly names "Surprise Express", since you're always in for some. Keen eyesight helped me to spot the bus at the very far end of the station, the opposite end from where it had been last time, at least 100 meters away - that is, to spot a bus that looked different from the regular public transport ones, more like a travel bus, and so I walked over to inquire and it turned out to be the one. Other people apparently kept calling the driver on mobile phones, having trouble to find it.
I felt grateful and kind of proud that, having no such gadgets, my keen warrior senses once more proved to be all I needed instead.
It kept raining on and off, but all in all the weather kept improving the closer we got to the destination. There was some traffic jams and slow going on the highways too, and eventually the driver stopped the bus on Piet-Hein-Kade, next to the Ij-Tower, and announced he wasn't going any further. I asked him to be sure he'd be back in this same spot for the return trip at 8:30 PM. At first he had trouble understanding my English but then he told me to be there by 8:20.
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| Zuiderkerk reflection |
I decided to walk all the way to Waterlooplein and then rent a fiets (bicycle) at the MacBike rental there, and to pass by "Knuffels", the plushie store where once I bought my sweet Sharky - years ago, my first one, and they've never had such a pretty sharky again.
This time they had spiders. LOL
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| Sharky - with me since ~2007 |
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| Spiders at Knuffels store |
At Waterlooplein I strolled the market for a bit, then went to MacBike to get a fiets on which I rode on to Albert Cuyp Market. Sadly I found no more of the warm "winter" leggings of which I bought a pair there back in December and which I was in fact wearing. They're certainly NOT fit for actual winter, of course, at least not without an additional pair of thermo-leggings underneath, they're only a bit plushy inside, similar to tennis socks. Outside they're printed to look like jeans. But this time around they only had the regular, thin ones, so I didn't buy any as I already got enough leggings that can be worn with long underwear only (unless it's summer, which rarely happens in actuality - not only on the calendar).
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| Old cams at Waterlooplein Market |
Interesting tidbit: At a drugstore I noted that painkillers (which in Germany you can't buy at drugstores at all but only at pharmacies) are ridiculously cheap there while hair dye is ridiculously expensive - at least 3 times the price it is in Germany!
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| Turds at Albert Cuyp Market. LOL |
As it was closing in on 4 PM I decided to return my fiets already so I'd have to pay for 3 hours only - beyond 3 hours you have to pay a whole day, which isn't even that much more (about 15 € instead of 11 or so), but it wouldn't have been worth it since I'd have had less than 2 hours more because MacBike closes at 5:45 PM. So I returned it & even got a discount again as a regular customer - even if only once or twice a year, but MacBike is that cool. :)
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| Iepenzaadjes (elm seeds), everywhere in Amsterdam now |
I walked on toward my next stop: The English book store in Kalverstraat! I browsed the store for about an hour and eventually found two books of sci-fi short stories that I bought.
Later I still bought some very nice plush ear muffs at a souvenir store by the Flower Market, and they're the kind of things you really need in these climes.
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| Me at the Flower Market |
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| My souvenirs |
About time to slowly move in direction of the central station again - passing by Dam Square which I found transformed into a fairground. The occasion I'm unsure about, it may have been for the upcoming King's Day celebrations already - formerly Queen's Day, which used to be right on Walpurgis, but they recently changed it and I think it's a couple days earlier now too. (26th? But that would be Chernobyl anniversary... whatever. LOL) I didn't go on any of the rides but only took photos of them since they were expensive and I'd already spent so much on the books & ear muffs, and my backpack would have hindered me anyway.
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| Fairground at Dam Square |
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| Beautiful sunlight reflections |
I was at the pick-up location on Piet Hein Kade early and was amazed that everyone else had found back there in time as well and we were in fact already departing by 8:20 PM.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Today I'm a roll of asswipe
And I'll have to work my ass off to remedy this situation because it's absolutely unacceptable, obviously.
I did this 10/10 Treadmill Challenge, and I'd never have expected my result to be this catastrophically embarrassing - I do consider myself a pro athlete, after all; it's what I do, my profession - always will be, until the day I die. And until then I'll keep getting better.
Winter time is hard on my body and energy, I can handle anything but cold temp's, and it's still f'ing freezing here although it ought to be spring by now.
But I've kept getting better so far, and I absolutely intend to get to the 2 minute mark with this one.
Even if today it's been only an embarrassing 34 seconds. :(
Calling on other athletes to try this challenge and let me know if it's really this hard - ?
I did this 10/10 Treadmill Challenge, and I'd never have expected my result to be this catastrophically embarrassing - I do consider myself a pro athlete, after all; it's what I do, my profession - always will be, until the day I die. And until then I'll keep getting better.
Winter time is hard on my body and energy, I can handle anything but cold temp's, and it's still f'ing freezing here although it ought to be spring by now.
But I've kept getting better so far, and I absolutely intend to get to the 2 minute mark with this one.
Even if today it's been only an embarrassing 34 seconds. :(
Calling on other athletes to try this challenge and let me know if it's really this hard - ?
Monday, February 29, 2016
Beyond Perception
Being given an extra day to do so I have to grab the opportunity to squeeze in another post here before the month is out!
Thinking of brother Richard Ramirez since it's his birthday today, at the last one in 2012 he was still among us, even by then we were already out of contact though, having corresponded for a while previously. He was, and is, a brother in Satan, one of us.
I'll be passing up this year's FIBO, didn't find anyone to accompany me and I can't take my own photos since I won't have a hand free when climbing some ropes or something, and photos where I have my hands free would be boring, boring shit and I don't do those.
Instead I'll be riding to Amsterdam later in April, today I rode downtown to have my ticket printed out.
Right now it's still freezing although the days are getting noticeably longer already, and lots of spring flowers are already blooming despite the bitterly frosty nights, even daffodils.
Myself I still feel in hibernation mode though and haven't been doing much besides my obligatory workouts lately. And of course, still thinking about the same things, searching for answers at the frontlines of the unknown.
I came to talk about it with a guy at the gym lately and was shocked to find that he's in the materialist camp, shocked even more so since this gentleman is 70 years old, and he seriously believes after bodily death there will be nothing - how can he live with this?! We didn't get into this much further, and this may in part answer it - they avoid the subject. At least I got to tell him that each atom consists of 99.99% empty space.
Although he didn't seem to have trouble grasping this idea, apparently it meant nothing to him. He wasn't dull at all,he then even asked me about the size of the universe and I told him that it's unknown, that science can only talk about the known universe, because since the universe is about 13.7 billion years old the utmost distance we can see is 13.7 billion light years out, everything beyond that is shielded from us by a sort of event horizon because any light from further out can't have reached us yet. Not to mention that actually we can't even tell what's out there inside this event horizon, at least not what's there right now - we can only tell what was there in the past; in case of things near the event horizon what things looked like 13.7 billion years ago.
It is estimated that the entire (unknown) universe is many times larger than the known part.
It's sad that these things seem so off-putting to most people, even the brighter ones. Maybe they dislike having their minds boggled and prefer to move back to some down-to-earth topics instead.
I'm sure I've said this before, but even though I can acknowledge feeling helpless in the face of the overwhelmingly vast unknown that won't yield any answers, wrestling the unknowable and unimaginable without hope to pry any insights from it - isn't it still far worse to give up and resign to the idea that there can't be any answers and that whatever we do is, and has been from the moment of our birth, been doomed to be perfectly meaningless and in vain?!
I still remember a discussion I had with someone years ago when it puzzled me to no end that I couldn't make them understand what I meant by saying a person who could see only one color, say blue, would be unable to know the color blue. The guy I discussed with even got really upset about it and insisted it were like saying a blind person wouldn't know blindness.
Well, in fact the latter may even be true to some extent, at least if the person were blind from birth. They may know blindness in the sense that they'll be aware of lacking a certain ability that most people have to navigate through life. Through communication with those people, the blind person knows that these people can see while the person herself cannot - in this sense the person would know blindness to some extent, but not to the full extent a person who previously could see would know it!
And this is the crucial point: the person born blind wouldn't have known sight, and knowing sight is necessary to fully comprehend the meaning of blindness.
But in a person born blind, the brain regions normally used for processing vision don't develop to do just this since there's no input from the eyes, so the brain will use them for other things instead. I imagine it must be very much like we can't imagine the electromagnetic sense of a shark. A shark possesses organs called ampullae of Lorenzini, they are in little pores covering the shark's nose and face, and with these he can sense small electric fields generated by other animals' muscles and heartbeat. Yes, a shark can sense your heartbeat. I love sharks and I know a lot about them, but even I can't imagine what it would be like to actually perceive in this way, I'm lacking the organs for it.
Or think of the heat pits of a snake, another sense organ that humans don't have. The snake can sense the body heat of a warmblooded animal, which the snake uses to find prey. You may say, oh at least this we can easily simulate using a thermal camera that can see infrared - but no, that's not the same thing! Of course, everyone has seen those rainbow color images where reds and yellows indicate a warm body while the cooler surroundings are colored blue. But that's not what the snake "sees", because the snake doesn't "see" it at all! The snake has eyes to see, but what the heat pits do is something different than seeing.
Our specialized camera can translate this heat image for us into visible colors, so we can use our sense of vision for a sense that we lack. I'm sure the snake does not see the mouse in rainbow colors superimposed over his normal vision!
Back to my previous example of monochromatic vision. Here's a pic of me holding a little shark figure:
Now the same image in monochrome blue. You can see that in this one, the shark appears to have the same color as my hand.
Here it is once more in black and white, and below in four different monochrome versions.
Alright, now as you imagine you were able to see only the single color blue, no other colors, just as in the monochrome blue version - it's easy to see that all of the images above would appear perfectly identical to you! You could see no other color but blue, but you wouldn't know what blue is because you had no comparison. Seeing only one color would be the same as seeing none at all, i.e. seeing only black and white; with no other colors you'd have no concept of color at all. If I asked you which of these images is blue you wouldn't be able to tell because they'd look each the same to you!
Thinking of brother Richard Ramirez since it's his birthday today, at the last one in 2012 he was still among us, even by then we were already out of contact though, having corresponded for a while previously. He was, and is, a brother in Satan, one of us.
I'll be passing up this year's FIBO, didn't find anyone to accompany me and I can't take my own photos since I won't have a hand free when climbing some ropes or something, and photos where I have my hands free would be boring, boring shit and I don't do those.
Instead I'll be riding to Amsterdam later in April, today I rode downtown to have my ticket printed out.
Right now it's still freezing although the days are getting noticeably longer already, and lots of spring flowers are already blooming despite the bitterly frosty nights, even daffodils.
Myself I still feel in hibernation mode though and haven't been doing much besides my obligatory workouts lately. And of course, still thinking about the same things, searching for answers at the frontlines of the unknown.
I came to talk about it with a guy at the gym lately and was shocked to find that he's in the materialist camp, shocked even more so since this gentleman is 70 years old, and he seriously believes after bodily death there will be nothing - how can he live with this?! We didn't get into this much further, and this may in part answer it - they avoid the subject. At least I got to tell him that each atom consists of 99.99% empty space.
Although he didn't seem to have trouble grasping this idea, apparently it meant nothing to him. He wasn't dull at all,he then even asked me about the size of the universe and I told him that it's unknown, that science can only talk about the known universe, because since the universe is about 13.7 billion years old the utmost distance we can see is 13.7 billion light years out, everything beyond that is shielded from us by a sort of event horizon because any light from further out can't have reached us yet. Not to mention that actually we can't even tell what's out there inside this event horizon, at least not what's there right now - we can only tell what was there in the past; in case of things near the event horizon what things looked like 13.7 billion years ago.
It is estimated that the entire (unknown) universe is many times larger than the known part.
It's sad that these things seem so off-putting to most people, even the brighter ones. Maybe they dislike having their minds boggled and prefer to move back to some down-to-earth topics instead.
I'm sure I've said this before, but even though I can acknowledge feeling helpless in the face of the overwhelmingly vast unknown that won't yield any answers, wrestling the unknowable and unimaginable without hope to pry any insights from it - isn't it still far worse to give up and resign to the idea that there can't be any answers and that whatever we do is, and has been from the moment of our birth, been doomed to be perfectly meaningless and in vain?!
I still remember a discussion I had with someone years ago when it puzzled me to no end that I couldn't make them understand what I meant by saying a person who could see only one color, say blue, would be unable to know the color blue. The guy I discussed with even got really upset about it and insisted it were like saying a blind person wouldn't know blindness.
Well, in fact the latter may even be true to some extent, at least if the person were blind from birth. They may know blindness in the sense that they'll be aware of lacking a certain ability that most people have to navigate through life. Through communication with those people, the blind person knows that these people can see while the person herself cannot - in this sense the person would know blindness to some extent, but not to the full extent a person who previously could see would know it!
And this is the crucial point: the person born blind wouldn't have known sight, and knowing sight is necessary to fully comprehend the meaning of blindness.
But in a person born blind, the brain regions normally used for processing vision don't develop to do just this since there's no input from the eyes, so the brain will use them for other things instead. I imagine it must be very much like we can't imagine the electromagnetic sense of a shark. A shark possesses organs called ampullae of Lorenzini, they are in little pores covering the shark's nose and face, and with these he can sense small electric fields generated by other animals' muscles and heartbeat. Yes, a shark can sense your heartbeat. I love sharks and I know a lot about them, but even I can't imagine what it would be like to actually perceive in this way, I'm lacking the organs for it.
Or think of the heat pits of a snake, another sense organ that humans don't have. The snake can sense the body heat of a warmblooded animal, which the snake uses to find prey. You may say, oh at least this we can easily simulate using a thermal camera that can see infrared - but no, that's not the same thing! Of course, everyone has seen those rainbow color images where reds and yellows indicate a warm body while the cooler surroundings are colored blue. But that's not what the snake "sees", because the snake doesn't "see" it at all! The snake has eyes to see, but what the heat pits do is something different than seeing.
Our specialized camera can translate this heat image for us into visible colors, so we can use our sense of vision for a sense that we lack. I'm sure the snake does not see the mouse in rainbow colors superimposed over his normal vision!
Back to my previous example of monochromatic vision. Here's a pic of me holding a little shark figure:
Now the same image in monochrome blue. You can see that in this one, the shark appears to have the same color as my hand.
Here it is once more in black and white, and below in four different monochrome versions.
Alright, now as you imagine you were able to see only the single color blue, no other colors, just as in the monochrome blue version - it's easy to see that all of the images above would appear perfectly identical to you! You could see no other color but blue, but you wouldn't know what blue is because you had no comparison. Seeing only one color would be the same as seeing none at all, i.e. seeing only black and white; with no other colors you'd have no concept of color at all. If I asked you which of these images is blue you wouldn't be able to tell because they'd look each the same to you!
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Antinatalism
This is the other thing I meant to write about for a long time: Antinatalism.
I came across a couple articles about it last year but they're usually long, such as this one, and I must admit I didn't read the whole thing. For a more concise explanation I found this video:
I came across a couple articles about it last year but they're usually long, such as this one, and I must admit I didn't read the whole thing. For a more concise explanation I found this video:
It also touches upon some things I mentioned in my previous entry, such as the terror threatened by doG against all who disagree with him. This part is actually new tome in the context of antinatalism, I had assumed antinatalism to be firmly and exclusively founded on atheism/materialism.
Despite this latter assumption, I found myself sympathizing to some extent with antinatalism.
Only to some extent - since there are several reasons for which I could never fully adopt this view for myself.
Only to some extent - since there are several reasons for which I could never fully adopt this view for myself.
Of course, unlike most people who, as the guy mentioned in the video, like sex, I have always been disgusted by even the idea of having sex, and so I naturally won't ever have children.
But the antinatalist view is ultimately grounded on compassion for the suffering of those brought into existence, and by nature I don't care about that, not only in a selfish way where others are concerned, but to some extent even concerning myself. If some suffering is necessary as a means to an end I'm willing to go through it. The hard workouts I do also entail some amount of suffering which I voluntarily choose, because I'm a warrior.
And this is another reason why antinatalism is not for me: It's basically a stance of resignation, and definitely not a way of a warrior. Myself I do believe that I'm in this world for a reason, that I can make a stand here and gain something for myself, and for who and what I stand for - for Satan, for His rebellion which I share, for freedom and lawlessness.
But I'm not opposed to the antinatalist view because under the assumption of materialism, the assumption that there is absolutely nothing to be gained from this life but a return into nonexistence - then this bleak and pessimistic outlook is the only one that makes sense!
In a much earlier entry I posted about a thought experiment - which wasn't my own idea but I was very interested to hear other people's opinions on it. It concerned the hypothetical offer of a free vacation trip to any destination of your choice, no matter how much it costs, with only one hitch: At the end of the journey your memory of it would be completely erased, and you would not be allowed to bring back any photos or other souvenirs.
There are no replies on the blog post itself, but 2 or 3 people commented when I posted the link to my entry on Facebook, and just like myself they said they would rather refuse this offer.
It would in no way enrich our life experiences of the memory of the trip were irretrievably erased thereafter just as if it had never happened, and therefore it would be useless. (Apart from the fact that some said they'd hate the idea of having their memory tampered with.)
But you see, the actual reason why this thought experiment interested me so much was because in the materialist view, our entire lives would be just like this trip!
If we are to simply cease to exist after the death of our bodies then naturally we won't retain any memories of our lives, and it would be as if we had never lived in the first place. This very fact makes life completely pointless from the start, which is why in my opinion, a materialist view can only be accommodated along with the antinatalist view - all else seems complete insanity!
Because if materialism is true then we all were only really born to die, needlessly.
And let's face it, if materialism is true then it's completely delusional to believe that any part of you will live on in your children, grandchildren, and future generations. Some genes, yes - but you also share some genes with mosquitoes, potatoes, and any lifeform on Earth; it all evolved from the same substance and is ultimately made of the same substance. But in order to live in any form you have to experience - consciously. There is no reason to believe that after your physical death you will suddenly to some extent share the consciousness of your children, if that were so then why would this suddenly happen only after your death?
1) While alive you don't experience a shared consciousness with your children. 2) If you have more than one child, your consciousness would have to somehow split up to be distributed among them. 3) And what would that be like for the child...
(My father already died about 10 years ago, and I'm perfectly certain that no part of his consciousness has become part of mine!)
And even if you're into this creepy collectivism - being the ultimate individualist, it's totally creepy to me - and you believe in "contributing your part to humanity as a whole", that would make very little difference since humanity will also eventually cease to exist, and that's absolutely not a question of "if" but only of "when".
Lately I read this article about the probability of finding extraterrestrial life in globular star clusters - there's an English language source article to it, but what interested me more than the article itself were some of the comments under the one in Dutch language.
The article says that in a couple of billions of years, Earth will become too hot to sustain life and that humanity will therefore have to move to a different solar system. A person named "Tom Meijer" is quoting this part and suggesting that such nonsense should not be repeated everywhere.
Someone else correctly points out that with the aging Sun growing hotter over time, Earth will indeed become uninhabitable. Tom Meijer states he knows this but that this is not what he meant: it is the idea that humanity might still exist in billions of years that is absolutely preposterous - and I couldn't agree more with him!!
His comment is drawing mighty flak, including name calling ("lulkoek" roughly translates as "dick cookie"), which more often than not speaks for a lack of any valid points of argumentation.
"How dare you say that our precious, noble race [LOL] might be anything but immortal among the stars?!"
But the truth is, absolutely nothing in this physical universe is meant to last, even the stars burn out, and the formation of new ones likely will eventually cease.
Species of lifeforms are even much shorter lived, without exception they either change or disappear over geological time spans. Even my beloved familiars, the sharks, who are at over 400 million years among the oldest of all higher species of life of Earth - which means, for comparison, they had already existed for about 200 million years at the time the very first dinosaurs appeared - have not remained the same over time. In the deep sea there are still some very archaic species like the frilled shark enduring to this day; on the other hand more modern families like the mackerel sharks, members of which include swift and highly intelligent species like the mako and great white sharks, appeared only later, and the greatest predator the oceans have ever seen, the mighty Megalodon, sadly is no longer among us.
The same goes for humans; in the unlikely case that they won't have long died out in a few millions (NOT billions) of years it is doubtful whether they could still appropriately be regarded as humans because their nature and appearance would likely be vastly different from what is familiar to us now.
In conclusion, the most likely explanation for the Fermi Paradox may be indeed that intelligent species capable of building space-faring civilizations usually are only very short lived.
Because if materialism is true then we all were only really born to die, needlessly.
And let's face it, if materialism is true then it's completely delusional to believe that any part of you will live on in your children, grandchildren, and future generations. Some genes, yes - but you also share some genes with mosquitoes, potatoes, and any lifeform on Earth; it all evolved from the same substance and is ultimately made of the same substance. But in order to live in any form you have to experience - consciously. There is no reason to believe that after your physical death you will suddenly to some extent share the consciousness of your children, if that were so then why would this suddenly happen only after your death?
1) While alive you don't experience a shared consciousness with your children. 2) If you have more than one child, your consciousness would have to somehow split up to be distributed among them. 3) And what would that be like for the child...
(My father already died about 10 years ago, and I'm perfectly certain that no part of his consciousness has become part of mine!)
And even if you're into this creepy collectivism - being the ultimate individualist, it's totally creepy to me - and you believe in "contributing your part to humanity as a whole", that would make very little difference since humanity will also eventually cease to exist, and that's absolutely not a question of "if" but only of "when".
Lately I read this article about the probability of finding extraterrestrial life in globular star clusters - there's an English language source article to it, but what interested me more than the article itself were some of the comments under the one in Dutch language.
The article says that in a couple of billions of years, Earth will become too hot to sustain life and that humanity will therefore have to move to a different solar system. A person named "Tom Meijer" is quoting this part and suggesting that such nonsense should not be repeated everywhere.
Someone else correctly points out that with the aging Sun growing hotter over time, Earth will indeed become uninhabitable. Tom Meijer states he knows this but that this is not what he meant: it is the idea that humanity might still exist in billions of years that is absolutely preposterous - and I couldn't agree more with him!!
His comment is drawing mighty flak, including name calling ("lulkoek" roughly translates as "dick cookie"), which more often than not speaks for a lack of any valid points of argumentation.
"How dare you say that our precious, noble race [LOL] might be anything but immortal among the stars?!"
But the truth is, absolutely nothing in this physical universe is meant to last, even the stars burn out, and the formation of new ones likely will eventually cease.
Species of lifeforms are even much shorter lived, without exception they either change or disappear over geological time spans. Even my beloved familiars, the sharks, who are at over 400 million years among the oldest of all higher species of life of Earth - which means, for comparison, they had already existed for about 200 million years at the time the very first dinosaurs appeared - have not remained the same over time. In the deep sea there are still some very archaic species like the frilled shark enduring to this day; on the other hand more modern families like the mackerel sharks, members of which include swift and highly intelligent species like the mako and great white sharks, appeared only later, and the greatest predator the oceans have ever seen, the mighty Megalodon, sadly is no longer among us.
The same goes for humans; in the unlikely case that they won't have long died out in a few millions (NOT billions) of years it is doubtful whether they could still appropriately be regarded as humans because their nature and appearance would likely be vastly different from what is familiar to us now.
In conclusion, the most likely explanation for the Fermi Paradox may be indeed that intelligent species capable of building space-faring civilizations usually are only very short lived.
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