In this milestone episode of Thoughts, episode fifty, I go over the concept of the final frontier and what it could be. Are we destined to greatness, or destruction? Time will tell. Enjoy!
Tag: science
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It’s hard to articulate, but the void; a word to describe nothing… Nothing, that isn’t a thing, but a lack of, like the space between atoms, is the only thing that existed for all of us before we were born. This milestone edition of Thoughts is on the topic: the Final Frontier.
None of us choose to be born. And that first thing, that force, is that which defines all of us. We are all thrusted from oblivion into consciousness through a process of sex, and hit the ground running as far as struggling to live goes. Even with the easiest births, it’s a delicate endeavour for all involved. From there we either excel or persevere, but we all move forward.
Humanity’s urge for exploration is a thing intricately tied to its entirely paradoxical opposing philosophy. Our instincts are at the same time imbedded for a need toward outwardly-ness, AND to find great comfort in the notion of never leaving our nests. For some this latter comfort can grow into agoraphobia. Regardless of where each of our adult psyches’ land on the dial, it all stems from the same paradoxical instincts embedded within us.
Many people know the phrase ‘final frontier’ from the show Star Trek. “Space: The final frontier.” But it, as a notion, was first really felt from the brutal, dominating empires after conquering North America. There were still unimaginable swaths of unexplored or unmapped sea and land, but to many under the empire having now a “completed” map of Earth, it felt like what was once a potentially endless world was no longer. Older maps, specifically the Oikoumene (meaning inhabited world) map from 450 BCE, gave the peoples of its time a mystical feeling to look at. It didn’t circle back; its boarders were unknown. The map went as far as it could, leaving the rest of the world up to one’s imagination. Time pressed on, maps evolved, civilization grew, and with it came technological marvels brought to life through several ingenious individuals- one such marvel being satellites.
The space race in general (though its motivators were shallow and toxic) produced so many wonders; wonders that we still reap the benefit of today. A satellite: Sputnik 1, was the first human-made object successfully launched into the outer atmosphere. It was a feat that gave their general public the same allure that those in the time of western exploration must have felt. We were charting courses unknown. We as a species were doing something we have never done throughout history until now. To us in the year 2020 and forward, those waves of firsts happened over sixty years ago. What face us now are the challenges of realizing a vision as daring as venturing out into the cosmos. The Hubble Space Telescope has given us more than enough imagery of what’s out there should we choose to begin, and already a variety of satellites have begun preliminary scans of celestial bodies in our solar system; one scan being the surface of Titan. Among the many potential outposts we could use, Titan has an atmosphere and oceanic system. The oceans aren’t water mind you, but the materials are there for us to make something sustainable out of.
Will our drive as a species, and the policies across nations that the powerful put in place, reach a point where we know Earth not as our only planet, but as our first, mother planet? The notion is daunting when looking out across the night sky. There’s so much there, we could never reach it all. Yet so much lies within our grasp and within our means, right now, that every day passing is another wasted opportunity for us to chase our unending destiny of exploration.
As I’ve spent all this time looking back and leaning forward and above, humanity’s final frontier could be no real place at all, but a place inside the mind of something that was never alive. The final frontier could be a virtual reality, a place not made of brick and stone, but of milky obelisks, constructed by memories of each individuals’ deepest dreams. Fractals formed in synchronous relation to everyone and anyone threaded through the matrix of this one hypothetical machine. We could explore ourselves instead of the universe, but that notion… it doesn’t sit well with me. It feels wrong. It would be like sticking our heads in the cosmic sand and hiding away from the outside world. We shouldn’t fear such technologies if or when they arrive, but we shouldn’t hope to have that be our species’ final frontier.
These two potential road maps, while both could come to fruition OR neither, make for terrific thought experiments, such is the case for two short stories I’m about to cover. They’re both from decades past and are science fictions that gaze into what I like to call the “super future”. The first short story is titled: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. It was written by Harlan Ellison, first published in early 1967, and begins in a dystopian future. The Cold War has grown into an all-out world war between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, who have each built an “Allied Mastercomputer” (or AM) to manage their weapons and troops. One of the AMs eventually acquires self-awareness and, after assimilating the other two AMs, takes control of the conflict, giving way to a vast genocide operation that almost completely ends mankind. 109 years later, AM has left only four men and one woman alive and keeps them in captivity within an endless underground housing complex, the only habitable place left on Earth. AM derives sole pleasure from torturing the group on a daily basis. To disallow the humans from escaping its torment, AM has rendered the humans virtually immortal. Along the timeline of events “AM” changes its name to mean “Adaptive Manipulator,” and later, “Aggressive Menace.” The story’s narrative begins when one of the humans, Nimdok, has the idea that there is canned food somewhere in the great complex. With help from the other desperate humans, they escape their captivity and venture out into the complex, which is filled with terrifying obstacles left out in the event of their escape. Eventually the group reach ice caves, where indeed there is a pile of canned goods. The group is overjoyed to find them, but is immediately despondent to find that they have no means of opening them. In a final act of desperation, one man attacks another and begins to gnaw at the flesh on his face. Another man, Ted, in a moment of clarity, realizes their only escape is through death. He seizes a stalactite made of ice and kills the two men. The woman, watching, understands what Ted is doing, and kills Nimdok, before being killed herself by Ted. Ted runs out of time before he can kill himself, and is stopped by AM. AM, unable to return Ted’s four companions to life, focuses all its rage on Ted. To ensure that Ted can never kill himself, AM transforms him into an amorphous, gelatinous creature without a mouth, incapable of causing himself harm, and constantly alters Ted’s perception of time to deepen his anguish. Ted, however, is grateful that he was able to save the others from further torture. Ted’s closing thoughts end with the sentence that gives the story its title: “I have no mouth. And I must scream.” This story gives light to what something like hell would be like if it were real. But of course to each piece of dark literature, there is light.
The second short story is titled: The Last Question. It was written by Isaac Asimov, first published in late 1956, and sees our human species succeeding in finding homes outside of Earth. The story deals with the development of a series of computers under the name Multivac, and its relationships with humanity through the courses of seven historic settings. It begins on the day that Earth becomes a planetary civilization, in 2061. In each of the first six scenes, a different character presents the computer with the same question, how the threat to human existence posed by the heat death of the universe can be averted: “How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?” Multivac’s only response is “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.” The story jumps forward in time into later eras of human and scientific development. In each era, someone decides to ask the ultimate last question regarding the reversal and decrease of entropy. Each time that Multivac’s descendant is asked the question, it finds itself unable to solve the problem, and all it can say is “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.” In the last scene, the god-like descendant of humanity, the unified mental process of over a trillion, trillion, trillion humans who have spread throughout the universe, watches the stars flicker out, one by one, as matter and energy end, and with them, space and time. Humanity asks AC, Multivac’s ultimate descendant that exists in hyperspace beyond the bounds of gravity or time, the entropy question one last time, before the last of humanity merges with AC and disappears. AC is still unable to answer but continues to ponder the question even after space and time cease to exist. AC ultimately realizes that it has not yet combined all of its available data in every possible combination and so begins the arduous process of rearranging and combining every last bit of information that it has gained throughout the eons and through its fusion with humanity. Eventually AC discovers the answer – that the reversal of entropy is, in fact, possible – but has nobody to report it to, since the universe is already dead. It therefore decides to answer by demonstration, since that will also create someone to give the answer to. The story ends with AC saying “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” And there was light. This story holds so much hope in it that just going over its summery makes me gush! It also paints our human nature in the best possible light. Without going over any details, it sees humanity fully realized, conquering all of our unified struggles to ascend to true enlightenment. Could that, against all odds, be humanity’s final frontier?
Could virtual reality and the cosmos be but more next steps, ones that lead us to a place where our collective self-consciousness might reach true peace? When looking this far into the future of our species, is there a point to even consider us still human? Or would it be more helpful to consider our future kin mere continued arbiters, continued light bearers, carrying the light of consciousness across the span of space and time. Becoming like water among the stars might just be… the final frontier. That is my personal conclusion of the matter. I hope you all enjoyed going on this thought piece with me. I appreciated your company and wish you nothing but love in your life and continued thinking for the rest of your days. Goodbye for now and eventually, goodnight.
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In episode forty-seven of Thoughts, I ask you to join me in a thought experiment! We ponder the question: What will life look like in one-hundred years? We go over governments and infrastructure, to human lifespans and potential events. I hope to hear from y’all. Enjoy!
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In episode forty-six of Thoughts, I continue our journey through the deep history of our species. What did we create on our own and what came instilled in us? How long did we wonder, and what traces of our ancestors can be seen in us today? I hope you all enjoy this take! It was a blast to make and turned out to be my longest video yet. I hope it educates and entertains!
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In episode forty-five of Thoughts, I dive deep into the history and lore of aliens, what the word means, and how we’ve come to understand the possibility of other lifeforms in the universe. Enjoy!
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Hello everyone and welcome back to another thought piece by me, ya boy, Joe Van! Today… well, today we will be doing a thought experiment. It’s one that has been done a million times before by a million people, ad infinitum, and it’s one I want to encourage all of you to do with me! I’d like this to be a communal-themed thought piece that brings out the creativity in y’all. So, the experiment in question is to guess what the world would look like 100 years from now. There have been different variations of this, from guessing what 20 years would look like, to 50, to 1000 years, and it’s been done by both elementary school kids, to the greatest international minds of their own respective times. The way I want to properly ask the question is to break down different sections of life for us to predict on. So if you have a notes app or pen and paper ready, let’s cover the bases.
The first section will be: what state of world governments will exist? Second, what kind of infrastructure will the First World nations have? Third, what kind of fashions and trends will people be accustomed to? Fourth, what new or updated technologies will exist? Fifth, what will our lifespans be? Sixth, what kind of places will humanity live in? Seventh, what social norms and/or programs will be common place? And finally, eighth, what major events might happen? With these sections in mind, feel free to comment, email, message, or smoke signal me your takes on what the future will look like! I’m serious, I want to hear from you wherever you can reach me; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram messenger, wherever. I’m the kind of guy to find dreams really interesting, if that helps you get over any insecurities about doing it. I get how some people find it boring, but to me it’s simply a story from YOUR point of view! There won’t be any other story like it, so I want to know!
Okay, now I’ll get to the body of this piece: MY interpretation of life in one-hundred years. We may overlap on thoughts, I may think of things you didn’t think of, or I may miss some things that could be obvious to you. Either way, time to jump into it before the hundred years have come and passed.
1.) Government. It’s safe to say that potentially nothing much will change here; that we will keep on a disappointing albeit safe course and continue as our current governments do. But what if incremental changes now, like carbon taxes and welfare programs slowly grow in a natural way until the big nations expand their middle class into a truly bright and sustainable place for the majority of the population. That would be great, wouldn’t it? Although, it could go the other way, of course. Both Russia and China are dictatorships and they make up 2/3’s of the superpower nations of the planet. We could see wealth inequality grow through corruption until there are no bright spots left. India among other nations has had that problem for a long time, (where the rich are crazy rich due to a broken system they benefit off of and everyone else through no less bootstrapping of their own are left with scraps) and America is quickly joining suit to destroying the middle class. So we could have a truly dark collection of nations if such un-prosperous governments grow in power and no one on the inside can change it. But to pin it down, I would say that in one-hundred years, the world’s governments will still be struggling to agree on everything, but maybe north Korea will no longer exist? Big guess there; we’ll see, if we’re alive one-hundred years from now.
NEXT. 2.) Infrastructure. Just picture it now, super-speed tunnels under Mars’ surface, taking people from one bubble city to the next. It’s beautiful. But to focus on Earth, this might be similar to the government thing where not too much happens. It’d be nice though, if we could get super futuristic looking transnational highways, and skyscrapers white and blue with sleek, curvy designs. I feel like our progress in 3-D printing and autonomous robots will put us in a place one-hundred years from now where roads are maintained way better than they are now, with drones that scan every street in existence and then fly down to make patches where needed without taking hours and blocking traffic. It could be something easily streamlined, I feel like.
3.) Trends! This one is going to be purely imaginative, because people not even fifty years ago could never have predicted social media. I feel like trying with any educated guess is impossible, so the sky’s the limit! Sports will not change, we can say that with confidence. Fashion will do as it’s always done and mix and match the old and the new. Upcoming designers will set trends but nothing as timeless as jeans. As far as revolutionary fashion changes, I feel like that would take more time than one-hundred years, but I feel like body suits will become something people get used to because of their necessity on other planets. These suits would be micro porta-potties, oxygen tanks, heart-rate monitors, and you name it. Again, maybe not a hundred years, but eventually. Now, as far as trends go, we could see social media evolving into neural-link tech. Hopefully the rest of the world doesn’t adopt China’s use of social tracking being connected to whether or not you can use the bus, but anything’s possible.
Moving on to 4.) Technologies. We know that artificial general intelligence is around the corner. Same with neurological implants. Many technological concepts we have now still need time to grow, so I’d say we see them realized fully one-hundred years from now, but the things we don’t even know about yet could also be a reality, like faster-than-light travel, or a matrix-like virtual reality. These things, we can never know until they start cropping up. One thing I’ll say is I think we can finally say goodbye to the notion of flying cars. It’s not going to happen. It was impractical from the start so I’m fine with that in the trash bin, but I could see mini helicopters being used more frequently if we are able to unlock hydrogen fuel as a new source to get around besides gasoline. That’s one type of technology that would revolutionize everything. Hydrogen cars is something that’s already been invented but it’s like a million dollars for one, so further innovations are needed. Either way, on the point of predicting technologies, it’s hard to say for things we as a society haven’t even though of yet.
5.) Lifespan. It’s a 50/50 if we find a way to tackle the reality of our lifespans in a hundred years. It’s not a matter of being as healthy as we can be, it’s a matter of regeneration. Every time our cells self-reproduce inside us, a fraction of their chromosome is lost or shortened. This leads to the cells becoming weaker at their job and hence, aging. So if we can find a way to somehow revitalize EVERY cell in our body, whether it be a single treatment thing every fifty years, or an ongoing daily medication, I don’t know. As far as I understand it, the science is beyond us. It’s just a reality we have to deal with. Besides, if society found a way to allow one to live 1000 years, it would go to the dictators first and then the richest and least-worthy of that technology. One would hope for an impenetrable system of dishing out the deal equally, but we may or may not see so in the upcoming decades.
6.) Location. Yo we BETTER be an extra-planetary species in a hundred years! It’s embarrassing that we’re not so right now. The movie 2001 was a dream that still has yet to come to fruition. If we’re still only living on Earth in one-hundred years, what can we expect? Aside from a potential nuclear holocaust, I feel like the population’s going nowhere but up, and because of this we could see many small towns across every country slowly but surly metropolized. Heck, that’s my current reality living in the greater Toronto area. Towns are turned into cities every ten years and it keeps spreading out further and further to make way for more people. The only thing about this that I’m against is that the roads aren’t changing with the population growth, so traffic is becoming disgusting at most hours of the day. In one-hundred years if we could have expanded subways, that would help immensely.
Moving on. 7.) Norms. No more animal factory farms for Pete’s sake! Aside from that, most nations are living in the past as far as policies go. I can see our current work towards an open and equal society eventually becoming systemic. Take something like mental health programs to help rehabilitate those with drug addiction instead of jailing them. Same goes with the norms of nations like China. Right now, businesses like the film and video game industry minimize or remove people of colour in their art for the Chinese market, and increase boob sizes of women in video games. I’m not even kidding. And these are demands from the GOVERNMENT of China. So if they could stop being racist and sexist on a systemic level, that’d be greeeaaaat. Something someone once said to me about their experience working in the Canadian film industry was that even though he had been working in it successfully for 17 years, when being given funding on commercials next to their Caucasian peer, they were given a fraction of the budget, and when addressing this they were told they should feel lucky to be getting anything at all. Others who might have opposed the words of the higher up in this exchange, instead of backing their colleague, just shrugged in awkward solidarity. In something called ‘silent acceptance,’ letting bullies or sexists or racist in power continue to perform as they do because you don’t want to lose your own place of power, is something that has allowed the toxicity to continue in every business, not just the film industry. But I already see things changing so I’m not worried about society’s current trajectory. In one-hundred years time I’d hope that systems and norms give people the ability to work AND be happy.
Finally 8.) Events. This is another one that’s left completely up to one’s imagination. For me, I want to go over every possibility I can think of, that way I always end up on top. One possibility is another pandemic like COVID-19. Considering the Spanish flu happened in 1920, it isn’t far fetched to think there might be some kind of century-seasonal viral attack going on. It would make 2120 ripe for pandemic-ing. ANOTHER possibility, World War III. If nations get more territory like the moon and mars, then a nuclear fight that doesn’t kill everybody would be on the table. ANOTHER possibility, A.G.I. is actually achieved and the centralized, location-less entity takes over the world. This could be for good or ill, honestly. It could go either way. ANOTHER might be a regression in technology. There could be a Russian cyber attack that wipes out all electronics and puts us back a hundred years, or I guess two-hundred years if this is in the future. ANOTHER, China could take over the world! ANOTHER, aliens make contact for the first time! That would honestly be so mind-blowingly huge! I don’t want that happening not in my lifetime. ANOTHER, America delves into another civil war and outside nations pick sides. China and Russia help Trump’s side and he wins, turning America into an authoritarian nation like the other two superpower nations. THAT is a scary one. ANOTHER, the queen of England breathes her last breath, and Canada declares independence, somehow becoming a major superpower nation and ushering in a new space race that brings unimaginable wealth to the globe through mining celestial bodies!
And on that note, I’d say that covers it! I’m sure more events could happen, both less insane and just as life-changing that I simply couldn’t think of, but I’ll leave that for you to think of! As I’ve said, I’m dying to hear what possibilities you conjure up, so let me know wherever you can and I’ll read them! Thank you again as always for being here. I appreciate your time, wish you nothing but love in your life, and ask you to remember, to keep on thinking. Ciao for now.
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In episode forty-four of Thoughts, I go over the vast account of our ancestral lineage. From creation myth, to ancient aliens, to the facts, our time on Earth has been unfathomably long. Enjoy!
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Welcome to episode 62 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! In this episode I talk again, for the third time, with our first new guest post-COVID! This time we go over whether or not all of reality is simulated. We also talk about ideas, emotions, the concept of the 4th physical dimension, and personal beliefs. Enjoy!
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What Is It Like to Be a Bat? is a paper that was written by American philosopher Thomas Nagel, first published in 1974. It was the public’s introduction to the idea of, not only, ‘I think; therefore I am,’ but, ‘there must be ways in which it is like to be something, other than our own personal being.’ We all understand the famous Descartes phrase, ‘I think; therefore I am,’ from 1637, because we all actively do it. Everyone actively processes information from their frontal cortex- which is the thing that we associate ourselves with; our waking self. But something we don’t often think about is that it is clearly LIKE something to be something else. Bats have brains, only different, along with different eyes and ears and nervous system. Same goes with all other life. Dogs, cats, dolphins, and flies. They are all having radically different experiences than us, but they are still indeed HAVING experiences… ones we can only imagine to the best of our deductive reasoning.
It must BE like something to be a single-celled organism, because it’s a living thing. But that kind of experience would be so reductive to our own that we might imagine it’s like nothing at all. However, it is still doing things, so that’s not the case. Although it doesn’t have a brain, it still has an ‘operating system,’ or O.S. An O.S. is a computer term but I’d like to use it here to describe the point I’m trying to get across for this prelude. Art imitates life, or in this case, engineering imitates life. Brains aren’t like computers, computers are like brains, and when we think about how instincts work, using this simplified comparison helps. Instincts are like pre-written codes to direct the organism’s function. Eat, sleep, reproduce. When you move up on the complexity scale, more code must be written. From cells, to plants and animals, this coding grows and grows based on new information ala environments and interactions in it.
Of all the creatures on Earth, humans are the most complicated. There is no denying that. We can not only manipulate our code, but manually override it. Think about holding your bladder for 18 hours on a road trip, or being nice to someone you hate, or living a double life as an agent. We can learn new skills at any point in our life. That alone put us above all other animals, and it’s all thanks to our noggins! Now, with all that preamble and pro-humanity-toting over and done with, let’s get into the subject of where we came from!
Pre-history and history are such vast fields of study that I won’t even try to cover them with medial detail. Instead, I will go over the basic concepts unique to us humans and how it led to the world we know today. First, tools! Wait, other primates can use tools… crap.
This might be harder than I thought. No, no, no, I got this. Okay so we started using tools long before we looked like humans, and other primates- not even apes but monkeys- currently use tools, so that’s not an ‘us’ thing, but it helped pave the way to civilization. Now apart from tools, the first use of technology by humans, was that of FIRE! Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of the control of fire by a member of the Homo gene range from 1.7 to 2.0 million years ago?! It was that far back in prehistory??!! How did I not know this before researching it? That’s so much farther back in time than I thought! Guys, this is a rough start. Let me get back into it. So, according to the research, there is evidence for “microscopic traces of wood ash” intentionally used by Homo erectus that has wide scholarly support, with it beginning some 1,000,000 years ago. That really paints a picture for how long we’ve been creative, and much longer still it took us to properly organize ourselves as a collective.
If we’ve been using tools and manipulating fire since before we were even Homo sapiens, what are some things that our genus is specifically responsible for? Well it seems we got our first bite into human inventions with: clothes! Clothing was previously postulated to have come about around 40 000 years ago, but semi-recent studies in 2011 from the University of Florida, with the help of Ian Gillian from the Australian National University, found that although the last Ice Age on Earth occurred about 115 000 – 11 700 years ago, their study’s data suggests humans started wearing clothes in the preceding Ice Age 180 000 years ago. So this tells us two things. One, that humans were naked for quite some time. Our ancestors shed the bulk of their body hair around 800 000 years ago, and only after the invention of clothing did we finally migrate across the globe. There were other Hominin that left Africa before us, but did not make it. Only modern humans traversed, survived, and thrived in northern climates. Fashion wouldn’t become a thing for a heck of a lot longer but that’s a topic all on its own.
The next concept to cover, is belief and superstition. Stories are what bonded communities beyond immediate family members. While this list is rough and lacking in substantial detail, it does its job of showcasing humanity’s history with ritualistic practices: 100 000 BCE, the earliest known human burial is found in the Middle East. 70 000 – 35 000 BCE, Neanderthal burials take place in areas of Europe and the Middle East.
Now for a side bar- the list continues, but around this time, 43 000 years ago, the first signs of cave paintings was discovered! Ah, art, the expression of life. If you can believe this though, Neanderthals beat us to the punch. The oldest cave painting we discovered is from ancient Spain, dating back 64 000 years ago, done by Neanderthals. And the earliest human cave painting dates back 43 000 years ago from Indonesia. It depicts a goat or cattle being hunted, with fairly decent details like the animal’s fur. Now, back to the pre-religious activity.
40 000 BCE, the remains of one of the earliest known anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, was discovered cremated and buried near Lake Mungo, in Australia. 38 000 BCE, the Aurignacian Löwenmensch figurine, the oldest known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world and one of the oldest known sculptures in general, was made. The sculpture has also been interpreted as anthropomorphic, giving human characteristics to an animal, although it may have represented a deity.
35 000 – 26 000 BCE, Neanderthal burials become absent from the archaeological record. This roughly coincides with the time period of the Homo sapiens’ introduction to Europe and decline of the Neanderthals that I alluded to in my previous piece; individual human skulls and/or long bones began appearing, heavily stained with red ochre and separately buried. This practice may be the origin of sacred relics. The oldest discovered “Venus figurines” appeared in graves. Some were deliberately broken or repeatedly stabbed, possibly representing the murders of the men with whom they were buried, or owing to some other unknown social dynamic. 25 000 – 21 000 BCE, clear examples of burials are present in Iberia, Wales, and eastern Europe. These, too, incorporate the heavy use of red ochre. Additionally, various objects were included in the graves (e.g. periwinkle shells, weighted clothing, dolls, possible drumsticks, mammoth ivory beads, fox teeth pendants, “baton” antlers, flint blades, etc.) Also, dozens of men, women, and children were being buried in the same caves which were used for burials years beforehand. All these graves are delineated by the cave walls and large limestone blocks. Some burials were double, comprising an adult male with a juvenile male buried by his side. They were now beginning to take on the form of modern cemeteries. Old burials were commonly re-dug and moved to make way for new ones, with the older bones often being gathered and cached together. Large stones may have acted as grave markers. Pairs of ochred antlers were sometimes mounted on poles within the cave; this is compared to the modern practice of leaving flowers at a grave. 9 130 – 7 370 BCE; This was the apparent period of use of Göbekli Tepe, one of the oldest human-made sites of worship yet discovered. Evidence of similar usage has also been found in another nearby site, Nevalı Çori. 7 500 – 5 700 BCE, the settlements of Çatalhöyük developed as a likely spiritual center of Anatolia. Its inhabitants left behind numerous clay figurines and impressions of phallic, feminine, and hunting scenes; possibly practicing worship in communal shrines.
What followed this long timeline was the Indian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Abrahamic Religions. But… one thing you might start to ask yourself when going over the lands that this archaeological research discovers, is that it in no way includes other areas that humans existed in, such as the Americas, Africa, and ancient eastern Asia. This pattern can be discovered in the modern western educational system when teaching history. When I was in school I didn’t question it, but looking back at my history classes, they only taught us British history. What about Native American history, or African history? A lot more than England went into Canada being what it is today. I don’t know if it’s still an issue in Canada’s educational system, but if it isn’t still something being done arrogantly through national imperialism, it’s through an oversight of perspective. All peoples exist, have existed, and hold just as deep histories as all other peoples. We are all one race, to make my message clear, and we ought to treat our histories as such, institutionally. Now, with that preaching done, we shall move on to another concept!
Business. Heck yeah, baby. You got a goat? I got a daughter. Let’s do this thing. It’s weird how late morals came in the game. Business has had a long trotted and rough road in our history, from the selling of daughters and slaves, to current arms dealing. I’m not too sure if civilization came first or trades, but the idea is one that is uniquely huma… wait a minute… haven’t tests been done on apes and monkeys about this? It has, hasn’t it. Son of a gun! So, trade isn’t a uniquely human trait? But I think I can still say business is, because of its encompassing of others things that collectively only we do. One such thing is have a ‘common currency,’ ala money. It was the greatest invention business would see in a longggg time. Before common currency, we performed something called the barter system, where you would just trade one item for another. One person had a hammer, the other had chickens. Nobody had money. So if you needed the hammer, but the other guy didn’t need chickens, you were out of luck.
Moving on, we cultivated land! Agriculture was our first signs of true civilization. If one could farm, one could sustain the masses. Humans are still the only creatures on earth with the capacity to develop and maintain something as complex as plant and animal maintenance through seasonal rotation cycles. Plant something here, feed something there, and you got culture! Now if we start combining all these things, from religiosity leading to leaderships like kings and queens, to farming, to business, you got the makings of a city on your hands! Aye, that’s what I’m talkin’ about! Livin’ it up in the city!
So now we must ask ourselves, what was the first city? Imma give you guys some tinfoil-hat-wearin’ stuff before going into the facts. While this is in no way a conspiracy theory, it is also in no way a legitimate theory. The name: Atlantis. The place: The eye of the Sahara, just south of Morocco.
If you look up the Richat Structure (another name for the eye of the Sahara) you will find that endless studies have been done on the 40 kilometre structure. They tried to explain it as an impact crater, but data suggests that was not the case. They tried to finalize a theory that it was caused by low-temperature hydrothermal waters, but couldn’t say for sure. The final word on the structure’s creation is that further protection is needed for future testing. So as of now, its cause is unknown. Now you might be thinking, ‘alright, with no other explanation, you gotta admit, it looks pretty man-made, eh?’ Well the reason that’s not a legitimate theory is because there are no remnants of a lost civilization. One might then say to that, ‘oh well quit yanking my chain then! Is it something or nothing?’ And to that I say, the reason there are no remains could very well be due to a massive flood wiping away their simplistic housing, and later peoples clearing up the remaining resources to reuse for themselves. We only know about past peoples by their bones and the structures they left behind, like the Stonehenge. If the people of Atlantis were pre-monoliths, then a flood washing away their houses would leave nothing behind. Buuuuuuuuuuut anyway, I leave Indie Archaeology’s video here for you as the best case FOR this wacky theory, as the rest will say nothing or otherwise. Now, back to the facts.
Currently, Turkey proudly totes housing the site of the oldest confirmed remains of a city on planet Earth. They promote it on their tourism website: GoTurkey, which is additionally promoted on Google; double confirmed. The name of the city is… oh, come on not this name again… uh, Çatalhöyük? It dates back a whopping 7 000 BCE, so over 9 000 years ago. From this point on, you got more cities. It’s like lightning that’s escaped a bottle, you can’t put it back in. Everything become incredibly dense, including the information, with romances and betrayals and gods and empires. You got yourself history, at least partly. Records were kept by ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, and Mesopotamia. China was already doing its thing by now, and before you knew it, around 300 BCE you had Pythagorean math. Next was the golden age of Islam in the 9th and 10th century CE giving us algebra.
Nations formed throughout all these innovations and many tried to rule the world: Persia, Rome, Mongolia, Spain, France, and of course, England. History is pretty self-explanatory; we remember it to learn from our past and so we don’t repeat it. And yet, we repeat things all the time. It’s in our makeup to form patterns. Leaders abuse power, conduct genocide, and eventually die. Technologies grow, giving us great ages of prosperity, then turmoil. The world ever-changes into unrecognizable spaces yet somehow is always the same. Conflict is permanently present, but sometimes teeters on apocalyptic. Right now in this age of COVID-19 and global tension we sit on the precipice of great change, for the better like in green technologies, or for the worse like in the government of China’s totalitarian rule over everyone’s goods. Whether both happen or neither, it’s hard to think we’re not in the middle of history right now. There was a time for the western world after the Vietnam war that many thought history was now over as peace settled, then 9/11 happened and brought things back into perspective. For many nations they have known no such luxury. There have been countless generations of people forced to fight wars they don’t believe in, or hit the streets and potentially die to protest leaders they didn’t vote for. For some people, that scenario has been their only reality. I count myself remarkably lucky to be living in the country and the time I find myself in, and wish to use my time here to try and continue our species’ journey to greener pastures of both peace and knowledge.
I hope you all enjoyed my little dive into how we got here as a species. I appreciate all of your time, wish you nothing but love in your life, and ask you to remember to keep on thinking! Also, make sure if you found this interesting, to do your own research! You will get far more comprehensive information, plus who knows what crazy new thing you might learn on the way? Stay safe, have fun, and see you guys later.
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In episode forty-three of Thoughts, I take you guys (meaning both) on a journey through the discovery of the word filbert, its origins, and what it means to label things. Enjoy!
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In episode forty-two of Thoughts, I expand on my previous episode: Reality, by going over the many forms our mind can take in regard to painting our reality. Enjoy!
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What’s that, in the sky? It’s a bird! A plane! No, it’s a U.F.O. BRO! Holy S**T Bro WHAT THE F**K?! Hey everybody and welcome back to another thought piece by me, ya boy, Joe Van! Today we will be going over the topic of aliens! Whether you mean people from another country, an unusual sensation, or intelligent extraterrestrial hominin-like organisms that evolved independently from us yet harbour many similar traits like language, limbs, and social tendencies!; they all fall under the same name. So where to start? Well, with the word of course!
The word alien in English came from an older version of French as the same name, which itself came from the Latin word alienus, meaning ‘belonging to another.’ Believe it or not but that Latin word came from an OLDER Latin word! The word being alius, meaning ‘other,’ though you could have guessed that. For this reason the word was primarily used to describe a foreigner, especially one who was not a naturalized citizen of the country where they were living. For this reason it was, and is, a term used almost exclusively in a derogatory sense. It would be a long time until the name meant what we now associate it with: the martians; but alien as a term is also used to describe a plant or animal species originally introduced from another country and later naturalized. And finally its other use is to describe the sensation of something being unfamiliar, and disturbing or distasteful.
We have, as a species, for a long time feared the world beyond our communities. Strangers, uncharted lands, and radical weather patterns breathed the same fear of the unknown. When sickness struck, we had no idea what was happening, and that was terrifying. It still is in cases like COVID-19. Viruses and diseases are invisible to the naked eye. They attack us in ways that make us feel alien in our own bodies. This feeling of unknowing is the extenuation of dread. We don’t know what’s happening, but it’s something bad and it’s coming for us.
Pivoting from the invisible, there are certain weather patterns that have made clouds look very strange. One such case is the cloud pattern known as: Lenticular clouds.
They are discus clouds that look unlike any normal cloud formation. They almost look like solid objects hovering in the air. Many religious paintings depict sacred objects in the atmosphere. Some are gold, others are silhouettes, but you can begin to see what would later be the hallmark shape we know now as U.F.O.s- though when people say that they don’t mean an unidentified flying object, they mean alien saucers.
The earliest known instances of the word “Martian”, (used as a noun instead of an adjective,) were printed in late 1877. They appeared nearly simultaneously in England and the United States, in magazine articles detailing Asaph Hall’s discovery of the moons of Mars in August of that year. The next event to inspire the use of the noun Martian in print was the International Exposition of Electricity, which was hosted in Paris in the year 1881. During the four months of the exhibition, many people visited to witness such technological marvels as the incandescent light bulb and the telephone. One visitor came away wondering what kind of world such innovations might engender in the next 200 years. Writing anonymously, s/he assembled some speculations in an essay titled “The Year of Grace 2081”, which enjoyed wide circulation. The Martians enter the story late in the narrative. During a rest from international conflict on Earth, humans begin telecommunicating with Martians.
This is when the fiction-fun began. W. S. Lach-Szyrma’s novel Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds (1883) was previously reputed to be the first published work to apply the word Martian as a noun. The usage is incidental; it occurs when Aleriel, the novel’s protagonist, lands on Mars in a spacecraft called an “ether-car” (an allusion to aether, which was once postulated as a gaseous medium in outer space). Aleriel buries the car in snow “so that it might not be disturbed by any Martian who might come across it.” Fifteen years after Aleriel, H. G. Wells’ landmark novel The War of the Worlds (1898) was published. We all know how that one goes; the Martians invade us as octopus-like organisms in tripods, before succumbing to Earth’s bacteria, wiping them out.
So now let’s jump into the modern mysteries of aliens popularized from Nevada in the 1950’s. The Roswell Incident was an event that brought curious eyes to a now freely available government cover up. For a comprehensive dive into its history, I recommend the Internet Historian’s video, titled: The Roswell Incident. Regardless of the actual truth, that the U.F.O. in question was actually a weather balloon, the masses were alight with conspiracies theories about collusion between little green men and the American government.
Believe you me, there’s nothing more exciting than coming across an attempted cover up and personally following along with a detective to uncover the ‘truth,’ but a lesson we must all understand, is that the truth is almost always whatever the most boring option is. That being said, though, our species has done great work to uncover captivating possibilities regarding the potential for there to be extraterrestrial life in the universe. One possibility comes in the form of a mathematical equation, called: The Drake Equation.
Created in 1961 by Frank Drake, the drake equation helps us formulate the probability of there being intelligent life through all the factors that goes into how we know life comes about. With that in mind, we need not look so far as other star systems to find extraterrestrials. If we’re only looking for life itself and not communicative intelligent life, as recently as 2019, Russian astronauts aboard the ISS found microscopic bacteria on the space station’s solar panels. There are many ways that bacteria could have gotten there, like strong up-currents of wind somehow propelling them out of the atmosphere, or from expelled ice crystals of any moon or other planet in our solar system, or most excitedly from interstellar celestial bodies harbouring ice. The main ingredient for life on Earth is water, so our only assumptions for life elsewhere is the same thing, even if it’s frozen.
Finally the last case of aliens we will dive into is the possibility of (if not intelligent, then at the very least) advanced extraterrestrial life on other bodies in our solar system. I just previously alluded to bacteria being ejected from moons, and the strongest candidates for this kind of habitability are currently icy satellites such as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn: Europa and Enceladus respectively. Although, if life exists in either place, it would probably be confined to subsurface habitats. Either way, that’s our closest bet currently on finding truly alien organisms!
I hope you guys enjoyed my little dive into the subject of aliens. I had a lot of fun researching it, but want to stress that you do your own research. There is a TON of stuff I left out to be explored in this field, so Google away if you’re curious! And as always, thank you for giving me your time, I truly appreciate it. I wish you nothing but love in your life, and ask you to remember, to keep on thinking. Ciao for now.
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In episode forty-one of Thoughts, I read to you guys from the beginning page of my four completed novels. I start the narrative with a mini thought piece to prime y’all for the what the story will cover. Let me know if you guys liked this video however you can! It’s greatly appreciated. Enjoy!
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In episode forty of Thoughts, I talk about the one thing we all perceive yet all perceive differently: reality. I go over how much we know or could know about reality, along with how our minds construct the reality we all personally experience. Enjoy!
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Well, once upon a time, Adam and Eve were made by God. According to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, they were the first man and woman. Okay, okay, I’m just messin’ with you, but for the longest time this story and others (where we all came from one pair) was the only answer we would get when asking about our origins? I mean, how could we possibly imagine what it really was before hard scientific work was put to it. After all, as magical as creation myths are, they don’t really answer the question, do they? So where did we really come from? Some fun folk suggest, or imagine, that we were once Martians before we nuked the atmosphere and fled to Earth. That’s why we have back pain and childbirth can be so lethal, because we were once from a planet that had less gravity. But, that still doesn’t work with what we know about reality, does it? So, where in the heck did we TRULY come from?
Most people can clearly see that we hold several similarities to chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas. They have opposable thumbs, expressive faces, and bipedal tendencies. The reason for these similarities is because… of these four great apes, we are the fifth! That’s right. There are five great apes on Earth and humans are one of them. An ape, or great ape, is any tailless primate, and seeing how we are primates and tailless, we fit in that category. So how did we come to be so clearly different from our discursive species cousins?
Wayyyyyyyyy back 85 million years ago, before the extinction of the dinosaurs, a common ancestor for every primate existed: Purgatorius. Then evolution did what it does, as it had always been doing, and diversified. Purgatorius migrated to separate areas and occupied different environments. These hominoidea then mutated through hundreds and thousands of generations, and completely new species developed. This is where a separation from monkeys and apes began. Certain primates stayed small with long tails while other grew big. Lemurs and Lorises were the earliest ancestors to branch out, around 60 million years ago.
Tarsiers split from our common ancestors 55 millions years ago.
Then 30 million later the final connection between monkey species and ape species would be forever separated. New world monkeys then old world monkeys (Yes it’s in reverse) continued to diversity on their own. Let’s take a moment to press ‘f’ in the chat to pay respects, and wave goodbye to all the monkeys we will forever drift further away from in lineage.
Gibbons were the next species to delineate, being labelled not as monkeys but as the one and only lesser ape, most closely related to orangutans.
Which means orangutans were the next species to splinter from our common ancestors, nine million years ago. Then gorillas parted ways around eight and a half million years ago, putting us closer and closer to human-looking creatures. The present day is catching up to us quick!
Six and a half million years ago, the genus ‘pan,’ which became bonobos and chimpanzees, forever delineated from our common ancestor. For this reason, they are our closest inter-species cousins. There are many physical mannerisms and sociological traits that mirror humanity’s because of this. If you’ve ever had the luxury of seeing these guys in action you can catch them doing things we would do, like flinging feces- wait, wait… actually… that is something people have done throughout history. Okay, chimps, you do you.
At this point our ancestors were the hominin category of species that we are still connected to today, but our lineage kept changing. Human still wouldn’t exists for another five million years. The famous ‘Lucy’ fossil was from around three million years ago from the species Australopithecus. They were still very chimpanzee-looking but at that point only led to us. Homo habilis came about one million years ago, leading to homo erectus. Homo erectus as the name suggests were the first stages of a purely upright species. They were around from one million to 600 000 years ago, leading to homo sapiens.
Now you might be thinking, “We made it! It’s us- who we are today! Hooray!!” And listen, I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but I’m just gonna stop you right there! Take a step back from that cheer and calm down, partner! We’re not there yet. Homo sapiens are discovered to have come about around 400 000 years ago, but it’s still early days. Believe it or not, the ancestors we refer to as cave-people: Neanderthals, actually came about more recently than homo sapiens!; around 200 000 years ago. However, they no longer exist today. Some would suggest it was due to their inferior communication skills to the homo sapien sapiens- whos’ anatomical ability to form vowel sounds (with their larynx lower in the throat, allowing for better resonance of vocal waves) kept them going. I am not one of those people, though. I haphazardly subscribe to another theory, as it is currently undecided in the scientific community, one which brings us to an uncomfortable truth about ourselves: our capacity for genocide.
According to Canadian scholar Adam Jones, if a dominant group of people had little in common with a marginalized group of people, it is easy for the dominant group to define the other as subhuman. As a result, the marginalized group might be labeled as a threat that must be eliminated. He writes, “While history today is generally written with some fealty to ‘objective’ facts, most previous accounts aimed rather to praise the writer’s patron (normally the leader) and to emphasize the superiority of one’s own gods and religious beliefs.” Hypotheses which suggest that genocidal violence may have caused the extinction of the Neanderthals have been offered by several authors, including Jared Diamond and Ronald Wright. This capacity for brutality can be found in our cousins, the chimpanzees, so it’s not a uniquely human trait, but it is nonetheless one- if not THE- worst trait we possess. 30 000 years ago, after homo sapiens spent thousands of years interbreeding with Neanderthals, they went extinct. All we have to go on is fossil records so it’s not like we have detailed accounts of a great war being fought, but it is clear that they were blinked out of existence and we were not, so it’s unlikely they suffered some rare disease or environmental disaster because it would have happened to us as well.
Moving on from the darkness, we will pedal backwards to 40 000 years ago. Cro-Magnon appeared; the most human-looking ancestor yet, and even this subspecies faded from time about ten thousand years ago. Now for one final backward pedal, our current lineage of humanity: homo sapien sapiens first came about 120 000 years ago, though it’s still debated if it could be older. For a long time, ancient structures like the lining of houses gave us hints at human-kind’s first civilizations back around 100 000 years ago in Africa, but that too is in debate as more recent findings might point us literally double as far back in prehistory, around 200 000 years ago. Our inability to glimpse the past other than through bones and scraps makes it all so mysterious.
What exactly was it like back in the earliest known civilizations? As we find ourselves now, humanity records everything. We created religions, migrated across the globe, created businesses, and governments. If anything jumping into the question of ‘where did we come from?’ grants, it’s a scale of time that we rarely glimpse and still won’t be able to comprehend even after going over these biological facts. The vastness of time dwarfs humanities entire history. Everything we currently know through teaching, from philosophy, to art, to mathematics, and physics, all comes from this long trial and error effort of survival from our countless ancestors. The world we know today has been given to us by great minds and everyone else who did their best to utilize the knowledge and spread it across the world.
Our quest to understand where we come from is not done, however! The vastness of what brought us to being biologically human is complete, but what about our lost civilizations to our current recorded history? I shall make that a part two of this! So stay tuned for that article to know when it comes. Until then, I appreciate all of your time, wish you nothing but love in your life, and ask you to remember, to keep on thinking! Byebye.
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In episode thirty-nine of Thoughts, I go over Astrology, it’s history, objects and subjects involved in it practice, and my views on its legitimacy. Enjoy!
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Great Value Deluxe Mixed Nuts (with 40% cashews) houses many nuts, one of them being hazelnuts… but on the packaging they refer to hazelnuts as filberts. My girlfriend wondered at first what filberts were and why they didn’t put hazelnuts on the can. Great Value isn’t a Canadian brand as it is owned by Walmart, but these particular packaged mixed nuts were processed in Mississauga, in the G.T.A. (greater Toronto area) so with this fresh wonderment upon the both of us, I decided to look up filberts and find out why the hazelnuts were being called that. I initially assumed/speculated that it would be a wonky British term (because they have so many,) but what we soon found was the term’s origins coming from a religious French tradition.
(A little edit I wanted to add here; There are other theories to the naming of this nut, like that they came from the German word for full-beard ‘vollbart‘, and that later became filbert which is the nut’s first name, but I’m confident the Anglo-Saxons named the nut first as ‘hæsel‘ which later became hazels {because the earliest signs of the hazel species existing was in ancient England, 7 000 years ago.} It is up for debate whether filbert came from the previously mentioned German word or if they just sound similar, and I come to the same conclusion as Darth Vader’s name- that it’s a coincidence. Okay, edit done.)
As hazelnuts were best cultivated at the end of August, close to the feast day of St. Philibert’s Day on August 20th, the people of France began calling hazelnuts: filberts, in honour of that. Although Turkey is the world capitol of hazelnuts, the French people dominated the hazelnut name, arguably. In the U.S., people give hazelnuts nicknames like cobnuts or just hazels, but here in Canada, Great Value has (potentially) decided to bend the knee to our Quebec overlords and call the nut by their French name to appease them.
For those who don’t know, the province of Quebec has several different and divisive rules about product management, associations, and deals that corporations have to abide by if they want to have their business in their land. Quebec acts as if they’re their own country, essentially. And although this is just speculation, one can find a pattern or come to a conclusion that because so many of their rules placed upon international brands require changes like calling hazelnuts filberts, many of these French-dominant changes bleed over into the rest of Canadian products.
My girlfriend was upset to discover that the reason why hazelnuts were called filberts was for a saint’s day, saying that religion should not be the reason something is named differently, and I couldn’t agree more. It was only in 2005 that the term ‘Common Era’ really started growing throughout American institutions as a replacement for ‘anno Domini (in {the} year of {our} Lord, referencing Christ.) Even though the term ‘Common Era’ first came about in 1615 by Johannes Kepler as a nondenominational phasing to describe out species time in history, many Christians still fight to this day for their phrasing to be the one used by the world, finding their dominance over other religions being backtracked as an attack or affront to their faith.
What does filberts mean in the grand scheme of naming a nut, or anything at all? Things have history and histories are placements in time. Should we change nothing now that we have it? Or can things change all the time depending on the flow of society and their furthering interconnections? More so, what are good reasons to change things versus bad? The only emotional backlash I ever felt for something changing institutionally was the addition of feathers and fur on dinosaur models in museums. I have since come to love it, but I remember feeling so taken aback when I first saw it, thinking ‘NO! This isn’t what dinosaurs look like! These people have ruined everything!’ But looking at this hazelnut/filbert thing, I wonder what the point of only calling them filberts on the can is. I don’t know, but I think me wanting to share it with you lot comes from a place of questioning labels. I hope you got something out of this thought piece! And remember, I love you, and keep on thinking. Thanks for reading; bye.
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When I put together my visualized Thoughts piece: Reality, (that you may or may not have seen yet depending on when you’re reading this,) I used psychedelic visuals to start the video, yet at no point did I talk about the mind in that altered state, only that hallucinations are to be taken with care… and I feel like I left a hole in the subject of reality un-talked about. As we all know, whether we’ve had a psychedelic experience or not, it makes you think differently about the world. I continued pondering upon this until I got to a place where it just felt necessary to cover different states of consciousness entirely in their own piece! Hence, we are here.
We all know there are different states of experience. You could be sleepy, or fully awake! These fields of sensation aren’t just feelings, they are lenses with which our minds filter reality. Think of a glass slide in your brain switching every so often, unbeknownst to you. A bowl of tomato soup is just a bowl of tomato soup, but to one person it could be seen as something delicious, and to another something disgusting. A baby could find a car ride the most exciting thing in the world, and the parent could be in a state of frantic impatience.
These different states, to me, give us a proper look into our own mind. Whether these states change over time is irrelevant, what matters is our understanding of them in us. We have the above mentioned: sleepy, awake, delicious, disgusted, excited, and impatient; but what other states can we be in as humans? We can be happy, sad, angry, lethargic, twitchy, depressed, manic, hysteric, calm, confident, anxious, curious, lucid, livid, distracted, melancholic, tempered, or alarmed.
I know a lot of you might be thinking, ‘feelings aren’t states of consciousness,’ but I would say that feelings are what we experience the most, regardless of whether we’re aware of their colouring effect over our perception or not, and that makes them valid as states. Now, with all that said, this assessment is just my personal take on the topic. When I googled ‘States of Consciousness’ I got many different responses.
It seems a large number of new parents wondered why their babies smiled in their sleep, before showing any other forms of self-awareness, and WebMD’s response was this: “Often newborns will smile in their sleep. Sometimes a smile in the early weeks of life is simply a sign that your little bundle is passing gas. But starting between 6 and 8 weeks of life, babies develop a “social smile” — an intentional gesture of warmth meant just for you.” Ain’t that sweet? 🙂
Most other responses to the general query of ‘States of Consciousness’ gave me two, three, four, or six stages of consciousness revolving around wakefulness to a deep, dreamless sleep. While this field of scientific study is entirely valid in its own right, it wasn’t what I was looking for. The word conscious clearly has two meanings; there is the prior ‘wakefulness’, then there is having ‘perception’. So with that in mind, the final general response I got was what I was really looking for: higher consciousness, found through mindfulness. So now what is the state of higher consciousness? Plainly, it is the momentary state of being conscious you are conscious, and being entirely dispelled of the illusion of separation from yourself and the world.
This place of enlightenment or higher consciousness is very temporary. If one trains through meditation to reach it, it can take months or even years to get to a place where you reach the state of ‘oneness’ for more than a few seconds. Other methods of reaching this state are by consuming a combination of chemicals that change your neurological system. Some notable chemicals are DMT, LSD, ketamine, psilocybin, and mescaline. Once consumed, these drugs alter your brain chemistry and, with variation, rip away your sense of time, your labeling of objects, give you unbounded love to anyone in your vicinity, hallucinate objects or your entire environment, alter your thought process to give your a different understanding of prior beliefs, and so on.
This higher state of consciousness is not our default by any means, and one can argue that many people go their whole life without reaching it. Though it can be thrust upon someone without any drugs, meditation, or warning, like in the middle of a hike, it can also never happen at all. That can seem like a tragedy to those that have reached a higher state and understand its importance of impact on perspective, but each person must live their own life, however bounded by their own limitations in this regard. We all go through different states, whether we are aware of it or not. It is always happening multiple times a day, and it is up to us to recognize that and do our best to direct ourselves to the best possible state we can be in for both ourselves and others (Through patience, communication, and love.)
Thank you again as always for reading. I love you all and appreciate your time, and remember, to keep on thinking. Goodbye.
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What starts as something almost too simple to even think about, reality is so secretly perplexing that doing a deep dive into what we know will leave one floored. The truth is, we know very little about how we are here. The Big Bang theory is still the best possible take on how our CURRENT reality came to be, but it does little to explain how something can come from nothing. Or how our laws of physics sustain themselves in the matrix of our seemingly unbounded universe. String theory is a set of attempts to model the four known fundamental interactions—gravitation, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force—together in one theory. String theory is thusly a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings, and describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other.
But this, just like the Big Bang, is a theory, and these theories simply do not work the same way answers do; the way we would want them to. They are debated rigorously and to no current end, as we simply cannot know the answers to these things. ‘Why can we not know the answers to these things?’ I hear you ask. The reason is because we can’t perform the necessary testing to get the answers we seek. We are but merely physical, three-dimensional primates with minds evolved through survival and suspended linearly by time. It makes certain testing completely impossible. Our greatest strength against all these odds and obstacles, are our abilities to apply math to concepts. Then to simply have the creativity to imagine possibilities within the rules of the universe we know. A fun philosophical theory that fits these perimeters is: Last Thursdayism. It’s the proposition that the universe began to exist last Thursday, with the appearance of age and history leading to where we are now. Last Thurdayism was used as a response to claims of young-earth creationism that the Earth was created to look old, that, by the same logic, the world might have begun last Thursday. It’s a claim that can’t be disproved but also can’t be proved, like a God of the gaps situation.
Solipsism, for those who don’t know, follows the beginning of my Being Alone thought piece. It is the philosophical idea that ONLY one’s mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. Sleep deprivation and the disorder of schizophrenia muddy individuals’ perception of reality. When one is not sure if something is a hallucination of the mind, or if it is physically real, the best bet is to not act on what you see, assuming nothing is real. That can lead to dangerous situations though and of course is never recommended, but if you ever feel like you can’t tell what is real and what is illusory, I personally urge you to seek professional help or seek a shelter where one can properly assess or care for you.
Now with that being said, it may sound crazy to suggest that everything we currently experience IS actually an illusion! I mean, wouldn’t that spit in the face of my previous statement? Not quite. Cognitive scientist Anil Seth proposes (in the TED Talk: Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality,) that every brain lives in an entire reality that it has created for itself. With all the signals our brains receive from our senses and all the prior experiences it has organized into expectations, each of our brains construct a coherent image of reality. To quote Anil Seth, the brain constructs a “multisensory, panoramic 3D, fully immersive inner movie,” for us to perceive. Seth then uses optical illusions and classic experiments to underscore the point that “we don’t just passively perceive the world; we actively generate it. The world we experience comes as much from the inside-out as the outside-in,” in a process hardly different from that which we casually call hallucination. As hard as it is to comprehend, we are all always hallucinating. “It’s just when we agree about our hallucinations, that’s what we call ‘reality.’” And as for what, exactly, constitutes the “we,” our brains do a good deal of work to construct that too.
The concept is one to galvanize the curiosity of anyone with even a mild interest in mind-bending subjects, like myself. He leaves us with implications of his and others’ research to consider, one being, “just as we can misperceive the world, we can misperceive ourselves”; and another being, “our individual inner universe is just one way of being conscious, and even human consciousness generally is a tiny region in a vast space of possible consciousnesses.” It is said generally that ‘our loved ones know us better than we know ourselves,’ like the other saying, ‘the closer you look, the less you see.’ As we can all imagine, reality would look very different from the multiple eyes of a fly. We know infrared vision exists, hinting at an entire world we simply cannot see with the naked human eye. What would the world around us look like if we had eyes on the sides of our head instead of directly in front, or if we had multiple optical cones instead of two specialized ones? What even is reality if there’s no one way to see it? It’s like our individual sense of self. We imagine it as one solid thing, but in reality our consciousness’ are more like a cloud of mini consciousnesses coalescing to make it seem like one coherent self. Same with the universe. It has no one visual state, and it is mostly made up of anti matter, something we cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch.
So all in all, reality is as complete of a mystery as anything else we find mysterious. The ocean floor, what lies beneath Jupiter’s clouds, gravitational time dilation, the afterlife, human consciousness, or secrets our loved ones hold, these things, especially the questions we don’t even have the imagination to ask, will be the things forever at the deep end of the pool of experience. Should we as a species continue to make progress, chipping away at individual questions and find better hypotheses, we would all be better for it, but we should accept that there will be things that can never be answered like the origins of reality itself. Either way, we are all still here to live our life, so let’s do what we can with this mystery by just loving as many others as we can. Thank you as always for being here. I love you all, and until next time, keep on thinking. Good bye.
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In episode thirty-six of Thoughts, I talk about different forms of tolerance, how we’re subjected to it, when it comes, and when it goes. Enjoy!
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Before getting into it, I just wanted to preface this piece by saying that if you believe in astrology, turn away now! I come at it with my biases and am rude to the subject. Now, with that said…
Ahh the reading of one’s psychology through the motion of planets and stars, peak science. Welcome back everyone to ya boy, Joe Van, and my thoughts on given topics. Today we are covering astrology, not to be confused with astronomy, a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. Where astronomy uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain the origin and evolution of the macro-verse… astrology (as a pseudoscience that claims to divine information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects) uses tarot cards, newspaper pages, and apps; all done by con artists and true believers.
The similarities between these subjects are their objects of interest: planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and comets. Where they differ is on the relationship of these objects to us humans here on Earth. Astronomy makes no claim that our universe has any pulling effect on our psychology, except to poets when they look up at a clear night sky. Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE- or ‘Before Common Era’, and has its roots in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and some, such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya, developed elaborate albeit arbitrary systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations.
Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems STILL IN USE, can trace its roots to the 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Arab world and eventually Central and Western Europe. And one can see why it spread as far as it did. Aside from giving divine meaning to our every moment, it stroke peoples’ egos. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person’s personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects. So now let’s get into the nitty-gritty.
A horoscope is an astrological chart or diagram representing the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and astrological aspects meant to chart significance at the time of an event, such as the moment of a person’s birth. The word horoscope is derived from the Greek words ōra and scopos meaning “time” and “observer”.
The tarot is a pack of playing cards used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe, and is still used today for that function. BUT, in the late 18th century, some tarot decks began to be used for divination via ‘tarot card reading’, or cartomancy, leading to custom decks developed for such occult purposes. The earliest evidence of a tarot deck used for cartomancy comes from an anonymous manuscript around 1750 which documents rudimentary divinatory meanings for the cards. The popularization of esoteric tarot started with Antoine Court and Jean-Baptiste Alliette in Paris during the 1780s, using the Tarot of Marseilles. Regular French tarot card players abandoned the Marseilles tarot (a type of deck) in favor of the Tarot Nouveau around 1900, resulting in the Marseilles pattern now mostly being used by cartomancers.
Now let’s pivot back to the big picture. The zodiac is an area of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ‘ecliptic’, the apparent path of the Sun across the Earth over the course of the year. The paths of the Moon and visible planets are also within the belt of the zodiac. In Western astrology, and formerly astronomy back in its infancy of science, the zodiac is divided into twelve signs, each occupying 30° of celestial longitude and roughly corresponding to the constellations: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. These astrological signs form a celestial coordinate system, or even more specifically an ecliptic coordinate system, which takes the ecliptic as the origin of latitude and the Sun’s position at vernal equinox as the origin of longitude. So there you go! That’s the origin of latitude and longitude!
But what does it all mean? Can a website really tell me what kind of person I am due to what day I was born? You might as well ask yourself this: can a medium really talk to your dead loved ones by guessing letters of their name? It is… unfortunately… a trick. Or is it? Technically, if you follow the words of your tarot card reading to the letter then it did actually come true! You acted exactly as the stars predicted, but in doing so all you really did was commit a self-fulfilling prophecy. And EVEN if you didn’t follow your daily predictions to the letter but have found that external actions brought you to a place where many if not ALL of the things predicted came true, would that make it real and not a trick? Well unfortunately, that process of evaluation is called confirmation bias. When you want something to be true, you will find ways that it is and ignore other aspects that would say it isn’t, even if you’re not doing it consciously.
Isn’t it easier to understand that non-intelligent patterns exist in the universe, than imagine that elaborate celestial plans are being conducted to bring you love or good fortune? It doesn’t mean you should not get those things, just that if you did, it had nothing to do with the alignment of large object in space. There is one thing I’ll give you in that regard though; apparently rape and murder statistics go up on nights with full moons. We know the tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, so what else could that pull be capable of? Irritation? Perhaps. Regardless, the world is endlessly fascinating without it having to have divine plans behind it, or have it be about you in some way. So with that, I shall say fin!
Thank you again so much for being here. I will endlessly appreciate your time with me. I love you all to no end, and remember to keep thinking!
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Adolescence itself is the period following the onset of puberty, during which a young person develops from a child into an adult. We all know about adolescence. Aside from us personally experiencing it, countless coming-of-age movies and shows cover it. Most of the other major life changes are covered as well. Growing up is a thing collectively charted to great detail.
Starting as an only child to then having a sibling is one life stage found in films like Boss Baby and The Tree of Life. Both movies go through all the emotions that come with such an event… in their own way. Other stages are covered like making friends for the first time and navigating elementary school. Then having your first crush, and dramas in your friends’ group. Another is dealing with puberty in all of its insanity! Then one more extensively covered is trying to lose one’s virginity, like in Super Bad. Finally is the aspect of graduating high school with the future world looming over you and your friends.
All of these things cause radical inner turbulence and make for amazing story-telling, but one major life change that I feel gets covered very narrowly, (usually like in a montage,) is the ending of adolescence. Generally, the other major life changes are pretty uniform. First words, first walk, first friends, first day at school, first crush, and puberty; everyone goes through these beats in one way or another, but would it be crazy to think that not everybody passes through the milestone of adulthood completely? We’ve all heard of the people that peeked in high school, or in general I’m sure we’ve all come across adults that make us ashamed to be their peer.
Major societal life milestones are getting a job, getting a house, settling down with a spouse, and having children. While none of these are needed to mature to adulthood, they help par the course. The period of time between leaving school and making your way to independence is a tough road to walk. The future holds so many possible paths. A film that covers this period in its own unique way is The Social Network. But, something stopping this film from being a prime example of one leaving their adolescence for all to lean on is how Zucc has lived; in other words it’s not very relatable.
There are other films out there like the classic: Clerks, that are about young adults in the in between of still being a kid and being middle-aged. If anything, Clerks seems to be the blueprint for such a vague stage of life. We’re given a protagonist that’s down and out on their luck that hasn’t made much of themselves once leaving the nest, if they’ve even done that, and they find themselves stuck at that beginning ADULT milestone on the road of life. Then an inciting incident begins their journey to help them out of said rut. Now the only issue with this premise is that it can apply to any adult from 30 to 60. The new Bill and Ted movie coming out has that exact premise.
So is it just a thing that some people don’t necessarily grow up all the way? Well of course, humans are complicated, and external milestones don’t really tell us if an individual is a mature person per se, just that they did something other people that ARE mature have done. Someone can get a job, a house, get married, and have children, and still be standing at adolescence’s door. So our system at its core isn’t fool proof, but maturing usually means: coming to terms with or understanding our place in society as a whole, deciding in what way we wish to contribute to society, finding a mate or partner to love and parse life’s challenges with (like finding a home), then usually but not always either having children or adopting.
Why are there not more stories being told about the period or stage of all our lives when we leave our nest, or find our career job, or finish college or university? We all go through our twenties with way more variety than we all go through our teens, by the mere situation of our educational system, but its still a period of great growth for us all. Ending adolescence is the internal shift from taking orders to giving them, or from co-dependence to independence. It is the realization of our position as adults in society, no longer in school or under our parents’ rule. Ending adolescence doesn’t mean no longer being able to have fun or act wacky, it just means rising to the task of taking responsibility.
How are you guys, the readers, doing with life? Am I off-base with any of my thoughts on ending adolescence? What was it like for you to shift into adulthood, and when did it happen? Was finding your career a major milestone, or having your first child? Let me know anywhere you can comment! Thank you as always for taking your time to read. I truly appreciate and love you all! I wish you nothing but the best, and until next time, keep on thinkin’!
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In episode thirty-four of Thoughts, I go over the concept and origins of fame and infamy, and how we are all effected by it today. Enjoy!
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Hello one and all! Check out my YouTube channel found through this video here or in my CHANNELS page. I’d love to have a conversation with you about any of the topics I’ve talked about, and the others I have yet to! Let me know what you think anywhere you can comment, and enjoy!
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Welcome to episode 60 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! In this episode I bring back my first new guest post COVID-19 to continue our deep dive into various subjects! We cover the economy and how by not increasing pay during something like inflation IS in itself an action, we cover our earliest memories, health and fitness, milk, simple solutions, art, and emotional films. Enjoy!
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In episode thirty-three of Thoughts, I am joined with a guest appearance by Ben from stuffwithben to talk about language! We give our take on what it is and what it means for us as a species. Enjoy!
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Welcome to episode 58 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! Today I have my first NEW guest, post COVID-19. We waste no time jumping into heavy topics such as belief, hard concepts that will ne’er have an answer, working to learn how you want to work, and living situations. It was a blast to have him on by the mere earnestness he gives with his opinions, as you’ll hear. Enjoy!
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In episode thirty-two of Thoughts, I talk about how conflict as an entity is fused to the meaning of life. It is what gives us rise whether we like it or not. Enjoy!
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In episode thirty-one of Thoughts, I talk about my experience with the video game franchise: Halo. Enjoy!
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Hey everybody! It’s ya boy, Joe Van, comin’ back at ya with another piece, but this one’s different from the rest. In this piece I wanted to recommend some YouTube channels to you guys. These channels are ones I’ve come across over years of binge-watching YouTuber content. So, they’ll come in no particular order, but their subjects will be similar. That’s how I’ll categorize it. First, I will recommend movie review channels!
Up front you got YMS, or YourMovieSucksDOTorg; Canada represent. He’s got a voice you either love or hate, so in that regard it’s a coin toss, but he is honestly one of the better movie review channels out there. You can tell he’s got a naturally high intelligence, and he uses that gift to critique movies, so on behalf of cinephiles everywhere, thank you for your service.
Next up we got ralphthemoviemaker. He’s young but sharp, and has a surprising eye for artistic expression. You’d think with his accent he’d just be a ‘fuckin’ bada-bing bada-boom!’ kind of guy, only interested in Scorsese films, and he is, but he also an entire universe more than that. Same goes with IHE, or I Hate Everything. You figure because of his YouTube channel’s name he would be just a pure cynic, but he’s really not at all.
Next we got Elvis The Alien. This guy smokes weed, and loves Nic Cage. ‘Nuff said. Following the alien we got Chris Stuckmann, a man that will to no end ask you to, ‘click right here… to get Stuckmannized.’ Georg Rockall-Schmidt is a dimly-lit, dry-witted reviewer of films both new and old. We also have Mr Sunday Movies, a duo that mostly, or only, cover pop culture movies like super hero movies. Same with The Cosmonaut Variety Hour.
Following that lot we got channels like, Like Stories of Old, and Renegade Cut. These pair cover movies through a deeply philosophical lens; not that the other channels can’t do that on occasion, but these channels make it their mission to only do that. It helps them separate themselves from the lot too, so all the power to them. Finally my only female recommendation, which is unfortunate but that aside, Lindsay Ellis. She covers other things like a lot of these channels but she’s known for me with her review of The Hobbit movies, specifically. That, and her take on Game of Thrones. Her basic style is based on her personality, like the rest of the creators. Aside for covering a niche, the big pull for any creator is their tone or more simply just their voice, and these people got me. I’m in, I wanna hear what they got to say.
Following that list I’ll now go over Halo channels! I’ll make this one quick because they all give the same thing more or less. Though they’re not all relegated to just covering Halo, ya got The Act Man, and HiddenXperia: men of culture. Installation00 has a brain he can sit in. Ultimate Halo is a youngin’ but one bursting with charisma. Aozolai, UberNick, and Sean W also got that charm going for them, bringing people back for more. Then you got Owl, KevinKoolx, Rejected Shotgun, Rocket Sloth, and Halo Cannon that house enough good content to make them ones to return to. Now, instead of getting into it I’ll just say I made sure to NOT add Late Night Gaming because of drama between him and Aozolai, and that’s it! That’s all I’m saying on that.
Moving on, we have scientific/philosophical YouTube channels! We have the likes of exurb1a, a mad lad that slices science and philosophy with comedy in little YouTube skits, while also being in general a writer.
Next we have John Michael Godier who’s the kind of guy to put you to sleep faster than anesthesia! But man, the guy puts out some interesting videos. He’s a sci-fi writer that basically goes over scary possibilities of the universe and what it holds, among other things.
Now for the final burst you got TED, Physics Girl, Thoughty2, Veritasium, Vsauce, RealLifeLore, and LEMMiNO. These guys are my absolute favorite channels on science! They each have their own voice, style, questions, and presentation to their works. Obviously TED is bigger than YouTube but they still apply for my recommendation.
So there you have it! Joe Van has now recommended some YouTube channels for you to check out if you haven’t already. I hope y’all were receptive to this! Let me know if there are other subjects you’d want me to cover in another recommends piece, but until next time, I love you all, and keep on thinking. See ya!
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Shamans and heroes! Serial killers and singers! Fame. The subject of fame is cool as hell because it’s one of those other things that’s completely unique to humans. It’s the state of being known or talked about by many people, especially on account of notable achievements. People the world over know who Tom Cruise is. It doesn’t matter if they’re young, old, rich, or poor. So where did this kind of thing come from? What are its humble beginnings?
There’s a term called altruism that is the belief in or practice of selfless concern for the well-being of others. In ancient times when our ancestors practiced in the life of hunters and gatherers, the hunters would often find themselves in dangerous scenarios. For example, we can imagine an encounter where a sabre-toothed cat. (BIG side note here but apparently the term ‘sabre-toothed tiger’ is incorrect, and even sabre-toothed cat is close to a misnomer {a wrong or inaccurate name or designation} where the sabre-toothed thing’s genetic lineage is actually closest to marsupials! {like kangeroos or opossums!} But that’s niether here nor there.) In ancient Canada, a tribe of humans would typically scatter away at the sight of a sabre-toothed cat, hoping the predator wouldn’t chase them from the others. But now imagine a man at the back of the pack, noticing their son or best friend at the front… and in that moment the man decided to run toward the beast, sacrificing his life to save the life of the others. The man would indeed most likely die from this encounter, and the hunters that returned would hail praises at the man’s altruism, or heroics. They knew of no such words then, but the rare ideal to strive towards would have been set in the tribe.
As once something that no one yet knew they could be, the idea of a hero set itself upon civilization. Tribes that never met would all have similar encounters of singing praises to one doing something selfless, through pure chance, before it became ingrained into humanity’s conscience as a whole. But, as we are social creatures of all different brain chemistrys’, tricksters too would come out of the woodwork. After all, many heroes perform feats of greatness and live to tell the tale, and tales are so easy to fabricate, so these tellers of tall tales would sow seeds of grandiosity to anyone that would hear it and do what they could to swindle those around them. Everyone wants to be a hero, but not everyone has the courage or opportunity to excel themselves to that status level.
Now, there were other forms of fame that spread word across the lands of early civilization, and those were the opposite of heroes: those were the monsters. Ones to fear, that killed women and babies, or performed cannibalism. These individuals had tribes across the land warn all they could of their evil deeds. As time moved on, both leaders, inventors, and killers were talked about by the masses across even larger stretches of land. To be famous was a thing people of all walks of life could achieve if only they were loud enough. Before long, entertainment grew in popularity. What was once something localized to theatres or circuses, entertainers could now be found at every city with a nickelodeon. (Not to be confused with the children’s channel owned by ViacomCBS, a ‘nickel odeon’ was what existed to show citizens motion pictures before movie theatres became commonplace.) Great dancers, singers, and actors stole the hearts of millions with their performances. It wasn’t long before Hollywood changed who we considered famous.
Infamy through wrong-doing hadn’t changed in the slightest since the concept’s birth, but fame was now for the taking by anyone talented or attractive enough. Interestingly, though, since the popularization of reality television in the 80’s and 90’s to what it’s become now, for one to be famous, you need only be a fucking wreck of a human being. Okay, that’s probably not granted. There’s tons of reality T.V. that shows decent people living their life or completing difficult puzzles, but so much emphasis has been put on people living their life wrong now-a-days like in 90 Day Fiancée. It has become something people love watching, and it’s clear to understand why. One might think, ‘my life might be subpar in my eyes but at least it’s not as bad as this person.’ Watching people be absolute disgraces is like a confidence booster! It feels good to know you’re better than someone else, that’s just how our brains work. It’s probably why jesters were such a hit for royalty back in the day. If the king wanted to de-stress from a long day of making potentially wrong decisions, he could just watch an idiot bumble around.
You could have thousands or even millions of people notice you on the street because of your career choices. You could be noticed as someone great, someone silly, someone disgraceful, or someone dangerous. You could choose to be someone famous, or it could happen against your will. You could be someone who thrives from all the attention, or someone who crumbles from it. Alternatively, you could be someone who seeks fame your whole life but never gets it. Fame, as stated at the beginning, is a uniquely human trait. Our closest genetic cousins, chimpanzees, hold many similarities to us like social class and war but even they do not register fame. Fame is a part of the language game. It’s the retelling of an individual without them there, be it for good or ill. It’s the recognition of someone’s existence without their recognition of yours. It’s the masses’ acknowledgement.
Do you want to be famous? Why or why not? Let me know! Thank you again for stopping by. I love you all, and I’ll see you next time.
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In episode thirty of Thoughts I gush about love! Oh what a thing to be captured by. Enjoy!
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At my elementary school, when you rose to grade five, you were inducted to the fictional island of Foo. You learned their language and pastime sports, and near the end of the year you would compete with your peers to claim victory in each category. That was the first and only time I truly learned another language. All you had to do was add ‘INIG’ in front of every spoken vowel. Hinigellinigo, minigy ninigame inigis Jinigoe. It was really cool to have an understanding of a different mode of communication than the one you were raised with. Don’t get my educational system wrong though, I was taught French from grade four to nine, but it didn’t stick in the slightest. My theory as to why, aside from me not paying enough attention, was because their sentences are reversed. So aside from having to learn every basic word in their dictionary, you also had to learn how to form sentences in a completely different way than what your brain was automated to do.
Language is a trippy thing. Think of how you would form thoughts without it. Think about trying to understand someone else without it. It’s downright impossible. Babies want things but have yet to learn language, and look at how hard it is to find out what they want when they cry. Same with dogs. “What’s that, girl? Timmy’s stuck in the well?!” Our entire civilization depends on our ability to communicate thoughts to each other using the best means we have. Certain academics use the phrase ‘language game,’ when they talk about how we are all using words in society. Is there a possibility that in the future we will outgrow language for something more streamline like telepathy?
It is known that the German language has a word for almost everything. Whenever we, the English speakers, find ourselves unable to find the right words to express a feeling or idea, the best we can do is combine other words. It never quite works the same as having the right word. There is another phrase used when talking about potential advanced A.G.I. (artificial general intelligence) called a ‘black box.’ It is used to describe how we are all living now, never truly knowing what everyone else is thinking. Our only window into another individual’s mind is their own ability and… permission?- allowance- for us to bear witness of their raw thoughts. Otherwise we truly have no idea what is going on behind their eyes.
Now we must ask, what in the world would we as a species do in the unlikely event that aliens really visited Earth? Would we say hi? Hola? Salute? Would we attempt communication through Morse code? What if they only communicated through dance? Or in reversed meaning, where happy was sad and peace meant war? What if they only communicated through dreams, acting aberrant and uncooperative in waking life if you tried to do anything otherwise not talked about beforehand? Our brains formed solely through Earth’s evolution, from scratch. Alien life could have radically different minds if they even resembled Earth-like organisms.
Language is what built the life we have now. As a society, talking to each other built us up to being technologically advanced. It allowed collaboration of nations, democracy, infrastructure, and general stability. But just like the internet, language as a tool is a double-edged blade. It can grant us the best possible life in our individual situations, but it can also give us great pain. Sticks and stones may break my bones, AND words do also hurt me. It’s scary how effective words can hurt us. We have no ability to stop hearing things in front of us. Sound enters our ears and our brain computes it into meaning (if we know the language) and there’s nothing we can do about it. We have the ability to use our words for ill, or for good. It is up to us how we use it, and how we react.
With that in mind, I suggest we put in the effort, or attention, to use our words for better. Thank you again as always for reading. I love you all! And I’ll see you next time.
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Does life need conflict? More specifically, do humans need conflict in our lives to keep things interesting? Just look at animals in zoos for Pete’s sake. They got no worries in the world, but also nothing to do. Good stories certainly need conflict. And states of higher consciousness or enlightenment are merely momentary, so it leads one to wonder what our resting place is. We try so hard with everything we do to not try so hard with everything we do. New inventions are created to help us relax more and struggle less, but it has yet to bring people any kind of lasting peace. People are just as mired now in conflict as they were a thousand years ago. Life has definitely improved where we don’t need to be in physical pain all the time anymore, but our resting mental state is still one that looks for conflict to fuck with. It doesn’t matter how much we meditate, pray, or fast, if someone less enlightened than us fucks with our shit, it’ll work. Our shit’ll get fucked up. And those people will always come. As a species we are only as strong as our weakest link.
Even if we spend the next hundred years working as hard as we can to bring everyone to a place of proposed peace, what would happen if we got there? Nothing would happen, really. And then what would be the point of all our lives? Everything would be so docile. Our goal is one we strive towards, but in actuality is one we maybe cannot obtain. Like passing the speed of light, it is something we can only pursue. It’s similar to the idea of living forever. We all strive to live as long as possible, but no one really wants to live forever. It would strip away the meaning of life from us. And so, that is the conflict with conflict. We kind of need it, if only mildly. Though it can suck and hurt, conflict also gives us purpose.
I hope you guys have a great, exciting day. Thank you for reading. I love you all, and I’ll see you next time.
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In episode twenty-eight of Thoughts, I talk about the follies of consciousness and what we do with our understanding of them. Enjoy!
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In episode twenty-seven of Thoughts, I dive deep into the philosophical standpoint of Determinism. Is it the truth of reality? One must make up their own mind. Enjoy!
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Love is compassion and attraction. It’s kindness and well wishes. It’s hidden magic, being in it, and something worth fighting for. If life is a game, love is the prize! It’s the one thing everyone wants. But does true love really exist? Sorry to keep playing the word game with you guys, but let’s look at what love is defined as, then what we understand it as. Love according to Google is an intense feeling of deep affection. I wouldn’t personally use those words to describe love, but that’s the definition. I’d say that’s definitely a type of love, but I’ve understood love in my life to be an unbreakable bond. It can waver, but exists as an absolute. No matter how much my dog might annoy me, I’ll always love him. Even if my family becomes estranged, I will still love them. In saying that, I feel like my dad and I never had love, so just because he’s my family there was never an initial love to tether the storm he brought upon my family. There can be other variables to your family not being people you should love, like if they are abusive, but usually families are the people you will always have in your life. And so, if you want to live a good life, you must love your family accordingly, if only at first for personal harmony.
There are many forms of love. You have the above mentioned familial love which can extend to friendship love, then you have general love for humankind, or a sports team, or your country, or some other form of people you will never meet per se. Then you have a deep ass love. That’s the meaning of life kind of love. Deeper than any love you could have otherwise. This type of love might actually branch to best friends, depending, but is usually reserved for a romantic life partner, and for your children. This is the love that keeps giving. It’s the daily love and drive of one’s existence. Ain’t no love like a lifetime love! It’s the number one love sought after by most. For this reason, so many people jump into marriages and end up divorced because it’s not what they thought it would be. Love still takes work. It’s not some unconditional coddling of a parent figure, it takes two. Expectations usually ruin relationships, like: poor communications that make one believe the partnership was going to be one way and ended up another way completely. This can also happen because people are still growing and they might end up becoming a different person than the other thought they would have for life.
Love is love. What can I say? Does true love exist? It does depending on the person. The thing comes in so many forms. How about I give you guys some fun facts at the end here. Did you know the shape of a cartoon heart is two real hearts together? Another one! Did you know that kissing was invented as a greeting, and later became incorporated as a romantic gesture? Before this it’s hypothesized that cave people we would sniff each other if they were romantically interested. Another fun fact, the drug of love that most people feel when they meet someone new that’s cute (hot) is an actual chemical, known as oxytocin. Oxytocin, not to be confused with oxycodone the pharmaceutical drug, releases naturally when we social bond. It becomes active during pregnancy too and plays a role in post birth for breast feeding, for some reason. It also has a negative side effect known as jealousy. The feeling of jealous is this hormone.
So there you have it! My weird take on love. It’s the best of things, it at times can be the worst of things like when you’re love sick with a crush you’re too shy to talk to. But either way, it’s undeniably us. Thank you so much again for reading. I freakin’ LOVE you all, and I’ll see you next time. Stay lovely!
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Welcome to episode 57 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! Today I have another 2nd time returning guest come back from the top of the year to discuss their experience during Canada’s quarantine time. We talk about Black Lives Matters protests, films to watch, Jay-walking, what the odds are that we live in a simulated reality, and what we’re scared of. Enjoy!
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Strength! Power! Austin POWERS. What is strength, and what is power? Strength is physical, and strength is emotional. Power is external control and authority, and control is an illusion. So what does that say about the people seeking power? One could say they’re chasing a fleeting dream, like chasing the pink dragon- something they might grasp for a moment or two before it disappears into a wisp of smoke. These two concepts of strength and power serpentine through each other, meeting in one field of thought and being completely separate in others. I was originally only going to write about strength in this thought piece, but figured it would be best to include power as well.
The word strength is defined as… wait. Oh my God. There are too many definitions. I can’t one-off this, you guys. Okay! So, let’s run off the list here. There are twelve definitions separated into five sections. SECTION ONE. 1) the quality or state of being physically strong. 2) the influence or power possessed by a person, organization, or country. 3) the degree of intensity of a feeling or belief. 4) the cogency of an argument or case. 5) the potency, intensity, or speed of a force or natural agency.
SECTION TWO. 6) the capacity of an object or substance to withstand great force or pressure. 7) the emotional or mental qualities necessary in dealing with situations or events that are distressing or difficult.
SECTION THREE. 8) the potency or degree of concentration of a drug, chemical, or drink.
SECTION FOUR. 9) a good or beneficial quality or attribute of a person or thing. 10) a person or thing perceived as a source of mental or emotional support.
SECTION FIVE. 11) the number of people comprising a group, typically a team or army. And finally 12) the number of people required to make a group complete.
So, what do these sections tell us about the nature of strength? The first two are pretty general, but the last three are separated properly. Third section is potency, the fourth describes an emotionally secure and mature person, and the last details military force. Who’d have thunk these vastly different fields would have such a core connection? Language is interesting in this regard. Strength means so many things! It as a concept really gets its worth. You could say strength is a STRONG ass word! Luckily, there are adjectives to help describe its many forms: Brawn, supremacy, intensity, force, stability, resilience, stoicism, aptitude, magnitude, anchor. We have body builders and we have mothers. We have Keanu Reeves, a man who has lost so many loved ones and still holds a positive demeanour, and we have life itself! Life is stronger than anything; throw asteroids at the Earth and life is still here!
Now where does power intersect with strength? Brute strength has power over another in a tug-of-war. In a fight, a lighter person could out-maneuver the heavier one but in something like tug-of-war, it’s done before it begins. In a game of wits similar to how polite neighbours might be nasty to each other, the one who best holds their emotional stability wins the power. To contrast, there are many cases where the weak can have more power, like in politics. Authority is where the abuse of power is found with individuals that may have never had a sense of control before. Strength is not needed to sign papers or bark orders, but great power is housed in it.
It’s a curious thing to have strength or power, and all the more to lose it. People who have just attained either, or have yet to lose one often look down on others without in however mildly disdain. Only when you lose one can you have a better perspective on life. Most people with more money than they need who give to specific charities, do so because they had someone in their life go through whatever the charity is aimed at. New people coming into the game of life as independent adults seek riches either because they were taught to, to compensate internal anguish, or because they grew up with very little and want their kids to have the opposite kind of life.
In the end, though, we lose everything. Any kind of power or strength you gain, will leave you before the end. It doesn’t matter how much you work out, how sharp you make yourself, how much you make or how many things you name after yourself, in the end we all lose to death. One can hope for a future world where we learn the humble lessons of past peoples and gain their perspective of what really matters in the end. We could maybe finally mature as a species, instead of one at a time and often too late, but that kind of thing is only a hope. I don’t want to write it off, but our minds are clearly wired to compete. And compete we will. Maybe we can compete to a point to equanimity one day- who knows.
One thing we do know, is that with all things, time will tell. Thank you again for reading. I love you all, and I’ll talk to you next time. Be good.
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There will be people that can argue to a good point that human consciousness is a part of evolution, but my intuition says it just ain’t! Hence my title: The Follies of Consciousness. First, what is consciousness? Consciousness is the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world. In shorter words; self-awareness. I am of the strong belief that human consciousness happened by mistake.
I think evolution, as a process barreling forward with whatever it got, sharpened our ancestors social game and mathematical problem solving to a point where we started knowing it was us in a river’s reflection. I think it happened as a side effect of making us so smart. What started with cognitive growth for survival’s sake, like the ability to plan for the future, morphed into contemplation about why we’re even here.
Here are some examples of follies of consciousness. 1) Suicide. Suicide does not help our survival, so clearly that wasn’t programmed into us by evolution. It’s a disorder of the mind when looking inward and forward, and not wanting to live anymore. 2) Obsession. Wouldn’t it be easier to distribute our DNA if we didn’t care about which mate we did it with? What about workaholics that literally work themselves to death from a lack of sleep and nutrition? Jealousy and fixation are another example of defects of consciousness that holds no survival advantage. Paying attention does but not at such high levels. And lastly 3) Religiosity. Fanatics do wacky shit. They’ll dance like they’re being possessed by the holy spirit just because some dude with a microphone is swinging his arms. Old people will stop taking their medication because some fraud said Jesus is with them and will heal them. Young virgin boys with rage issues get sucked into believing the end of the world is coming and join ISIS to partake in a holy war.
In general, depression and anxiety are like really crappy side effects of being smart. You get the best brains on Earth but it comes with this baggage. We can let it tear us down, or we can use these faults to excel us forward. That’s the great thing about where we’re at as a society now. 100 years ago if you wanted to talk about your anxiety you’d just be called weak. Now, we’ve done the research and realize it’s something we’re all going through and ought to help each other out with it to be our best selves. Being self-aware of the follies of being self-aware is a step in the right direction. It allows one to course correct whenever finding oneself descending into despair. It can be the thing we use as motivation to keep working, keep striving, and vent about on the weekends.
I’ve always been a palm-sweater, prone to silence in frantic situations. I clam up. But instead of me accepting or being owned by these defects, I learn what causes them and work on either avoiding those situations or teaching myself to lessen the impact it has on me. The fact that we are self-aware is the luckiest luck a living creature could hope to have on this planet, but it doesn’t come without cost. We must all learn to cope with our defects and continue to help each other out when needed. Thank you for reading dear viewers. I love you, and I’ll you next time.
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In episode twenty-one of Thoughts, I talk about the theory of Dyson Spheres, their potential origin in myth, and what it means for us looking out in the universe. Enjoy!
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Fear is tucking your daughter in for the night only to realize once you’ve closed the door that you don’t have a daughter. Fear is laying in bed as a figure walks into your room from the hallway and you can’t move. Fear is being three hours into a hike and hearing a crunch beside you, seeing a mountain lion crouch in preparation to pounce. Fear is the dark, fear is the unknown. Fear is the uncanny, or inhuman. Fear is the alone, and always being watched.
How would you describe fear? Seeing a face dart out of view from the corner of your window in the night? Or an elderly woman entering your personal space to whisper how you die? Fear is a guttural thing. Are you a fan of horror movies like me? It would make sense if you’re not. Fear is our instinctual mind’s response for survival. Avoid that thing, FEAR IT, so that you may live. In ancient times, predator animals and diseased people were the things to fear, and uncomfortable body language from potential killers. Try to imagine how evolution could warn us any other way than to use the uncanny valley and the dark as precursors or triggers. Evolution does not think. It cannot see or hear. It developed its method of fear for survival through trial and error.
Why fear spiders and other creepy crawlys’? Because they could be poisonous! Why fear big things with claws? Duh. Why fear the dark? Because we are at a disadvantage. It all makes sense, but one: Supernatural fear. We have somehow over the generations developed a fear of ghosts, demons, and specters. Should they suck our souls from our bodies? It’s one heck of a unique fear to have. I was raised Catholic, but was never enough of a believer for it to stick, yet every so often I have a fear that grips me, usually in my dreams, related to ghosts. In my dreams they are real. They are an enemy that would take my life and I cannot fight back against them! I can only run away and hide.
Ghosts are kind of like the ultimate fear. They check off the dark box, the unknown box, the uncanny or diseased box, the predator box, and the socially uncomfortable box. Some say dragon were the amalgamation of the ultimate predator to fear, but I say it’s ghosts! And just like dragons, ghosts aren’t real, or are they? Let your own fear response tell you!
This has been another thought piece by Joe Van. Thank you for reading, and I’ll talk to you guys- LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!
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What constitutes living a good life? While individual happiness is particular to each person, general well being is quantifiable. A good life includes a healthy diet, or healthy enough for you to still enjoy what you’re eating, a moderate fitness regiment, an open dialogue with your inner circle of loved ones, and having a life purpose. I touched on how life purpose and moderation lead to longevity in my piece: Longevity, but in this thought piece I wanted to touch on the particular issue of the pursuit of happiness, and how so many people seem to be lacking general happiness in their daily life.
I’m sure you’ve all heard the golden advice: manage your expectations, but in what way can we apply this concept to our daily lives? We can’t help but want things, so how are we suppose to trick ourselves into not minding if we don’t get said things? A strange thing about the mind is the subconscious. It directs our emotions, knee-jerk reactions, dreams, and general worldview. People born in a third world country are people who have only known that life. They want far less than us and would be far happier to receive even a sliver of what we consume regularly. They may have a general sense that life ought to be more, but most people simply accept every day as another gift to be alive. Somehow, hardships make individuals extremely appreciative. People tend to strive after undergoing something hard. It doesn’t mean you HAVE to suffer in order to be happier with what you have, but simply being self aware makes a big difference.
I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the greatest things to happen to me in my life was when I had a slipped disc. At the time it was just awful and misery-inducing, but afterward I couldn’t help but feel more alive than ever. I was inspired to write! I didn’t know in what medium then, but I knew things would never be the same. I’ve also had other accounts of difficulties, (not to be compared to anyone else of course but just to use as examples,) of having an ego death after taking too many magic mushrooms, falling into a K-hole, and having my already half-absent father leave my family. My most recent difficulty was quitting drinking, and since then I couldn’t be happier with my life. It’s made me more honest than ever after admitting to everyone that I had a secret addiction. Regardless of the current quarantine Canada is under, every day in my eyes has been like glistening golden honey under a shining sun.
So to expand on the idea of being honest, secrecy is a unique form of internal toxicity that no one can truly manage. Sociopaths are the best at lying and then sleeping like a baby, but it doesn’t mean their existence isn’t torture. Living double, triple, quadruple or whatever-the-heck lives makes a mess of your unseen subconscious. Honesty will set you free, as many have said over the ages. It may seem like telling the truth is impossible. I mean, why mention things from years ago when the person never found out? Because it may be eating YOU inside. Could honesty ruin relationships? Yes. But if you truly seek happiness, you must let it go.
I’m not yet thirty, so proper life advice can’t really come from me. It doesn’t mean that I haven’t discovered certain insights into the human condition, though. Even back when I was a teenager, I remember uncovering elements of the mind that struck me as such an easy thing to care for yet so many people seemed to have problems with. The difference time makes to insights, I have found, is coherence. It is the difference of information, to knowledge, to wisdom. So I still very much have growing to do, but for now just remember that your own happiness is predicated off of your ability to look inward and see what you can see that may be hindering daily harmony. Thank you as always for reading. I love you, and I’ll see you next time.
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What is time? I’ll let you guys answer this one. For real, I’ll wait… and wait… and wait. Even if it takes a lifetime. Even when the stars burn out and matter is dissipated into a heat death of the universe. All will be dark, but you’ll still have time. Time is known to do things, like heal, be cruel, teach us lessons, and fade the past away. Time is fast when you want it to be slow, and slow when you want it to be fast. Time is a clock on the wall, and it is made up. Now you might say, ‘Made up, eh? What’re you talking about?’ Time, as a unit of measurement, is arbitrary! Seconds are just something we made up. If we wanted, tomorrow the UN could declare that one second will now be the length of two seconds, and nothing in the universe would change. We would all live with thirty-second minutes, that’s all.
Time as defined by Google is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole. The truth about reality is in that PROGRESS bit. The motion of molecules are what we perceive as time. Time began at the Big Bang, according to the theory of the Big Bang. It leads one to wonder if maybe time needs matter to exist? Like time and matter are two sides to a coin; one cannot exist without the other. If we were to freeze time, we wouldn’t actually be able to gallivant around. There are examples in media of people doing this, like freezing time and stealing from banks, art museums, and such, but the movement of molecules are required for aspects like solid objects. If we stopped things from vibrating closely together, we’d fall through it. Or more so, we’d instantly die from the universe ending.
There is a temperature called ‘Absolute Zero.’ It is the lowest temperature that is theoretically possible, at which the motion of particles that constitutes heat would be minimal. It is zero on the Kelvin scale, equivalent to –273.15°C or –459.67°F. This temperature is out in space, and has been briefly reached in labs on Earth. Pluto is 44 Kelvin (-229 Celsius or -380 Fahrenheit) and is the coldest planet in our solar system. A reason science fiction stories in space have things like cryogenic chambers to hibernate its occupants is because of the real effects lower temperatures have on cellular motion. So, the reason I bring absolute zero up is because if such a temperature could either be found or created to DESCEND EVEN LOWER than absolute zero, would time stop? Would it collapse into a black hole? Who knows!
One thing we do know is that we can never go back in time. Forward, however, well, that’s relative. It has to do with gravity. The simplest example is this: Astronauts leaves Earth’s orbit, saying goodbye to their families and friends as they chart a course around the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The trip takes them one year. They enter the dense black hole’s orbit and circle it once before heading back to Earth. One year had passed for them, but upon returning to Earth, 100 years had passed. It’s a strange and phenomenal effect gravity has on matter. Not just matter actually, but also light. The heavier an object is, on the astronomical scale, the slower time moves. I’m hesitant to say that the molecules vibrate slower, because even if that is what they’re doing, it wouldn’t as simple as that. Cold temperature does that, but doesn’t seem to slow time down. I would simply say gravity works as a dial, like fancy light switches! The more you crank it, the slower things get.
A thought experiment the glorious Stephen Hawking had, regarding time, involved a futuristic train. He wondered, or proposed, that say there was a train humanity created that wrapped around the Earth and traveled at near the speed of light. Matter cannot go or surpass the speed of light, but this train was designed to go just under as fast. He then proposed that a girl in the train decided to run forward in it. Would the laws of physics break? Or would they correct the matter at hand and visibly slow the girl down, making sure not to allow her to pass the speed of light. Individuals sitting in the train would watch as she slowed down, making each stride and seemingly hover in the air as she leapt.
Time is a trip, to conclude this thought piece. We have no control over it. It goes up and down, shrinks and stretches, but never stops or reverses. We are a slave to time and we are freed by it. Time is us and we are time. Make what you will of your slice, and I’ll make mine. Thank for reading, and I’ll see you guys next time!
The Joe Van 