Welcome everyone to episode #12 of The JD: Unplugged! Today we have on a new guest with a wide array of work experience, both inside the film industry and out. The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -MOVIES! Snyder’s cut, eXistenZ, Strange Days -Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit -Xbox Game Pass -Halo Infinite -Endless email subscription -Audio devices are actual magic -Location situation -Freezing windmills -Greenland, The Day After Tomorrow -Joe’s 2012 end of the world experience -Horse Girl PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jd-streams/id1541025716
Tag: series
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Welcome everyone to episode #14 of The JD: Unplugged! Today we have on double the dose of guests, both NEW, to talk about their lives. The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -The last three years for our first guest -Ever-changing work life -Trekking in deep snow -Neanderthals -British Columbia -Travel issues -A frozen Texas -WandaVision season two with FUTURE tropes! PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jd-streams/id1541025716
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Chilling, tingling, hot sensations of bubbly, proud, shocking but sad, boring, scratchy, pungent, exhausting happiness. EXPERIENCES are the tether with which we can all find common ground. It doesn’t matter what beliefs you have. If you’re shy, confident, sadistic, depressed, or think this reality is a simulation, we are all still existing through experiences. It’s the key component to life versus non-life.
We have our senses of taste, touch, sight, smell, hearing, space, and other more subtle, subconscious senses that together give us one collaborative, cohesive ‘thing’ called experiences.
Let me start with an example; jogging. It’s exhausting at times and euphoric at times; but what causes that? When we run, our muscles stretch and contract, and the blood pumping through our veins is given extra oxygen. Our heart beats quicker, and we breathe heavier, giving our brains a type of high; a kind of ‘premium rush’ that our ancestors felt when they were on the hunt. It would put them in the zone and once they were in, it was like unlocking a mental state where you can kill and not lose sleep over it. The phenomenological process of experience is something that, though it exists for all living things, only as a human has the potential to be self recognizing.
Also, that thing I said at the beginning about it being the key component to life versus non-life, well, that basic understanding has changed in the scientific community over time. It can be argued now to a startling degree that we mustn’t rule out experiential possibilities for non-life entities such as rocks. This scientific theory is called panpsychism. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, they write,
“Panpsychism is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. The view has a long and venerable history in philosophical traditions of both East and West, and has recently enjoyed a revival in analytic philosophy. For its proponents panpsychism offers an attractive middle way between physicalism on the one hand and dualism on the other. The worry with dualism—the view that mind and matter are fundamentally different kinds of thing—is that it leaves us with a radically disunified picture of nature, and the deep difficulty of understanding how mind and brain interact. And whilst physicalism offers a simple and unified vision of the world, this is arguably at the cost of being unable to give a satisfactory account of the emergence of human and animal consciousness. Panpsychism, strange as it may sound on first hearing, promises a satisfying account of the human mind within a unified conception of nature.”
In my own words I would say: consciousness is NOT an emergent phenomenon. Human evolution didn’t create self-aware consciousness, (as is the standard idea of why we are different from all other animals,) rather, human evolution in the brain developed and molded the neurology to access the universal bed of consciousness, just to a far higher degree than all other animals. Our species’ mental wiring tapped into a preexisting consciousness rather than developing it as a side effect of growingly complex thought pathways and instincts. It can be hard to make this theory easy for everyone to understand, but the way I continually think about it, is that just like how order can come from randomness in nature without an intentional maker behind it, so can our own self-awareness.
This theory doesn’t answer everything. It leaves bigger questions alone like how did the laws of physics come to be? Is it truly either by a creator or unanswerable? That comes with the caveat of setting aside that fact that were it by a creator, it would still be unanswered, with us just moving the goal post back one dimension.
This leads many who believe this universe to be a simulation to the understanding that if we were to create a simulated reality, what is to say that it has only just happened once, and not that what we just did is exactly what has happened to US? And same with our creators’ universe. Someone more than likely created theirs, and someone created that creator’s reality, and so on and so forth for infinity. But to that theory leading many great minds to think that it must be the case that we ARE in a simulation then, I say, but we haven’t created an entire simulated universe though. We haven’t done it yet, so this postulating is based purely on theory, like time-sing a number by infinity, or conceptualizing matter moving faster than light. We can think about these things- we can imagine about infinity, but physics has blockers. If we built a rocket to go as fast as possible, we could get it near lightspeed until tiny space debris tore it to sheds; or simply gravity from large objects might impede the time and distance needed to get it there. Or we could walk a half distance to a door, but rather than walking a half distance forever, never reaching the destination, eventually we would reach the door.
That’s all not to say that us imagining these things isn’t in a way, real experiences. Here’s an example of what I mean: when I think back to my earliest memory, I catch myself remembering walking alongside the rock path at my grandparents’ old cottage. However, when I think more about it, my first real memory isn’t a physical experience at all, but a dream; more specifically a nightmare, but that’s beside the point. It’s not like it doesn’t count as my first memory, that IS the first experience that I remember, it just feels weird to say because the experience only happened in my head. So like usual, our initial assumptions about what defines experiences, that maybe we didn’t even know we had, can be incorrect. The universe may be a conscious thing that our brains simply access to think, and we may choose to understand that dreams are as valid of an experiences as real life. I would only add that we shouldn’t be upset with people who did us dirty in our dreams. Keep the confrontation for the dream version of that person.
The final point on experiences I want to hit on is how our own presumptions and expectations can radically warp our perception of experiences. I’ve hit on this point throughout multiple Thoughts pieces so it would be redundant to cover it all again, but I do feel it still deserves to be mentioned here. Our state of consciousness determines our interpretation of events, not as they are, but as how we feel about them. There is a technique of meditation called mindfulness that taps into this aspect about ourselves. It has us sit, eyes closed typically, and focus on the breath. While doing this we are told to take in all thoughts, sounds, and physical sensations simply as they are. The point of this form of meditation is to shed light on reality as it is, and our own state of being. It’s also meant to give us a break from our standard, rather distracted, mental state. It’s ability to successfully do so is entirely dependent of each individual and their own ‘distractibility’, though there should be no judgment for anyone’s success at this. We are all wired differently, and some honestly do not have the ability to attempt this practice. I myself have undiagnosed A.D.D., but feel like I still have had successful moments of clarity, so all I would say is everyone should at least give it a try.
And that’s about all I have to say about the topic of experiences! There’s physical experiences, mental experiences, and out of body experiences. The range is wildly wide. I hope you all had a fun time reading this latest piece, from me, ya boy, Joe Van. I happily urge all those who found this interesting to GO OUT into the world wide web, and do your own research! I hope for nothing but love in your lives, and ask you to remember to keep on thinking. Bye for now.
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Welcome to episode 62 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! In this episode I talk to a new secret guest about their work, rebellious adventures online, the power of optimism, finding peace in the randomness of our seemingly endless multiverse, and understanding human nature as natural. Enjoy!
PODCAST LINK: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jd-streams/id1541025716
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Welcome everyone to episode #12 of The JD: Unplugged! Today we have on a new guest with a wide array of work experience, both inside the film industry and out. The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Nicknames -Work situations -Derron’s lost tooth -Tiff, working out, and work space -Joe’s journey to the film industry -Hard work trashed -Joe’s parking lot fight, New York mentality -“Treat every conversation like your last one.” PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/jd-streams/id1541025716 #Canada #Podcast #Unplugged
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Welcome everyone to episode #11 of The JD: Unplugged! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Wisdom teeth -Cleaning Dave & Busters -Savage gifts -Game stonks -Foodies -Female hygiene products overpriced! -Reopening for the virus -Breaking into NASA #Canada #Podcast #Unplugged
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Howdy everybody! In this ep I just go over a couple of passing thoughts I’ve had recently that I thought I’d share with y’all. Enjoy!
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Welcome everyone to episode #10 of The JD: Unplugged! We have two new guests on this week as we dive into the ever-changing landscape of exponential growth. The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Gaming iterations -Cell phones -Marketing -Napping and isolation -Progressive countries and conservative ones -Mounties and inequality -Hope and change #Canada #Podcast #Unplugged
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Welcome everyone to episode #9 of The JD: Unplugged! Today we have a guest: Kelechi Ofoha, creator and host of Kelechi TV. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs22C2JFVLnyuPaaeukFVHw
The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Business independence -Politicians failing -Finding work -Helping others -Onlyfans -Sound of Metal and finding stillness -Karma -Visual information #Canada #Podcast #Unplugged
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Welcome everyone to episode #7 of The JD: Unplugged! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Festival food (raised without crans) -Politicians going on vacation -New Year -A 15-year-long dream -Daylight savings -Vaccines -Overthinking -YouTube doc and Sorry to Bother You -Lifetime of work -Art and business #Canada #Podcast #Unplugged
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Welcome everyone to episode #7 of The JD: Unplugged! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Location situations -Edgy horror movies -The Wilds, peak boredom -What constitutes true struggles -Moral dilemmas
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Welcome everyone to episode #6 of The JD: Unplugged. Today we welcome back episode #1’s third man to the scene! The topics we cover in today’s episode are: -Our locations -Cyberpunk 2077 -Minecraft -History -Scale
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Welcome back everyone to the EE EH, also known as the Triple A podcast! Where we talk everything AA from alcoholism to recovery. In today’s episode we talk about the American election and what it means to not drink even when it seems like the right time. Enjoy!
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Welcome everyone to Derron and Joe’s newest podcast series titled: The JD: Unplugged! For episode one we have on friend of the show Aidan from Movie Motel, to talk all things current in our crazy world. We had a blast opening this first chapter and we hope you all enjoy!
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Welcome back everyone to the AA EH, also known as the Triple A podcast! Where we talk everything AA from alcoholism to recovery. On today’s podcast, we go over the changing seasons and how that affects people in Canada and abroad. Enjoy!
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Welcome back everyone to the AA EH, also known as the Triple A podcast! Where we talk everything AA from alcoholism to recovery. On this episode we review the sequel to The Shining: Doctor Sleep, and discuss our takes on its portrayal of alcoholism. Enjoy! #AAEH #Alcoholism #DoctorSleep
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Welcome back everyone to the AA EH, also known as the triple A podcast! Where we talk everything AA from alcoholism to recovery. Today’s episode is special in that we have our very first guest on to talk with us! You’ll soon find that he comes from quite the distance away but it does nothing to hinder our connections, relating to personal experiences. Enjoy!
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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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Welcome back to the AA EH, also known as the triple A podcast! Where we talk everything from alcoholism to recovery. Today’s episode we dive into the Kubrick classic: The Shining. We review the film under our alcoholism lens to dissect how possession is played out in the movie for Jack Nicholson’s character. It’s a scary flick, but one worth watching at least once. 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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Welcome back the AA EH, also known as the triple A podcast! Where we talk everything from alcoholism to recovery. Today’s episode we do a movie review of the film: Flight, starring Denzel Washington. It a harrowing film of the effects alcoholism has over those suffering. While Denzel’s character is a high-functioning alcoholic, it still destroys his life in more ways than one, and we go over it. Enjoy!
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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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Welcome to episode 61 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! In this episode I interview a newly acquainted gentleman and professional who specializes in the therapy of the body. In his words, he ‘beats people up until they’re better’. I couldn’t have put it better myself. 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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In episode thirty-eight of Thoughts, I talk about growing up, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Life holds so many changes for us and we’ve charted them to great detail, save narrowly for the ending of adolescence, in my mind. I go over this and what it means to really grow up. Enjoy!
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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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In episode thirty-seven of Thoughts, I talk about Nintendo’s beloved video game franchise: the Legend of Zelda! With its countless iterations, each one reviving the characters we know and love, the Zelda series covers vast generations. Have you played any Legend of Zelda games? Let me know!
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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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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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In episode thirty-five of Thoughts, I talk about late nights in general and their profound effect on our ability of reflection. Enjoy!
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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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The Legend of Zelda is a video game franchise where you play a silent-type heroic character clad in green, that fights the flood- wait! Wait waitwait, wrong franchise. Sorry. In the Legend of Zelda, you play as a character appointed by your commanding nation to quell the forces against your kind, harnessing little more than a trusted weapon, tiny blue lady with all the know-how, and copious amounts of courage and luck. Your name is the Ma- Link! Link- you play as Link. Man alive. Who knew the only two video game franchises I’d come to love would be so similar? I’ve already covered Halo in a previous thoughts piece I’ll link you to here, so no more of that.
Both franchises hold dear places in my heart for both their story and the time they came in my life. I started playing Halo in 2007, but before that, the Legend of Zelda inspired my every creative spark. When I look back at old comic books I made or just original art in general, they were almost all based off of the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Back in 1998 when I was five years old, my older brother and I got a Nintendo 64 for Christmas. The first 3D Legend of Zelda game subtitled Ocarina of Time just came out that year at the end of November so we and millions of others including one of my best friends received it as a packaged deal for the system. It was the first time we got a gaming console. Other kids at this time had a Play Station, NES, or SNES, but to my brother and I, this was the genesis of gaming. We later received other games like Mario Kart and Super Sash Bros but for a long time the Legend of Zelda was all we had. (Side note before getting into it, I always called the game ‘Oricona’ of Time for some reason, and I always pronounced deku, ‘deeku.’ For a kid, the latter is sensible, but my mix-up of ocarina has no rhyme or reason to it. Anyway, back to it.)
I remember my brother and I being stuck in the Great Deku Tree dungeon for the longest time until our cousin solved a particular puzzle for us. Afterward, once defeating the dungeon’s boss and leaving our character’s home of Kokiri, we entered Hyrule field of the first time. Witnessing the expanse of land housed the same feeling of awe in me that Halo’s second mission did. All of a sudden, you were in the world, and nothing was going to be the same again. It reminds me of when I was younger and would walk to school. My elementary school was ONE block from my house, so at the time my whole world was very small. It wasn’t until like grade five that I started biking around the city with my friends, where for the first time I truly grasped the scope and scale of the world.
As one does, I eventually beat the game. I had beaten it before my older brother and best friend. I remember that being the first time I had really competed and won. On the day my brother made it to the end fight with Ganon, I sat there furious. He hit B, triggering the final blow animation, and I ripped out the power cord! Like that was going to permanently stop him from beating the game. Talk about childish and petty. Obviously he soon beat the game along with everyone else and life went on. A year later, Ocarina of Time’s sequel was announced! I begged to have it and when it came out, my parent’s obliged. At this point it was clear to my folks that I was obsessed. I went through an addiction phase with the N64 where I wouldn’t do my homework or let anyone else play, so my parent’s grounded me from it and I threw a full-on fit. These were the first signs that I had an addictive personality, but how could my parent’s have known that? Regardless, I started drawing my own dungeon maps and spin off story lines for Link. Then, Wind Waker came to the GameCube. I was at first appalled by their change of art design. It was cartoony now! Completely divorced from the first two 3D games’ ‘realistic’ art design. But my love was strong and I adjusted to it, quickly falling in love with the story it told. Years passed before the next game was announced at E3 2004. It was at the time untitled, but… the art design… it went for a more realistic look! And in that reveal trailer the camera panned over a land that looked just like Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule field. I remember watching that trailer over and over again, thinking, ‘is this the third game to Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask? Will it take place between then and Wind Waker, where Link returns to Hyrule? My mind was running wild! As we all know now, that wasn’t the case. It was its own standalone story in its own universe. Before this game, I didn’t even know the stories of any of the other games in the series, and didn’t know they all held the same names of characters but were otherwise not connected.
So now I shall cover all of the Legend of Zelda games as quickly as I can: The first game simply titled The Legend of Zelda came out in 1986. Since there are over 19 games, this first one will be the only story I dive into for the sake of levity.
A small kingdom in the land of Hyrule is engulfed by chaos when an army led by Ganon, the Prince of Darkness, invaded and stole the Triforce of Power, one part of a magical artifact which alone bestows great strength. In an attempt to prevent him from acquiring the Triforce of Wisdom, another of the three pieces, Princess Zelda splits it into eight fragments and hides them in secret underground dungeons. Before eventually being kidnapped by Ganon, she commands her nursemaid Impa to find someone courageous enough to save the kingdom. While wandering the land, the old woman is surrounded by Ganon’s henchmen, when a young boy named Link appears and rescues her. Upon hearing Impa’s plea, he resolves to save Zelda and sets out to reassemble the scattered fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom, with which Ganon can then be defeated.
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link came out in 1987 and is a direct sequel to the first game, taking place many years later. Then the third game, A Link to the Past came out in 1991. It’s a prequel to the first two games, and is directly followed by Link’s Awakening in 1993. Ocarina of Time came out in 1998 and is apparently a prequel that takes the story back many centuries; according to character designer Satoru Takizawa, it was meant to implicitly tell the story of the Imprisoning War from the manual of A Link to the Past, with Majora’s Mask in 2000 directly following its ending. (Another side note, there’s a YouTube video by The Game Theorist called Dear Nintendo, I FIXED Your Timeline! (Zelda) He goes over the whole timeline properly for those who like things done properly. So just keep in mind that although I’m covering the official Zelda timeline, it isn’t something the makers of the franchise actually planned to have.)
Next, Skyward Sword from 2011 is a prequel to Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess which came out in 2006 is set more than 100 years after Ocarina of Time. The Wind Waker from 2002 is actually parallel to Twilight Princess, taking place in another timeline branch, which we’ll get into in a bit. Phantom Hourglass from 2007 is a direct sequel to Wind Waker and is followed by Spirit Tracks in 2009 which… is set about 100 years later with a different link on a supercontinent far away from the setting of The Wind Waker. So like… why? Why even make it a Legend of Zelda story? Why say they’re connected?! But I digress. Four Swords from 2002 for the Game Boy Advance was considered the oldest tale in the series’ chronology at the time of its release, with Four Swords Adventures released in 2004 set sometime after its events. The Minish Cap, also from 2004, preceded the two games. A Link Between Worlds which came out in 2013 takes place six generations after Link to the Past. Important events occur in the game include the Triforce being reunited, and Ganon being resurrected.
Nintendo’s 2011 timeline announcement subsequently posits that following Ocarina of Time, the timeline splits into three alternate routes: in one, Link fails to defeat Ganon, leading into the Imprisoning War and A Link to the Past, Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, Link’s Awakening, The Legend of Zelda and The Adventure of Link. In the second and third, Link is successful, leading to a timeline split between his childhood (when Zelda sends him back in time so he can use the wisdom he has gained to warn the Zelda in the past of the horrifying fate of Hyrule) and adulthood (where the Zelda from the future lives on to try and rebuild the kingdom). His childhood continues with Majora’s Mask, followed by Twilight Princess and Four Swords Adventures. The timeline from his adult life continues into Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks.
FINALLY, In 2017 Breath of the Wild came out, officially taking place after all previous games in the series (without specifying a connection to any of the three timelines), and moved Link’s Awakening to take place before Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages.
Now with all of that wiki timeline nonsense covered, the only games important to me were and are the console games. I understand if that makes me ignorant to other story beats but that’s where I’m at with the franchise. On that note I admit I’m not a super fan by any means. Even with the console games, I never played Skyward Sword which came out on the Wii. So for my own timeline, I know of Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Breath of the Wild, and Link’s Awakening which just came out with a refreshed coat of graphics in 2019 on the Nintendo Switch.
Whether you’ve played every game, only some console games like moi, haven’t played any but watched family and friends play through them, haven’t played any but watched the cutscenes online, or only know of the games by name, the Legend of Zelda’s got a place for everyone. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the franchise, one of his most memorable experiences as a young boy was the discovery of a cave entrance in the middle of the woods near his childhood home in Sonobe, Japan. After some hesitation, he apprehensively entered the cave and explored its depths with the aid of a lantern. Miyamoto has referred to the creation of the Zelda games as an attempt to bring to life a “miniature garden” for players to play with in each game of the series, and to me you can really feel that sense of adventure when you play.
Also a fun fact worth noting, Miyamoto named princess Zelda off of American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife. He’s stated that he thought the name sounded “pleasant and significant” and decided to pay tribute. Another fun fact! The inspiration for Link and his fairy came from Peter Pan and Tinker Bell. And finally, the Master Sword was inspired by Excalibur, which originates from the Arthurian Legend in the Welsh collection of Mabinogion.
The Legend of Zelda is a strategy game series that rewards players’ puzzle solving abilities with a rich story of good fighting evil, courage in the face of insurmountable odds, and love. The latest game announced is a yet untitled Breath of the Wild sequel, to come out for the Switch possibly in 2021. It is said that it will build atop the original’s world with a new story and gameplay elements, something inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2. What do you guys think of this series? What games have you played? What do you know about Link, Zelda, and Ganon? What do they mean to you? Are you curious to find out what happens next for these characters? Let me know! Thank you so much again for being here. I appreciate your time, I love y’as, and I’ll see you in next one.
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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 59 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! Today I have on my fifth guest post COVID-19. We waste no time jumping into Ang Lee’s discography, conspiracies- both ludicrous and true, how separation leads to hate, the new viral ‘woke and racist’ skit on Twitter, Oakville’s checkered past AND present, why Canada should not compare itself to America, personal philosophies, and anime. It was a full episode that I’m happy to have had. I hope you 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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I gave you guys a late night thought of mine in Transient Thoughts, and here I just wanted to talk about late nights in general. They are the time of a 24 hour cycle where most people are asleep. It’s when it’s quietest in your corner of the world, and it’s when deep thoughts can emerge. Free from the pull of work and socializing, we have a chance at reflection. Our thoughts can breathe, with either brevity or torture. It can be a time of great peace, or great melancholy. Though, even under the ever-judging scrutiny of our own mind, late nights wash waves of benign calm across our brows, soothing any hard edges. Its ability on us is undeniable. Should we bathe in the glow of our computer screens, or walk under the pale moon light? Do we reminisce on the past, or ponder the possible future, regardless of what may come in the morning to follow?
Work, studies, exams, trials, or tribulations are not found in the moments of peace formed from the late nights, instead we get a chance to just breathe. The peace hark like a light cast to the dark sea, that we are indeed here. We are conscious. We are alive. Our past has gone and our future is unseen. Our time is limited, but in the moment it is infinite. In the moment, we are present with the buildings and the birds and the trees and the wind. The universe has been here long before us and will long outlast us, but in the moment, we are both here, together. Tomorrow we may be gone, but not now yet. No. Here, we find ourselves. Here we be, for an unforeseen moment more, and in it we can think about our place. Should we only do right with our time. Time will tell.
Thank you as always for giving me the opportunity of your eyes. I appreciate your time, and hope for you nothing less than love and peace.
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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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In episode twenty-nine of Thoughts, I go over the MANY different definitions of strength, and discuss how power plays into strength. Enjoy!
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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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When you first saw Halo, were you blinded by its majesty? Before I jump into the video game that I’m actually referring to, let’s cover the other uses of the word. A halo is a disk or circle of light shown surrounding or above the head of a saint or holy person to represent their holiness. It’s also a circle of white or colored light around the sun, moon, or other luminous body caused by refraction through ice crystals in the atmosphere. Synonyms of halos are rings, belts, or bands.
So with that out of the way, let’s talk about the video game franchise. I could honestly make my YouTube channel a Halo channel, I love it so much. I’m honestly kind of annoyed at how much emotional power it has over me. The latest game is set to launch at the end of this year of our forerunners 2020 and I’ve been checking the r/halo Reddit every day since E3 2019. It’s sickly, guy, I’m a mess. So when did my love of these games start?
Growing up, my family was a Nintendo household and I loved it. I had the N64, the Game Boy Pocket, and then the GameCube and Wii when they came out. I didn’t even hear about Halo until grade nine, which for me was 2007. I made a new friend who came over to my place one day after school and we played Super Smash Bros. His reaction to it was honestly insulting. He ragged on the fact that it was a platformer and had inferior graphics to Call of Duty. He had just recently got an Xbox 360 with its new high definition graphics so my Wii couldn’t compare. After a few days of mulling it over, he decided to give me his old Xbox so that I could have a real gaming experience! I was beyond grateful. The only game he gave me with it was Halo: Combat Evolved. Everyone talks about this so I get how its not a unique experience, but when I started the second level and looked up for the first time, I was blinded by Halo’s majesty! I was in awe, and I was hooked. I remember getting my first legal job at 15 just so I could buy an Xbox 360, which I did, then I quit. I wasn’t really money oriented at that time.
So now for the people who’ve never played Halo, let me quickly break down it’s story. 500 years from now, humans take to the stars with slipspace engines that let them go father than we currently can, and with it we inhabit like hundreds of planets. After some wars between the UNSC and insurrectionists, our farthest out Planet, Harvest, makes contact with aliens for the first time. They’re called the Covenant; a collection of different species all working together to uncover artifacts of a long dead OTHER alien race that they revere as gods. So, side note, but why was humanity not inscribed into the covenant? It’s probably mentioned in a book, who knows.
The first game Halo starts in the middle of our space war with the aliens, and we’re losing. The Covenant has far superior weaponry than us so we never really had a chance. The ship you’re in comes out of slipspace after running away from the last planet we’ve inhabited aside from Earth. You play as John 117, better known as the Master Chief: his military rank, alongside Cortana as a chip in your head, Captain Keyes, Sargent Johnson, and Echo 419. You wake up to find that the ship you’re in has come across some kind of giant artificial planet in the shape of a ‘Halo.’ The aliens are on your tail so you descend onto the ring and fight on the ground. After discovering the Halo is a part of the alien’s religion, you seek to control it, later discovering that the ring is actually a giant weapon made by the ‘forerunners’ to wipe out all life in order to starve ANOTHER, parasitic alien species called the flood. Bingo bango, you blow up the Halo to save all life.
Second game brings you back to humanity where we’re still in the middle of losing. We get introduced to the Arbiter, an alien ship master that lost to you in the first game and must now make penance. As it turns out, the Covenant have no idea that firing the Halo will kill them all. They think it’ll teleport them to heaven or something. Meanwhile with the Master Chief, an alien fleet found Earth. Lucky for us, for the first time in a long time, we outnumber them, and force them to retreat into slipspace. You follow them this time and when y’all get out of slipspace, wouldn’t you know it but you’re at another Halo. You fight to destroy the aliens’ leaders but get picked up by an intelligent form of the flood, that instead of consuming you, convinces both you and the Arbiter to work with it to stop the Covenant from firing the ring. You do that and head back to Earth.
Third game has you back at Earth where the aliens are gaining the upper hand, but they also seem to be digging some structure up in Africa. You fight your best but run out of time as the aliens activate this forerunner device, creating a portal. They go through it and you follow. It leads to a Halo MAKER called the Ark. On the Ark, the Covenant can activate all the Halos scattered throughout the galaxy so you gotta stop them. You do, then save Cortana who got mixed up with the flood dude, blow up ANOTHER Halo and skip dodge as shit blows up. You nearly die but make it out only to be floating in a random part of space for an unforeseen amount of time.
There’s a lot I left out there but that’s the gist of the original trilogy that everyone loves. Years later, after I had played the prequel and spin off games, I headed to College. At this point a brand new Halo 4 was announced! I was excited for it but also nervous. It was the first new game by 343, who took the mantle of responsibility by Bungie, who had done 1-3, ODST, and the prequel. Would they continue Master Chief and Cortana’s story in a good direction? The game came out to mixed reviews by fans. Some loved it, some hated it. Most people hated the multiplayer because it copied Call of Duty’s load out system, and I agree to that point but didn’t care at the time. The only thing that grinded my gears was the Prometheans. They were a new robot-esque enemy to fight along with the Covenant, and they just aren’t good, man. Like, the Covenant are living things. Each species have their own history for how they ended up in the Covenant, and the faceless robots don’t have jack. Suffice to say, it didn’t feel like the same caliber of games as the O.G.s. At that point in my life I began to lean off of playing video games, for one reason or another, and the new Xbox One came out so I simply passed on the next Halo game that came to the system.
Halo 5: Guardians continued Master Chief’s story. In my mind they used that subtitle, Guardians, to lean off of numbers like they have now done with Halo 6. It’s been a marketing strategy used by other studios like Ubisoft with the Assassin’s Creed games. I’m not against it, but just thought I’d note it for y’all. Now, the story of Halo 5. Oie. Again, my opinions here aren’t unique but damn did they do Cortana dirty! And Buck (you don’t know him from me but he’s great,) but most of all, they did Chief dirty! They had such a bad writer come on to do this game. Like, guys! The reason people like Halo is because of its story! I mean, all of the other elements need to work too like the music, graphics, game play, multiplayer UI and so on and such, but the story is the hook! Anyway, at this point I wasn’t with it anymore. It sucked because I really loved the story. It kind of hurt not continuing with the franchise.
After many years passed, I started a relationship with the most gorgeous woman on the planet, and during Black Friday of 2018, she suggested I get a Nintendo Switch. It had been so long since I actually played video games, but now I wouldn’t be playing alone. It would be like my childhood when my siblings, cousins, and I played Mario Party and Mario Kart. So I got it, and really quickly got into the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I’d never been much of an open world player, but BotW on IP alone sucked me in. I was in love again with a gaming franchise! It wasn’t even a year later that I made up my mind that I was going to buy an Xbox One. I did so, buying the Master Chief Collection and Halo 5. I got Game Pass for a number of months and played Halo Wars 2 through that, and may I say, it was great. I’d say I was right at least to wait, because apparently MCC and Halo 5 at launch had HUGE problems. I never had to suffer any of it, luckily. The MCC has been going through new glitches as 343 ports every game to PC, but it gives me little grief knowing it isn’t permanent.
So there you have it! My time with Halo. The newest game is on the horizon (a potential end to 343’s trilogy) and they have decided to go back to Bungie’s art design. It has a lot of people happy, myself included, making this year not CONCLUDE quick enough! Is my love of this franchise a bit much? I’d say so. But hey, everybody’s gotta have a thing, right? For some people it’s religion, for some it’s sports, others it’s Star Wars, and me in part it’s Halo. Will all my dreams be answered from the new game? I figure, yeah. Whether or not it’s good like Halo 3 or bad like Halo 5, I just want the thing out so I can decide once and for all if 343’s a botch studio. Either way I’ll still give it 80+ hours of playtime/my life. One thing I’m wondering is what the fate of the Master Chief will be? If he’s continues on after this game’s campaign I feel like it might dull his appeal. That’s probably what they’ll do, but our boy is getting old! If he were to die or retire or something, it would feel granted in my mind. Let him rest I say, and give him a nice send off.
But any who! With that, I’d say my thought piece is finished. It’s done. Halo is one of those franchises deserving of its place in pop culture because of its rich story universe. There are endless books to read, forums to pose questions and theories on, and movies/shows to watch. What do you guys think will happen in Halo Infinite? Let me know! Thank you for reading and until next time, wake me when you need me.
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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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In episode twenty-six of Thoughts, I discuss the sensation of fear, where it came from, why it lives within us and what one does with it. Enjoy!
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In episode twenty-four of Thoughts, I go over time in all of its complicated simplicity as it draws us ever forward. Enjoy!
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In episode twenty-three of Thoughts I go over the heavy subject of substance abuse, what factors play into how it develops and how breaking through mental walls is all part of living a better life. Enjoy!
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In episode twenty-two of Thoughts, I talk about the concept of identity, what it is, what it means, where it could come from, and what we make of it. Enjoy!
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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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Hey everyone! Here’s another video of me reading a sample of my writing. This time it’s the very beginning of my first book: Deviance. I hope you enjoy! For those hooked and want more, if you google smashwords and search my full name: Joseph Van Landschoot, you can find Deviance as an ebook for free!
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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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Welcome to #56 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! Here I talk to another returning guest about her early past, quarantining with friends, what the point or lack-there-of is regarding the theory that reality is a simulation, and virtual babysitting among other things. She was a treat to have on and I hope you all enjoy!
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Welcome back to #55 of Joe Van’s Secret Podcast! I talk with a returning guest about how the current quarantine has affected his plans, what scares him most, and states of the mind. Enjoy!
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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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How does someone find themselves at the receiving end of a destructive habit? No one plans to live a life of degradation. It’s something that happens slowly, like a frog in boiling water. One doesn’t notice that certain actions have a predictive outcome of addiction until they reach that point down the line. It can start with partying on the weekends as a seventeen-year-old, to drinking alone every night ten years later.
Many variables lie under substance abuse, like a bastardized clandestine iceberg of submerged painful memories and torment. The most understood variables are loss, and lineage. Grief is the most painful emotional state in life. We as a society have seen countless people get swallowed by substance abuse to numb the pain, and have overall understood that standpoint. Not accept it, but understood it. Lineage is also easy to understand. If you have the blood of a drinker, you may have drinking problems. The actual science behind substance abuse says that genetic predisposition plays a role of fifty-percent to an individual developing a problem.
Other factors that are harder for people to understand are childhood traumas, and general stressors. The reason childhood trauma is hard for people to understand is because those people in the individual’s life were most likely there in their childhood, so it’s a matter of coming to terms with something they may have had a role in. The human mind is a survival mechanism. Children absorb experiences like a sponge so when something distressing happens, their mind will go to great lengths to bury the event in order to keep the lights on.
General stressors can be otherwise described as school, family life, friendships, or work. Coping with life’s hardships can be as easy as taking a hit. You may have started just once or twice, but soon fall into the habit of ritually needing the substance. It can get to a point where you’re blowing off your friends and other engagements so as to continue the ritual you’ve started one lonely night.
Homeless heroin addicts were once innocent children. But bit by bit, one event after another things kept going wrong and getting worse, pushing the person down the path to where they are now. Substance abuse isn’t the end of the road, though. One in the pit of their deepest hole might say it is, but so long as one is still alive, there is a chance to get out. An optimistic spin might be to say, ‘If you’re at your lowest, then you have nothing to lose.’ Dependency is a construct of the mind. It is a damn tight construct, but a construct none-the-less. Joggers talk about a mental wall they hit at a point of deep exhaustion. It’s a moment when your body, instincts, and soul scream for you to let go. To know what it is, and know you can say no allows you to break the impossible wall and push past it. Once you do, a weight is lifted and everything becomes lighter.
It’s a hard truth to face but the fact of the matter is that life is a constant struggle. It’s not easy, but like working out, it gets better if you put in the effort. Let daily pessimism die under the light of a hopeful mindset. Ring it out to let the sober winds of realism breeze your cheek, and stand tall to let a ray of optimism shine on you every now and then. I hope this helped anyone reading to better sympathize or understand that many things go into how someone can fall from grace. We are all in this thing called life together, and all need to help each other out. Thank you for being here, and I’ll see you guys next time.
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Folding and pelting,
greasing and gassing,
holding and passing.
Letting up a tad to see it spin out,
grabbing on tight and trying not to shout.
Bingeing on the hard stuff,
dying just to last.
Crying with cuffed hands now,
hell has come and passed.