#Poem – Samnites

Under the glare of cameras and arclights
We observe
The Samnites and the press of humanity
Faces focused
And locked in bloody rictus
The heat and force wrings out their sweat
Passing through the sinew, blood and gristle
Spittle flecks and respect are beaten out
In that speckled gossamer mist with a crimson tinge

Pieces of teeth, and fractured dentine spread about the mat
A back set against the bars of the cage
A mind set on survival
A Haymaker follows on from a Glasgow Kiss
Then a spine under applied pressure, bending
Beat into submission.
He will twist you until you snap
Better death or glory
And when we dance with the dragon in the octagon:
Overcoming
Is the only thing

Kill your foe

Samnites circling again
Slowly drawing in
Oblivious to the eyes looking on
Interfering and offering suggestions
Ringside dogs barking in fury
Each caught up in the lust
Ravenous
We bay for blood
Bay for blood
Who wants it most?

We paid well for the promise of bloodshed
Placed our bets
Prepared for the adrenaline rush
And the crushed skulls
And won’t leave until we’ve seen a contender
Split the back of the title defender
Hubris is eventually broken by the bodyblow.
And you can cut the tension with a knife
So win or be crippled, double slow
A reminder, doubled over, old
And finally humble

Kill your foe

Under the eyes of the audience
And the devil you know
We need bread and circuses
A little bit more
Of the Art Of War
More Samnites with the hunger
And the ringside swagger

Pain and madness
Have always made
For the ultimate show
Either leave this world
Or kill your foe

 mma black and white photo
Photo by Stuart Conner

#ThoughtExperiment – Godhead, Bored…

Here’s an idea for you:

What if our experiences of individual consciousness are all pieces of an eternal, unified mind which has grown tired of its omniscience.

It has chosen to forget everything it knows and experience again the joy of discovery.

And with every new day you are remembering new things…

Consider how life would be if you had the kind of amnesia which destroyed your identity every time you slept and brought fresh novelties to every experience.

Perhaps stranger things have happened.

I know many will agree with me when I say that some of our memories are not worth the space they take up…

“In the Hindu view of nature, then, all forms are relative, fluid and ever-changing maya, conjured up by the great magician of the divine play” – Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics

 

mystical black and white photo
Photo by Miguel Virkkunen Carvalho

#Poem – A Ghost Arranging His Own Resurrection

Life and love are an elaborate hoax
The deception grows stronger and wider
The deeper you get
Death lies like the punchline
To an epic joke
And the sooner you get it, the lesser the threat.
I remember, almost
But can never know…
Don’t try to recall leaves and woodland walks
In the corporeal smoke
And don’t choke out in the cold on your own,
Bodiless, broke
Or cry over lost loves and spiritual fires
Or be despondent because of the cyclic eternities
Of ongoing and unspent desires…

owl black and white photo
Photo by DWCarroll

#ThoughtExperiment – More Thinking About Thinking

The mind puts chains around sentience so familiar that we were born into them…

Amongst other things, perception can be (please excuse these newly made terms):

Reconstruction: Seeing separate pieces and creating a separate pattern or relationship from them. Example: seeing a group of trees as a forest
Deconstruction: Seeing the whole and mentally partitioning it. Example: seeing a forest as a group of trees
Preconstruction: Projecting expectations on an event yet to be perceived. Example: dreading going into this forest to look at trees in the first place
Postconstruction: Projecting beliefs and values onto past experience (memories) Example: remembering how much fun you actually had looking at those trees

But, can it ever be truely ‘seeing?

If we think in language, are our thoughts bound by the limits of speech?

If I think in Italian, is my view of the world infused with more passion than someone who thinks in German?
And if we don’t think ‘in’ language, what do we think in? Feelings? Images?

If I am brought up in an environment where I do not learn a spoken language, what form does my internal dialogue take?
Is this how some animals think?

If not bounded by language’s constraints, what are the boundaries on our thoughts?

There must be some kind of boundaries, after all, what stops us thinking up the answers to everything? A lack of reference points? Can we think ‘outside of boundaries’ or is that like trying to stand erect on a floor that is not there?

And if we are truly looking for an objective view, can we as humans ever find it through the filter of our own thoughts?

In looking for a supremely objective view, what perspective, if any, can we take?

eye black and white photo
Photo by Jessica Keating Photography

#ThoughtExperiment – Total Understanding / A Stroll Through The Multiverse / Predestined Giant Banana Transformations

Could there be ever be an understanding complete enough that we could have total certainty in every possible outcome?

As human knowledge has advanced, it appears that the causes of more and more phenomena are becoming clear to us.

If human understanding of a certain thing can be placed on a continuum where:

  • The value of 1 represents complete understanding of the cause of the thing
  • The value 0 represents no understanding at all

Maybe ‘randomness’ represents a value below 1.

But, can we ever reach ‘1’?

Let me elaborate for you..

In times past, humans used various ‘unscienitic’ reasons as explanations to natural phenomena. Crops failed? Angry god. Comet? Angry god Famine? Angry god. Of course, you get the picture..

Constraints due to uncertainty

As I understand it, randomness suggests an element of uncertainty, but can be accounted for and worked around. For example, we can leave space in our calculations to excuse randomness and fully expect this will affect our final result. We can account for randomness but this means that the outcome can never be known with certainty.

As I understand it, using statistics we can plot the probable outcomes of an uncertain event.

The more results we get from our uncertain situation, the closer we get to certainty on a result. For example: with a coin toss, the odds of getting heads 186,000 in a row are rather small, and things tend to even out towards a 50/50 distribution in the extreme long run.

Even so, we can’t be certain that we won’t get these 186,000 heads in a row, no matter how improbable, and therefore we do not have complete certainty.

Similarly, in an infinite or long enough period of time, every event, no matter how statistically ridiculous, would happen. The sun makes a quantum leap and in an instant transitions into a giant banana. The moon also becomes a giant banana. You get the idea…

banana black and white photo
Obligatory banana pic Photo by MOJO MOOMEY

A limitless understanding

A godlike/limitless understanding would imply absolute certainty in all outcomes. Godlike power would mean that all endeavours set into motion would work absolutely flawlessly, with nothing left to chance. Godlike power could result from knowing exactly what needed to be done to achieve certain outcomes.

In prediction there would be no randomness, as all outcomes would be known or controllable (there’s that godlike power again). In a real sense, with all things known, all things would be predestined.

Put another way, random outcomes prevent destiny, unless there is some way of knowing enough that we can predict with certainty the outcome of events that were previously deemed random.

Therefore, if we can have infinite understanding then predestination is inevitable. But, can we have an infinite understanding?

Here’s my main point

What if there is destiny, and randomness is simply the symptom of a deficit of understanding?

For example: we are uncertain of where a coin lands as we haven’t quite grasped some bigger explanation that allows us to predict where coins land with complete certainty.

owl black and white photo
Obligatory owl pic Photo by Kristina_Servant

Statistically speaking we can know that the coin will end up at a value closer to 50/50 to some extent, if we continue to repeat the coin toss over and over again, and placing our faith in statistics. But as I said before, this is not true certainty.

Of course we build upon this with the idea that for every point of multiple outcomes, the universe splits into all possible outcomes

Seeing the sum of all possible outcomes..

A godlike understanding may allow us to connect in some way with a ‘place’ of infinite probabilities. In this place, the totality of all possible outcomes could be collected into a great sum of all, in where everything that can happen, has happened. This is everything..the Tao, the unmanifest/manifest field of probability, the multiverse, God, whatever.  This is the ‘place’ of all places.

If it could be visualised, what would that place look like? Another wall of solid white light? Perhaps it would look like nothing, the opposite of everything… With further inquiry, it could very well be a continuation of this thought experiment. Anyway..

One who sees with absolute certainty, would be able to walk through this miasmic place of infinites, and pick a path that best suited their fancy. If this powerful person wanted to win the lottery, he/she could simply follow one of the infinite paths through the field which leads to the desired outcome. This path would take them from the multiverse/sum off all/God/etc to a universe in which they had picked the correct number.

TLDR/Summary:

Could randomness simply be a lack of understanding a certain cause in it’s entirety? But, is it possible to know this much?

If I become immortal can I watch the sun become a giant banana? (assuming the sun and universe didn’t burn out first…)

owl eye photo
Photo by left-hand