The Universe of Perfection
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
In his “Meditations,” Marcus Aurelius wrote: “Everything is but what your opinion makes it; and that opinion lies within yourself.”
I hold certain opinions about matter and spirit, which opinions shape my life profitably. I begin by imagining a universe where everything is perfect: all matter in it has taken the form of a tightly ordered crystal, which never changes. Being a a crystal, such a universe would not be subject to the second law of thermodynamics: it would not move towards greater disorder. Energies flow inside the crystal structure in never-ending cycles sustaining the existence of vast numbers of spiritual beings, garnered from living planets everywhere. This is a universe of peace, tranquility, total security, and bliss.
The souls in such a heaven are linked together in a master mind, which sees to all their needs, immaterial as these needs are. Spirits in heaven exist in perfect harmony with each other. Yet, sometimes a soul will pine for living in a material world, with all its vibrant sensations, the risks and thrills of adventure. Then it is sent out to a planet outside the heavenly orb to experience material life once again, and procreate new bodies into which spirits may enter. The connection of the soul to heaven is never lost; after the death of the body, the soul returns to heaven to enrich it with new experiences and bring new growth to the universal mind.
I choose to think I am such a soul. I am not my body, but an imperishable spirit making its home in my body; my body is a possession like my clothes, house, car, discarded when worn out, not useful any more, replaced by a new body, or no material body upon my return to heaven. I can provide no scientific evidence for the existence of the crystal universe of heaven or even for the existence of an immortal soul in me inhabiting my material body; I find it helpful in my life to think and feel it is so. I choose to feel I am always tethered to heaven, no matter what dangers threaten my body. I am like a deep-sea diver or a space-walking astronaut with my lifeline to heaven and companions above. I am a surveyor craft landed on this planet to collect data and sensations, transmitting these to my home in the crystal universe for my fellows there to experience.
I am confronting dangers in my adventures here, yet my soul is always safe from harm; if my body is destroyed, or when it dies of old age, God will withdraw my spirit through the umbilical cord connecting me to heaven. I can experience my body aging, suffering injury, disease and damage; if I cannot prevent these ills, I am not concerned. I seek help from above and continue my life on earth as best as I can.
As I pass from moment to moment, I keep in mind that my spirit is priceless, being the immortal and important part of me; but my body, having evolved over billions of years through innumerable struggles and dangers, this body is also very valuable, deserving the best of care to survive long and well in order to serve the goals of my spirit.
Even when walking through the dark valley of death I will not be afraid; my spirit is safe with God. If my body perishes, it will be a small loss compared to the safety of my spirit. Not that my spirit can be lost, but it may be barred from heaven, and go to a different place, a place of oppressive power, anger, and cruelty.
I remember in my daily efforts that my mission on earth is justice, peace, compassion, knowledge, and wisdom; I focus on my mission: to experience many sensations, adventures, learning, arts, actions, helping my own spiritual growth and that of family, friends, and community. To continue doing so, I also want to make my body as strong, healthy, and versatile as it can be for my age and constitution so I can cope with life's mountains and pitfalls.
How do these ideas of mine differ from religious teachings? They differ because I take them as conscious choices, assumptions, or definitions; no one can argue with definitions. The test of a definition is not its truth, because a definition is arbitrary, but the usefulness of a definition in solving a problem. I define spirit, God, and heaven as I choose, because my definitions help me solve the problem of my existence, and continued survival on earth-- posssibly even beyond this earth.
Should I discover that one of my notions is a detriment rather than an aid in my life, I am ready to reject it, replacing it with a more effective notion; so does a physician when a particular medicine does not heal a patient; the physician tries a different prescription which may help, not harm the patient. This approach of mine is also very different from the various religious doctrines, which sometimes do harm, but are not erased from the scriptures by the patriarchs, except rarely. In this respect, my approach to spiritual matters is more scientific rather than religious, evolving when I meet with new facts and experiences, and not becoming petrified.
The commandments to myself are not carved in stone; I prefer to change, adapting to new trials. I visualize my move before taking it, seeing the result in perfection, sensing that I am
guided by a beam of light from above. I become keenly aware of my surroundings, my body and mind acting deliberately to do what is right, what is proper, what brings forth good fruit, and what is beautiful.
Beauty is indeed immortal, such as we find in great works of art. And my spirit is immortal, but can it change as artistic expression changes? Can my soul get better or worse? Yes, it can, just as character changes. The spirit aims towards perfection, which is not possible on earth or any other material planet; yet that goal of perfection is clear to me. I see that goal in what I think, feel, and do. I clearly visualize the perfect moves I need to make in any game I play. When I achieve that perfection occasionally, then I am “in the zone,” as athletes say. I cannot fail in that state of mind, but can only do what is right and successful.
Otherwise, what happens if my spirit changes for the worse? Can it go back to heaven? I think admission back to heaven would be barred; heaven cannot allow an infected spirit to come back. That sick spirit needs to go through lives of purification, penance, and cleansing on other planets, before being re-admitted to the crystal orb of perfection. Sometimes a soul goes so far astray, it cannot hope to enter heaven any more and is sucked into a sphere of evil, known as hell, a place of grief, agony, and slavery.
My main effort in life is to avoid the whirlpool of hell, to seek the updraft of heaven, not just to prolong the use of my body or to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. Yes, I want to prolong life to get the maximum mileage I can from this body, in order to learn more things, experience fascinating adventures, do good work for myself and my fellows. But when the time comes to go away from this sphere, I will leave without fear or regret, having done the best I could have done with the gift of life given to me.
I will have no regret upon dying, but joy instead, looking forward to joining my beloved parents and friends who passed on before me. I will be eager to arrive in heaven and be in the company of people who share my feelings and beliefs, congenial souls, those of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammad, Lao-Tse, Descartes, Bacon, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Whitman, the souls which are brothers of my own. It will be great indeed to be talking to these people, remembering together our lives on earth, discussing the ideas that intrigued us all during our lifetimes and the opinions laid down in our writings and talks.
Yet, what if I am mistaken in hoping for the immortality of my spirit? In that case, my consciousness will dissipate in earth's air upon my death as my body goes still and begins to decompose. There will be no harm done to me or to any one else because I imagined a great existence in an afterlife. In the meantime, I enjoy romancing the soul; and transcendent hope sustains me, filling me with meaning and purpose, moving me to good feelings, deeds, and accomplishments.
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Monday, February 9, 2009
Is Matter Energy?
Is Matter Energy?
By Basil Gala, PH.D.
As every preschooler knows, Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light, or E = mc², that from Einstein. The relationship of matter and energy has been settled by physicists to nearly everybody’s satisfaction. So why do I want to discuss it? Because the issue is not settled as far as I am concerned. I want to know why energy, which scatters in all directions at the speed of light, remains bound up in matter, outside of radio-active materials, a nuclear reactor, a bomb, or a sun. So here I go, until the physics police pick me up and put me away.
Let me start with matter. Four centuries before the birth of Christ, Democritus said matter was made up of indivisible pieces he called atoms, because if you take an apple and keep slicing it into finer and finer bits with a very sharp knife, you will eventually get to atoms. Modern scientists agree and go further. Atoms are divisible, with some difficulty, into protons and neutrons bound together in the nucleus, with waves of electrons around it. As to sizes, the nucleus is like a football in a stadium with electrons like flies in waves whirring around the stadium; what you have in an atom is mostly empty space, not the solid matter we sense.
The protons and neutrons in the nucleus are made up of quarks, say ‘kworks.’ Nobel-prize winner Murray Gell-Mann of Caltech gave us the word and pronunciation. Quarks are particles held together by the strong nuclear force, mediated by gluons, to form combinations known as hadrons. A hadron of two quarks is a meson and one of three quarks is a barion. Quarks have the properties of mass, spin and parity, which we cannot measure directly, but we have to infer from their behavior. Why? The answer stated by Frank Wilczek (another Nobel winner) is that quarks make it impossible to separate them from their hadrons setting them free as particles. As physicists apply more and more energy to pull quarks apart, the force of gluons holding them together becomes greater still; quarks are not found free in nature.
Tougher still, quarks may have a substructure: they may be made up of other things, but we have no evidence to suggest to us what parts make up quarks. I want to know if quark parts exist, or quarks are the boxes holding nuclear energy from flying away in all directions. Clearly, quarks are bundles of energy that are held together somehow by means of the weak nuclear force, which also binds leptons (including electrons) into bundles. The weak force is mediated by massive bosons designated by W±, and Zº. What do we mean by weak and strong forces? Using the electromagnetic force as a base of 1 for two massless mediating photons in a nucleus, the strong nuclear force is 20 times weaker; and the weak nuclear force 10,000 times weaker. Holding planets, solar systems and galaxies together, the gravitational force is 10 followed by 36 zeros weaker than electromagnetism. Weak indeed at the particle level, but without gravitation, mediated by the massless graviton, there would be no universe as we know it. The graviton remains elusive, not yet detected by any instrument devised to date.
What do physicists mean when they say a force is mediated by particles like the graviton or photon? Some authors give the analogy of two people on wheeled stools who are throwing a series of balls to each other. Each ball thrown and caught causes the two throwers to move apart with a somewhat greater velocity. This is not a satisfactory analogy, because it does not explain an attractive force such as gravity; and the graviton is without mass to cause a push. The photon is also without mass, but the electromagnetic force it carries also has large effects, such as in the electric motor or in the supercollider which speeds up protons at CERN.
The theory of force carriers, called bosons, such as the graviton, photon, gluon, etc. derive from the Standard Model, which accounts for all the particles appearing in the supercollider experiments. The data suggest theoretical models to explain them, and the models stimulate more experiments to test for the existence of particles which theory predicts. One such hypothesized particle is the Higgs boson, a very heavy boson, requiring energies to produce. Physicists will be looking in 2008 for this boson with the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and with the Tevatron at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. If it exists, the Higgs boson has a huge effect on the universe and its forces, which prompted Leon Lederer (Nobel Laureate) to name it the “God Particle” in his popular science book.
All these bosons also derive from quantum mechanics and field theory. Field theory is a better explanation for the action of force particles than the analogy of stools. According to field theory, gravitons create a field of force around a massive object which distorts space like a sloping well with the object in the center. Another object with mass coming close to the field rolls down the gravity well, or is attracted by the first object, as Newton would say. The result is gravitation. If the centrifugal force of the captured object exactly matches the force of gravity, the object circles around the gravity hole without falling in.
The same phenomena occur with antimatter. Each particle I have mentioned, including quarks, has a corresponding antiparticle, with the opposite properties. For example, the anti-electron, or positron, has a positive electric charge, while the electron has a negative one. When a particle and antiparticle collide, they annihilate each other and producing photons of energy. Such collisions are used at CERN and Fermilab by speeding up protons and anti-protons in opposite directions, and then smashing them together. The scattering of energy and sub-particles are recorded. Physicists study these recordings and develop new models of the subatomic world to further enlarge our knowledge of how the universe is put together.
Physicists tell us that a particle is a wave in accordance with quantum mechanics. The Z particle mediating the weak particle is also a wave, which establishes a field of attraction among the quarks, like a web of energy. When antimatter is collides with matter, the anti-Z particle and field neutralizes the field of the Z particle and vice versa. Thus energy in both matter and anti-matter is released to scatter in all directions.
I conclude that mass exists when energy packets or quanta are in a stable configuration, balancing expansive forces with centrifugal forces in an electromagnetic field. When this stability is broken, quanta become ordinary radiation moving at the speed of light.
Vista, CA January 2008
By Basil Gala, PH.D.
As every preschooler knows, Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light, or E = mc², that from Einstein. The relationship of matter and energy has been settled by physicists to nearly everybody’s satisfaction. So why do I want to discuss it? Because the issue is not settled as far as I am concerned. I want to know why energy, which scatters in all directions at the speed of light, remains bound up in matter, outside of radio-active materials, a nuclear reactor, a bomb, or a sun. So here I go, until the physics police pick me up and put me away.
Let me start with matter. Four centuries before the birth of Christ, Democritus said matter was made up of indivisible pieces he called atoms, because if you take an apple and keep slicing it into finer and finer bits with a very sharp knife, you will eventually get to atoms. Modern scientists agree and go further. Atoms are divisible, with some difficulty, into protons and neutrons bound together in the nucleus, with waves of electrons around it. As to sizes, the nucleus is like a football in a stadium with electrons like flies in waves whirring around the stadium; what you have in an atom is mostly empty space, not the solid matter we sense.
The protons and neutrons in the nucleus are made up of quarks, say ‘kworks.’ Nobel-prize winner Murray Gell-Mann of Caltech gave us the word and pronunciation. Quarks are particles held together by the strong nuclear force, mediated by gluons, to form combinations known as hadrons. A hadron of two quarks is a meson and one of three quarks is a barion. Quarks have the properties of mass, spin and parity, which we cannot measure directly, but we have to infer from their behavior. Why? The answer stated by Frank Wilczek (another Nobel winner) is that quarks make it impossible to separate them from their hadrons setting them free as particles. As physicists apply more and more energy to pull quarks apart, the force of gluons holding them together becomes greater still; quarks are not found free in nature.
Tougher still, quarks may have a substructure: they may be made up of other things, but we have no evidence to suggest to us what parts make up quarks. I want to know if quark parts exist, or quarks are the boxes holding nuclear energy from flying away in all directions. Clearly, quarks are bundles of energy that are held together somehow by means of the weak nuclear force, which also binds leptons (including electrons) into bundles. The weak force is mediated by massive bosons designated by W±, and Zº. What do we mean by weak and strong forces? Using the electromagnetic force as a base of 1 for two massless mediating photons in a nucleus, the strong nuclear force is 20 times weaker; and the weak nuclear force 10,000 times weaker. Holding planets, solar systems and galaxies together, the gravitational force is 10 followed by 36 zeros weaker than electromagnetism. Weak indeed at the particle level, but without gravitation, mediated by the massless graviton, there would be no universe as we know it. The graviton remains elusive, not yet detected by any instrument devised to date.
What do physicists mean when they say a force is mediated by particles like the graviton or photon? Some authors give the analogy of two people on wheeled stools who are throwing a series of balls to each other. Each ball thrown and caught causes the two throwers to move apart with a somewhat greater velocity. This is not a satisfactory analogy, because it does not explain an attractive force such as gravity; and the graviton is without mass to cause a push. The photon is also without mass, but the electromagnetic force it carries also has large effects, such as in the electric motor or in the supercollider which speeds up protons at CERN.
The theory of force carriers, called bosons, such as the graviton, photon, gluon, etc. derive from the Standard Model, which accounts for all the particles appearing in the supercollider experiments. The data suggest theoretical models to explain them, and the models stimulate more experiments to test for the existence of particles which theory predicts. One such hypothesized particle is the Higgs boson, a very heavy boson, requiring energies to produce. Physicists will be looking in 2008 for this boson with the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and with the Tevatron at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. If it exists, the Higgs boson has a huge effect on the universe and its forces, which prompted Leon Lederer (Nobel Laureate) to name it the “God Particle” in his popular science book.
All these bosons also derive from quantum mechanics and field theory. Field theory is a better explanation for the action of force particles than the analogy of stools. According to field theory, gravitons create a field of force around a massive object which distorts space like a sloping well with the object in the center. Another object with mass coming close to the field rolls down the gravity well, or is attracted by the first object, as Newton would say. The result is gravitation. If the centrifugal force of the captured object exactly matches the force of gravity, the object circles around the gravity hole without falling in.
The same phenomena occur with antimatter. Each particle I have mentioned, including quarks, has a corresponding antiparticle, with the opposite properties. For example, the anti-electron, or positron, has a positive electric charge, while the electron has a negative one. When a particle and antiparticle collide, they annihilate each other and producing photons of energy. Such collisions are used at CERN and Fermilab by speeding up protons and anti-protons in opposite directions, and then smashing them together. The scattering of energy and sub-particles are recorded. Physicists study these recordings and develop new models of the subatomic world to further enlarge our knowledge of how the universe is put together.
Physicists tell us that a particle is a wave in accordance with quantum mechanics. The Z particle mediating the weak particle is also a wave, which establishes a field of attraction among the quarks, like a web of energy. When antimatter is collides with matter, the anti-Z particle and field neutralizes the field of the Z particle and vice versa. Thus energy in both matter and anti-matter is released to scatter in all directions.
I conclude that mass exists when energy packets or quanta are in a stable configuration, balancing expansive forces with centrifugal forces in an electromagnetic field. When this stability is broken, quanta become ordinary radiation moving at the speed of light.
Vista, CA January 2008
God is the Great Investor
God Is the Great Investor
(And Warrent Buffet is His Prophet)
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(1511 Words)
God is Great, says the Koran, and Mohammad is His Prophet. At the beginning of each passage in the Koran, God is also declared to be compassionate and merciful. God is the creator of the world and of humans, and will be their judge on Resurrection Day. The Hebrew scriptures give similar attributes to God, who is also wrathful on occasion when His chosen people misbehave: fornicating unlawfully, worshipping idols, and neglecting to pray to Him; then God allows famine, war, pestilence, and enslavement to fall upon His people. The Christian Bible, which plagiarized the Torah in the Old Testament, speaks of all these qualities of God, who is also our Father, especially the Father of the Son, of the same substance as God, all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present in the universe. He feels pity for people on occasion, forgiving their sins, intervening with a miracle or two to cure them of deadly disease or other ills. I say, God is a great investor, and Warren Buffet is His prophet.
Pray to God, the Great Investor, and honor His prophet, Warren Buffet.
Why is God an Investor, and Warren Buffet His prophet? The prophet we know and hear; then through the prophet we learn about God Investor Almighty. We know Warren Buffet as "the Oracle of Omaha" among investors, in 2008 the world's richest man, having surpassed Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation.
Bill Gates founded and managed Microsoft, growing it to become one of the most valuable corporations in the United States and the world. Buffet bought his company Berkshire-Hathaway, a textile company, converting it into an investment corporation. He has bought major positions (large chunks of stock) in traditional corporations, such as Coca Cola, Sees Candies, Geico Insurance, holding the stock and exerting some influence on the companies by appointing directors. He holds stocks for many years, usually not getting involved in company management. Occasionally, if one of his investments flounders, he will place a management team to run the company until it is on the right track.
Warren Buffet invests in companies he judges to be more valuable, having the potential to earn higher profits, than other investors recognize. He does not like to speculate, generally avoiding "hot" stocks in high technology. He has a following of devotees, like any bona fide prophet, who throw their chips on the same bets he has made. Nobody quite matches his performance.
Warren Buffet is God's prophet because he has a vision of supporting men and women with his money, i.e. any resources money can buy, people capable of turning a profit in their operations, enriching their community and the world. He pledges to donate 90% of his estate to charity; in the meantime, he holds on to his money, to keep growing it for the sake of charity when he is gone. Buffet has the best of both worlds, present and promised. I follow him, clutching my money tightly, enjoying money in life, until government, charity and heirs take it, after my body is certified dead; then seeking my reward in the next world.
Prophet Buffet preaches investing in sound companies, companies with effective management teams, marketable products, continued prospects for profits, valuable assets, and low ticker prices. Investors listen carefully to him, but most of them chase after the idols of greed, quick appreciation, and speculative profits. The true and faithful zealots prosper with Buffet, holding their shares of Berkshire-Hathaway close to their hearts at about $100,000 each.
Pay close attention to the words and deeds of Warren Buffet, the Prophet, if you want to be among the chosen few who can own stocks each at a six-figure price. His sermons are of traditional economics, not momentum strategies of going with the crowd; make Samuelson's Economics your bible, and pick your daily prayer from the Wall Street Journal.
With the help and guidance of the Great Investor, Warren Buffet performs an occasional miracle, saving from bankruptcy a desperate company, with proper intervention in the company's affairs; otherwise, he watches over his investments from afar and above in Omaha, Nebraska. Every few years, the prophet will shift his investment from a non-performing company to one with better prospects, but as a rule he is loyal to his chosen people. Buffet's chosen people must play by the rules and laws of the country and of business to deserve keeping his loyal support and compassion. When the people err in one of his companies, he and his God do not persecute, punish, or condemn, except by withdrawing investments.
God, the Investor, is Great; wise beyond our comprehension is He and His Prophet Warren Buffet.
Leave not the bulk of your estate to heirs, Buffet preaches; leave it to worthy causes that do good works, avoiding inheritance taxes. Invest most of your earnings and re-invest appreciated assets, trading up to avoid capital gains taxes. Life is short, but not for well-managed and well-positioned corporations, like Coca Cola or Geico Insurance; own stocks in corporations with unlimited life spans.
Like Mary Poppins, Warren Buffet is very nearly perfect, at least as an investor. His God is the ideal of perfection in investment knowhow, as He is our ideal for other attributes: wisdom, knowledge, kindness, and power.
What we sense about God is an entity like Nature, laying down laws, rules, or regularities in the phenomena we observe, regularities such as gravitation, electromagnetism, relativity, evolution, or justice. Make use of the laws of Nature or God; you are more likely to succeed, flourish, survive. Ignore the rules; you are not going to be around for long as a living person or an investor. Democritus, 600 B.C., spoke of necessity and chance ruling the world. The laws are necessary; but chance is behind the scenes, churning events. Even the most regular phenomena possess random elements. Who expected venerable Citigroup to lose billions in mortgage securities? As an investor, you face risk; the greater the apparent risk, the larger is the profit potential, because risk scares off others, afraid of it more than you are. You can take calculated risks, as Warren Buffet does, to succeed more often than timid people in investments.
God likes to play dice with the universe, to misquote Einstein on quantum mechanics.
Why so? God-Nature challenges every living thing to change, evolve, getter better; He gives us all random testing, even investors, especially with investors, because He is the ideal, Great Investor. We face the unexpected, even the bizarre, outcome in our investments at irregular intervals. The business cycle puzzles us, with a recession starting the moment our head is turned away from the economy, or a big boom in assets and profits, when we are on a long vacation. Thus God-Nature promotes and distills our spirits, separating the sheep from the goats: those who are to continue His works from those cast aside to oblivion.
Some people believe God arranges events to determine our fate; others, say Nature is a blind force, acting on its own, with no regard for us favorable or unkind. Certainly, God is a passive investor in the universe, in our own lives, and our societies, letting chips fall where they may, allowing us the freedom to succeed or fail; on rare occasions, He appears to intervene in our affairs, performing a small or large miracle that we do not expect from blind chance. Is that not how life emerged on our planet billions of years ago?
Science explains the vast majority of phenomena we observe through the actions of natural laws, without Divine Intervention. A few events we encounter are puzzling for science and reason. Such is the appearance every century or so of a gifted person, talented with skills, imagination, creativity of fantastic proportions: Democritus, Archimedes, da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, Shakespeare, Gauss, van Beethoven, Einstein, and such, luminaries who guide our progress to the future. A rare combination of genes explains such phenomena for some commentators; for others, such innovators and creators are miracles of God.
By and large, God applies the Star Trek principle of non-intervention on our planet. We are free agents to determine our own fate, good, bad, or indifferent. Like Warren Buffet, God is an investor allowing us the managers of our world to make own decisions freely, and take credit or blame for our mistakes. If we manage poorly, we simply lose out on resources to carry on with our lives.
We should take this lesson to heart in considering the use of Earth's resources; they are finite, and spoilable. When the forests are gone from the face of our lands, their cool comfort does come back readily; when the ozone layer is depleted, when with excess CO2 planetary warming has run away, when the oceans, land, and air are polluted, our blue-white planet is not as hospitable and profitable for humans or other living things. Then without recrimination or wrath, God invests His resources in a different planet, with better managers of operations than Homo sapiens.
(And Warrent Buffet is His Prophet)
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(1511 Words)
God is Great, says the Koran, and Mohammad is His Prophet. At the beginning of each passage in the Koran, God is also declared to be compassionate and merciful. God is the creator of the world and of humans, and will be their judge on Resurrection Day. The Hebrew scriptures give similar attributes to God, who is also wrathful on occasion when His chosen people misbehave: fornicating unlawfully, worshipping idols, and neglecting to pray to Him; then God allows famine, war, pestilence, and enslavement to fall upon His people. The Christian Bible, which plagiarized the Torah in the Old Testament, speaks of all these qualities of God, who is also our Father, especially the Father of the Son, of the same substance as God, all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present in the universe. He feels pity for people on occasion, forgiving their sins, intervening with a miracle or two to cure them of deadly disease or other ills. I say, God is a great investor, and Warren Buffet is His prophet.
Pray to God, the Great Investor, and honor His prophet, Warren Buffet.
Why is God an Investor, and Warren Buffet His prophet? The prophet we know and hear; then through the prophet we learn about God Investor Almighty. We know Warren Buffet as "the Oracle of Omaha" among investors, in 2008 the world's richest man, having surpassed Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation.
Bill Gates founded and managed Microsoft, growing it to become one of the most valuable corporations in the United States and the world. Buffet bought his company Berkshire-Hathaway, a textile company, converting it into an investment corporation. He has bought major positions (large chunks of stock) in traditional corporations, such as Coca Cola, Sees Candies, Geico Insurance, holding the stock and exerting some influence on the companies by appointing directors. He holds stocks for many years, usually not getting involved in company management. Occasionally, if one of his investments flounders, he will place a management team to run the company until it is on the right track.
Warren Buffet invests in companies he judges to be more valuable, having the potential to earn higher profits, than other investors recognize. He does not like to speculate, generally avoiding "hot" stocks in high technology. He has a following of devotees, like any bona fide prophet, who throw their chips on the same bets he has made. Nobody quite matches his performance.
Warren Buffet is God's prophet because he has a vision of supporting men and women with his money, i.e. any resources money can buy, people capable of turning a profit in their operations, enriching their community and the world. He pledges to donate 90% of his estate to charity; in the meantime, he holds on to his money, to keep growing it for the sake of charity when he is gone. Buffet has the best of both worlds, present and promised. I follow him, clutching my money tightly, enjoying money in life, until government, charity and heirs take it, after my body is certified dead; then seeking my reward in the next world.
Prophet Buffet preaches investing in sound companies, companies with effective management teams, marketable products, continued prospects for profits, valuable assets, and low ticker prices. Investors listen carefully to him, but most of them chase after the idols of greed, quick appreciation, and speculative profits. The true and faithful zealots prosper with Buffet, holding their shares of Berkshire-Hathaway close to their hearts at about $100,000 each.
Pay close attention to the words and deeds of Warren Buffet, the Prophet, if you want to be among the chosen few who can own stocks each at a six-figure price. His sermons are of traditional economics, not momentum strategies of going with the crowd; make Samuelson's Economics your bible, and pick your daily prayer from the Wall Street Journal.
With the help and guidance of the Great Investor, Warren Buffet performs an occasional miracle, saving from bankruptcy a desperate company, with proper intervention in the company's affairs; otherwise, he watches over his investments from afar and above in Omaha, Nebraska. Every few years, the prophet will shift his investment from a non-performing company to one with better prospects, but as a rule he is loyal to his chosen people. Buffet's chosen people must play by the rules and laws of the country and of business to deserve keeping his loyal support and compassion. When the people err in one of his companies, he and his God do not persecute, punish, or condemn, except by withdrawing investments.
God, the Investor, is Great; wise beyond our comprehension is He and His Prophet Warren Buffet.
Leave not the bulk of your estate to heirs, Buffet preaches; leave it to worthy causes that do good works, avoiding inheritance taxes. Invest most of your earnings and re-invest appreciated assets, trading up to avoid capital gains taxes. Life is short, but not for well-managed and well-positioned corporations, like Coca Cola or Geico Insurance; own stocks in corporations with unlimited life spans.
Like Mary Poppins, Warren Buffet is very nearly perfect, at least as an investor. His God is the ideal of perfection in investment knowhow, as He is our ideal for other attributes: wisdom, knowledge, kindness, and power.
What we sense about God is an entity like Nature, laying down laws, rules, or regularities in the phenomena we observe, regularities such as gravitation, electromagnetism, relativity, evolution, or justice. Make use of the laws of Nature or God; you are more likely to succeed, flourish, survive. Ignore the rules; you are not going to be around for long as a living person or an investor. Democritus, 600 B.C., spoke of necessity and chance ruling the world. The laws are necessary; but chance is behind the scenes, churning events. Even the most regular phenomena possess random elements. Who expected venerable Citigroup to lose billions in mortgage securities? As an investor, you face risk; the greater the apparent risk, the larger is the profit potential, because risk scares off others, afraid of it more than you are. You can take calculated risks, as Warren Buffet does, to succeed more often than timid people in investments.
God likes to play dice with the universe, to misquote Einstein on quantum mechanics.
Why so? God-Nature challenges every living thing to change, evolve, getter better; He gives us all random testing, even investors, especially with investors, because He is the ideal, Great Investor. We face the unexpected, even the bizarre, outcome in our investments at irregular intervals. The business cycle puzzles us, with a recession starting the moment our head is turned away from the economy, or a big boom in assets and profits, when we are on a long vacation. Thus God-Nature promotes and distills our spirits, separating the sheep from the goats: those who are to continue His works from those cast aside to oblivion.
Some people believe God arranges events to determine our fate; others, say Nature is a blind force, acting on its own, with no regard for us favorable or unkind. Certainly, God is a passive investor in the universe, in our own lives, and our societies, letting chips fall where they may, allowing us the freedom to succeed or fail; on rare occasions, He appears to intervene in our affairs, performing a small or large miracle that we do not expect from blind chance. Is that not how life emerged on our planet billions of years ago?
Science explains the vast majority of phenomena we observe through the actions of natural laws, without Divine Intervention. A few events we encounter are puzzling for science and reason. Such is the appearance every century or so of a gifted person, talented with skills, imagination, creativity of fantastic proportions: Democritus, Archimedes, da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, Shakespeare, Gauss, van Beethoven, Einstein, and such, luminaries who guide our progress to the future. A rare combination of genes explains such phenomena for some commentators; for others, such innovators and creators are miracles of God.
By and large, God applies the Star Trek principle of non-intervention on our planet. We are free agents to determine our own fate, good, bad, or indifferent. Like Warren Buffet, God is an investor allowing us the managers of our world to make own decisions freely, and take credit or blame for our mistakes. If we manage poorly, we simply lose out on resources to carry on with our lives.
We should take this lesson to heart in considering the use of Earth's resources; they are finite, and spoilable. When the forests are gone from the face of our lands, their cool comfort does come back readily; when the ozone layer is depleted, when with excess CO2 planetary warming has run away, when the oceans, land, and air are polluted, our blue-white planet is not as hospitable and profitable for humans or other living things. Then without recrimination or wrath, God invests His resources in a different planet, with better managers of operations than Homo sapiens.
On the Design of Community
On the Design of Community
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(2874 words)
Earlier than ten thousand years or so ago, humans hunted and gathered food in bands or tribes with no more than a few hundred members. They occupied land, a territory, which they defended against other tribes, because their lives depended on it. Those were societies similar to that of other primates, such as gorillas, baboons, or chimpanzees: a core of dominant males surrounded by females and children, and immature or aging males standing guard and sounding alarms on the perimeter of the roving group, ready to engage hostile tribes or large predators, until the big males joined the fray. In human tribes, many males and females were pairing for life or for enough years to nourish offspring to maturity, about thirteen years. At thirteen, boys became men with a bar mitzvah or something equivalent, and the girls married off, or sold, anyway turned over to reproduction and life-long service to the family. When early geniuses domesticated animals and plants in certain tribes, those tribes settled down in the most fertile area of their territory, starting the first village communities. Surplus grain, meat, and milk allowed leisure for technical innovations and the development of specialized skills. Societies became large and more complex; the chiefs became kings, the shamans, priests. Eventually, where resources were plentiful, cities emerged in the Nile delta, in Mesopotamia, and other fertile river valleys. Today, we have huge metropolitan areas, like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Moscow, with luxurious developments, cultural centers, government buildings, transportation corridors, office buildings, manufacturing plants--also slums, crime, pollution, noise, congestion, traffic jams, and other evils. In response, thinking people ask: can we not design a community properly, as we design other systems, to meet human needs for healthful living, privacy, peace, security, and social interaction, rather than accept the massive urban agglomerations grown on our lands? Yes, we can, but to build on a design for the ideal community may be more difficult for people than to stay in the ugly urban centers they now have.
People may be afraid that the community that is designed will be uglier than one that has grown naturally. Utopia is the word for it when the outcome of the design is good, dystopia when the end product is ugly. Thomas More wrote "Utopia" to describe a socialist community ruled by just laws, not kings. King Henry VIII ordered Moore's beheading for "treason against the crown," (really for simple disobedience in the issue of the king's divorce and remarriage). In ancient times, the philosopher Plato designed his "Republic" to be ruled by a philosopher king and properly trained noble men. Plato was a philosopher and an aristocrat. According to legend, the ancient Greek city state of Sparta was designed by Lykurgos, the city's king, and turned out to be as ugly in many ways as Hitler's Nazi Germany, or Lenin's Soviet Union. Why was Sparta a dystopia? The ruling class, Dorian warriors who came to Greece from the North, conquered and enslaved the locals, who were more numerous than they. The slaves worked the fields, periodically revolting and getting punished by their Spartan overlords. Sparta was also threatened by other city states and non-Greeks, such as the Persians in the East. King Lykurgos organized his city as a permanent armed camp. All citizens, from a very young age, devoted their lives almost exclusively to exercising for war with no regard for discomfort, pain, or danger. Citizens had little time for the finer arts, learning, or even for their families. They admired strength, courage, and honor only. They lived Spartan lives. The city survived for many centuries undefeated and even prevailed over the vast Persian army, with the help of other Greeks, and later defeated the powerful city of Athens, its liberal design said to have been laid out by the legendary King Theseus.
Later in that age, Alexander the Great founded several cities he named Alexandria, the most famous one in Egypt, where his general Ptolemy and his descendants, including Queen Cleopatra, ruled for some years. Alexandria in Egypt became famous as a cultural center of the ancient world, with its vast library and scientific center, burned by a Christian mob as a pagan target, with many irreplaceable manuscripts lost forever to the world.
Eventually every community, no matter how strongly built, will collapse, as Sparta did after the rise of Macedonia and later that of Rome; survival cannot be the only principle to follow in designing a community, or a private life. Utopian dreamers should consider the principle of bringing the magic of the arts to our brief existence on earth, as the ancient Athenians did brilliantly with music, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, drama, poetry, oratory, history, and philosophy. The design of the ideal community should allow also for expression of spiritual sentiments, the free worship of God, as each person perceives God, and above all freedom for all the people to live the way they choose, provided they bring no harm to others. A society cannot be peaceable and content when some of the people are masters while others slaves, when a few are filthy rich, while most others dirt poor, or when some are exalted, while others oppressed; above all, a good community is a just community, where all citizens may advance themselves with hard work, talent, and learning, where those who save and invest may get to keep most of their wealth for themselves and their children instead of being taxed to death and beyond; people will not be motivated to work hard and save, if most of the coin they earn is taken from them by the Sheriff of Nottingham, or Robin Hood. Most of all, the ideal community cultivates the fruit trees of imagination and creativity, which are the sources of the most abundant wealth.
Great wealth is not enough for a city if its environment is not safe and healthful. Rome may have lost its vitality and power because of the lead metal used in water pipes and containers, leading to the slow poisoning of eminent people and their children. Today, many large cities are covered with smog and toxic chemical residues; water is polluted; food is lacking in vital nutrients, because of depleted soils and over processing; crime is rampant, damaging lives and property; moving about is gruesome in mass transit or in traffic with a private car; noise is jangling our nerves in stores, streets, subways, restaurants, clubs, offices, or factories. People add to all that mess by smoking, drinking alcohol, strong coffee, tea, sugar, or stronger addictive drugs. One of the worst ills of most modern metropolitan areas is the sheer density of the population. Experiments with rats and other mammals have shown that the health of the animals rapidly declines as population density gets higher than normal in the wild. Animals become aggressive, attacking their fellows more often, raping the females, who suffer frequent miscarriages; males abuse or eat many of the young. Humans, like rats, are very adaptable, surviving in dense crowds and in other adverse conditions; surviving is not the same as living good lives.
A community may survive, but it will not thrive, unless those who are capable of doing excellent work are encouraged to produce it and profit from it. Such a community will fall behind others and decay, eventually dissolving, as it happened with the Soviet Union, where political institutions ware framed by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.
By comparison, the Founding Fathers of America, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and others, framed just institutions for the federal and state governments, with balanced powers for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. These institutions have served America well, promoting growth, prosperity, and social peace at a high level. That is why many more people want to come to the United States than want to leave it.
The design of America is fine at the federal and state levels, not so at the county and city levels. Large cities are not suitable for good and healthful living; small towns are places where young people find little in the way of recreation, education, cultural expression, and employment. If the local factory closes down, workers have to move to the big city where there are many companies operating, as well as job opportunities in government, education, and services. Thus large cities become more populous and small towns the depositories of old and spent people. Transportation is a nightmare in metropolitan areas; the grid system of roads, which served early, largely rural, America well is clogged with automobiles. Cities grow horizontally, spreading over much prime agricultural land, asphalt and concrete covering large areas. Master-planned communities, such as Mission Viejo, Woodbridge, and Valencia in California have provided bikeways, walkways, parks, and excellent street landscaping for commercial purposes, in order to sell track homes, and condos. In the last decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first, high-rise condos for affluent people, and mixed-use buildings for childless couples and single people have revitalized many downtown centers. Unfortunately, they have also added to congestion.
History shows that civilization and high culture do not flourish in large, congested, cities or small towns and villages, but in prosperous cities of one to a few hundred thousand people, such as those of ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy. Those were city states, each about the size of a county.
County governments today have little power to correct problems like congestion and heavy traffic. Cities look to their own interests and are fixated on growth at any cost. The federal government with its broad and extensive powers must impose zoning and construction codes that will establish properly designed and distributed cities of moderate size, not too large, not too small. Good ideas come from Arcosanti in Arizona, being built slowly by architect Paolo Soleri and his students on a plateau north of Phoenix. This is a three-dimensional city which incorporates industry, agriculture, housing, offices, entertainment, all the needed amenities, with the use of little land, and hardly any roads. It is a city designed to a human scale, where people can recapture their tribal heritage, living in it without pollution or strife.
Such three-dimensional cities, separated by wide areas of open land zoned for agriculture, parks, or wilderness, would serve us far better than our current population centers. Each city would be designed with a planned maximum size, no more than a million people, and once that size was reached it would stop growing. Individuals and companies would own the framework of spaces to finish for their uses: industry below ground, stores on the surface, offices next up, and residential units higher still. The top of the city would be used for solar panels, wind turbines, antennas, pools, sport facilities, gardens, and helicopter pads. In the city's compact space, few pollutants, CO2 for example, will be generated and can be more easily trapped for disposal; everything used can be recycled. Transportation corridors would exist between cities, but inside the city, traffic would be with elevators, escalators, bikes, and feet for the most part. The entire structure would be air-conditioned efficiently by central facilities on the roof and basement.
I visualize such a structure, with a different shape for each city to fit its particular function and character; it would be a steel and concrete building inside a cube of ten miles all around, with an average population density of one thousand people in each cubic mile; cities would separated by open country one hundred miles in each direction. Such a dispersion of our cities would make America safer from acts of war or terrorism, even from natural disasters, such as meteors, hurricanes, flooding, and volcanic eruptions. One structure might suffer extensive damage, but others not much. It would not be like the damage America would suffer if a major metropolitan area is struck, as New Orleans by hurricane Katrina. The social organization inside the city would also fare better than New Orleans did, because people would be more closely knit together by proximity and allegiance to their community.
I do not mean to imply that city design would involve much social engineering, such as proposed in B. F. Skinner's "Walden II." People would naturally be more closely knit, cooperating better with each other in a stable, well-organized, and civilized city, than in a megalopolis full of the slums of disadvantaged people. I don't subscribe to social engineering which forces human beings into molds for which they have not evolved and to constraints they are not pleased to assume. I respect freedom above security, comfort, wealth, even life itself.
Humans cannot be happy and fruitful living like social insects, bees, ants and such, with a reproducing queen, all others completely constrained to specific tasks: food gathering, warfare, nursing, etc. Humans have minds that adapt readily, allowing them to grow, change, and form creative relationships with other people. It is human nature to want to be with others, enjoying work and recreation together. Community engineers and dictators should stop trying to turn their fellow humans into social insects.
People in the ideal city should have the freedom to enter into any social arrangements they choose, to form the friendships, marriages, contacts, neighborhoods, tribes they choose, without undue interference from government. In our large cities now, we have Chinatown, Korea town, Greek town, Germantown, etc. That will also be fine in our city of the future.
In the U. S. there have been many experiments with forming communities on religious grounds, such as the Amish, Shakers, Oneida, and the early Mormon tribe. Some of these tribes still exist--enlarged or diminished. The nineteen sixties and seventies brought us many communes, dedicated to independence from the consuming culture of American life, instead sharing resources among the people, not competition and personal enrichment. The vast majority of these communes have disbanded, as most socialist movements usually do, but have brought some of their values to the rest of society. Other people created modern business cultures: corporate tribes, such as Apple Computers, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, Google, and many others in Silicon Valley and beyond. A business organization, of course, has to be geared to the efficient production of goods in order for an enterprise to compete and survive. A government organization, too, needs to be effective in serving the people, or their rulers.
In the ideal city, and country, politics should serve the people, not rulers of any sort. I reject autocracy in any form, even that of Singapore which thrived with autocracy under Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, or that of prospering Russia under Putin. China, Pakistan, Myanmar, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lybia, Zimbawe, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and many other nations have worse problems with autocracy. Monarchs, tyrants, dictators, entrenched presidents, ruling political parties, usually controlling the army and secret police, restrict freedoms, oppress, exploit, torture, and kill people who resist their dominance of social affairs.
Our American democratic system serves justice well, but it can be improved to fit better our design of new high-rise communities widely surrounded by open land. Take the voting system for example. We require that new immigrants pass a simple test to get citizenship after at least five years of residence. Citizens born in America don't have to pass such a test, except in school, out of which children frequently drop out. Born idiots are allowed to vote, senile seniors too. A graduate from Podunk High School with 1.1 GPA has one vote; so does a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Political Science. During elections, people are asked to vote for officials on the basis of what they read in papers, see on television, or after listening to speeches crafted by paid political writers, which simply spew out what the voters want to hear.
In our new cities, every one thousand adults could vote for leaders in their neighborhood they would know well, and one thousand such leaders could elect officials to manage the city. One thousand city officials could then pick state officials, and one thousand state officials could appoint the top officials to run the federal government. Such an election system would be grass-roots democratic, major voting decisions made by knowledgeable people, expert in administrative processes. We would get a hierarchy of power, created from the bottom to the top, a hierarchy changing with each election, not becoming entrenched.
What we have thought about the ideal community may be fine, but how do we build one? Who has the power of Alexander the Great, Julius Cesar, or Napoleon the Great to accomplish such a task? Great people build to become even more powerful, glorifying their names. Big companies with master plans for new communities proclaim broad social ideals, while pursuing narrow commercial interests: the bottom line. The rest of us, though, can get together and vote for changes in our society with enlightened leaders whom we elect wisely. To a degree, the necessary changes are already occurring in our society. We can also change our nation by choosing to live in a city that meets our criteria for a good community, moving out of a city which does not, as long as we have the means and freedoms to choose.
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(2874 words)
Earlier than ten thousand years or so ago, humans hunted and gathered food in bands or tribes with no more than a few hundred members. They occupied land, a territory, which they defended against other tribes, because their lives depended on it. Those were societies similar to that of other primates, such as gorillas, baboons, or chimpanzees: a core of dominant males surrounded by females and children, and immature or aging males standing guard and sounding alarms on the perimeter of the roving group, ready to engage hostile tribes or large predators, until the big males joined the fray. In human tribes, many males and females were pairing for life or for enough years to nourish offspring to maturity, about thirteen years. At thirteen, boys became men with a bar mitzvah or something equivalent, and the girls married off, or sold, anyway turned over to reproduction and life-long service to the family. When early geniuses domesticated animals and plants in certain tribes, those tribes settled down in the most fertile area of their territory, starting the first village communities. Surplus grain, meat, and milk allowed leisure for technical innovations and the development of specialized skills. Societies became large and more complex; the chiefs became kings, the shamans, priests. Eventually, where resources were plentiful, cities emerged in the Nile delta, in Mesopotamia, and other fertile river valleys. Today, we have huge metropolitan areas, like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Moscow, with luxurious developments, cultural centers, government buildings, transportation corridors, office buildings, manufacturing plants--also slums, crime, pollution, noise, congestion, traffic jams, and other evils. In response, thinking people ask: can we not design a community properly, as we design other systems, to meet human needs for healthful living, privacy, peace, security, and social interaction, rather than accept the massive urban agglomerations grown on our lands? Yes, we can, but to build on a design for the ideal community may be more difficult for people than to stay in the ugly urban centers they now have.
People may be afraid that the community that is designed will be uglier than one that has grown naturally. Utopia is the word for it when the outcome of the design is good, dystopia when the end product is ugly. Thomas More wrote "Utopia" to describe a socialist community ruled by just laws, not kings. King Henry VIII ordered Moore's beheading for "treason against the crown," (really for simple disobedience in the issue of the king's divorce and remarriage). In ancient times, the philosopher Plato designed his "Republic" to be ruled by a philosopher king and properly trained noble men. Plato was a philosopher and an aristocrat. According to legend, the ancient Greek city state of Sparta was designed by Lykurgos, the city's king, and turned out to be as ugly in many ways as Hitler's Nazi Germany, or Lenin's Soviet Union. Why was Sparta a dystopia? The ruling class, Dorian warriors who came to Greece from the North, conquered and enslaved the locals, who were more numerous than they. The slaves worked the fields, periodically revolting and getting punished by their Spartan overlords. Sparta was also threatened by other city states and non-Greeks, such as the Persians in the East. King Lykurgos organized his city as a permanent armed camp. All citizens, from a very young age, devoted their lives almost exclusively to exercising for war with no regard for discomfort, pain, or danger. Citizens had little time for the finer arts, learning, or even for their families. They admired strength, courage, and honor only. They lived Spartan lives. The city survived for many centuries undefeated and even prevailed over the vast Persian army, with the help of other Greeks, and later defeated the powerful city of Athens, its liberal design said to have been laid out by the legendary King Theseus.
Later in that age, Alexander the Great founded several cities he named Alexandria, the most famous one in Egypt, where his general Ptolemy and his descendants, including Queen Cleopatra, ruled for some years. Alexandria in Egypt became famous as a cultural center of the ancient world, with its vast library and scientific center, burned by a Christian mob as a pagan target, with many irreplaceable manuscripts lost forever to the world.
Eventually every community, no matter how strongly built, will collapse, as Sparta did after the rise of Macedonia and later that of Rome; survival cannot be the only principle to follow in designing a community, or a private life. Utopian dreamers should consider the principle of bringing the magic of the arts to our brief existence on earth, as the ancient Athenians did brilliantly with music, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, drama, poetry, oratory, history, and philosophy. The design of the ideal community should allow also for expression of spiritual sentiments, the free worship of God, as each person perceives God, and above all freedom for all the people to live the way they choose, provided they bring no harm to others. A society cannot be peaceable and content when some of the people are masters while others slaves, when a few are filthy rich, while most others dirt poor, or when some are exalted, while others oppressed; above all, a good community is a just community, where all citizens may advance themselves with hard work, talent, and learning, where those who save and invest may get to keep most of their wealth for themselves and their children instead of being taxed to death and beyond; people will not be motivated to work hard and save, if most of the coin they earn is taken from them by the Sheriff of Nottingham, or Robin Hood. Most of all, the ideal community cultivates the fruit trees of imagination and creativity, which are the sources of the most abundant wealth.
Great wealth is not enough for a city if its environment is not safe and healthful. Rome may have lost its vitality and power because of the lead metal used in water pipes and containers, leading to the slow poisoning of eminent people and their children. Today, many large cities are covered with smog and toxic chemical residues; water is polluted; food is lacking in vital nutrients, because of depleted soils and over processing; crime is rampant, damaging lives and property; moving about is gruesome in mass transit or in traffic with a private car; noise is jangling our nerves in stores, streets, subways, restaurants, clubs, offices, or factories. People add to all that mess by smoking, drinking alcohol, strong coffee, tea, sugar, or stronger addictive drugs. One of the worst ills of most modern metropolitan areas is the sheer density of the population. Experiments with rats and other mammals have shown that the health of the animals rapidly declines as population density gets higher than normal in the wild. Animals become aggressive, attacking their fellows more often, raping the females, who suffer frequent miscarriages; males abuse or eat many of the young. Humans, like rats, are very adaptable, surviving in dense crowds and in other adverse conditions; surviving is not the same as living good lives.
A community may survive, but it will not thrive, unless those who are capable of doing excellent work are encouraged to produce it and profit from it. Such a community will fall behind others and decay, eventually dissolving, as it happened with the Soviet Union, where political institutions ware framed by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.
By comparison, the Founding Fathers of America, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and others, framed just institutions for the federal and state governments, with balanced powers for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. These institutions have served America well, promoting growth, prosperity, and social peace at a high level. That is why many more people want to come to the United States than want to leave it.
The design of America is fine at the federal and state levels, not so at the county and city levels. Large cities are not suitable for good and healthful living; small towns are places where young people find little in the way of recreation, education, cultural expression, and employment. If the local factory closes down, workers have to move to the big city where there are many companies operating, as well as job opportunities in government, education, and services. Thus large cities become more populous and small towns the depositories of old and spent people. Transportation is a nightmare in metropolitan areas; the grid system of roads, which served early, largely rural, America well is clogged with automobiles. Cities grow horizontally, spreading over much prime agricultural land, asphalt and concrete covering large areas. Master-planned communities, such as Mission Viejo, Woodbridge, and Valencia in California have provided bikeways, walkways, parks, and excellent street landscaping for commercial purposes, in order to sell track homes, and condos. In the last decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first, high-rise condos for affluent people, and mixed-use buildings for childless couples and single people have revitalized many downtown centers. Unfortunately, they have also added to congestion.
History shows that civilization and high culture do not flourish in large, congested, cities or small towns and villages, but in prosperous cities of one to a few hundred thousand people, such as those of ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy. Those were city states, each about the size of a county.
County governments today have little power to correct problems like congestion and heavy traffic. Cities look to their own interests and are fixated on growth at any cost. The federal government with its broad and extensive powers must impose zoning and construction codes that will establish properly designed and distributed cities of moderate size, not too large, not too small. Good ideas come from Arcosanti in Arizona, being built slowly by architect Paolo Soleri and his students on a plateau north of Phoenix. This is a three-dimensional city which incorporates industry, agriculture, housing, offices, entertainment, all the needed amenities, with the use of little land, and hardly any roads. It is a city designed to a human scale, where people can recapture their tribal heritage, living in it without pollution or strife.
Such three-dimensional cities, separated by wide areas of open land zoned for agriculture, parks, or wilderness, would serve us far better than our current population centers. Each city would be designed with a planned maximum size, no more than a million people, and once that size was reached it would stop growing. Individuals and companies would own the framework of spaces to finish for their uses: industry below ground, stores on the surface, offices next up, and residential units higher still. The top of the city would be used for solar panels, wind turbines, antennas, pools, sport facilities, gardens, and helicopter pads. In the city's compact space, few pollutants, CO2 for example, will be generated and can be more easily trapped for disposal; everything used can be recycled. Transportation corridors would exist between cities, but inside the city, traffic would be with elevators, escalators, bikes, and feet for the most part. The entire structure would be air-conditioned efficiently by central facilities on the roof and basement.
I visualize such a structure, with a different shape for each city to fit its particular function and character; it would be a steel and concrete building inside a cube of ten miles all around, with an average population density of one thousand people in each cubic mile; cities would separated by open country one hundred miles in each direction. Such a dispersion of our cities would make America safer from acts of war or terrorism, even from natural disasters, such as meteors, hurricanes, flooding, and volcanic eruptions. One structure might suffer extensive damage, but others not much. It would not be like the damage America would suffer if a major metropolitan area is struck, as New Orleans by hurricane Katrina. The social organization inside the city would also fare better than New Orleans did, because people would be more closely knit together by proximity and allegiance to their community.
I do not mean to imply that city design would involve much social engineering, such as proposed in B. F. Skinner's "Walden II." People would naturally be more closely knit, cooperating better with each other in a stable, well-organized, and civilized city, than in a megalopolis full of the slums of disadvantaged people. I don't subscribe to social engineering which forces human beings into molds for which they have not evolved and to constraints they are not pleased to assume. I respect freedom above security, comfort, wealth, even life itself.
Humans cannot be happy and fruitful living like social insects, bees, ants and such, with a reproducing queen, all others completely constrained to specific tasks: food gathering, warfare, nursing, etc. Humans have minds that adapt readily, allowing them to grow, change, and form creative relationships with other people. It is human nature to want to be with others, enjoying work and recreation together. Community engineers and dictators should stop trying to turn their fellow humans into social insects.
People in the ideal city should have the freedom to enter into any social arrangements they choose, to form the friendships, marriages, contacts, neighborhoods, tribes they choose, without undue interference from government. In our large cities now, we have Chinatown, Korea town, Greek town, Germantown, etc. That will also be fine in our city of the future.
In the U. S. there have been many experiments with forming communities on religious grounds, such as the Amish, Shakers, Oneida, and the early Mormon tribe. Some of these tribes still exist--enlarged or diminished. The nineteen sixties and seventies brought us many communes, dedicated to independence from the consuming culture of American life, instead sharing resources among the people, not competition and personal enrichment. The vast majority of these communes have disbanded, as most socialist movements usually do, but have brought some of their values to the rest of society. Other people created modern business cultures: corporate tribes, such as Apple Computers, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, Google, and many others in Silicon Valley and beyond. A business organization, of course, has to be geared to the efficient production of goods in order for an enterprise to compete and survive. A government organization, too, needs to be effective in serving the people, or their rulers.
In the ideal city, and country, politics should serve the people, not rulers of any sort. I reject autocracy in any form, even that of Singapore which thrived with autocracy under Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, or that of prospering Russia under Putin. China, Pakistan, Myanmar, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lybia, Zimbawe, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and many other nations have worse problems with autocracy. Monarchs, tyrants, dictators, entrenched presidents, ruling political parties, usually controlling the army and secret police, restrict freedoms, oppress, exploit, torture, and kill people who resist their dominance of social affairs.
Our American democratic system serves justice well, but it can be improved to fit better our design of new high-rise communities widely surrounded by open land. Take the voting system for example. We require that new immigrants pass a simple test to get citizenship after at least five years of residence. Citizens born in America don't have to pass such a test, except in school, out of which children frequently drop out. Born idiots are allowed to vote, senile seniors too. A graduate from Podunk High School with 1.1 GPA has one vote; so does a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Political Science. During elections, people are asked to vote for officials on the basis of what they read in papers, see on television, or after listening to speeches crafted by paid political writers, which simply spew out what the voters want to hear.
In our new cities, every one thousand adults could vote for leaders in their neighborhood they would know well, and one thousand such leaders could elect officials to manage the city. One thousand city officials could then pick state officials, and one thousand state officials could appoint the top officials to run the federal government. Such an election system would be grass-roots democratic, major voting decisions made by knowledgeable people, expert in administrative processes. We would get a hierarchy of power, created from the bottom to the top, a hierarchy changing with each election, not becoming entrenched.
What we have thought about the ideal community may be fine, but how do we build one? Who has the power of Alexander the Great, Julius Cesar, or Napoleon the Great to accomplish such a task? Great people build to become even more powerful, glorifying their names. Big companies with master plans for new communities proclaim broad social ideals, while pursuing narrow commercial interests: the bottom line. The rest of us, though, can get together and vote for changes in our society with enlightened leaders whom we elect wisely. To a degree, the necessary changes are already occurring in our society. We can also change our nation by choosing to live in a city that meets our criteria for a good community, moving out of a city which does not, as long as we have the means and freedoms to choose.
What is the Purpose of Life?
What is the Purpose of Life?
By Basil E. Gala, Ph.D.
(3,463 words)
We know, with almost absolute confidence, life on earth arose, evolved, and produced us humans with the actions of genes in DNA. We have emerged from the cauldron of evolution, masters of the earth and all living things on it, or at least with the power to destroy everything. But what is the purpose of us humans, and of all life in the universe? What is the purpose of your life or mine? Some say we have no true purpose; we just exist, striving to survive to no purpose at all. If you are a Christian, you may assume the purpose-driven life: fitting your life within God’s plan for you, a plan explained to you by your mother, father, a teacher, or a minister, such as Rick Warren of “The Purpose-driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?” What, however, is meant by God’s plan? That is whatever your particular religious tradition dictates. I follow no particular religion, though I am not irreligious. My purpose in life is to discover God, the great spirit of all that is lovely and glorious in the universe--and do good works in that spirit; or, failing that, to create God in my own image, pouring out that art in which I excel: nourishing and expressing my love of wisdom with logic and lyricism. In my view, your purpose and mine, and of every living unit, each cell in our bodies, or each cell floating freely, is to create beauty where there is ugliness, and order where there is chaos in the world--or by opposing this purpose to strengthen and enhance it.
I admit your purpose in life may be more or less ambitious than that, or different. You may not be interested in God if you are an atheist or an agnostic. But consider this: Our bodies are biochemical, mechanical, and electrical machines, made up of parts that are machines: the liver, the heart, stomach, brain, and gonads all performing functions for the survival of the individual, family, tribe, and species. What comes after survival? What is our purpose? Purpose is a concept we invented to direct our efforts for survival. Now it has the exact meaning we ascribe to it.
We find meaning in life when we have a purpose and a function. Since we are machines, we need to function to feel useful and happy. Our proper function is to work at what we do best to serve ourselves and others. If the work we do best also is something we love doing, we do it even better, because it is pleasurable and we do more of it before tiring.
Some people think that simply pursuing pleasure or more generally happiness in life is enough, and the U.S. Constitution is with them there. But can there be much happiness for long without a primary purpose in life? Although purpose may be subjective and arbitrary, having a serious purpose in our lives, gives us motivation, interest, and keeps us healthier, saner, and happier on a long-term basis. Anybody who has raised children knows this. Those who have followed careers with a consuming passion and talent know this. On the other hand, people who wander in life aimlessly tend to be unhappy, are drawn to addictive behaviors, and generally end up badly, besides not contributing anything to society.
A person without a purpose in life is like a feather in the wind, like a ship without a destination on the high seas, wondering here and there like the Flying Dutchman. Someone who does not set up a goal for his life is likely to pick the burden of a goal handed down by parents, teachers, ministers, and other leaders, a goal which may or may not be right.
Someone may say, “I like my freedom--floating around, playing with things every chance I get, not bound by goals, disciplines, or rules of the game.” Such a life may work fine for you if you have inherited a lot of money and you don’t overdo the playboy or playgirl role. If you must realize other dreams, then you will consider this: Purpose or goal is some end result we want to achieve in spite of obstacles, time, and discouragements. We design and tie a plan to our goal to achieve it in our lifetime. In business, this is called goal-oriented management. If the goal is complex and difficult, we divide it into manageable tasks or steps, which we do in a logical order, where a task accomplished results in the prompt beginning of another task. A flowchart is helpful for a complex end. For a program of such steps of work to be fruitful, we set a reasonable completion date for each step; reasonable means not too early or too late a completion deadline, otherwise, a goal may become too difficult or trivial; that is discouraging in the first instance or when trivial, not challenging enough to elicit our best efforts.
A challenge, a contest, a good fight, makes strong people, and all living things, do their best, drawing on every reserve of energy and ingenuity they possess—provided the challenge is not overwhelming. Our immune systems get stronger with the challenge of some germs and poisons; it’s called inoculation. “That which does not kill me makes me stronger,” someone wrote. In World War II, the British people became stronger after Dunkirk, defending their freedom against the onslaught of Nazi Germany, fighting alone after the fall of France. They had their finest hour, inventing radar, breaking the enemy’s enigma code, and stopping Rommel at El Alamein.
Hitler and his party led Germany’s rise to new heights of power out of the defeat and humiliation of World War I, depression, inflation, and the impotence of the Weimar republic. His purpose was to make Germany’s Third Reich the dominant force in Europe and the world. His plan was to defeat England on her own shores, subdue the Soviet Union, and then allied with Imperial Japan bring America to her knees. Thus he would restore the rule of forceful authority over the whole world after the long run of degenerate democracy.
Also at that time Lenin and Stalin had a purpose and a plan to eliminate liberal democracy together with capitalistic enterprise, and bring the blessings of a classless society to the Soviet Union and the world. Lenin was the ideologue while Stalin was more concerned with his personal power and glory. He ordered the assassination of Trotsky, his personal foe and another ideologue, even though Trotsky lived in distant Mexico. Stalin’s purpose was to rule absolutely and in that effort he murdered millions of adversaries and many innocents.
In 1941 America stood against authoritarian rule from the Nazis and from the Communists, but did little else except lend lease equipment to England and the Soviet Union. Then on December 7, 1941, came the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor and Americans woke up and began a gigantic effort against Imperial Japan and in support of England--and the Soviet Union, because F.D.R. believed Hitler and the Japanese militarists were a greater evil than the communists.
Since its inception in 1776, America has had a sense of national purpose and mission, declared so to the world by Thomas Jefferson in that document which begins with “We the people of the United States…” Americans believed their destiny was going to the West to spread American culture across the continent, and in the time of President Theodore Roosevelt, the one who spoke softly and carried a big stick, across the shining Pacific and Atlantic seas.
In our times, President George W. Bush and his neo-conservative entourage ordered the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq to bring freedom and democracy American style to those oppressed lands, at the cost of many lives and wealth on both sides. That was the administration’s response, because a few mad Muslims decided the purpose of their lives was to destroy America and the Jews, and on September 11, 2001, launched kamikaze attacks on New York and Washington with stolen jumbo jets.
I could cite many cases of such national enterprises from History: the Trojan War by the Greeks to defend their honor for the loss of Helen; the building of the pyramids by the ancient Pharaohs, their purpose in life for success in afterlife; the conquests of Alexander of Macedonia to spread Hellenism in the ancient world; the long rule off Rome to maintain order and peace throughout the empire; the sacrifices of the Mayans and Incas to appease their gods; Peter the Great of Russia with a purpose to bring to his country the advances in Europe and grow a new culture, technology, and science on his soil, largely accomplished; the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte to spread French power and culture throughout Europe and establish a unified code of law; General de Gaulle’s “La France,” with nuclear weapons directed to all points of the compass after World War II; Jack Kennedy’s purpose for America to land men on the moon and bring them safely back to earth by the end of his decade, a mission accomplished in 1979.
My point is: nations set up purposes. So do families when they work together, and other organizations. Some business organizations today state their charter missions in providing services, and international corporations, such as Exxon, Microsoft, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Toyota, General Motors, Wal-Mart, and others, which have budgets larger than many nations, and more power.
Let us not forget the missions and powers of religious organizations in the world. Religious innovators, prophets, and holy men believed they had been chosen by God to reveal the right way to us and lead us out of sin to the wisdom of heaven. In the Old Testament, Moses had fiery talks with God who instructed him to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, guide them through the desert, teach them the ten commandments of ethical behavior, and lead them to Palestine, the land of promise. Ever since, the Jews have felt their mission in the world as the Chosen People, and have endured many challenges as a consequence, thus becoming stronger and more versatile. Their mission was to get the world acquainted with the One God, which they carried out by inspiring Christianity and Islam, the two largest religions today. The ancient Greeks thought similarly, that they were the only civilized people in the world, and all their neighbors were barbarians. Their mission was to give to the world their brilliant culture of philosophy, poetry, rhetoric, history, theater, logic, architecture, etc., all Greek words. They succeeded mainly through the military organizations of the Macedonians and the Romans who conquered the Greeks to be taught by the Greeks. Then the Macedonians and Romans spread Hellenism to the barbarians as far as India.
In India, the Buddha, the Awakened One, a prince to become King someday, abandons his palace and splendid clothes. Dressed as a mendicant, a holy beggar, he wanders the streets and woods, seeking the purpose of life. He practices meditation intensely in the rich Hindu spiritual culture that had flourished for thousands of years. Buddha discovers his purpose in first freeing himself from the frustration and grief of living with the right meditations, reaching a state of perfect acceptance, calm and peace, later teaching his mental disciplines to his disciples and with them to all humanity how to reach nirvana, roughly what we call heaven or paradise.
Five hundred years later, Jesus, the well-known carpenter, son of Joseph also a carpenter, abandons his trade to seek a higher purpose in saving souls for heaven. “I am not of this world,” he says. He is an alien visiting for a while to guide us safely to God’s universe. Inevitably, he is thwarted by the authorities, who represent a different universe, and at last is crucified, because that is what great rebels and innovators have to endure as a rule. But after the Crucifixion, he lectures to his disciples one last time, giving them specific instructions how to spread his gospel, and then rises up to the skies, according to the Christian scriptures.
About six hundred years later, a camel driver in Arabia named Mohammad sought heaven too, meditating in a cave in the desert. In the Koran, Mohammad recites holy verses prompted by the angel Gabriel, verses that embody the teachings of Islam, surrender to the will of God. Mohammad’s purpose is to teach his faith, but the local idolaters attack him and his followers. Unlike the early Christians, Muslims led by Mohammad take up arms to defend themselves and to spread the faith by the sword and the word. Mohammad’s heirs continue this militant tradition, spreading Islam from Morocco to Indonesia, including large parts of India. This is more like the way of Christians in the New World, and unlike Northern Europe where the pagan Nordic and Germanic tribes defeat the Christians and then take up Christianity; and unlike third century Rome and eleventh century Russia, where Christianity is established as a state religion by imperial decree, yet another form of persuasion.
Where does all this lead? Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and other smaller sects, unify people from different ethnic backgrounds, cultures, and genetic pools, into cohesive wholes to spread the spirit of love, peace, and cooperation-- sometimes. Other times, one religious group will fight another, or within one faith sprinter groups will fight among themselves. It all depends on the mood of the people. Before the English left India, Muslims and Hindus lived in a fair amount of peace among themselves. In the Middle East, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived for centuries with reasonable tolerance until after World War II, when the state of Israel was established. In the Koran, the prophet Mohammad recognizes Moses and Jesus as fellow prophets of the One God, objecting only to the tribalism of the Jews and the deification of Jesus by the Christians. Today’s militant Muslims simply display their foolishness by fighting Christians and Jews, instead of cooperating with them in spreading faith and ethical conduct for the advancement of the world.
On the other hand, scientists and business leaders generally aid in the advancement of the world employing reason, fact finding, cooperation, open dialogue, bloodless competition, open borders, open channels of communication, and the profit motive. Peoples who trade goods and ideas with each other are less likely to exchange attacks at each other. Peace will come to Palestine when Arabs realize the futility of waging war on Israel and the West. Arabs have little to fear from Israel, except knowledge, culture, and progress. Arabs may work with the Israelis if they choose to do so, and learn from them all that the Jews have learned from the ancient Greeks, as their Arab ancestors did seven to nine centuries after Christ, when Arab culture flourished. Thereafter, Muslim leaders took other roads of thinking and trading.
Today a large number of newly enlightened (and rich) Muslims are back to learning from the West, such as in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Jordan, and Malaysia. In Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Northwest Pakistan, and Chechen, they continue on the other roads, spoiling for a fight with America and the West. For my part, I place my bets on international science, technology, and business (with the profit motive), rather than religious practices the way they are conducted today, to see greater peace and cooperation among peoples, and to bring order to the world and a cleaner planet.
When I look at life on planet Earth from the time life began about three and a half billion years ago in volcanic cauldrons of fire and ice, I see evidence of some overall purpose or function that pervades everything. As in the economy the invisible hand of Adam Smith guides people to produce abundant goods and create a prosperous society, while each person and each company pursues their own profit, so I see all living things competing and cooperating to advance life in general. I see predators, not spoiling, but benefiting the herds. I see germs and poisons making living things stronger, more adaptable, and resilient. In human societies I see criminals keeping us alert, cautious, and tough, rather than weak and lethargic. What people call evil is often not so. For example, excrement is fertilizer, better than chemicals for our fields. Drought makes plants to resist the loss of water better. Hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, and volcanic explosions destroy lives and property, but force us to build better homes and lives. Meteors and comets colliding with the earth bring water and other needed materials. When a giant meteor hit the Gulf of Mexico sixty five million years ago, it caused the extinction of the large dinosaurs, and allowed the growth of mammals that were our ancestors. Even wars contribute to life’s progress unless they become totally destructive.
Where goes the progress of life to bigger, more complex, and more adaptable forms? What is life and what is its purpose? Irwin Schröedinger, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, in “What is Life?” observes that life goes contrary to the general entropy of the universe towards greater disorder, disorganization and decay; life creates negative entropy or “negentropy,” towards a state of greater order. In my 2002 book, “The God Connection,” available at newvistasmedia.com, I proposed the notion of twin universes, perfect crystals of zero entropy, organized into a heaven and a hell.
But a crystal has no life, no motion. Life implies motion, action, change, growth and decay, both of which are missing in perfect crystals. A crystal grows for a while and then stops growing and remains in a frozen state. A diamond is a regular, perfect, carbon crystal, which does not die, does not decay, it is very hard to break, but does not change. A living thing is also made mostly from carbon in its structural parts, but it is in motion and growth, and it eventually decays and decomposes into its constituent parts. Scientists agree that living things have had and are having a profound effect on earth’s atmosphere, waters, and surface soil, including today’s planetary warming.
So, all living things on earth and other planets may have a purpose, going beyond mere survival, which purpose is worthy of exploration in our imagination. What might that purpose be? Some people say our purpose is to praise and serve God. If so, the purpose of our lives is to work, work as servants or slaves of God, doing his bidding in the running of the universe, fitting in everything we do to the divine plan. Reverend Rick Warren in “The Purpose-driven Life” gives us the Christian view on life’s purpose, with the assumption of a God and revelations from God through the prophets.
Warren’s views may be fine for Christians, but not for those of another faith or no faith. What is this Christian faith, if not the traditions spread by spiritual leaders of the Church? Why should we trust these people that they know things we don’t know? Trusting so, are we doing any better than the Muslim acolyte trusting his mad mullah who tells him the purpose of his young life is to strap on explosives and detonate himself together with alleged enemies of Islam? Is this worse than for a Christian to follow a man such the Reverend Jim Jones in Guyana or David Koresh in Waco, Texas, who, suffering delusions of persecution from U.S. agents, directs his followers to mass murder-suicide, women and children first?
I trust no one and nothing absolutely, not even myself. I trust my own experiences that I have gathered first hand as my most reliable but always imperfect source of knowledge and guidance. I trust people, those living and those remaining as spirits in world culture, whom I judge to be trustworthy to the extent their views agree with my personal findings, but only to a degree of confidence. I follow no human who claims direct contact with the divine, who declares to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and all else is false which others believe. I am the truth, the light, and the way, as far as I can go.
Reverend Warren quotes Bertrand Russell, a British atheist philosopher and Nobel Prize winner for literature: “Unless we assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” In that case, I shall return to creating God in my own image, and I shall give meaning to my life, not according to the words of such prophets who profess to know everything by revelation, but with my own investigations into facts and feelings, my own interests, and my own best judgment.
Greece, August 2007
By Basil E. Gala, Ph.D.
(3,463 words)
We know, with almost absolute confidence, life on earth arose, evolved, and produced us humans with the actions of genes in DNA. We have emerged from the cauldron of evolution, masters of the earth and all living things on it, or at least with the power to destroy everything. But what is the purpose of us humans, and of all life in the universe? What is the purpose of your life or mine? Some say we have no true purpose; we just exist, striving to survive to no purpose at all. If you are a Christian, you may assume the purpose-driven life: fitting your life within God’s plan for you, a plan explained to you by your mother, father, a teacher, or a minister, such as Rick Warren of “The Purpose-driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?” What, however, is meant by God’s plan? That is whatever your particular religious tradition dictates. I follow no particular religion, though I am not irreligious. My purpose in life is to discover God, the great spirit of all that is lovely and glorious in the universe--and do good works in that spirit; or, failing that, to create God in my own image, pouring out that art in which I excel: nourishing and expressing my love of wisdom with logic and lyricism. In my view, your purpose and mine, and of every living unit, each cell in our bodies, or each cell floating freely, is to create beauty where there is ugliness, and order where there is chaos in the world--or by opposing this purpose to strengthen and enhance it.
I admit your purpose in life may be more or less ambitious than that, or different. You may not be interested in God if you are an atheist or an agnostic. But consider this: Our bodies are biochemical, mechanical, and electrical machines, made up of parts that are machines: the liver, the heart, stomach, brain, and gonads all performing functions for the survival of the individual, family, tribe, and species. What comes after survival? What is our purpose? Purpose is a concept we invented to direct our efforts for survival. Now it has the exact meaning we ascribe to it.
We find meaning in life when we have a purpose and a function. Since we are machines, we need to function to feel useful and happy. Our proper function is to work at what we do best to serve ourselves and others. If the work we do best also is something we love doing, we do it even better, because it is pleasurable and we do more of it before tiring.
Some people think that simply pursuing pleasure or more generally happiness in life is enough, and the U.S. Constitution is with them there. But can there be much happiness for long without a primary purpose in life? Although purpose may be subjective and arbitrary, having a serious purpose in our lives, gives us motivation, interest, and keeps us healthier, saner, and happier on a long-term basis. Anybody who has raised children knows this. Those who have followed careers with a consuming passion and talent know this. On the other hand, people who wander in life aimlessly tend to be unhappy, are drawn to addictive behaviors, and generally end up badly, besides not contributing anything to society.
A person without a purpose in life is like a feather in the wind, like a ship without a destination on the high seas, wondering here and there like the Flying Dutchman. Someone who does not set up a goal for his life is likely to pick the burden of a goal handed down by parents, teachers, ministers, and other leaders, a goal which may or may not be right.
Someone may say, “I like my freedom--floating around, playing with things every chance I get, not bound by goals, disciplines, or rules of the game.” Such a life may work fine for you if you have inherited a lot of money and you don’t overdo the playboy or playgirl role. If you must realize other dreams, then you will consider this: Purpose or goal is some end result we want to achieve in spite of obstacles, time, and discouragements. We design and tie a plan to our goal to achieve it in our lifetime. In business, this is called goal-oriented management. If the goal is complex and difficult, we divide it into manageable tasks or steps, which we do in a logical order, where a task accomplished results in the prompt beginning of another task. A flowchart is helpful for a complex end. For a program of such steps of work to be fruitful, we set a reasonable completion date for each step; reasonable means not too early or too late a completion deadline, otherwise, a goal may become too difficult or trivial; that is discouraging in the first instance or when trivial, not challenging enough to elicit our best efforts.
A challenge, a contest, a good fight, makes strong people, and all living things, do their best, drawing on every reserve of energy and ingenuity they possess—provided the challenge is not overwhelming. Our immune systems get stronger with the challenge of some germs and poisons; it’s called inoculation. “That which does not kill me makes me stronger,” someone wrote. In World War II, the British people became stronger after Dunkirk, defending their freedom against the onslaught of Nazi Germany, fighting alone after the fall of France. They had their finest hour, inventing radar, breaking the enemy’s enigma code, and stopping Rommel at El Alamein.
Hitler and his party led Germany’s rise to new heights of power out of the defeat and humiliation of World War I, depression, inflation, and the impotence of the Weimar republic. His purpose was to make Germany’s Third Reich the dominant force in Europe and the world. His plan was to defeat England on her own shores, subdue the Soviet Union, and then allied with Imperial Japan bring America to her knees. Thus he would restore the rule of forceful authority over the whole world after the long run of degenerate democracy.
Also at that time Lenin and Stalin had a purpose and a plan to eliminate liberal democracy together with capitalistic enterprise, and bring the blessings of a classless society to the Soviet Union and the world. Lenin was the ideologue while Stalin was more concerned with his personal power and glory. He ordered the assassination of Trotsky, his personal foe and another ideologue, even though Trotsky lived in distant Mexico. Stalin’s purpose was to rule absolutely and in that effort he murdered millions of adversaries and many innocents.
In 1941 America stood against authoritarian rule from the Nazis and from the Communists, but did little else except lend lease equipment to England and the Soviet Union. Then on December 7, 1941, came the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor and Americans woke up and began a gigantic effort against Imperial Japan and in support of England--and the Soviet Union, because F.D.R. believed Hitler and the Japanese militarists were a greater evil than the communists.
Since its inception in 1776, America has had a sense of national purpose and mission, declared so to the world by Thomas Jefferson in that document which begins with “We the people of the United States…” Americans believed their destiny was going to the West to spread American culture across the continent, and in the time of President Theodore Roosevelt, the one who spoke softly and carried a big stick, across the shining Pacific and Atlantic seas.
In our times, President George W. Bush and his neo-conservative entourage ordered the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq to bring freedom and democracy American style to those oppressed lands, at the cost of many lives and wealth on both sides. That was the administration’s response, because a few mad Muslims decided the purpose of their lives was to destroy America and the Jews, and on September 11, 2001, launched kamikaze attacks on New York and Washington with stolen jumbo jets.
I could cite many cases of such national enterprises from History: the Trojan War by the Greeks to defend their honor for the loss of Helen; the building of the pyramids by the ancient Pharaohs, their purpose in life for success in afterlife; the conquests of Alexander of Macedonia to spread Hellenism in the ancient world; the long rule off Rome to maintain order and peace throughout the empire; the sacrifices of the Mayans and Incas to appease their gods; Peter the Great of Russia with a purpose to bring to his country the advances in Europe and grow a new culture, technology, and science on his soil, largely accomplished; the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte to spread French power and culture throughout Europe and establish a unified code of law; General de Gaulle’s “La France,” with nuclear weapons directed to all points of the compass after World War II; Jack Kennedy’s purpose for America to land men on the moon and bring them safely back to earth by the end of his decade, a mission accomplished in 1979.
My point is: nations set up purposes. So do families when they work together, and other organizations. Some business organizations today state their charter missions in providing services, and international corporations, such as Exxon, Microsoft, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Toyota, General Motors, Wal-Mart, and others, which have budgets larger than many nations, and more power.
Let us not forget the missions and powers of religious organizations in the world. Religious innovators, prophets, and holy men believed they had been chosen by God to reveal the right way to us and lead us out of sin to the wisdom of heaven. In the Old Testament, Moses had fiery talks with God who instructed him to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, guide them through the desert, teach them the ten commandments of ethical behavior, and lead them to Palestine, the land of promise. Ever since, the Jews have felt their mission in the world as the Chosen People, and have endured many challenges as a consequence, thus becoming stronger and more versatile. Their mission was to get the world acquainted with the One God, which they carried out by inspiring Christianity and Islam, the two largest religions today. The ancient Greeks thought similarly, that they were the only civilized people in the world, and all their neighbors were barbarians. Their mission was to give to the world their brilliant culture of philosophy, poetry, rhetoric, history, theater, logic, architecture, etc., all Greek words. They succeeded mainly through the military organizations of the Macedonians and the Romans who conquered the Greeks to be taught by the Greeks. Then the Macedonians and Romans spread Hellenism to the barbarians as far as India.
In India, the Buddha, the Awakened One, a prince to become King someday, abandons his palace and splendid clothes. Dressed as a mendicant, a holy beggar, he wanders the streets and woods, seeking the purpose of life. He practices meditation intensely in the rich Hindu spiritual culture that had flourished for thousands of years. Buddha discovers his purpose in first freeing himself from the frustration and grief of living with the right meditations, reaching a state of perfect acceptance, calm and peace, later teaching his mental disciplines to his disciples and with them to all humanity how to reach nirvana, roughly what we call heaven or paradise.
Five hundred years later, Jesus, the well-known carpenter, son of Joseph also a carpenter, abandons his trade to seek a higher purpose in saving souls for heaven. “I am not of this world,” he says. He is an alien visiting for a while to guide us safely to God’s universe. Inevitably, he is thwarted by the authorities, who represent a different universe, and at last is crucified, because that is what great rebels and innovators have to endure as a rule. But after the Crucifixion, he lectures to his disciples one last time, giving them specific instructions how to spread his gospel, and then rises up to the skies, according to the Christian scriptures.
About six hundred years later, a camel driver in Arabia named Mohammad sought heaven too, meditating in a cave in the desert. In the Koran, Mohammad recites holy verses prompted by the angel Gabriel, verses that embody the teachings of Islam, surrender to the will of God. Mohammad’s purpose is to teach his faith, but the local idolaters attack him and his followers. Unlike the early Christians, Muslims led by Mohammad take up arms to defend themselves and to spread the faith by the sword and the word. Mohammad’s heirs continue this militant tradition, spreading Islam from Morocco to Indonesia, including large parts of India. This is more like the way of Christians in the New World, and unlike Northern Europe where the pagan Nordic and Germanic tribes defeat the Christians and then take up Christianity; and unlike third century Rome and eleventh century Russia, where Christianity is established as a state religion by imperial decree, yet another form of persuasion.
Where does all this lead? Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and other smaller sects, unify people from different ethnic backgrounds, cultures, and genetic pools, into cohesive wholes to spread the spirit of love, peace, and cooperation-- sometimes. Other times, one religious group will fight another, or within one faith sprinter groups will fight among themselves. It all depends on the mood of the people. Before the English left India, Muslims and Hindus lived in a fair amount of peace among themselves. In the Middle East, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived for centuries with reasonable tolerance until after World War II, when the state of Israel was established. In the Koran, the prophet Mohammad recognizes Moses and Jesus as fellow prophets of the One God, objecting only to the tribalism of the Jews and the deification of Jesus by the Christians. Today’s militant Muslims simply display their foolishness by fighting Christians and Jews, instead of cooperating with them in spreading faith and ethical conduct for the advancement of the world.
On the other hand, scientists and business leaders generally aid in the advancement of the world employing reason, fact finding, cooperation, open dialogue, bloodless competition, open borders, open channels of communication, and the profit motive. Peoples who trade goods and ideas with each other are less likely to exchange attacks at each other. Peace will come to Palestine when Arabs realize the futility of waging war on Israel and the West. Arabs have little to fear from Israel, except knowledge, culture, and progress. Arabs may work with the Israelis if they choose to do so, and learn from them all that the Jews have learned from the ancient Greeks, as their Arab ancestors did seven to nine centuries after Christ, when Arab culture flourished. Thereafter, Muslim leaders took other roads of thinking and trading.
Today a large number of newly enlightened (and rich) Muslims are back to learning from the West, such as in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Jordan, and Malaysia. In Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Northwest Pakistan, and Chechen, they continue on the other roads, spoiling for a fight with America and the West. For my part, I place my bets on international science, technology, and business (with the profit motive), rather than religious practices the way they are conducted today, to see greater peace and cooperation among peoples, and to bring order to the world and a cleaner planet.
When I look at life on planet Earth from the time life began about three and a half billion years ago in volcanic cauldrons of fire and ice, I see evidence of some overall purpose or function that pervades everything. As in the economy the invisible hand of Adam Smith guides people to produce abundant goods and create a prosperous society, while each person and each company pursues their own profit, so I see all living things competing and cooperating to advance life in general. I see predators, not spoiling, but benefiting the herds. I see germs and poisons making living things stronger, more adaptable, and resilient. In human societies I see criminals keeping us alert, cautious, and tough, rather than weak and lethargic. What people call evil is often not so. For example, excrement is fertilizer, better than chemicals for our fields. Drought makes plants to resist the loss of water better. Hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, and volcanic explosions destroy lives and property, but force us to build better homes and lives. Meteors and comets colliding with the earth bring water and other needed materials. When a giant meteor hit the Gulf of Mexico sixty five million years ago, it caused the extinction of the large dinosaurs, and allowed the growth of mammals that were our ancestors. Even wars contribute to life’s progress unless they become totally destructive.
Where goes the progress of life to bigger, more complex, and more adaptable forms? What is life and what is its purpose? Irwin Schröedinger, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, in “What is Life?” observes that life goes contrary to the general entropy of the universe towards greater disorder, disorganization and decay; life creates negative entropy or “negentropy,” towards a state of greater order. In my 2002 book, “The God Connection,” available at newvistasmedia.com, I proposed the notion of twin universes, perfect crystals of zero entropy, organized into a heaven and a hell.
But a crystal has no life, no motion. Life implies motion, action, change, growth and decay, both of which are missing in perfect crystals. A crystal grows for a while and then stops growing and remains in a frozen state. A diamond is a regular, perfect, carbon crystal, which does not die, does not decay, it is very hard to break, but does not change. A living thing is also made mostly from carbon in its structural parts, but it is in motion and growth, and it eventually decays and decomposes into its constituent parts. Scientists agree that living things have had and are having a profound effect on earth’s atmosphere, waters, and surface soil, including today’s planetary warming.
So, all living things on earth and other planets may have a purpose, going beyond mere survival, which purpose is worthy of exploration in our imagination. What might that purpose be? Some people say our purpose is to praise and serve God. If so, the purpose of our lives is to work, work as servants or slaves of God, doing his bidding in the running of the universe, fitting in everything we do to the divine plan. Reverend Rick Warren in “The Purpose-driven Life” gives us the Christian view on life’s purpose, with the assumption of a God and revelations from God through the prophets.
Warren’s views may be fine for Christians, but not for those of another faith or no faith. What is this Christian faith, if not the traditions spread by spiritual leaders of the Church? Why should we trust these people that they know things we don’t know? Trusting so, are we doing any better than the Muslim acolyte trusting his mad mullah who tells him the purpose of his young life is to strap on explosives and detonate himself together with alleged enemies of Islam? Is this worse than for a Christian to follow a man such the Reverend Jim Jones in Guyana or David Koresh in Waco, Texas, who, suffering delusions of persecution from U.S. agents, directs his followers to mass murder-suicide, women and children first?
I trust no one and nothing absolutely, not even myself. I trust my own experiences that I have gathered first hand as my most reliable but always imperfect source of knowledge and guidance. I trust people, those living and those remaining as spirits in world culture, whom I judge to be trustworthy to the extent their views agree with my personal findings, but only to a degree of confidence. I follow no human who claims direct contact with the divine, who declares to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and all else is false which others believe. I am the truth, the light, and the way, as far as I can go.
Reverend Warren quotes Bertrand Russell, a British atheist philosopher and Nobel Prize winner for literature: “Unless we assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” In that case, I shall return to creating God in my own image, and I shall give meaning to my life, not according to the words of such prophets who profess to know everything by revelation, but with my own investigations into facts and feelings, my own interests, and my own best judgment.
Greece, August 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
