This last Friday I spent a considerable amount of time talking with a small group of people about god. On Saturday one of those people died. I will not go into the particulars, but I should state that the death was caused by an accident whose details suggest a more than passing reference to suicide. The event was sudden, unexpected, and traumatic to those who knew him. I did not know him well at all so his sudden death was decidedly less traumatic for me than many other people. My most important connection to him was that I was one of the last people to speak to him.
I should tease out a observation from this: “One of the last things he ever did was speak to an atheist about god.”
The human mind generates patterns from significant events. With this death, and the recent death of my former roommate, and the cancer scare with a close friend, I have some material well suited for use in developing intricate patterns. The mind brings together partially experienced phenomena to form the glue for these patterns. With highly traumatic events the patterns can be so real as to form the backbone of some truly horrid pathologies. With less severe events the patterns are easily distinguishable from reality so they can be examined, and may yield clues about the workings of the mind upon close examination. I do not mean general clues about generically human minds, but actionable information about actual minds. In this case the mind is mine (A mind that is very important to me).
Some of my loyal readers will detect a tone of self-centered unconcern for the significance of events in this post. A man is dead. This fellow thought about stuff and made decisions that led to his death. People cared about this guy, and those people now question what impact they had on his unfortunate end. There are people on our planet juggling feelings of inadequacy, comfort, doubt, fear, love, loss, and a host of others. There is hurt enough to go around and I might possibly, through the application of human empathy, lessen the burden of some caring people. Instead I dispassionately remark that I could use this as an opportunity to examine some arcane aspects of my personal reality. I hope this apparent self-centeredness comes as a surprise.
I should leverage the self-centeredness by pointing out that I am sitting here writing about a person’s death on the anniversary of my birth.
Death is such an iconic event that lives are defined by it. Atheists are especially defined by their death. There are many stories I have been told of Atheists finding some sort of god, usually Jesus, on their deathbeds. My favorite stories of deathbed conversions have involved public figures who are not dead (or even very sick as far as I know) yet. Everyone dies, however, and I am constantly asked what I think happens after we die. I do not think that people who are perceived as believers are asked this same question as often as I am. While posing as a Christian (for social or survival purposes) I have never been asked this question yet. The answer: “it isn’t really going to matter to me; is it?” has not proved to be sufficient to anyone.
Death defines lives and drives conversations about god. Death emphasizes the interaction I had with the fellow who died, and our conversation was about god. However, the conversation about god was not about death. The fellow who had already begun acting on his unfortunate plans (which after some additional decisions would result in his death) was interested in life. He was interested in “finding” a god type entity that would help him in life.
I am not immune to doubt. I have wondered if lying about a god of some type would have resulted in a more productive Saturday for this guy. I think I could lie convincingly about the existence of a great bearded father in the sky who answers prayers and loves everyone all the time. Would this lie have saved (in a purely literal sense) this fellow? Some people readily state that: “we’ll never know”. I don’t think that question is a satisfactory capstone to the events, or my feelings on them.
There are many things that I will never know. I will never know, for instance, if George Steinbrenner would have lived longer if the Yankees had won 8 World Series. I will never know if drying my wash outside was seen by space aliens as a signal to go home, and that is why they don’t visit. The things I will never know range from the mundane to the fantastical. The things I will never know range from the unimportant to the heartbreaking. The things I will never know range from things I never want to know about to those things I would pawn my future to purchase a glimpse of, but they are all just things I will never know.
My doubts are easily driven by the society I live in to question my reliance on reason as opposed to the supernatural. Reason also invites doubt as a method of tempering the impact of partial knowledge on behavior. Doubt, in my mind, is caused by significant events, not by significant uncertainty. The reason for this is simple. I pay attention to events more on the basis of their significance than on the basis of any uncertainty connected to them. Because of this “focus bias” a very significant event with small uncertainty will cause much more doubt than a mundane event with very little certainty. I can look across the street and see that my neighbor’s front door is closed, and I have no idea who closed it, and I will probably never know.
So, now that I am over 900 words into this entry, let me reach back towards the beginning to gather an idea I left there, before it gets too far away. I mentioned the mind using significant events to create patterns. Just in the last paragraph I mentioned “focus bias” causing doubt in direct proportion to the significance of events. These two psychological predispositions work in concert to provide strong perceptual manipulations.
Perception is also manipulated to provide stronger focus. I can remember the unfortunate fellow’s face after a single evening’s conversation where I cannot remember most people’s face…ever. I can remember portions of the conversation that would be unnoticeably forgettable under most circumstances. This additional focus enhances focus bias and provides additional details from which to create patterns.
There is just one psychological feedback loop after another going on in the reaction to significant potentially traumatic events. It is not surprising that entire event cascades can be fabricated to fit the ever deepening groove of psychological resonance. The fabricating of events feeds the feedback loops with new material not available from unadulterated reality. Fabrication can also be used to enhance the significance of events, leading to even more pronounced patterns, and focus bias, and more fabrication. It is easy to see how a significant life event can, along this spiral path, lead to psychological pathology. I’m sure there are many other pathways to psychological illness also.
What tools can be used to halt this self-destructive spiral? Initially one can use denial. This is one of my favorite tools. The idea is to minimize the focus bias and pattern formation by downgrading the significance of the events themselves. This can be like applying the brakes; the spiral is still active but it is slower. Hopefully the additional time can be used to employ additional tools.
Re-directing attention, sometimes called sublimation, can be useful once denial has been successfully employed. The brain works by enhancing often-used patterns of thought. By working in established patterns (as opposed to furthering the establishment of a new pattern) the psychological resonance of the new pattern is diminished. Sometimes just getting out and going for a walk “clears the mind” enough for reasoned observations to be useful. I find more engaging activities, like cycling or swimming, are most effective. One must be careful with highly engaging activities as they may require a minimum level of attention in order to be safely performed. Failing to notice oncoming traffic while recreating the particulars of a conversation with a becoming-ex-lover can be very hazardous.
Eventually reason must be used to allow acceptance of the significant events. If reason is applied too early in the acceptance cycle it can be used to fuel the cycle of psychological pathology. Reason can only be properly used once perception is under control. Anything that alters perception, including (perhaps especially) mood or psychoactive drugs, can potentially pervert the effects of reason. I should ask “what happens in dreams?” but this is just a blog post not a dissertation.
Reason can provide context. Up until this point focus has been on the significance of the events and the effect that significance has on the way the mind handles the perception of the reality of the events. Up until this point the perception has been self-directed. Looking at the contextual events provides a means to rationally assimilate the significant events. They become more like events that the perceiver participated in and less like events that occurred to the perceiver. The perceiver is now afforded choice in the actions he performed; no longer is the perceiver a marionette driven by events.
Only after the choices can be identified can the actions be examined for what they were. In extremely traumatic situations it may be impossible to accurately recall the actions; let alone decide on the choices which led to them. In less traumatic situations (like this one for me) the choices can be examined.
I presented this guy with information on god(s) that I thought was honest and helpful. I wanted to be honest and helpful. I wanted him to have many enjoyable Saturdays, and thought the information I provided him would help him enjoy them. These were my choices: to be honest and caring. If more people chose more often to be honest and caring there would be more honesty and caring in the world; this is a good thing.
The doubt that drives me to think I should have lied and provide information I think is almost always harmful is a necessary part of my response to the events I am dealing with. I welcome that doubt. I welcome the denial, the re-direction, the rationalization, and the human emotions they protect. I welcome my humanity. Though frail enough to evaporate at the touch of a few poor choices my humanity brings me the experience of love (some of you were probably wondering when I would mention love. I’ve gone on much longer than normal without slipping it in). Love cradles my perception with mind-blowing elegance.
The fellow who died was cared for and loved. He undoubtedly left holes in the fabric of some people’s lives. I cared about him before he died and his death left me with some knowledge of how my perception of the usefulness of caring can be perverted by my human ways of handling emotional stress. I just hope I can use this knowledge to process some of the real doozie stressors coming my way.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
PC future
Sometimes events provide definitive clues concerning future events. Once the sound of one shoe hitting the floor has been noted the future sound of the other shoe is assured. One could (if one were a tad obsessive) even use this knowledge to divide the future into two segments, and perhaps even provide abbreviations or acronyms for each segment. I would call the time until the other shoe dropped WD (waiting for the other shoe to drop) and the time after AD (after the other shoe dropped).
Once the WD-AD boundary condition has been realized by the dropping of the other shoe the WD time segment can be described in terms of all observed events that took place within it. In other words, the status of the WD time segment changes from anticipation to narrative. Many people believe that the narrative exists before the WD-AD status shift, and is merely transcribed onto reality as time nudges us closer and closer to the boundary condition.
There is utility in believing that the future exists before it is realized; it may provide actionable information before it becomes history. There is an obvious paradox in this situation. If you are able to see accurately into the future and you act on that information about the future you must be able to change the future therefore your information about the future is inaccurate. If the paradox holds it is incorrect to view the unrealized future as a fixed narrative; instead it would be a set of suggestions. Hidden within the suggested narrative would be unavoidable events, like the WD-AD boundary condition. This view could also be illustrated by a picture of the future as a probability cloud (PC), with each of the apparently infinite potential events being given a distinct probability.
I view the future as PC and I can tell you, without hesitation, that it is unsatisfactory. Firstly a PC future is wildly confusing, and for events that are not certain most probabilities are fairly random guesses. Secondly a PC future ignores those potential outcomes that are unimagined or disregarded (the so called black swan events). The PC future is dependent on the ability to focus on potential events while at the same time one must be aware that focus on a particular event distorts the ability to accurately place that event in the context from which the very probability of its occurance is derived. An obsesive attention to particular events in the future can distort the future time-space contimum, and result in a rather pshcologically disturbed individual in the present. A PC world future view is so wildly unsatisfying that it is often reduced to only performing the simple task of answering the question:”What do you think future is like before it becomes history?”. I do not personally get asked that question every day.
I think I would much rather have magical knowledge of the future. This desire ignores the obvious constraints this situation would impose on physical laws, like gravity, that are dear to my heart. I would couple it with the magical ability to act on the future knowledge. The ability to act on knowledge of the future would have to be limited to me (or maybe a very small handful of folks) or else it would not be magical; would it? The knowledge would also need to be un-saturating; in other words I would be able to retain some mystery of the future to keep me interested in the progression of time. In fact... a mirror of my mental state resplendent with magical abilities and privileged information would be quite acceptable. When I was insecure about the future my feelings would be fixed by magic. The future would provide the abundance, and opportunities for everything I desired, and I would have the magic treasure map to it.
Because the magical knowledge future (MKF) is so very tempting it should come as no surprise that it has many followers. For most of those I have spoken to, who believe in MKF, their belief is that MKF is almost just barely obtainable at any point in time. One may be separated from MKF by the need to sacrifice a few goats; perhaps one must purify one’s body by repeated and violent cleansing of the colon. For some the visions of MKF are murky, and the interpretation of the future is suspect, requiring application of probability to make the intelligence actionable. To me the latter sounds much like a PC future only with more goat meat and diarrhea.
I would love to interject a story here. It would be a story about someone who believes in a MKF. The story would be complete with ominous threats of death, visions of paradise, unnecessary blood transfusions, adventure in far off lands, the discarding of all worldly possessions, and ultimately disillusionment and depression. I would love to tell this story, but some of you would recognize the protagonist, and I do not think I would tell it with the level of respect the protagonist deserves. The telling of such a story might come across as theist bashing. Although theist bashing can be: enlightening, productive, and good clean fun; it is not what this blog is about.
I should say something about what this blog is about. A little over a month ago I declared that I would be on summer vacation and therefore writing much less. Instead I wrote more...much more. I will stop posting so many of my “this day in history” pieces as they were originally for another project. I would also like to say I will be less wordy in my other posts, but look at how long this one is already (almost 900 words, and it’s still going strong).
Without a very workable PC future (or MKF for that matter) I am stuck with an approach to the future best described as “muddling through”. There are things I “know” will happen like the dropping of the other shoe (ie. the WD-AD boundary event), but I do not know what the drop will sound like. In some cases I may have so many doubts about the particulars of an event that apparent doubt will be cast on the certainty of the event itself. If I do not know enough about what an event will actually consist of, what certainty can I place on the occurrence of that event? To be even more disjoint I should suggest that some events interfere with one’s cognitive ability to observe or judge the event’s occurrence.
When I think of the future I like to think about love. This is partially due to my constant desire to think about love, and partially my desire to imagine a future filled with love. Unfortunately love is associated with such an indirectly knowable event system that it is difficult to predicatively visualize. This is not because of “black Swan” type love phenomena, which are as rare as they are delightful. This is because of the way love arises from the cognitive machinery of the brain.
Comparing love to smell is particularly useful due to similarities in the neuroanatomy of both of these stimulations. We describe smells by comparing them to other smells. We describe love by comparing one instance of it to another (possibly fictional) instance of it.
The setting sun teases with the possibility of a green flash over the pacific whose waves slowly erode the base of those Palos Verdes cliffs. The orange-ing glow catches her hair and obscures the color of her eyes. Later I am reminded of sitting across the table from her, except for the lack of sunset, cliffs, or the anticipation of a possible green flash. I am reminded of the expression on her face, except for the fluorescent light that reveals the color of her hair and eyes and everything else. Almost all describable elements that unite the moments are reductably exceptional, only a few trivial particulars remain: the smell of coffee and night, the sound of automobiles, the touch of unfamiliar fingers. The descriptions that can conjure the memory of love only serve to define the stage upon which it was played out, and yet love is described.
Some attempt to describe love by its secondary symptoms. One could, for instance, describe the quickening of the circulation or the tunneling of attention. To me this often makes love sound more like an illness, or a poisoning.
Because of this “blind spot” in recounting love it is difficult to predict its onset. The event can be as much of a certainty as the attractive forces between two mutually attracted individuals in close proximity can surmise, but what of the attending phenomena that will eventually be used to describe the love onset event? Sure, one can attempt to set the stage. Driving the rickety VW bug to the cliff-top trail just before sunset… but how does one plan tripping over every root and stone on the short stroll to the cliff’s edge? Once I even ran out of gas while driving with a leggy blond on a breeze kissed quayside road, and I have never decided if I had set that stage on purpose or not; that young lady ended up marrying me.
The end of a loving relationship is easier to describe. Describing the symptoms accurately recalls the emotions and state of mind. This may be due to the resonance between the tendency when describing emotional events by their symptoms to make emotions sound like disease, and the disease-like feelings associated with the ending of a love affair.
The progression from love to lying to loss may describe a trajectory as certain as those ballistics defined by physical laws, but the particulars remain ill-defined. Looking into the eyes of a lover as they talk themselves into your past tense gives no hint to the pathway of their exit. It is always possible, perhaps even preferable, to ignore the lies that begin disturbing the surface of the shared experience that is the relationship. But the first ripples give way to waves and fire, and before long a new whole land is formed and one of you is not on it. Understanding which words -what look- or what event causes the start of the decay is sometimes impossible. Sometimes the question: “what was I even thinking to begin with?” can obscure the dropping of the first last shoe. And the second last shoe can seem to drop just once or a million times. The reconciliations, the memory loss, the reminders….
Depending on the amount of ancillary life that became attached to the relationship there is an inevitable physical adjustment period. This can be accompanied by moving out or just watching her walk out the door with a strange finality in her step. Then there are the friends wanting to know what happened and/or the lawyers trying to make something of what happened. Each step is an opportunity, not necessarily utilized, to mark the progress of the relationship’s dissolution. An ideally manufactured person could theoretically mark this progress dispassionately, but I have never met anyone who was able to even convincingly lie about their skills in this area.
Then there is the social recovery: the re-discovery of time, space, and the enjoyment of them, the discovery of and exploration of a new lover. The grounding events like the (as has been all too common for me) accidental happening upon your ex (or soon-to-be-ex)in an uncomfortably comfortable embrace with her new lover.
In those relationships where little is held back the process is akin to putting all the above steps in a blender and making some sort of emotional blender drink; like a fruit smoothie made with broken glass.
There are some who believe that the breakup is the inevitable “other shoe” to the one that is dropped when one takes a lover. I do not (with very little evidence) believe this pessimistic vision of all futures is accurate.
I have never gone, and never plan to go, bungee jumping. I imagine the weightless falling moments wondering if the bungee will catch and hold. I imagine the doubt and fear increasing as the ground rushes up. I know that, given enough bungee jumps, the failure of the bungee cord is a statistically certainty. The amount of doubt has no effect on the cord. The amount of fear only colors the experience, and I’m not sure it would be worthwhile to even jump without it.
The breakup of a relationship may be a memory more easily recalled than its conception. The inevitability of a breakup following the onset of a relationship may be empirically suggested by my experience. That the pain of a breakup is directly proportional to the amount of effort put into a relationship is a theorem I would state as true. However, I gladly doubt these apparent clues (along with all rational thought) for a chance to believe things will be marvelous forever this time; whenever "this time" is now.
Once the WD-AD boundary condition has been realized by the dropping of the other shoe the WD time segment can be described in terms of all observed events that took place within it. In other words, the status of the WD time segment changes from anticipation to narrative. Many people believe that the narrative exists before the WD-AD status shift, and is merely transcribed onto reality as time nudges us closer and closer to the boundary condition.
There is utility in believing that the future exists before it is realized; it may provide actionable information before it becomes history. There is an obvious paradox in this situation. If you are able to see accurately into the future and you act on that information about the future you must be able to change the future therefore your information about the future is inaccurate. If the paradox holds it is incorrect to view the unrealized future as a fixed narrative; instead it would be a set of suggestions. Hidden within the suggested narrative would be unavoidable events, like the WD-AD boundary condition. This view could also be illustrated by a picture of the future as a probability cloud (PC), with each of the apparently infinite potential events being given a distinct probability.
I view the future as PC and I can tell you, without hesitation, that it is unsatisfactory. Firstly a PC future is wildly confusing, and for events that are not certain most probabilities are fairly random guesses. Secondly a PC future ignores those potential outcomes that are unimagined or disregarded (the so called black swan events). The PC future is dependent on the ability to focus on potential events while at the same time one must be aware that focus on a particular event distorts the ability to accurately place that event in the context from which the very probability of its occurance is derived. An obsesive attention to particular events in the future can distort the future time-space contimum, and result in a rather pshcologically disturbed individual in the present. A PC world future view is so wildly unsatisfying that it is often reduced to only performing the simple task of answering the question:”What do you think future is like before it becomes history?”. I do not personally get asked that question every day.
I think I would much rather have magical knowledge of the future. This desire ignores the obvious constraints this situation would impose on physical laws, like gravity, that are dear to my heart. I would couple it with the magical ability to act on the future knowledge. The ability to act on knowledge of the future would have to be limited to me (or maybe a very small handful of folks) or else it would not be magical; would it? The knowledge would also need to be un-saturating; in other words I would be able to retain some mystery of the future to keep me interested in the progression of time. In fact... a mirror of my mental state resplendent with magical abilities and privileged information would be quite acceptable. When I was insecure about the future my feelings would be fixed by magic. The future would provide the abundance, and opportunities for everything I desired, and I would have the magic treasure map to it.
Because the magical knowledge future (MKF) is so very tempting it should come as no surprise that it has many followers. For most of those I have spoken to, who believe in MKF, their belief is that MKF is almost just barely obtainable at any point in time. One may be separated from MKF by the need to sacrifice a few goats; perhaps one must purify one’s body by repeated and violent cleansing of the colon. For some the visions of MKF are murky, and the interpretation of the future is suspect, requiring application of probability to make the intelligence actionable. To me the latter sounds much like a PC future only with more goat meat and diarrhea.
I would love to interject a story here. It would be a story about someone who believes in a MKF. The story would be complete with ominous threats of death, visions of paradise, unnecessary blood transfusions, adventure in far off lands, the discarding of all worldly possessions, and ultimately disillusionment and depression. I would love to tell this story, but some of you would recognize the protagonist, and I do not think I would tell it with the level of respect the protagonist deserves. The telling of such a story might come across as theist bashing. Although theist bashing can be: enlightening, productive, and good clean fun; it is not what this blog is about.
I should say something about what this blog is about. A little over a month ago I declared that I would be on summer vacation and therefore writing much less. Instead I wrote more...much more. I will stop posting so many of my “this day in history” pieces as they were originally for another project. I would also like to say I will be less wordy in my other posts, but look at how long this one is already (almost 900 words, and it’s still going strong).
Without a very workable PC future (or MKF for that matter) I am stuck with an approach to the future best described as “muddling through”. There are things I “know” will happen like the dropping of the other shoe (ie. the WD-AD boundary event), but I do not know what the drop will sound like. In some cases I may have so many doubts about the particulars of an event that apparent doubt will be cast on the certainty of the event itself. If I do not know enough about what an event will actually consist of, what certainty can I place on the occurrence of that event? To be even more disjoint I should suggest that some events interfere with one’s cognitive ability to observe or judge the event’s occurrence.
When I think of the future I like to think about love. This is partially due to my constant desire to think about love, and partially my desire to imagine a future filled with love. Unfortunately love is associated with such an indirectly knowable event system that it is difficult to predicatively visualize. This is not because of “black Swan” type love phenomena, which are as rare as they are delightful. This is because of the way love arises from the cognitive machinery of the brain.
Comparing love to smell is particularly useful due to similarities in the neuroanatomy of both of these stimulations. We describe smells by comparing them to other smells. We describe love by comparing one instance of it to another (possibly fictional) instance of it.
The setting sun teases with the possibility of a green flash over the pacific whose waves slowly erode the base of those Palos Verdes cliffs. The orange-ing glow catches her hair and obscures the color of her eyes. Later I am reminded of sitting across the table from her, except for the lack of sunset, cliffs, or the anticipation of a possible green flash. I am reminded of the expression on her face, except for the fluorescent light that reveals the color of her hair and eyes and everything else. Almost all describable elements that unite the moments are reductably exceptional, only a few trivial particulars remain: the smell of coffee and night, the sound of automobiles, the touch of unfamiliar fingers. The descriptions that can conjure the memory of love only serve to define the stage upon which it was played out, and yet love is described.
Some attempt to describe love by its secondary symptoms. One could, for instance, describe the quickening of the circulation or the tunneling of attention. To me this often makes love sound more like an illness, or a poisoning.
Because of this “blind spot” in recounting love it is difficult to predict its onset. The event can be as much of a certainty as the attractive forces between two mutually attracted individuals in close proximity can surmise, but what of the attending phenomena that will eventually be used to describe the love onset event? Sure, one can attempt to set the stage. Driving the rickety VW bug to the cliff-top trail just before sunset… but how does one plan tripping over every root and stone on the short stroll to the cliff’s edge? Once I even ran out of gas while driving with a leggy blond on a breeze kissed quayside road, and I have never decided if I had set that stage on purpose or not; that young lady ended up marrying me.
The end of a loving relationship is easier to describe. Describing the symptoms accurately recalls the emotions and state of mind. This may be due to the resonance between the tendency when describing emotional events by their symptoms to make emotions sound like disease, and the disease-like feelings associated with the ending of a love affair.
The progression from love to lying to loss may describe a trajectory as certain as those ballistics defined by physical laws, but the particulars remain ill-defined. Looking into the eyes of a lover as they talk themselves into your past tense gives no hint to the pathway of their exit. It is always possible, perhaps even preferable, to ignore the lies that begin disturbing the surface of the shared experience that is the relationship. But the first ripples give way to waves and fire, and before long a new whole land is formed and one of you is not on it. Understanding which words -what look- or what event causes the start of the decay is sometimes impossible. Sometimes the question: “what was I even thinking to begin with?” can obscure the dropping of the first last shoe. And the second last shoe can seem to drop just once or a million times. The reconciliations, the memory loss, the reminders….
Depending on the amount of ancillary life that became attached to the relationship there is an inevitable physical adjustment period. This can be accompanied by moving out or just watching her walk out the door with a strange finality in her step. Then there are the friends wanting to know what happened and/or the lawyers trying to make something of what happened. Each step is an opportunity, not necessarily utilized, to mark the progress of the relationship’s dissolution. An ideally manufactured person could theoretically mark this progress dispassionately, but I have never met anyone who was able to even convincingly lie about their skills in this area.
Then there is the social recovery: the re-discovery of time, space, and the enjoyment of them, the discovery of and exploration of a new lover. The grounding events like the (as has been all too common for me) accidental happening upon your ex (or soon-to-be-ex)in an uncomfortably comfortable embrace with her new lover.
In those relationships where little is held back the process is akin to putting all the above steps in a blender and making some sort of emotional blender drink; like a fruit smoothie made with broken glass.
There are some who believe that the breakup is the inevitable “other shoe” to the one that is dropped when one takes a lover. I do not (with very little evidence) believe this pessimistic vision of all futures is accurate.
I have never gone, and never plan to go, bungee jumping. I imagine the weightless falling moments wondering if the bungee will catch and hold. I imagine the doubt and fear increasing as the ground rushes up. I know that, given enough bungee jumps, the failure of the bungee cord is a statistically certainty. The amount of doubt has no effect on the cord. The amount of fear only colors the experience, and I’m not sure it would be worthwhile to even jump without it.
The breakup of a relationship may be a memory more easily recalled than its conception. The inevitability of a breakup following the onset of a relationship may be empirically suggested by my experience. That the pain of a breakup is directly proportional to the amount of effort put into a relationship is a theorem I would state as true. However, I gladly doubt these apparent clues (along with all rational thought) for a chance to believe things will be marvelous forever this time; whenever "this time" is now.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Gang of four
One hundred and forty five years ago today, on 7 July 1865, four people were hung from the same gallows in fort McNair SW Washington DC. The four people were Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt. They had been sentenced to death on June 30th for the conspiracy that resulted in the assassination of President Lincoln.
Marry played a minor role. Mary ran a boarding house (now in Chinatown) whose quarters were vital to the conspiracy. She became the first woman sentenced to death (and hanged) by a federal court.
Lewis Powell actually attempted to kill Secretary of state William Seward. David had accompanied him, but when Dave heard shooting he got scarred and ran away. Lewis did not kill Seward with the gun so he tried to stab him to death. Despite having been severely wounded in a carriage accident –still with a splint on his arm- Seward fought Lewis off and survived.
George avoided all involvement in the actual events of April 14th by getting drunk and missing his scheduled appointment to assassinate the Vice president.
Booth, the mastermind of Lincoln’s assassination, is thought by some to have escaped unharmed and lived to an old age under a fake name. Some believe that the corpse produced by union soldiers on April 26th (which very closely resembled Booth), was proof that he died. Either way Booth avoided the festivities on July 7th.
Marry played a minor role. Mary ran a boarding house (now in Chinatown) whose quarters were vital to the conspiracy. She became the first woman sentenced to death (and hanged) by a federal court.
Lewis Powell actually attempted to kill Secretary of state William Seward. David had accompanied him, but when Dave heard shooting he got scarred and ran away. Lewis did not kill Seward with the gun so he tried to stab him to death. Despite having been severely wounded in a carriage accident –still with a splint on his arm- Seward fought Lewis off and survived.
George avoided all involvement in the actual events of April 14th by getting drunk and missing his scheduled appointment to assassinate the Vice president.
Booth, the mastermind of Lincoln’s assassination, is thought by some to have escaped unharmed and lived to an old age under a fake name. Some believe that the corpse produced by union soldiers on April 26th (which very closely resembled Booth), was proof that he died. Either way Booth avoided the festivities on July 7th.
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