The Kids in The Ward

By Happy Hiram

Someone dropped off gifts at the orphanage. The children in Ward A said the gifts just fell from the sky. The kids in Ward B said the gifts were a temptation and should be avoided. The children in Ward C said a man named Jack Crisp brought the gifts even though the children were undeserving of them. The children in Ward D said to remember the gift giver whomever it was and to cherish the gifts. Wards I and J said there were rules that came with accepting the gifts. That kids who didn't follow the rules would get no more gifts.

What matters is to know life is a gift and to honor the giver. We will never know who the giver is except by faith, and science cannot change that.

I personally side with Ward D (Daoist). Enjoy the gift and leave the Ward A kids alone.

Copyright 2014 hgl

On Boredom -- Again (Oh how boring!)

There is a simple cure for boredom: realizing what a dangerous place life is and how fragile our hold on whatever situation allows us to be bored is. Much of the world is starving a war torn -- no I am not trying to guilt trip you, I am suggesting you spend some time preparing for the things that can go wrong in your life. Assuming if you are bored you A) have parents or the like supporting you. Try and live in a tent in the back yard for a week and avoid all help from your family. You have to go to a store to take a crap and you eat what you can earn, smelling like you do without a shower. Some will advise trying to be homeless for a day or a week, but I've been there and the street is a very dangerous place. Just try it in the back yard during the warmer months.

Ask yourself ten hard questions like "Why is the sky blue?" or "Why do cars ride on the right (or left) side of the road?" and find the answers WITHOUT USING THE INTERNET OR ASKING ANYONE ELSE WHO IS USING THE INTERNET! Boredom is usually the result of a disease called Affluenza which is when you have too much money, support and household appliances and you forget that life is a struggle between life and death. When you realize what life is about you go home EVERY NIGHT and hug the folks who know your name, and say a heartfelt thank you for simple things like sugar on your Wheaties.

First, boredom is ignorance. Secondly boredom is a defect of character. The problem is not in the world but in you. If you did every little thing you wanted to do every moment of the day your life would go in terrifying directions very quickly. You don't do that because deep down there is an unlabeled fear, a fear that the real you, your unfiltered behavior would make people hate you or stop supporting you and your ideas. A sociopath never feels those fears or is bored because they just do what they want. Because I am in touch with those fears, I never feel bored, rather I go right to terrified and I DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

A person or a hobby losing its appeal is also a function of affluence. If your GF was the last girl on earth she wouldn't start to look plain or become annoying. You would desperately need her. We DO desperately need each other but we cover the fear over -- with boredom.

The original question
 

Self-knowledge and Denial

Reality is relatively infinite compared to our brain capacity, which means it comes at us like a fire hose. Our brains shelter us from 99% of perception reality just so we can keep our sanity. When our subconscious introduces information we may need that we have missed it comes in dreams which are often disturbing. The illusion of our "self" and knowing what is going on around us is very important to us. 

We are like a iceberg with a small part at the top in our awareness and the vast bulk below the water line. Outsiders see the whole iceberg, and sometimes when they share parts of us that we do not see it can be disturbing. 

Gleaning information from it is good. Forcing ourselves to absorb too much self-knowledge is damaging. So you pick and choose your responses between those poles.

The Question

Another Attempt at Eternal Recurrance and the Nature of God.

The question: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=As6IeTyL..fgZrf9TAuyn8_O_Nw4?qid=20140811095315AA1o8pX#

You have hit on the problem of eternal recurrence. Either infinities are paradoxical or nothing is infinite. This is why I say God and the multiverse both exist and do not exist. They are paradoxical. In a universe of infinite choice nothing is real, but underneath the infinite choice is ONE OF the infinite choices, that of a finite universe. This world exists because it is the logical offshoot of an infinity that can't exist. That infinity parent wants a universe that is as large as it can be without contradicting itself. This answers the question of evil. Complexity is how this universe matches the multiverse. Consciousness is how we resemble the non-existent architect. The ultimate resemblance is the fact that consciousness is colorless and tasteless. Our state of being is as non-existent as our creator, and as real.

Embracing Life: or Why I Reject Buddha

 Original Buddhism preached a kind of original sin called desire. This was very much contrary to eastern thought at the time. In the west bad is bad as an entity and in the east bad is bad if it is inefficient or has cause and effect negative repercussions. Buddha's Maya, was the first real eastern devil. So avoiding maya (the illusion of the world) means letting go of attachments and expectations. Most can give up lust or gluttony but have a hard time letting go of the love for their child or knee jerk compassion for total strangers. When all attachment is gone, one feels a universal love for everything and eventually becomes Buddha, the enlightened one. They spiritually leave this earth and attain Nirvana (non-existence, the Buddhist heaven.)

Modern, western Buddhism substitutes Stoicism (mastery of the emotions) for nirvana, and in this sense is a psychology practice rather than a spirituality practice.

It is true that everything we want to eat, protect, hold onto and love hurts us usually as much as it heals us, because everything in life has two sides, but to me, the idea of stoicism is a form of death, and I am here to endure the pain of desire and experience it, not reject it and live in a bubble. Buddhism to me is just eastern Catholicism, watered down by modern users to a pop psychology tool. 

The original question:

Buddhism meaning: "Attachment is the cause of suffering"? From Yahoo Answers 

The Revelation of "Another One Bites The Dust"

Every morning when I wake up, my alarm goes off and whatever song is on the radio is a message from God to me. This morning, I was already awake, and answering questions on the internet, thinking about past and future, and of the click click click of nows going past, when the radio comes on my alarm clock. I got up to shut it off and the song started, so I am standing there anticipating the message from God. I know the song by the opening music and think to myself "This can't possibly be my message for today?" But I listen anyway:

Steve walks warily down the street,
with the brim pulled way down low
Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet,

Woah! Is God talking about me being a self-contained individual in the world? Never heard that in this song before...

machine guns ready to go

The click click click (machine gun) of momentary "nows" I am carrying in my thoughts as I am literally sitting on the edge of my bed in front of the alarm clock anticipating the next part of the revelation...

Are you ready, Are you ready for this
Are you hanging on the edge of your seat
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat

So the moments whiz by as I am listening to them die (another one bites the dust) thinking about the brief moments of a human (another one bites the dust.) and how they are the same (and another ones gone and another ones gone, another one bites the dust.) Then it gets personal:

Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust

So now God starts talking about my trying to live at times without his help and my ego-centric view of my own importance (even after death)...

How do you think I'm going to get along
Without you when you're gone
You took me for everything that I had
And kicked me out on my own



Are you happy ? Are you satisfied ?
How long can you stand the heat


Out of the doorway the bullets rip


To the sound of the beat


Look out!

And there it was: "Look out!" My message for the day. Look out for my ego and self-importance ruining my machine gunning now that is so temporary and is all I have. Okay, so I am done right? Use the day wisely. But then God goes on...

There are plenty of ways that you can hurt a man

And bring him to the ground


You can beat him, you can cheat him


You can treat him bad and leave him


When he's down, yeah


But I'm ready, yes I'm ready for you
I'm standing on my own two feet
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
Repeating to the sound of the beat
Oh yeah


Another one bites the dust....

God is ready for me, and I can take it OR DIE. God wants me to stand on my own two feet - be like Him. I will never view THAT song the same way again!

Famous quotes by Happy Hiram

I do have a unique perspective on life:
People have their whole view of past and future backwards. The future is determined by our character, the past can be changed by our perspective. - Happy Hiram

On history:

Most of what most people have thought for most of history has been wrong. But that doesn't stop me from thinking. - Happy Hiram

On the universe:

Reality is a feverdream on the soul of non-existence - Happy Hiram

And my own special metaphors*:

Sex is a metronome to measure death by - Happy Hiram

*In college, dozens of people came up to me and say "Hey, you're the 'Sex is a metronome to measure death by' guy, right?" I was somewhat notorious for that line. 

You Can't Always Get What You Want...

The question (from Yahoo Answers Philosophy):

Why is it so? 

We do not get what we like and do not like what we get sometimes.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140530104208AAcl52L

My Answer:
Picture a pizza pie. Take away two slices. What do you have left? Three quarters of a pizza? Not enough? An incomplete puzzle? An annoying asymmetry? 

Every atom and molecule in the universe is susceptible to change. DNA and Nebulae live to diversify and produce new things. Every aspect of the universe is poised to grow and change and pass away. It is never complete. 

Animals hunger, and seek those things they are geared to find. Cats play with yarn. Humans seek patterns in everything. We want that finished product, that whole pie in the sky that life can never be. It is our gift to seek it, and it is the universe's gift not to give it to us, so that we are always and forever seeking those missing pieces. 

We don't always get what we want or accept what we get because that would kill us.

What was the most touching thing anyone has done for you?

The Question from Yahoo Answer:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140521072907AAijS7O

My Answer: When I was eighteen I was still wetting the bed. My family never told me my much older siblings had the same problem. Parents shamed me and ignored me, siblings mocked and blackmailed me. It was a horrible secret.

I told my best friend. He could have laughed, he could have judged me. What he did was CRY. He felt so bad for everything I was going through.

From that day on, I stopped wetting the bed.

Where did we come from

The question from YA!:

Philosophical discussion ...? 

(Just in your personal opinion) 

- Where did we come from? and where we will go?

I want you to try this thought experiment. 

Imagine infinite non-existence. If a ruler is infinitely long, every number possible (like 4527) and impossible (like minus minus beeblblatz) will eventually appear on that ruler. 

So, an infinite non-existence has every kind of non-existence possible in it, AND something impossible - existence! 

Now turn it around, and you have a little spot of reality (not little from OUR perspective but little compared to the infinity of infinities) that has x, y and z in it. Everything that is in that reality is determined by the invisible hand of the infinite sea of nothing. The infinite sea of nothing is so omnipresent and so multifaceted that it is an integral part of every atom (see superpositioning of electrons) and yet at every level it is invisible (because non-existent) except for effect. 

Now have this non-existence observe the world, as a colorless, formless, rootless consciousness attached unexplainably to the body of H, an animal roaming around this reality. 

Why is consciousness so ethereal, detatched and formless? Because it is the nothing observing itself in the one place where nothing can be something - reality. 

Thus God created the world, is unchanging, infinite omniscient and we are formed in his image, as shapeless unchanging observer. 

That is how we got here - creation.

On Dualism

Duality is a false god. It appeals to us because our minds filter ideas through continua (hot-warm-cool-cold; light-dull-dim-dark) and dualistic thinking 90% simplifies the universe. It allows for black and white thinking which is deeply satisfying and it allows the ineffable universe to feel within our grasp. 

But separating things creates TWO continua (heaven-purgatory-hell; sacred ground-ordinary ground-profane ground) and adds more and more theological complications until it resembles a man-made version of the ineffable universe, the ineffable theology so to speak. 

That then (the fact that dual logic is confusing) becomes a DEFENSE of dualism (life is a mystery.) 

Yes life is a mystery, but building a mystery cult around it is not an answer - it is parroting the question. 

Dualism does not work.

The question from Yahoo Answers:

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140515023109AAJ76pB

The Donkey and the Hooch

The question from Yahoo Answers:

Is an addiction really broken if you just remove it?

If you have a donkey that drinks all your bourbon and you separate the two, you now have your bourbon and a thirsty donkey.

Teaching the donkey to stop wanting the bourbon is fine, but he can't ever have any again or he'll go right back to being a bourbon drinking donkey. You cannot unmake a drinking donkey unless you keep it away from your hooch.

The kicker, is of course that donkey's have a bad memory and forget that they have been trained not to drink.

But yes, you can teach an old donkey new tricks, so long as he avoids his old ones.

Goofy

The Boy Who Wanted To Fly

I was fascinated as a child with the belief that human unaided flight should be possible just by willing it, and that to the degree that it was not, we were buying a bill of goods called reality. I asked myself why I wanted reality more than I wanted to fly. I doubted I wanted reality more than I wanted to fly. 

But the will to crazy, the will to do anything I wanted if I wanted badly enough was not there. So I continued to puzzle over my fixation with sanity and limitation, eventually coming to see limitations as what make me me, and not just cosmic noise. I wanted to be me (live in a universe I recognized) more than I wanted to fly.

God and Evil: Theism and the Multiverse

Again Happy Hiram explains why there are bad things in the world but God is not evil.

Here was the question from Yahoo Answers:

Is it possible for there to be an all powerful, all knowing, all loving God in the face of evil and suffering!?

I do Religion, Philosophy and Ethics at school. I recently wrote an essay on the topic and expressed my views what are your thoughts? We thought about it in the terms of suffering during the holocaust when many innocent Jews faithful to God were slaughtered.

My Answer:
1. If the multiverse does not have a latent part (i. e. spiritual or phantom potential, aka God) then everything is as the ancients feared "eternal recurrence" and nothing is real. The Buddhists may love that answer, but I find it dehumanizing.

2. Everything affects everything else. Cause and effect run forwards AND backwards in time, contact clear across enormous distances of space and even "potential" events affect the whole. Those in the know call this God's Law, and define the relationship of spirit over matter as omnipotence.

3. In this universe of connectivity, take out Hitler and you might also lose the color red. Diversity is the greater good. Is the God who chooses to allow suffering for the sake of a more complex universe evil?

4. I believe God (potential) experiences matter (reality) through consciousness. That he goes through everything a holocaust victim does is the only reason why he can allow suffering in the world. Because he is there beside us through consciousness, which is the way in which we are made in his image, it is the part of us that is intangible, immaterial and most like un-existent potential.

Please mention me (Happy Hiram) if you use this in your paper.

The Question in Philosophy

The Prayer Boats Theory

There are those who say "My little prayer cannot change God's mind. God's plan is God's plan. What use is prayer?"

To me, when I pray for someone else's betterment, it actually works on me. We are like boats overwhelmed in a sea of troubles. When we pray, we are somewhat lifted above the tide and tempest of life, through our connection to God. 

As we are lifted out of the deep water, the waterlevel lowers for those around us, just as when we are in need we raise the stress and difficulty of others. Our draft* adds to the tide and our uplift lifts the burden on all.

Thus our little boat of prayer calms the sea without being about us.

The Green Sail represents the person praying.

Letter to Thomas

Thomas,

Thanks for the Best Answer to your question and in response to your comments, I would love to discuss matters of faith any time you like. You may be surprised (or disappointed) to know that I have been (a) born again Christian THREE times in my youth but I kept finding Christianity too hard to maintain a belief in.

First off was the idea that I saw kids doing bad things and saying "it's okay, I'm saved."

My second disillusionment was the idea that "do unto others" is a form of abuse, as in "figure out what other people need and give it to them whether they want it or not." That is pretty much how I interact with folks on YAP, treating them as I want to be treated, and they are appalled because the golden rule is a formula for abuse. Luckily I am not a Christian so I don't try to pretend that it is anything but a psychological purge, doing what I think is best for others. It would require more humility than I have to say "God doesn't want me to 'Do unto others' God wants me to leave them the heck alone." Luckily you have the bible to blame for following this abusive rule.

Thirdly, when I got re-involved with religion in my twenties, I got a glimpse of the worldly money and power aspect of Christianity, and it freaked me the hell out. I kept telling myself "it's the message, not the messenger" but it was like being Alice in Wonderland trying to pretend everything was normal.

I have known many great Christians who have been models of goodness and humility. I have also known good Hindus who would give a stranger the shirt off their backs. I have known religious Jews who were models of generosity and tolerance. I have frankly known charitable and gentle Satanists (not the atheist kind, the voodoo-y "I can do magic" kind. Frankly I have a tremendous respect for the power of good in faith, just not any interest in anyone's religion.

When I was in college, I read about Taoism and thought nothing of it. Then I read a silly little book by a guy named Benjamin Hoff called "The Tao of Pooh" (Taoism as explained by Winnie the Pooh) and it changed my life. I had always hated Pooh growing up as he represented stupid and lazy to me. It was my earliest training to impose myself on the world whether mechanically, like my dad, or verbally like my mom. I had no real idea that you could accept the world AS IS without imposing values on it, like sin or karma or salvation, the eight-fold path, the Ten Commandments or the five pillars of Islam.

I am happy to just be in the world, and as I do not fear any afterlife, salvation, and hellfire neither interest nor terrify me. I believe we are our own hell and the world as it is is heaven enough if I just get out of my own way.

So yeah, I am sure your personal journey is equally if not more compelling, and like me, you are not looking for a new religion. But I also don't think you are going to hell for not believing in the Tao (things as they are) so this imperative on your part may somewhat mess up our dynamic.

Sorry to run on so long. Your turn.
Harry


*PS: If I believed that folks who didn't accept Jesus were going to burn for all eternity I would be pretty anxious to convince them too. Its not the motive but the message I am at odds with.