Probably half of this blog is written immediately after a shower, as are half of the songs I write, although I haven't done a lot of that for a year or two.
God as the big pattern of the fractal: I've mentioned before that the idea of the fractal leads me to see something bigger than us. If fractals are identical patterns within patterns (as you zoom in, you see the macro-pattern duplicated at the micro-level, again and again), and the universe actually has a fractal structure, then the existence of things like values and love would seem to indicate that this is a property of the universe, rather than just what some philosophers would call an "epiphenomena", an odd side effect of a dead universe, full of energy yet intrinsically lifeless. There is a book on my father's shelves, for example, called "Values in a Universe of Chance". I haven't actually read it, but the title illuminates the conundrum of the modern thinker who sees physics at the base of all existence.
A simplified fractal might be a circle that is filled with tiny circles that are filled with tinier circles. But then again, you could build much the same circle out of triangles, the favorite shape of virtual reality programmers. So is the fractal just a convenient way of dicing things up, creating beautiful poster, and even depicting reality -- but just a depiction? Or is it actually an expression of reality? Even when I see a little light, I like to ask the dark questions. But if the questions are not suppressed, each new light seems a little more real, a little more reassuring.
Incidentally, this is one reason why I don't like censorship, even when free speech hurts or seems to strike at the soul of all we believe in.
However, now I have to work on the question. I don't have an answer at the moment.
The Bar Exam: Completed the bar exam a week and a half ago. Reading outlines of American law gave me a new appreciation of the balance struck by our Constitution, legislation and jurisprudence over the years. Of course much that is evil or unfortunate in human beings has also expressed itself over the years. My sense is that, along with society in general, our progress in law peaked around the mid to late seventies, and started slowly downhill with Reagan, although I'd bring him back in a second to replace our beloved W.
Love is a tool which humans use to provive (survive and propogate) the human pattern, or the family pattern, or sometimes the cultural pattern, through cooperation and nurturing. Humans are separate patterns, but part of a bigger pattern. Groups are intermediary patterns, while the human race is the big pattern, although not the biggest. Hate is also a tool, which attempts to assist provival of oneself or an intermediate sized group by neutralizing or destroying a competing group. The great strength of love is that it is also a pattern in and of itself, which tends to provive when put into action. The great weakness of hate is that it too is a pattern in and of itself, which tends to provive when put into action. When love provives, solutions are found. When hate provives, people suffer and die; those who set it into action for their ends will find that it tends to then turn against them. If the so-called enemy and its friends and allies are not completely neutralized, then their hatred will surface against the instigators, and it will go on until there is nothing left. As Gandhi said, "an eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind". If somehow an "enemy" is completely vanquished, there will be no paradise for those who remain, because, having learned the power of hate, they will then turn on each other, competing as smaller and smaller groups until there is only one, alone (perhaps that is the point of the Highlander movie slogan, "There can be only one!"). And then, since we are not immortal like the Highlander, there will be none. Only love can intervene, which it is really up to all of us to do at our earliest, er, convenience.
Love and hate are patterns within our patterns of existence; we are capable of both. But the vision that hate is a shortcut is the most vicious of illusions. Not to wax religious per se, but it is a shortcut only to Hell.
Which brings me back to last Fall (no pun intended), when we proved, facetiously of course (well, sort of), that W. is the anti-Christ, despite his religious posturing. Not to introduce anymore hate into the equation, but just to bring some perspective on the gravity of what we are dealing with, even with just a trace of hyperbole and humor.
