Compass

What does it mean that a compass points North?
dynamo theory could help us here.

The flow of large amounts of ionized liquids and gas move through an existing magnetic field sustaining a current. All kinds of peeps suggest that we should harness the Earth's magnetic field to generate electricity. That doesn't concern us here.






What's Important?
Earth happened. I don't know why. Some people know that God created it. I don't know that God created it. I do know that it doesn't make sense to me. I often think that sometime, in my lifetime, NASA or SETI scientists will make contact with a booklet that explains all the mysteries of the universe. This booklet would explain magnetism and time and Spacemen 3 and me. Once this information is disseminated, I won't have to live in doubt anymore. I won't have to wonder if what I'm doing is right or wrong. I won't have to wonder if there's universal laws that govern which of my sets of neural instructions.(Mayr 2003)

In my deepest, calmest understanding though, I know that understanding itself does not resolve to right and wrong, or to mysterious or unmysterious, or to answered or unanswered. This deepest, calmest understanding I tend to reference with a space in between quotations, like this:

" "

This is my reference point. I find that everything can be tested against this measurement, and that's how I can divide the world in a way that I'm comfortable with. When I think calmly, I realize that the magnetism that affects the compass will never be explained - because it cannot be. It can be discussed and analogies can be made. But a pure explanation is impossible of a natural event - explanations of communicative intention are all that can ever be said to be pure.

This reference point, of " " is my compass. Within it, I can find alignment, paradoxically, with my genes. By removing the necessity of (impure) explanations, I'm free to mine " " to simply see what is linked - to learn what I think. Can you learn what you think? Stunningly, we have the ability to use our efforts to actually watch what we think. This meta-existence, most likely a result of our pre-frontal cortex, results in a deep confidence in our understanding of the world in its totality, and allows us to watch our mind in a way that fMRI will never provide.

The genes are connected as the historical vehicle for the generation of the brain. Their beautiful competing reproductive strategies are constantly chemically reacting with their ever-changing environment. Permanently morphing and shuffling in their unique and beautifully complex self-generating reactions. No one can control them, because they are the source of all control itself. As a group, their effects result today in a mind that can explore and begin to understand them, and yet considers itself to be a unity. This unity, which ostensibly extends seemingly only to the individual genotype, expands throughout space and time to require all the laws of the universe to become.

The distinction of individuality is not an illusion, but rather its another lens, like the fish's eye, or the snake's tongue, or the bat's sonar, to relate to and measure changes in the environment. There is no limit to the development of these measurements. If a dog was bred that was the size of Australia he could develop magnetic vision allowing him to see the middle of the Earth. The information is there, the question is our degree of sensitivity to it. Our use of technology, of course, has sped particularly in the area of lenses. Our individual and collective entities have evolved to have a dire need to expand our environmental knowledge, which has led to our continued reproduction, multiplication and dispersion across the Earth.

My Ethics

Let " " be my compass. Look where it leads. My genes have brought me thus far. I am not separate from them. There is no me, without them. We are not a team, we are one. With " ", I can see, as clearly as I can, what the sum of their infinitely varied yet carefully organized built-in tendencies and influences. Which proteins they make and how my environment might respond to them. I can then chose to alter my environment, to test out various reactions and interactions, according to the truest tendency of my genes. In effect, they tell me something to do, tell the body, tell basic urges and instincts, but then they, as a conglomerate connected via the most advanced nervous system ever documented in the fossil history, allow an observation of all actions and a power to, with narrow but still generous limits, look at the big picture.

When I look calmly and honestly at my internal environment, my needs and thoughts, feelings and memories, I can match these with my knowledge of the environment to locate a best-guess as to the actions most likely to provide maximal returns to the genetic council. Perhaps, some would say, the genetic council is a tiny subset whose power is dwarfed by the power of the autonomic nervous system. In reality, the genetic council's inseparation from any genes allows its existence to reflect a representative of collective genetic action, regardless of the rapidly changing and evolving motives and responses.

GOALS
Amazingly, this power combined with a detailed memory allows incredibly complex missions which require years of planning to be accomplished using the awesome power of goals.

DESIRES
Desires are no different from goals. We tend to consider goals as cognitive, and desires as affective. However, they can be used interchangeably. They both refer to concerted effort towards a complex object (even obtaining food and feeding oneself is incredibly complex in comparison with the automatic procedures of breathing and temperature regulation) over a period of time.

Absolute truth comes in the form of " ". Like the compass, we're drawn. If we pay attention to where we're going, we can get there sooner.