My Muse.

Hey everyone!  Sorry but I can't stay long, however I did feel the need to post this video.

Consider again that dot.


Love you Carl!

- Adrian B.

Skyscraping.

Wow...It's been a while.

Hookay, how to break the long silence?
How about a good ol' vent about science vs. creationism?

Ok. It seems that the only place I find comfort in speaking my opinion is in the company of the academic community or even more so, the scientific community. Now I don't respect this community for the same reason one would respect leaders and well positioned figures in a social community. I respect them for what it is that has given them their positions, namely the discoveries they have made in their field of study and the knowledge they would have had to attain in order to get to a point where they could make such discoveries.

That being said I feel a great feeling of openness in this community. I am comforted by the fact that everything that scientists know that I do not is not beyond my understanding or for lack of a better term (and I am) "unlearnable." What I love about the scientific community is that I CAN, through universal irrefutable principles, understand everything that they know.

Will I? Probably not. But that's mostly due to the fact that I simply haven't devoted as much time or as much effort into their area of study...I am an artist after all.

But back to these irrefutable principles.

Today it is very easy to believe that everything is relative. And of course, this is most certainly true. At the end of all things, the idea of universal truth is flawed and impossible to know.

But my attitude towards relativism can be pretty much summed up similarly as it could in the famous philosophical example of "other minds." Can we ever truly know that there are other equally cognizant beings out there in the world that in fact think, wonder, and feel as we do?
Of course not.
Is that reason enough to do what ever we want to them and become indifferent towards the possibility that they might be cognizant?

Well...maybe if there was only one other...

Two's skeptical, three's a consensus.

Truth comes down to many obvious universals, but lets get down to the bare bones of the subject.

Sense, and "a second opinion."

Sense of course is a natural ability that has evolved to take in energies or forces in nature and translate them using some sort of cognizant organ. In most animals this involves taking in some light, some sound, the recognition of some chemical compounds through taste and smell, and of course sensory feedback through touch.

There are other senses that can detect electromagnetic fields as well as varying extreme (at least by our standards) wavelengths of light.

In any case, sense in a nutshell involves the reception and translation of exterior information (natural or otherwise). Information that is inevitably lost in translation.

And this is where "truth" becomes a slippery notion. If translation is the only way to understand reality, then how is it that we can know it as it is? How do we know we aren't just being fed the information by some malevolent deceiver?

Well we don't.

BUT!

Because we are receiving information at all tells us that we aren't alone.

There is an outside.
There is an exterior.
There is something outside of us that is independent of our mind.

And whether you want to call that an illusion, a truth, a lie or just a good ol' fashion reality is up to you, but in all honestly, whatever that is, is all we have.

Now how do we know that every seemingly equal human being is on the same playing field?
How do we know that what we see has the same cognizant abilities as we?

Well that takes us to our "second opinion."

Now I put that in quotations because in all honesty it takes more than just a second opinion to verify reality.

3 will do...but 300 hundred will do better.

In fact if you have the tech to pull it off, 3 billion could work even better than that.

Fortunately for us we are social beings and rely on group cooperation to survive.

Numerical verification.

Yes, it sounds like a terrible universal...

That truth is subject to numerical opinion, sort of diminishes the ideal of truth.

After all, people in groups can believe in some embarrassingly stupid things.

BUT regardless of the beliefs they have built up, there are still truths that we all share and cannot deny.

For one, light exists.

So does dark.

Things never stay the same...like people for instance.
But other things do...like the rising and setting of the sun.
Some things are hard to predict....like weather.
Somethings are not...like growth.

One person can believe in anything.
Two people can refute.
Three people, can have a majority.

And it's in that majority that we can find truth.
And so with the power of our senses and other people, we have the ability to create a tower of verifiable foundations.

The foundation of this tower of foundations may sit atop the philosophical impossibilities of truth but hey, you gotta start somewhere right?

So lets say the first foundation of this tower is our ability to sense.
The second? Other minds.
Now lets flash forward a few thousand years to the present.

Not much has changed in terms of those two foundations...

We have the same five senses.

And there are still other minds around...albeit, A LOT more minds...

But we seemed to have developed something to help us amplify both of these foundations and as such add even more foundations.

Technology.

Technology, along with inquisitive thinking has allowed us to tap into the seemingly infinite intricacies of this exterior world. Intricacies connected to and supported by a network of intricacies discovered previously using similar, albeit less advanced, means.

Technology has widened our gaze to see spectrum of light never before seen, opened our ears to sounds never before heard, and expanded the limits of our imagination to a universe much larger and much grander than anything we could have ever imagined or hoped for.

And so our tower has broken through the sky and continues to do so progressively.

But it is still "Earth" bound.

And it still sits upon those two most basic foundations of truth.

If this reality is an illusion than the tower is still legitimate.

Sure it may be a tower of lies, but if that's all we know, knew and ever will know, than why try to know anything else if we are absolutely incapable in anyway of knowing it.

...my thoughts exactly.

So now that we have this tower, what ideas seem to be apart of it?

The supernatural?

Ghosts?

Mythical creatures?

Skyhooks?

How about literature?

Well absolutely.

Culture?

Of course.

Ideologies, ideas, beliefs?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

Those foundations of truth sit on top of the one labelled "Homo sapiens."

They are a part of us and without us would not exist...at least in the way that we think of them.

And what about the stuff that has no foundation?

Well they do...just not where some people would like them to be.

The things in which some people would like to believe are eternal or foundation-less such as God or an intelligent designer, the eternal soul or spirit, or afterlives are founded on something, just not nearly as close to the bottom as they'd like to be.

They sit on top of the foundation labeled "Human culture."

They are dependent on us.

Like anything else in the tower, they all follow a chain of truths originating from those two base truths of sense and numerical verification based on sense.

So has any of these things violated the first two truths?
I certainly hope not...

Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to build a tower in the first place.

Let me now get to the foundation (pun intended...kinda) of my argument.

I'm not saying that there is nothing beyond our ability to sense or the verification of "other minds."

I'm saying that those things are not things that violate any of the foundations of the tower.

To know something without sensing it through energies detectable through the exterior world is not to know...it is to imagine.

And to imagine is great. I feel as an artist it is one of my most cherished tools. But I also know that the imagination is terribly limited and transparent.

Is it truly creative to imagine that the origin of the universe came about from a figure so anthropomorphic? Who amongst most religious renderings shares our feelings, emotions, skills, and in many cases, appearance?

Is it truly creative to imagine that there is something within only humans that can cheat the eventual decay of all matter?

Is it truly creative to imagine that when we die, we get even more life?

These are the imaginings of creatures with an evolved ability to inquire about things who themselves are unchallenged by any other animal.

And we are most certainly unchallenged. In fact most creatures on this planet don't even know or care that we exist at all.

I'm sure if a rhinoceros could evolve intelligence, then God would have the largest horn of any rhinoceros, of which he created in his image, and that when they die the most cooperative in their herd would be able to eat the greenest grass while the others would lose their horns and be forced to live in an eternal swarm of flies forever.

But the foundations based upon the most basic of foundations of truth are as I have found throughout my entire life, far more incredible and fascinating than anything I myself could come up with...let alone anyone else.

And this is my problem with those that choose to hold onto what is imagined rather than what is sensed and verified by those testing and studying the external world.

Anthrocentrism.

The other day I was watching an interview between professor Richard Dawkins and an American creationist.

Now I do this alot, and it often riles me up.

The reason for this is because I have been involved in this debate since the 5th grade.

One of the lines that particularly got to me was her interpretation of human evolution as a progression from "slime" to human beings, and that this disrespected the value of human life.

Slime.

I apologize for my reaction to this but how dare she.

This apparent slime is the most ancient most abundant life form on the planet. Of which we are composed. Of which most life on this planet is composed of.

For billions of years the fate of all living things relied upon the choices and actions of simple single celled organisms.

For a species to just finally gain an understanding of this ancestry and deny it in favor of a poorly constructed fantasy is terribly pathetic.

And to say that evolution diminishes the importance of human life? Yes it does. And thank god (pun certainly intended) for that.

Human life is precious yes. But not the most precious.
The last century of endangering species has taught us that the hard way.
Life as a whole is important.
Including the "slime" some of us seem to detest so aggressively.
In the 50's human beings attempted to destroy this seemingly numerous pest through anti-biotics. Which led to generations of more virulent and aggressive eukaryotes that made our lives even worse.
There is no hierarchy.
There is no superiority.

We can have ideas of respect and sanctity.

But we cannot reserve it for ourselves.

This is a damaging concept, and yes it may have worked okay back when we could do very little to the world outside of our kingdoms and societies.

But today we can cause harm to the world around us. We can affect the lives of entire species of living things.

Now that we know they are related to us, the next thing we need to broaden is our sense of understanding.

Break beyond our collective egos and acknowledge the evidence that proves that we as a species are not an island...

That we are apart of a much more intricate and elaborate network of living things on this planet.

To assume superiority is to live alone.

To assume superiority is to die alone.

I am proud that I am a composed being.

Made up of essentially chalk, gas, and iron.

Now it sounds degrading when you reduce a human being (we seem okay with doing this with anything else oddly enough) to its most basic materials.

But its not the materials themselves that is important.

It is their arrangement.

Carbon by itself is an incredible element...but when arranged in a specific order it can become charcoal, a gas, a diamond, or even life.

How is that demeaning?

To add to this incredible fact, the thing that has fashioned these objects are the things responsible for the construction of planets, stars, and galaxies.

Mostly time, and attraction.

It's this sensible fact that provides me with comfort and intrigue.

More so that a self-assuring throne of superiority.

We are inseparable.

A sliver in a skyscraper of supporting facts.

We may not be great but we don't have to be.

We aren't alone.

Our arrangement is temporary.

And if it all stands on top of a false foundation,

It's still a beautiful looking building.

Adrian B.

In the Details.

I never understood why it was that the devil was in the details.

In a cosmos defined by details it leaves very little room for a god.

Details based upon details based upon details.

Fissures made of fissures.

Communities composed of units.

Units composed of communities.

Numerical infinity.

An overwhelming truth.

A storm in which we dare to advance.

Individuality intact. Nametag in check. Ego engaged.

And it is not until we reach the eye of this truth that we truly become…overwhelmed.

With each educating step, we are lost within its rampage of detail.

Its violence weathering our reach,

shedding our skin.

Daring us to sacrifice with each step.

First our flesh, next our muscles, then our bones,

until all that‘s left is naked nerve.

And then, at the moment in which we are nothing more than the sparking neurons of the thoughts that marched us here to begin with, we are presented with our prize.

The truth that fought against our advance with such fervent opposition….

Never opposed us at all.

How could it?

Storms don’t oppose.

Minds do.

Minds protect their details,

Storms consume them.

And it is in this false duality that we play the devil.

As the storm continues its detailed whirlwind dance through the cosmos, we can see, with squinted eyes, that our march for truth was not in vain, and simultaneously not extrinsic.

Look closely and you can see a new devil in the details.

No longer opposed, but a part.

Lost amongst a material dance so elegant and beautiful, it would be a crime to leave unseen.

And so we need a mind.

To be grown, to protect, to seek out, and finally become

The devil in the details.

- Adrian B.