Heidegger — Gregory

Maybe he knows about Quantum Mechanics randomness.

I've lost some of my ability to defend myself from attacks on my atheistic beliefs. — Purple Pond

Finally, the dialog comes to an end:

So, my friend, how is 'God' standing now?

He is teetering on the edge of non-existence, given that complexity can't be Fundamental/First; I cling to the notion somewhat less, I guess.

What would the Fundamental basis really be like, given not anything could have gone into it?

Random, such as QM suggests.

Indeed, Anton Zeilinger has confirmed that randomness is the bedrock of reality to several sigma. Now what?

The Fundamental cannot be anything in particular. God cannot be random; God has faded.

It was a nice wish—for whatever good would have come out of it.

Yeah.

not predetermined entirely by the past — Eric Jenkins

I'll have to seize on the good, creative random deviation results when my will gets disrupted.

indeterministic effects on the quantum scale have been shown to affect the nervous system, which means that our choices are not predetermined. — Eric Jenkins

Even some well figured decision might fail, due to the damage from 'random'. Everything leaks! If only we had three brains we could let the majority rule (that's what some computers do.)

if energy is the foundation of causality, motion, and force, wouldn't it first have to have been in a state of perfect stillness? How could it get, from itself, from that state into the complex universe we experience? — Gregory

No, no stillness, for the base of reality would have no further input, making its outputs random—and this means motion, as ever, like in the quantum fluctuations.

Forget 'spiritual'; they would have no input either, no design, no further point for specific definition, etc, meaning no particular state, i.e., random.

determined by non determinate things, which means that we have free will — Eric Jenkins

No wonder the free-via-random will sometimes makes big mistakes, for its consistency gets harmed and thrown off. Well, we can't have everything go right, even if it was built to work. 'Random' seems to stem from the bottommost ground of reality having no further inputs, such as the proposed quantum foam.

I wouldn't jump off of a high bridge, but I think it would be best if I never stood on one, for my will might go haywire from a random fluke.

Do you understand the reference? Do you know why Einstein said it? Do you know what, if anything, it has to do with determinism? — Wayfarer

Yes, Einstein was against QM's randomness/uncertainty/probabilities, thinking that Nature wouldn't play dice (as random), and for hidden variables indicating determinism, when talking to Born.

I'm noting that the Ground of All would produce outputs from no inputs, i.e., random, such as in the posit of quantum fluctuations.

god playing dice — Wayfarer

The bedrock of existence, having no input, whether 'God' or not, would have to play dice.

I would also like to add that i believe in time travel to some extent. — christian2017

To some slight extent, we all travel into the future.

When you do your time travel back into the past, can you arrange to get rid of mosquitos in such a way that the food chain still works well?

I want to bring good news to their egos and minds by improving their thinking, not bad news that their god is dead. If dead, he will just be replaced. Let him live as an example of evil. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

He might as well be living, per the believers' beliefs, and it's tough to replace dogma.

Per the OP:

We search for 'God', high and low, here and there,
Far and wide—He's said to be ev'ry where;
But no omens are found: quasars abound;
So, He hides out or He's truly nowhere.

Mid-Morning at the OK Club — Part 2a — Rubaiyat II

My dream becomes to write a sequel to the Rubaiyat…

Preface
مقدمه

The light of Omar Khayyam shines again, in this epic successor to the FitzOmar Rubaiyat, via Omar’s quatrain conversations with his Beloved female, the Moon of his Delight who know’st no wane, as they wander far from the noise of politics, wars, and mosques, in and about enchanting forests, on green-grassed river banks, through fabulous gardens, and up and down the Djinn mountains, whilst in between they haunt the taverns and therein engage in philosophical and religious discussions.

In Naishàpùr, Persia, rose gardens sing,
Then shed their blossoms at the end of spring.
Likewise, Old Khayyàm’s Earthly splendor flew,
Yet, his Bird of Time still lives, on the wing.

The fumes of ageless rhymes from ancient times
Waft from the Persian verse, as some chimes
New are mixed with the spirit of the old,
Deftly rendered for Victorian climes.

Across Khayyàm’s gravestone blows the simoom,
Carrying forth Omar’s Persia-fume.
Redressed in the versifier’s costume,
It’s remade into Victorian perfume.

In his flowered bed, Omar reposes,
Resting in the earth in peace, one supposes;
Yet, beneath these words and themes on roses
In my quatrain-poems, Old Khayyàm composes.


Foreword
مقدمه

Rubaiyat II is an illustrated epic poem, ideally to be read slowly and thus savored in the now of its present tense. It is a sequel, yes, but it is extended, and thus more in depth, expanding on themes that were just touched upon or implied in the FitzOmar Rubaiyat.

Omar and his Beloved finally appear after about 25 pages of Persian background descriptive quatrains. Later on, it takes them about 16 quatrains just to wake up. They ever speak in quatrains, and the ongoing conversations, sometimes with others, dominate the remainder of the work. They’ve returned to life, via djinn, and science and philosophy have progressed over the years, yet still in the way as ever first identified by Khayyam.

This back and forth method of quatrain dialog, along with the continuity from similar subject matter within a particular time of day, serves to energize the work by weaving a continuous story. Also, the topics versus their illustrations play off each other, this synergy spiraling into added resonance.

There are 4 main sections, in 6 hour periods, of the day’s 24, midnight to morning, morning to noon, noon to evening, and evening to midnight, these roughly corresponding to youth, young age, middle age, and old age, as well as to the seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

The 3000+ quatrains are mostly my own, as inspired by Omar or by themes I’ve reflected on, but for about 134 public domain translated quatrains from the Calcutta manuscript or from Whinefield, retransmoggrified, and about 186 quatrains contributed by Positor. Most of my 158 retransmogrified Bodliean manuscript quatrains appear. I have also derived about 17 quatrains from Gallienne’s fine prose. These uses are cited in the Appendix.

The longest sections are the evening tavern talk sessions, way later on. Well before that, and throughout, Omar and his Beloved discuss similar Rubaiyat universal topics while here, there, and about. Yes, I have been overwhelmingly overtaken by the Persia-fumes.

Some other long sections are of the olden folklore of the language of the flowers and of the otherworld, peri/pari (fairy-djinn) realm of Omar’s djinni Beloved, as well as several particular philosophies expounded upon. Take heart, for though they may be extensive, they are beautiful and flowing to read.

There is also much of Omar and Beloved enjoying the glorious nature of the wilderness, as well as ever-present romance, mystery, metaphysics, thinking, drinking, and adventure, which the ideal for a far reaching epic.

I’ve drawn from just about everything that I’d ever thought of in life, as well as some new ideas, and so this, probably being my last long book, is the only book of summary that I’ll ever need.

The illustrations were made in Poser, DAZ3D, and iclone, all of which applications allow the user to own whatever is produced. Not all the illustrations can be embedded herein, but can be seen in videos.

Such it begins in earnest:

0.
PROLOG
پرولگ

(0. 1 q1-8)

1
— The Persian Climate and the Poetic Temperament —
هویت ایرانی و احساسات شعری

Persian life simplifies to the extremes,
Loving or fierce, to have or not the means,
Twin Genii granting the best and the worst—
Beyond the Sultan’s favor and Fate’s gleams.

The subsistence aplenty engendered
By the sun’s bounty and breezes rendered
Contrasts to the simoom, the plague, the wars,
The mirage, and the beasts endangered.

Desert life hangs by a skin of water—
In a realm so large to die no better
From a freeze in the north to suffocate
From the heat in the south, weather-whether.

The Patience Stone is the most empathetic
Of listeners, absorbing into it
The pains and sorrows of the one telling.
When it’s full of ache it bursts into bits.

Temper’s all poetry and religion,
And there are but two days distinction—
The Day of the Lot—origination,
And the Day of Judgement—destination.

A-tween, inexorable Destiny
Weaves life’s braided wave, warp, and woof, Sufi,
Whose virtue is courage and submission
To what has been appointed so surely.

Exquisitely pleasured by poetry,
The sense excites beyond rein, dearly,
Through verses chanted, that drive the fearless—
Then grant reward, returned from victory.

Verse exhilaration bests the grapevine,
For quatrains and couplets exceed fine wine.
Flowers and tenders are as drink-spirits,
With the rose gleam a dram of hashish shine.

(0. 1 q9-16)

Poetry dresses the phantasmic new
By enshrining the apparitional brew,
Captured and bottled as aqua-vita—
Wisdom’s pearls, from the evanescent dew.

The Persian pearls bear the down of the lip,
The mole on the cheek, the eyelash, tulips,
Lilies, roses, jasmines, pearls, musk, birds, song—
Epigrammatic, and often epic.

The cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive,
The willow, and fig-tree, and birds therein,
Are ne’er wanting in the musky verses,
Nor the flower legends, as well as wind.

What’s pent and smouldered as the numb and dumb
Is not spent in the poet, but from a crumb
Rises and grows over into new form,
As relief, in creation through the plumb.

Of a keen bodily sense with sensation,
With a deep intellectual passion,
Poets wing far between Heaven and Earth—
As delight in the two’s composition.

A snatch of poem the camel-driver sings,
And paints with sun-beams what his vision brings—
Of the waving veils adorning the tent,
Of the pipe-dreams floating up in smoke rings…

Which fumes are as sighs sent to Heaven far,
For consideration, from his altar
On this bubbled puff of a worldly sphere,
In case Destiny wishes to shake its jar.

The fence is a temptation for a flout,
But souls are the breezes that have no route.
Were that I was her soft breath in and out,
I could e’er on my way kiss her lips’ pout.

Acceptance obtains if all can be shown have to be what it is, more or less.

Mid-Morning at the OK Club — Part 2



My reverie took flight, with autumn’s sight,
For I was abstracted, entranced, and light.
I beamed to the site suffused with insight:
The solutions are deep within the mind,
Reachable by dreams of the lucid kind.



While I am listening to Afsoon Elmy’s CD of FitzOmar’s quatrains singing, a poetess/songstress, Ima Beloved, arrives, and offers me a walk outside into the warming autumnal haze. We take off and stroll afar through the countryside, scuffling through the leaves.

The weed flowers came, marking autumn’s track, 
The blossoms that almost brought the spring back.



She says, “Here’s a wide log; let us sit on it to rest a while,” then hums the Pachelbel Canon, mild, adding words to it from a poem that we know, thereby creating a song, music through and thru! It goes something like: Then, where and when will we touch again…”

“Why do people take to songs so heartily?” I ask.

“Because songs can touch one’s spirit truly, so very deeply and thoroughly.”

“But how? Why?”

“There are wordless rhythms in what we call the ‘soul’. Poetry, in a rather approximate way, I’m told, attempts to translate the soul’s rhythms into words. Melody, on the other hand, being already wordless, plays directly on the heart’s strings. A song, being a poem set to music, sings, and thus causes heart and soul to ring and blend into one unified and glorious experience.”

“Yes, and it all seems to flow so smoothly. And, by the way, your words of prose seem to both rhyme and sing, my dear.”

“Music, like life, consists of the ‘what-how’ of what I would call a ‘smoothly rolling now’.”

“I feel that I know your meaning, but, please explain the further seaming seeming.”

“Well, the total effect of music comes from, I’m sure, the smooth transition through past, present, and future, this, thanks to a correspondence rationed, in memory, sensation, and imagination. Memory recalls the past few musical tones that have come just before the ‘now’ that we own; sensation lives ever in the ‘now’ as known, and therefore it savors the present tones; imagination looks to the future rounds, anticipating the coming sounds.”

“Ah, I get it, and it’s poetic. The delight in such as is known is as none of the three could produce alone!”

“Yes, that’s it, my man, as you’re a poet, too, a fine conclusion, and similarly, there is a life award: for each one of life’s moment’s words contains eternal reward, since both past and the future are smoothly rolled up thereinward.”

“We live in the paradisal ‘now’, at last, wherein each moment is eternally vast,” I state, poetically.

“Now, let us consider the quatrain,” she says, “for it can encapsulate and condense a lot of wordiness into something more succinct, as like a pearl produced from an oyster’s digestion—please excuse me for that last part.”

I write, juggling the words and the rhyme sound, after having to end up using 12 syllable lines:

Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone;
Sensation savors what is presently known;
Imagination anticipates coming sounds;
The delight is such that none could produce alone.


(Ima’s winter garment of repentance thrown off in the spring)

(Click on the GIF image above to run it.)

mental content — Andrew4Handel

Same as saying 'qualia', for the content is a product of a brain process with consciousness also being a step in the brain process, there being no need to call 'dualism' because the content is so unique.

Consciousness is like a tourist along for the ride if all ended there.

Fixed will is simply the will doing as it must. No one would want to be free of the will.

Gnostic Christian Bishop — Gnostic Christian Bishop

R.I.P. The Biblical 'God' idea — PoeticUniverse

So, how are those descriptions for getting the Biblicals to think deeper?

I don't think so. Try this...
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1309/1309.0132.pdf — fresco

This is good, in that with no outside to Totality that could. have absolutes, all within would be relative.

Rovelli's latest book is where he has covariant quantum fields remaining as all that is.

So, then, as Cosmic and Biological evolution was not instant, but rather took such a long time, the supposed Deity or Theity couldn't create all at once, as well as it being problematic that He could foresee and seed all the developments that would lead toward life, this in addition to the quandary of a Mind System being able to precede all else, given that systems always have parts.

but motion being prior to time is the topic I would like to discuss — Gregory

We can know for sure that motion is ever, else all would have long since stopped in an impossible Stillness, indicating that something energetic is fundamental or derives.

Real time is perhaps meaningful change of something that persists more than a but, leaving sub-time or useless change to be such as certain quantum fluctuations that don't amount to much of anything more.

Does predestination make you feel less guilty about whatever mistake you made in the past — christian2017

One need'nt feel shame and blame about mistakes, since they are past and we can't go back and they had to happen that way.

When we see potential, we not only see what’s possible, but also how it can become actual. — Possibility

The brain/will collapses scenarios of consequences into a choice, in regular dimensions.

Covariant Quantum Fields exist by themselves (Rovelli).

How, then, is the supposed God Fundamental as a system of Mind and Emotion as a Person? Even a proton cannot be fundamental, for quarks are its parts. All that we see proceeds from the very simple to the more composite and complex, even into our future, where we can expects beings higher than ours.

Well, that's a tough one, even fatal, but our life, to be so, appears to require a Higher Life to make it.

This Golden Template fails instantly after its first and only usage, requiring God's Life to have to come from a HIGHER LIFE, and so forth.

Damn, it doesn't work!

And for the fine-tuning, I'll give you that it seems so, but how does your not all smart Scientist God foresee enough to make the tunes, or at least some?

Well, as said, He didn't really know All, but probably threw stuff together time and time again until one universe went along much further than the others.

You have just defined the multiverse.

Yeah.

And your God seems to be constrained to operate identical to the way nature would if there were no God, such as that extinctions could be natural, and more.

Back to the drawing board.

So, then, what kind of a 'God' came forth in the imaginings of the ancients that became the dogma that our karma now runs over (as contradictions we've attended to elsewhere in the threads)?

At least with the many gods and entities of old, the bad stuff could all be relegated to a few of them; however, all these old separate entities were amalgamated in the One True God (as claimed).

The dogma written in stone still lives on, unchanged, for it can't change or it wouldn't be dogma, but we can wonder why it is that we wouldn't follow the Example. How about that the invented 'God' doesn't have good character? And even that He has bad character. It is easy to out think Him; He is the easiest target ever dreamt up.

(God: The Non Role Model)

‘Tis lucky for us that God doesn’t exist,
For in breaking the rules He’d ever persist.
Even His own commandments wouldn’t be sacred,
Since He’d murder His own forms created.

Well, this would be goof, big time, a mistake,
So then a joyous rainbow He might make,
To show He’d no more rain a worldly lake,
But He could still destroy us all by earthquake!

He’d slay by flame and flood excruciate;
He’d entrap; he’d blame us for His mistake;
He’d hold grudges for our ancestors’ sins;
He’d throw tantrums and fits; his name, God’s Sake!

Other loves would not allowed by this Jealous One,
For He’d be the only one to enjoy the fun,
For His low esteem our adoration would be required,
This request being much like singing to the choir.

Would He have to rest on the 7th day,
After working 24-6 on making universal hay?
Or would He use boundless energy reserves,
Such that He could do it all in an instant blurb?

Would God’s last name be known as ‘Dammit’,
With ‘Herald’ His name on Earth’s planet,
And would be ‘Art’ named, when up in Heaven?
Would we swearest in vain these names never taken?

We’d have to be so lazy on the Sabbath day,
Not even lifting up a finger or even wave a bug away,
Keeping holy and wholly the laundry on Sunday,
Even avoiding polo, as the Pope doth say.

Cripes, He’d be in the right place at the right time,
Not ever having been made, not even costing a dime.
What luck to be unborn with so much talent,
Never having earned the spot with any effort spent.

Well, we’d still humor our dear parents,
Not telling them where we’d been apparent,
Honoring her offer, on her and off her;
Yet, we’d soon learn, through human nature.

If this non God we’d emulate, we could kill
Those who solicitate, and e’en more kill,
Even time, spouses, bugs, microbes, and other swill,
And, of course, outlaws, and, especially in-laws.

So, if God’s a good role model, a leader,
Someone that we would follow, imitate,
Emulate, be like, adore, or follow,
What else would his fine example allow?

We could jail people for the sins of their
Ancestors, exterminate humanity,
Allow known evil to exist and tempt,
And devise devious entrapment plans.

We could have temper tantrums and outbursts,
Envy, not permit competitors,
Grant free will only it matched our own,
And covet worship, adoration, and praise.

Now, as to the commandment sultry;
Yes, we should surely admit adultery.
Would we banish all thoughts impure?
Well, that’s simply our human nature.

Now, if He’d wanted us not to be naked, say,
Then surely we’d have been born that way.
As for padding, that would false witness be,
So, please, please keep a-breast of reality.

And no loving thy neighbors much too much,
By coveting their Heavenly bodies such,
But thy own ass do covet; it’s not free;
Follow Moses, by always tying it to a tree.

There are stealers about, another shalt not,
Who take office supplies home a lot,
And take various and sundry restaurant items,
As well as keeping every quill, never buying them.

Now, really, ever do one to others, too,
Before they can do one to you,
And never lie in court; no, not you;
Just let your lawyer do it for you!

Now, walking on water is very much out,
Unless there is solid ice, winter, no doubt,
And always know that sin is fun’s evil twin,
And ever enter that evil Sin-a-God.

So, what more would this invented God be,
The One with neither paternity nor maternity?
Would we then be made so specially
That we’d be rewarded for all eternity?

If we’d worship Him from fear of Hell,
Then He’d rightly cast us into it;
If we’d worship Him from a desire for Paradise,
Then He’d deny us entrance into it.

Well, He’s still on His meds, so we say,
For He works in mysterious, insane, ways.
The free will to us given is ever free,
Unless it doesn’t match His own entirely.

He’d still detest evil so totally completely,
That he’d allow the Devil to tempt us mercilessly.
And sins, even the most horrible ones, well,
No big deal; just repent them to avoid Hell.

Rigged and jigged, God’s perfect plans would be done,
But he’d long for some surprises yet to come,
So He might even roll the dice, it being ‘random’;
‘Damn!’ He’d say, ‘I already know the outcome!’

One-night stands with engaged young virgins
Would be alright, but those are not good urgins;
And no fighting, especially if you are weak;
So, when one kisses your ass, turn the other cheek!

The Diviner would just sit around, with nothing else to do,
His mind already full with what would become as new.
He couldn’t play dice, scrambling the forecast,
For He would know all of which the die was cast.


R.I.P. The Biblical 'God' idea

Intelligence, study, imagination, genetics, nurture, experience and more can make one good at something. Issac Asimov was good at a lot, but he declined credit, saying something like that he was a natural at it.

Fixed will is dynamic; it grows, as it must, to a better, wider fixed will every moment, to whatever degree.

my capacity to manipulate that occurrence operates in the realm of 5D experience — Possibility

The sizing up of all possible world-lines unto all their ends to see what works the best, and then in 6D jump into the best one?

sensorily — Maureen

A sensation may be present, but who's to really say what is the basis of it.

Also, thinking of something a lot can make it come to mind a lot more.

quailia — Andrew4Handel

Hi Andrew,

Qualia cannot be useless, or they wouldn't have evolved. Since the brain expresses results in its own symbol language of qualia, then it has to be in this same language that the product has to go into further usage, such as to memory and as input for further brain analysis (as we the brain) by other brain areas. Perhaps it is a good shortcut due to its holistic form; who knows. Perhaps it's a way for the brain to perceive and experience itself; who knows. Perhaps the brain is a bunch of smaller brains, more of which get alerted by qualia; who knows.

Although qualia are ever but showing what's past and done with, there's no good reason for qualia to just dead-end and not get used, for a heck of a lot goes into the production of qualia, as in their unity and their continuity and more.

Yes, lots of 'who knows', but we do know that conscious is sequential to the brain's figurings of what ends up in it, up to 500 ms after the figurings begin subconsciously.

I do not see the point of any qualia if you cannot act on it. — Andrew4Handel

The brain would go on to attend to it and to act on it. I don't know why the brain does it this way, if so.

Pain — Andrew4Handel

Any qualia would be the brain's way of broadcasting a product so that other brain areas could attend to the result.

washing the dishes — schopenhauer1

I use paper plates, but, after a week, I have to take out the trash.

The ancients found themselves here and not there,
Yet to fathom earth, fire, water, and air,
Asking why life was not square, as unfair,
So invented the Bad Role Model’s Care.

They looked unto their calamities,
Their powerful rulers and enemies,
Toward their olden family structure’s way,
Of strict father, and mother with no say.

This Father Notion they based on themselves,
As the best answer that was ever delved:
The demanding Male Mind who was called ‘God’,
An idea for some to this day, well trod.

The Christian concept of reward and punishment
Handed out by an omnipotent, omniscient God,
Is derivative of the family experience,
The child and parent, a conception of our world.

Answers were needed for them to persist:
They extended the Notion with more myths
And legends into lore layered upon,
Inventing all the scrolls of scripture on.

‘God’ brought both fear and comfort in those days,
Making people better through fearsome ways,
Although worse for some—the unchosen tribes,
Protecting their notions, as taught by scribes.

A wasteland of superstition plod,
Instantiates a meaning for ‘God’.
Emotion e’er sets up a firm blockade
When thoughts fired more build a stockade.

Part 2 of a series…

Willing the Will That Wills?

What is the ‘secret’ of human behavior,
One that’s really so much the savior
That we may even keep it from ourselves
Rather than very far into it try to delve?

What is it that should be so confidential,
Classified, and undisclosed—its potential
Kept under wraps, so very contra;
Informally: hush-hush; formally: sub rosa?

Well it’s a revelation of splendor,
One that’s often good to surrender
But is also very well to remember.

Is the will free to will one’s actions otherwise?
Can antecedent conditions be ignored?
Can the self be an unmoved mover?

And what of those tendencies of evo’s realm
That have been imprinted on one’s genetic film—
Those of temperament, role preferences,
Emotions, responses,
And even one’s most revered moral choices—
Those invoices from which one rejoices?

Well these are not choices
At all in and of any free will voices;
In essence, from the basis of one
And from all that one has become

From life’s total behavioral reactions,
There are probabilities of actions—
Some patterns that are very likely
And some patterns highly unlikely.

Is free will a necessary fiction,
A kind of a religion?

No and yes if it’s to provide an essential berth
For one’s morality, meaning, and worth.

So then, with this ‘free will’ become,
One might then succumb
To systematic deception
About one’s causal connection

To that of nature,
A roadblock, a detour
That’s neither possible,
Necessary, nor desirable.

The enemies to these willing motifs
Would be the mythical cultural beliefs
That explain behaviors and feelings
In terms of unknowable forces and beings.

But to protect one’s moral virtues
Should one still believe oneself’s purview
To be as an ultimately responsible agent, lo—

A self creation ex nihilo,
A God-like, miniature first cause who chooses
Without it being determined by one’s own muses?

Well maybe, but nay, really not, nil,
For there is no contra-causal free will.

What the good then of this fix we’re in?

Such it is then that we can gain a measure of peace
Rather than the anger of resentment’s crease
When someone does or says something bad,
Even those close relatives you once had.

Should we imprison for punishment?

For the civil-law-breakers
And all those ungiving takers
We’ll no longer incarcerate
For punishment, being so irate at the jail’s bait,
But so that society will be protected
And that they might emerge corrected

From the swill of a prison mill,
Fulfilled with a new fixed will
That points more toward goodness
Or at least away from badness.

Thus the action
Of metaphysical justification
For a total retribution
Then greatly softens,
A relief from the stress so often,
For it’s no longer induced
From the abuse produced.

Really?

Truly.

Indeed, we become less self-conscious,
More playful, less noxious, more gracious,
Less callow, and less likely to wallow

In the sorrow that is so hollow and shallow
In its excessive self-blame, pride,
Envy, or resentment—now all put aside.

Aren’t we changing the will here as we go?

Yes, but the will adds what we can know.

Then we are learning—
The only hope for larger earnings
From the will’s then wider yearnings!

Yes, we’re overturning.

What if to learning we are averse?

What a curse! Might as well call the hearse.

So then, all in all, though a tempt,
It is that we humans are not exempt
From the laws of physics—as a preempt,

Although we’ve been wired to make the attempt—
A seeming violation by nature
Of its own universal law and structure.

No, it’s not a violation I would call,
For science still does tell us all.
It’s all part of the structure;
One can never cheat Mother Nature.

Hail, then, to the physic.

Well it’s not so bad, is it?—
Although we can never will the will,
Its motives ever our intent to fulfill;
It is that we have no free will.

True, plus we can expand the will’s horizoning

Through our broader learning’s wisening.
Yes, learn today and by tomorrow, say,
The will may have a different sway.

I wouldn’t want it any other way,
For then I wouldn’t be me—my screenplay.

What other ways can we improve the play?

Well, we have patience and delay,
For we don’t have to act right away.

Until a more creative solution appears?

Yes, from any frontier, Shakespeare.

Hear, hear!

Mid-Morning at the OK Club Part 1 — The Smallest Book


(Click to play this GIF? Let me know.)

In this continuing series, posted from the virtual OKCA Building (which anyone else could submit to), I wander about the Club, meet people, mention goings-on, refer to books, display quatrains, give a nod to the season, indulge in Omaresque musings, tie some threads together, and perhaps float on apparent flights of fancy—some of which hopes, wishes, and projections may even be real or at least eventually actualize.



The Rubaiyat Quatrain Poetic Form

The verses beat the same, in measured chime.
Lines one-two set the stage; one-two-four rhyme.
Verse three’s the pivot around which thought turns;
Line four delivers the sting, just in time.

At 10 AM each day, a different Rubaiyat song softly plays throughout the Club a few times, and today’s is a Dylan-like rendition by Michel Montecrossa, called ‘Calm Beauty’, consisting of several Rubaiyat quatrains. Note that a few obscure words have been changed/bettered for singing/understanding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DITr464OOQ

The playing of a song is the signal to Martin at the bar to supply from his Mixology book a special free drink of the day to all comers, served in a gold and silver chalice.

My good friend, Ohow Dryiam, an Omarian scholar from Flunck University, East Carolina, arrives, and comes over, holding out his hand, saying, “You’ll hardly believe what I have right here: the tiniest book ever made, and it's a Rubaiyat, crafted in the very early 1900s!”

I don’t see anything but a ring on his finger. “Don’t tell me it’s so small that it’s invisible, written by lining up atoms, such as IBM did with its logo, in 1989?”

“No, they couldn’t do that way back then. It took seven months to make. Look closer.”

I think your intuitions are accurate in the larger sense - i.e. absolute zero - which would be the absence of all motion - has been proven to be theoretically unreachable fairly recently. — Pantagruel

Yes, as in a post I put an article saying it would take forever, which means never.

My list of impossibles: Stillness, Beginning, End, Infinite, Nothing, Free Will, He, and maybe Forever.

So therefore how would you know they existed in the absence of religion? — Maureen

One might likely suppose that the Earth got made by a larger version of us, since we make smaller things.

The first of a series, although rather basic…

The Other Shoe Drops

Determinism doesn’t sit well, at first;
Its flavor does not quench the thirst,
For then it seems we but do as we must,
But, we’ll see a way that in this we’ll trust.

We wish that our thoughts reflect us today,
Our leanings, for it could be no other way.
To know, let us turn to the ‘random’ say
To see whatever could make its day.

Shifting to this other, neglected foot,
What could make the ‘random’ take root?
It would have no cause beneath to explain
The events, they becoming of the insane.

We could pretend, imitating air-heads,
Posting nonsense on purpose in the threads,
But that then we meant to do this way,
Too, so, such a ‘random’ holds not much sway.

Seems less problem of a determined Nature
Than the same in our individual nature,
But, sense isn’t made from ‘random’ direction
That relies on naught beneath its conception.

Would we wish it to be any other way?
Doing any old thing of chance that may?

The ‘random’ foot then walks but here and there,
Not getting anywhere, born from nowhere.
The unrooted tree lives magically, unfathomed.
Is not then ‘randomness’ but a fun phantom?

The opposite of determined is undetermined,
The scarier ghost that’s never-minded.

How else would any human have been aware of its presence? — Maureen

As you say, God cannot be witnessed, so, no one is aware even now, in any way that can be proved; so, then, even religions say that in lieu of fact, there is but 'faith' that the unknown unshowable intangible is God.

Remember that the most often asked question is something like "Where did everything come from?".

ae — thewonder

Maybe 'AE' for God, but 'ae' elsewhere is some kind of a diphthong thing or something.

We can't really show invisible realms being so or not so. This does, though, show that no one can ever be blamed for not accepting the invisible realm.

This would indicate that they in fact only exist as a result of their religions. — Maureen

The particular God definition, as a Christian-type God, didn't exist before it was defined, but that type of God might well exist before anyone defines Him.

How should you approach traditionalism in general? — thewonder

Live and let live, and even more so, if that's possible, because they have to do it, which fixed will understanding all the more lessons any possible aggravations. Even seek out other nationalities for their uniqueness.