Future Life Resonances

So this blog has a label "future life resonances". To recap, "future life resonances" is a spin-off of "past life resonances", whereby under some flaky theory of reincarnation, we might suspect that aspects of our current lives and beings are the results, or resonances, of past lives by force of karma.

Karma, I very unscientifically propose, being an aspect of a natural energy substrate of the universe that is as unknown as the scientifically proposed dark energy. The form this natural energy substrate has taken with biological beings on this planet may be what we think of as consciousness or awareness. It's what enables all living beings to interact with our environment, from bacteria to human beings.

In the cycle of death and rebirth as envisioned by people who believe in reincarnation, karmic impressions are able to be transferred from one lifetime to future lifetimes. It's not scientifically testable. It is attested to by masters of various esoteric traditions. For laypeople, it's only intuitive in the most flaky way possible. "Intuitive in the most flaky way possible" is maybe a proper definition of "faith".

But whereas past life resonances look at our current lives and habits to think about what we might have been or what issues we might have dealt with in previous lives, future life resonances look at our current lives to imagine or project what or where we might be reincarnated in future lives.

Oh, and as far as I know, it's my creation. I didn't read or hear about it from anyone else, and it only occurred to me in relation to this Korea thing.

My implication is that my inexplicable attraction to South Korea so late in this life, and assuming this is late in my life (anyway it's later in my life), may be an indication that I'm angling towards a rebirth in South Korea, whether by choice or by force of karma.

I've had plenty of exposure to South Korean culture and people before, but never until now did it become a near obsessive focus. As early as college I had a Korean roommate for a semester, Myung Soo, and looking back at the people from whom I learned the most from college, he was one of them.

He had come to the U.S. when he was about 10 years old. He was very patriotic and spearheaded a Korean student movement to get Korea included in Oberlin's East Asian Studies department, which at the time only included Japan and China (I know, wtf?).

To the still marginal extent Korean studies are now included at Oberlin is because of his efforts and the stink that he raised. I know because I was at those meetings (drunk, if I remember correctly) with the all-white East Asian Studies faculty (I know, wtf?!) who tried to defend their hegemony.

How can you have an "East Asian" Studies department and not include Korea? Look at a map! They argued that most people were only interested in Japan and China, but that was probably more an expression that they, the all-white fetishizing faculty, were only interested in Japan and China. In the end, I think they realized they had to make more of an effort to promote Korean studies as well.

He was the kind of person who could change people's lives and he did. And he transformed himself, too. Initially, I was very unimpressed by him. He was very materialistic and superficial when I first met him, and I witnessed his changes over the years and after college he went back to L.A. and became a labor organizer. Far more impressive than anything I've done since college.

And, like all Koreans I've met, he was Christian. He actually turned my prejudice against Christianity around to realize all Christians weren't like mainstream white Americans, who I found to be frightening, hypocritical, racist bigots, spewing words of intolerance, hate and evil in God's name, while believing themselves to be righteous and godly.

My exposure to Christians had me thinking that it made sense to me that if Satan were to wage war against God, the most effective strategy would be to subvert and assume the word of God to spread evil, and Christianity was the very language of hate, intolerance and evil, while convincing the weak minded they were agents of God and good.

Myung Soo felled me on my ass just by saying, "Do you think I'm like that?". I hadn't thought of him as Christian, but he forced me to and to tear down that blanket view of Christians.

Still, nothing in my experience with him stirred any interest in Korea or Korean culture. For me at that time, it was all about Japan, a possible past life resonance. Aside from Myung Soo, I continued to have exposure to Korean culture and nothing about Korea resonated.

I met plenty of Korean/Korean Americans after moving to the Bay Area. Among them, I had a Korean American roommate who had graduated from Brown University and knew my brother ("You're Rob Li's brother?!", she said) and nothing Korean was inspired. I had a Korean co-worker who, when she called me inter-office, I would answer the phone in Korean (learned that from Myung Soo), and she swore my pronunciation was perfect.

Nothing until I came to Taiwan in 2006 and had a Korean classmate who introduced me to K-pop after I asked her to make me a mix CD of music she liked.

WordsCharactersReading time

The Root of All Evil - The God Delusion

I wouldn't say the views in this documentary reflect my own, but it's worth the watch for anyone striving for a balanced interest in the human condition and the role of humanistic rationality in relation towards religion, dogmatic religion, and how its far-reaching influence has become a scourge of humankind.

Richard Dawkins is an atheist, and after watching this, I think it's fair to call him a fundamentalist atheist. His language is virulent and his attitude unforgiving and not totally unlike religious fundamentalists. Even though I generally agree with his content, I'm not really comfortable with his form.

Even fundamentalist atheism can start looking scary in this documentary.

Fundamentalism by nature breeds intolerance. Even though fundamentalist atheism is relatively benign compared to the other kinds of religious fundamentalism that plague our existences, there's still a gnawing darkness that if these views were the dominant hegemony, the intolerance would still lead to persecution and violence. That, I think, is the legacy, manifest or not, of any fundamentalism.

I'm glad that Richard Dawkins targets religion based on evidence rather than spirituality in general. If a scientific atheist attacked spirituality, he or she would be attacking something they don't know and have no evidence for or against.

Science makes no claim about understanding spirituality or defining it. Spirituality is not in the realm of scientific inquiry, therefore a scientific attack on spirituality itself would be invalid, unscientific and likely dogmatic. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, "Absence of evidence (of god) is not evidence of absence (of god)".

Religion, on the other hand, provides plenty of evidence of its nature through human behavior and history. It is a human phenomena, and is reasonably subject to a science-like analysis and scrutiny. It's not hard science; no laws can be derived from Dawkin's inquiry. But he can rationally point to characteristics and concrete results of religion, and argue against its validity or value to humanity.

And I think what he portrays has a point. Religions, or aspects of religions manipulated in an aggressive, intolerant and dogmatic way, can rain untold suffering upon innocents who the general idea of religion are meant to protect.

If you're just trying to be good and make an honest living, that's no defense against religious fervor if something you do offends their religious sensibility. ( <-- I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, -ed.)

Einstein was skeptical about quantum mechanics to his death. He didn't refute it or describe it as bad physics; the mathematics were meticulous and experimentally proven accurate. But he felt they were incomplete.

Quantum mechanics was very good at what it was describing, but it was limited. Its results were so bizarre and counter-intuitive that something must have been missing in its description of reality. On the other hand, Einstein must have realized that leveling such a description of quantum mechanics opened up his theories of relativity to the same accusation.

If he couldn't refute quantum mechanics, then his theories of relativity were also incomplete and did not truly or fully describe reality. And that, I suppose, is why he pursued a theory of everything, merging quantum mechanics and relativity to his death.

My thinking and my bias is that even if a theory of everything is reached, perhaps the ultimate triumph of scientific process and theory, I still look at science with Einstein's own suspicious eye. It's very good at what it's describing, but it is successful because it limits itself.

Quantum mechanics works fine in the atomic realm, and as long as it limits itself to the realm of the very small, it's primo. Same with relativity; as long as it limits itself to the realm of the very large, the science is irrefutable.

But to me, I wonder if this explaining the realm of the very small and the realm of the very large, even if explained in a unified theory, explains the whole of reality. It might still do what it does very well because it limits itself. Physics describes the physical world, but it assumes the physical world is all there is.

And there's plenty of stuff in the basic existential human experience to suggest that assuming the physical world is all there is is fundamentally delusional, incomplete and arguably unsatisfying.

Carl Sagan: You Are Here (Pale Blue Dot)

Carl Sagan on the opening image, taken by NASA using the Voyager probe at his request:  

The spacecraft was a long way from home. I thought it might be a good idea just after Saturn to have them take one last glance homeward. 

From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would just be a point of light, a lonely pixel, hardly distinguishable from the many other points of light Voyager would see – nearby planets, far-off suns. 

But precisely because of the obscurity of our world, thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having. It had been well-understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast encompassing cosmos. But no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

I know I'm no longer a part of this world. I don't occupy the same world as mostly everyone else does, I shouldn't wonder. No doubt there are others like me, searching, striving, wondering. Failing even, which I don't posit as a bad thing. I readily admit it, I'm a failure in many things. It's just not necessarily a bad thing.

But the vast majority of people are a part of the nominal world of physical phenomena, accepting it for what it appears to be.

I know I have trouble getting past that, too. I sense and experience reality and the world just as everyone else does, but I have that requisite doubt that what I'm perceiving isn't all there is to it and I have to attack that doubt head-on to try to figure out what my truth is about it.

So I read. My current reads are spread amongst libraries and bookstores.

Alice Sebold's (author of "The Lovely Bones") "Lucky" is a current read. It's her autobiographical account in which she writes in painful and gruesome detail about how she was raped, beaten and degraded as a first year college student and the ensuing events that led to her rapist's arrest and conviction.

Mind you, personally "rape" is my most hated word in the English language. I don't know why, it always has been. In any catalog of  "worsts" in the human experience, rape has always been an item that I've found particularly egregious and disgusting.

I'm not sure how it ties into my inquiry. Perhaps it's the subjective intensity by which we feel the human experience in the worst way possible. Similar to my fascination of high altitude climbers and their sick obsession with a basically suicidal sport. And I'm not criticizing it. I thoroughly understand it and am intrigued by it.

I now regard Alice Sebold as one of my life heroes. I don't know why. Maybe in a similar way as I consider Stevie Ray Vaughan as one of my guitar heroes even though I don't think of myself as a guitarist in any way. Her bravery in handling the aftermath of her rape stands for itself, but she didn't get through it unscathed.

She graduated from college, endured the rape and alienation by one of her closest friends and confidantes, and subsequently went through hard times of falling apart that I'll never know. And most disturbing in "Lucky" is her description and realization of having post-traumatic stress disorder.

I self-diagnose and know how I consider my feelings about myself and my experience, but when they match up perfectly with someone who genuinely has PTSD, it just makes me realize what a wuss I am. What trauma have I experienced? None. I'm no survivor of anything.

Still, discovering Alice Sebold's personal story and realizing the type of psyche from which a twisted and disturbing, yet lovely, work like "The Lovely Bones" can emerge made me feel somewhat connected. When you experience that kind of trauma, you no longer live in the same world that most everyone else seems to.

I'm also reading "Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene, which is about scientifically accepted phenomena of things that are completely beyond human subjective experience, such as quantum mechanics and cosmological space-time theory and sub-atomic entanglement.

A lot of weird shit is described in what science is finding about the nature of reality, but what strikes me is about the effort to describe reality using our limited observational ability. As human beings, as biological products of the universe, our perception and observational ability is a product of evolution on this planet. i.e., for this perceptional reality.

As humans, we arrogantly believe we can understand the big picture, the whole enchilada. But really all we can really understand is what is observationally perceivable, and our perceptions are limited (granted human nature strives beyond our limitations to boldly probe natures of reality we weren't biologically meant to understand).

A very simple example is that we only perceive electromagnetic radiation in a limited range – mostly visible light. We need instruments to perceive electromagnetic radiation beyond that limited range. Our limit is natural. Perceiving what we call visible light is a product of evolution. We don't need to see ultraviolet or infrared electromagnetic radiation to survive.

On other worlds and other environments, it might benefit other biological creatures to perceive in those other ranges, and perhaps what we perceive as plainly visible in visible light, is imperceptible to them.

We have sound perception, but the sound spectrum is greater than what our facilities are equipped for. But we hear according to what is beneficial to us. Smell, touch, taste? These are just tools that make our environment navigable. But change the environment, and the tools will change, as will the general perception of reality.

The whole of reality is actually the entire range of everything, beyond our senses and include senses that we haven't even developed because of our limited environment on this planet, and we have no idea what those are!

Could there conceivably be an environment or a world where what we categorize or even deride as spiritual perceptions are requisite to survive? For us on this planet, the question ends right there. I don't think we can even conceive of it.

And, of course, death is foremost among my readings; meditations on death and the biological beings that we are, destined to die.

One book I've been reading in the bookstores is How We Die by Sherwin Nuland. Another is The Thing About Life is that One Day You'll be Dead by David Shields. Straight shooters of books about our biological reality.

How We Die is written by an M.D., a cardiologist like my brother and uncle, and his book is more about the biological process of dying. Describing what is happening to and in our bodies when we experience external forces that are bringing our lives to an end in various ways.

The Thing About Life is more philosophical and uses general scientifically observed facts and data about aging and the life cycle for readers to think about the life and aging process, which always culminates in death.

Lastly, I mentioned the book Reading Judas before, but it disappeared from the bookstore shelves before I finished it. Well, it reappeared.

Its relevance to my inquiry is that one of the issues that had disparate views and divided the early Jesus movement was sacrifice and death under the reality back then of Roman persecution; namely torture and eventual execution, either by crucifiction or games at the Coliseum.

They were pondering and meditating on death in a very deep and real way, because just by being followers of Jesus they were under threat of Roman horrors. The meaning of Jesus's death was a central concern among them.

One side promoted being martyrs and encouraged followers to bravely and willingly meet their end as sacrifices. Mind you, if you read the book, it shouldn't be lost that this attitude is the exact same attitude that current day Muslim extremists and militants hold. I can imagine those early Christians who held this view yelling, "Allahhu akbar" as they were condemned!

The argument in Reading Judas is that the opposing side, the side that was suppressed for 1700 years, was that this attitude was completely counter the teachings of Jesus. Thinking oneself as a willing sacrifice was primitive and vulgar. Jesus preached love and rebelled against the Roman Empire by refusing the practice of sacrifice.

And it won't happen, but it theoretically makes logical sense that Christians could use the Gospel of Judas to argue against Muslim suicide bombers, saying that's not what Islam is about. It won't happen because the Gospel of Judas is not canon, and it would be hypocritical because the attitude of Muslim suicide bombers is not much different from the early Christians martyrs who are canon.

And to wrap this all up, after trying to gain perspective on scientific observation despite our observational limits, which is a result of evolution, I have to admit that spirituality is also beyond our biological observational limits.

We don't need spirituality to survive, evolutionarily speaking. So what am I doing? What are we doing? Perhaps basically the same as cosmologists and astrophysicists – trying to describe reality.

What seriously disappointed me about Reading Judas was the authors' final stance that the Christian canon need not be challenged to be revised because the (Nicene) canon has been counseling and inspiring Christians for 1700 years.

This thoroughly goes against what they uncovered in their analysis that if the teaching and preaching of the canon is about a wrong God, it should be challenged. If Christians are being counseled or inspired by a doctrine counter to what Jesus taught, it should be challenged. They just roll over to the status quo.

WordsCharactersReading time

I mentioned earlier about lecturing my parents on not worrying what their children were doing and butting in and nagging, which just creates aggravation for everyone. Whether they were good parents or bad parents is a matter of opinion, but their job is over. We're all adults now, responsible for our own decisions, and unless they could offer wisdom and not just nagging, we're likely not going to listen to them.

OK, I didn't mention anything about wisdom, as I know they have none to give. I told them to focus on their own happiness and do the things they want and enjoy, and truly enjoy them without getting worked up about what they perceive their children might be doing wrong.

At the time, I thought I may have gotten through to them. I thought maybe they had a moment of, "you know? that's right, that makes sense". But upon reflection a few weeks hence, I realize that's totally against character. The far more likely scenario is that they thought what I've thought about them my entire life. Which is, "who are these people and where did they come from?".

It's far more likely that they listened to me with incredulity, realizing they have no idea who this person is or the nonsense they were hearing. "Happiness? Just do what we enjoy? Who is this person, where did he come from?" People who can't give wisdom will also not hear it.

Their identity lies in part in controlling the complete micro situation around them. Enjoy the aurora borealis? Enjoy traveling to the pyramids in Egypt or Machu Picchu or the Antarctica? They don't do those things because they enjoy the experience and being fascinated by the macro wonders of the world. They do those things because it's a measure of their material success in life.

They travel the world on package tours, but I'm convinced they never feel awe or grandeur at what the world presents. They don't reflect on the world system the Egyptians created or the extreme environment of Antarctica or the grandeur of the civilization that built Machu Picchu which was wiped out by European blood-lust and greed (I know, I know, that civilization may have had its own blood-lust and greed. Who knows?).

I'm sure they don't contemplate that the auroras exist as a result of the magnetosphere protecting our planet from solar radiation, without which life on earth as we know it could not even exist. Instead, they laugh at the Muslims praying five times a day towards Mecca with their butts pointing high in the air.

What they really enjoy is feeling they have a measure of control over their lives, which is an illusion they constantly try to maintain. When I tell them to just be happy, it's the same as telling them to lose that control. And that's just absurd.

This makes far more sense.

WordsCharactersReading time