I don’t need to know the whole truth in order to act on some truth. The notion that I can’t do anything until I know everything is a myth. I don’t need to know how the whole journey will play out in order to take the first step. Many of us become paralyzed against acting […]
Continue reading →Let’s face it. We cannot know everything. There are limits to what we can understand. I suspect that some of you reading this already disagree with what I have written so far. Some of you think so highly of human ability and human potential that you are apt to believe that actually, we really can know […]
Continue reading →One way to think of God is as a ruler, a decider, some sort of higher being that we can appeal to and who makes decisions that affect us. This God performs miracles or causes tragedies, punishes people and rewards people. This is the God of “God damn!” Some people feel especially close to this […]
Continue reading →We love conspiracy theories for three reasons. One, we just can’t stand it when we can’t understand something. So we make up explanations. When we can’t understand why something is the way it is or how things are connected, conspiracy theories fill the gaps. And if the theory is unprovable that is far less important […]
Continue reading →Just because “I don’t see how that could happen” does not mean it does not happen. Just because I don’t see it, or get it, doesn’t mean it’s not true. Truth is happening out there whether we see it or understand it or not. Rather than the conventional view that “truth is what I know […]
Continue reading →My Theory of Relative Understanding is a hypothesis. It is an idea seeking proof, or disproof. Yet it seems to me that it has not been disproven yet. And if the hypothesis is true, or even partly true, there are some pretty wild implications. The hypothesis challenges some assumptions. For one thing, there is a lot […]
Continue reading →If I believe that something is true — that one thing is true in the face of other things that are false or that one thing is right and other things are wrong -– when that truth becomes threatened I want to defend it. If I develop a specific expectation of how something will be […]
Continue reading →There is no such thing as absolute truth. Truth is not something that is or isn’t. Rather, there are degrees of truth. Not only that, there are multiple truths. And there are infinite multiple degrees of infinite multiple truths. My truest truth is what I know best; what I most understand. These are things that […]
Continue reading →Caution. Wild ideas ahead. The farther down the page, the wilder they get. By “pace of time” I mean how fast time seems to be passing. It is widely presumed that the pace of time is a universal constant; that time marches along at a constant pace from the beginning of time to the distant […]
Continue reading →For many people meditation brings new understanding. Some even say it brings enlightenment. Meditation means different things to different people but to me it means trying to be still and quiet and empty the mind. It is an attempt to be free from distractions. It is a focusing inward, on one’s breathing for instance. You […]
Continue reading →Caution. Ideas under construction. Participation encouraged. Short Version Understand before you decide. If you don’t know much, don’t do much. Medium Version For long term and widespread good, the impact of a decision should not exceed the amount of understanding on which it is based. Rule out alternatives where understanding is relatively low and potential impact […]
Continue reading →Caution. Ideas under construction. Participation encouraged. Does time move in one direction, like and arrow? I don’t think so. Well, I certainly don’t know so. How would I know? Most people believe that time flows in a single direction from past to future and we are all carried along in parallel fashion. And some things happened […]
Continue reading →There are things I know, things I understand, and things I believe. Things I know are things that I know to be true, that I can prove or that have been proven to me. These are scientific facts. They can either be replicated at full scale before my very eyes, replicated at different scale (well […]
Continue reading →Caution. Ideas under construction. Participation encouraged. We understand best those things that are closest to us and those things that are in scale with us. The first part of my Theory of Relative Understanding is that understanding is relative to proximity in space and time, and it’s relative to proximity in scale. In other words, […]
Continue reading →To understand something, anything, two things need to happen. I need to be able to detect some sort of data coming from the thing and I need to be able to analyze that data. In terms of detection, most humans have five senses. We can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Basically all information that […]
Continue reading →Human beings love to make things big and do things big. The bigger the better. Especially boys and men. Playing dolls with my sister on the floor with a cardboard doll house: Her: “You be the dad and I’ll be the mom. Let’s cook dinner for the kids.” Me: “Wait. First let’s make the kitchen […]
Continue reading →Caution. Ideas under construction. Participation encouraged. The pace of time is not a constant, but a variable. The pace of time does not carry the universe along at a constant cadence heard the same way by all living things. I have argued elsewhere at this website that the pace of time, like all things, is […]
Continue reading →Caution. Ideas under construction. Participation encouraged. Home Units are used to discern distance from the point of view of the measurer. Using Home Units reminds us that how time and space look and how far away things seem is always relative to the scale of the measurer. The concept of Home Units is something I […]
Continue reading →Ultimately, it’s very difficult to prove that anything is absolutely true. So ultimately, what I believe comes down to a choice that I make. Do I decide things based on logic or on intuition? Do I go by what I think or how I feel? Do I fall back on scientific proof or on religious […]
Continue reading →Caution. Ideas under construction. Participation encouraged. The pace of time, the speed at which things seem to happen, the rate at which time passes, is not a constant but differs among all things. The traditional view is that time passes at a constant speed and that the number of “events” varies. That is, from 5am […]
Continue reading →I play God whenever I impact some one or some thing that they don’t understand. Like the spider and her nest in the woodpile that I move. Or the critters in my barn when I turn on and off the lights. Or the bugs in my yard when I mow the lawn. Or the bacteria […]
Continue reading →Actually, I am trying to give new meaning to the word “truth” and the word “true.” Look up the words and you find that, basically, “truth” means being in accord with fact or reality. And something is “true” if it lines up with other things thought to be true: if it lines up with facts, if it lines up […]
Continue reading →I dedicated my first book to my parents and my second book to my older daughter. This website is not a book but it’s a pretty significant piece of work that I would like to dedicate to my younger daughter. For Sara. The ocean within you, laughing and smiling with your friends, loving life, reflecting […]
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