Sunday, October 25, 2009

War is not a sports event.

War is not a sports event.

The human species proudly differentiates itself by its consciousness, values, morality, choices. How then explain brutality, and war?

Creating humanitarian principles to guide behavior towards each other as part of the internationally accepted Rules of War has a starting place that accepts war as a given. That false start leads to destruction of persons and property and worst, of kindness. War is an insufficient justification for managing an overload of ambition.

A search for simmer

Buddhism is about emptying the mind and having an awareness of now.

The Dalai Lama says emptiness is not vacuum, nothingness, but rather that nothing is fixed, there is a lack of form, motion, change, manifesting.

Physics states that observation removes choice by fixing a result, that observation fixes what is observed, makes possibility actual. Thus observation slows time. We know how elastic our perception of time is. We encapsulate this idea in “a watched pot never boils.”

So if the pace of human activity is speeding up, as it seems, thinking, doing, faster, faster, moving, ... while Buddhism spreads it’s awareness, slowing, slowing, and fixing/manifesting ... ?

The pot boils over? The bubbling stops?

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Tech Hubris

The health care industry is excited about electronics, electronic health records, savings, coordination. They’ve decided to use robot phone calls to customers and patients. I am expectant when the phone rings, between rings wondering who might be calling, kindly reaching out to me. When I hear the robot, instant rage covers my disappointment. I scheme about how to turn off the phone, turn off the ring, never ever answer, never ever hope.

I use TiVo to record chosen television programs, and watch a day or several days later. The first few minutes of a program I just watched was an emergency alert interruption, local flood evacuations, site of shelters, ... But it had no date, only times, evacuate now it commanded in a red trailer and command voice. Do you think there is no message developer at the National Weather Service who thinks that some of the audience time shifts?

As I experience each of these technology innovations, I feel less and less an individual, more a bit in a marketing audience.