Sacrifice

Humans used to sacrifice themselves, animals, blood, … to appease the many Gods. Now we sacrifice to medicine, appease with unpleasant medical procedures on the altar of health.

Why humans believe human life is sacred

Humans are self-organizing networks which have selected for valuing life. Today we use medical technology to ensure slow death, but human decay so challenges the rush for life that we have moved death to hide in institutions or in hospices.

Some self-organizing systems become repetitive. A few continue to iterate and change. Human development has selected for components which are drawn to the next and the new and to more. Along the way our genes have selected, over and over, for the survival of an adaptation. The prototypes that don't strongly value survival don't survive. At the same time human consciousness wrapped itself around the value of survival and more-ness and added stories and myths to ensure that more life was the dominant adaptation. So we end up with encoding for life and a story that human life is sacred. And we ennoble suffering, promising rewards after.

Some other reality might produce some other value system – perhaps the spiritual consciousness grew and 'mind meld' was the global value .

But here, now, life is considered sacred because we have selected for genes that are drawn to life and wrapped that process in a story. It's very fundamental and very circular and no reason not to choose to die a good autonomous death.

Constants

The math constants would be elegant if the nomenclature were apt. The irregularities say to me that there is a better fit than the base ten system and binary logic. Constants like pi and I and e and lots more appear because it is the very balance of all the rules and exceptions that have developed into an environment that sustains the consciousness that allows us to look at these patterns. Other values, other worlds. Another pattern system, perhaps a more elegant pattern.  

Three quarters of my money and a quarter of my time is spent on sustenance – shelter, food, and health; stretches and laundry and meals. What's the point?

US end of life suggestion - one terminal drug dose per person

Every US citizen gets an electronic prescription for a terminal drug dose, one time only (associate with SSN; maybe have IRS track).

Maybe one has to be over some age to fill it.  It's OK to sell it (black market) but if one does, one then only has access to 'ordinary' health care.  (One round of chemo, one hip replacement, ... )  No exceptions at all for second round of prescription.  Indeed some hardship.  And yes, risk that teens could access these.  Of course risk that people incompetent to choose would indeed choose.  Yes, subject to abuse, influence.  But overall, puts choice in the hands of the individual with way less risk and cost than current situation.  Very American.  Very autonomous.  Completely simple.

On models of personality typing

On models of personality typing

In a self-organizing system with just a few rules, natural clusters will form and cohere. These convergences move only within their own borders, though one needs to be outside the border to recognize that. These sets can be enneagram types, astrological signs, DSM diagnoses, … . There will be many likenesses and unique differences and the likenesses will enable people to fit themselves into a comfortable pattern. Most people will place in the background the parts of themselves which don't quite fit. And then the model becomes,if not Truth, a generally accepted option for understanding each other.

For the idea to hold, it isn't necessary to have any god or supernatural belief, beyond accepting self-organizing ... seeing the likeness creates the patterns and then adopting the pattern finds more likeness, reinforcing over and over, enlarging and pruning, until a typology is built and naming rights are claimed for the construct, and the typology is taught and made complex.

See, for instance, Game of Life Cellular Automata, Andrew Adamatzky, 2010 for discussions of cellular automata, boundaries, convergence, and a lot of the convergences (glider, cross, … ) and applications.

Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz is changing. From the left-most US city, we are moving towards bigness, dealing with a smaller economy by setting hungry policies for the dollars of others and withdrawing support for the values of innovation, creativity, smallness, and volunteering. By implementing the plans of the Community Programs Committee, we will be concentrating power in large professionalized service delivery agencies.

We are not learning lessons from the national failures.

I'm discouraged by the short-sighted survival mode that the funding guidelines committee has approved especially here where there is so much involvement in spirituality and holism and ecology.

When pragmatism trumps the values of community and connection to create a professionalized safety net, the quality of life here will degrade.

An example of the kind of exclusion is in the city's new health focus area where the old-fashioned physical and mental health silos prejudices against people who experience moods swings, fear, voices and visions by segregating mental health from physical health. A result of this segregation has been, on average, 15 years of potential life lost.

By assuming emotional well being is somehow separate from diet and exercise and cancer, separating things we can touch prejudices against feelings and fears. Just consider all the effort to get people to go for help which they are ashamed of wanting, ashamed because of the selfishness behind the carve out, carved out to get separate funding by separating out the people who would be helped.