LUD disease

There's talk these days of a growing anti-religious movement. They make some strong arguments. There are some truly horrific events that have occured in the name of someone's god. However, I don't wholeheartedly agree with them. While anti-religious activists fight a noble fight, I find that they are often guilty of the same sin that fundamentalist christians are.

I call this it Loyalty to Unverified Data, or LUD disease. The problem isn't so much that people believe in the stories their parents told them or that they look down on people who don't believe the way they do. These are merely symptoms of a much deeper problem. The real issue has to do with the way we look at knowledge, and the way we choose our beliefs. We feel an overwhelming need to be right, and our brains will even fool us into believing that we are, even when we're not. Once we decide that something is right, we will fight with every ounce of strength to defend it, to uphold it, and to push it on others.

The reason I disagree with the anti-religious movement is that LUD disease applies to so much more than just religion . If all religion vanished tomorrow morning, would gays and homophobic hill billies join hands and forgive one another? Would the KKK disband and start volunteering at inner city schools? Would upper middle class middle aged men quit buying Hummers and start buying twisty light bulbs? Of course not. In each of those examples, the real problem is how attached people are to the stupid things they believe.

I am not an atheist. If I were, I'd be undermining my entire argument. I really don't have enough data to make a judgement call one way or the other. I hope I find out one day, but as of this blog post, I just don't have any idea. Frankly, I think that either belief, that there is a god or is not one, is just as good.

I'm certainly not saying that everything you believe needs to be proven in a laboratory or at a philosophical round table. I don't have much evidence that my method for taking a piss is the most efficient or effective. What I am saying, is that if I find a better way to pee, then I'm going to go with it. I believe in and fight for the case of science, but who knows, maybe some day we'll discover and even better system of distilling facts, and if we do, I'm not going to fight to uphold the weaker system.

Think about that way that republicans make their arguments. They don't speak in terms of data and logic. They speak passionately about what they know to be true, even though they really can't really back it up with any facts. It's a dangerous way to think, and it's contagious too. When you passionately fight for something that you haven't really ever considered might be wrong, you might be leading others down your own misguided path.

For example: The abortion issue. We know that abortion is bad. No one is suggesting that it's going to make everyone happy. But if you attach yourself to that one fact and never allow your brain room to consider all the complicated factors involved, then you'll just fail to see that there is a real problem that's a lot worse than dead fetuses. When you keep that fetus alive, chances are he will grow up to be the kind of person republicans have nightmares about. Welfare, prison, and all the other tax drainers that are put into place to take care of the people who grow up without enough money or resources.

Perhaps instead of convincing people not to have abortions, you could teach about safe sex practices. But wait, that would violate another pointless belief that is held onto by people who don't know any better (and refuse to learn more about).

What is it in us that makes admitting that we're wrong, and that we can improve, such a repulsive thought? What can we do to overcome LUD disease? Well, we can start by taking a look at what we believe. We can ask ourselves what we know with certainty, and then question it. We can look at the things we're pretty sure about, and see if we can look deeper and find certainty in it. We can explore the things we are unsure about, and find a better way. Most of all, every time we find a fact that stands out above all others, we can put it in our pocket, and keep it there for as long as we don't find a better fact. We show it to others and fight for it with the same fire and intensity that a hunter cries about gun control, and a creationist asserts the need for teaching the bible in school. And when we do find another, better fact, and we realize we've been wrong, we stand up, like men, and admit our mistake. And then we fight with the same passion with which we fought for our previous mistake.

Spirituality

I woke up from a bad dream yesterday morning. It put me in a bad mood. I woke up depressed and anxious. Pondera is great for blipping out little in-the-moment emotions, but the deeply rooted ones are a little harder to penetrate.

I remember being spiritual years ago. I've sought spirituality for a long time, though not really as much since I started following the path of science and reason. Still, I remembered the feeling that I would get in spiritual situations. Christians often refer to it as 'feeling the holy spirit'. I believe that every religion has their own version of that state of mind.

By the definition of pondera, if you can feel something through religious experience, then you should be able to reproduce it with pondera. So I wanted to give it a try, and see if I could reproduce those spiritual feelings of peace and comfort. The problem is that pondera is controlling one's state of belief, and if I refuse to believe in things unverified, then how am I to reproduce feelings that were generated by believing in something unverified?

The answer was simply believing in myself. I could focus on the fact that any mental state that I'd reached before was possible with a simple switch in state of mind. Also, I could simply believe in my own ability to be peaceful, and happy, and all those things that you feel when you're 'in the presence of jesus'.

Again, I hope I'm not offending anyone with this. I'm not saying anything about god or jesus, I'm only exploring our own limits as humans.

Focus pt 2, and Emotional Mastery

I've done some experimenting with focus now. One problem that is easily encountered with pondera is making sure we have the right beliefs. Here's what I mean. I'm not sure where I got this idea, but I had some internal thought that sensations in my head represented things happening in my mind. For instance, if there was a tightness in my sinuses, it somehow echoed some mental activity. Once I actually think about it, I realize that there's really no reason to believe that, but before I thought about it, it just seemed like a normal thing to believe. The obvious problem is that I thought I could guage my mental effectiveness with the sensations in my head.

This leaves us with the same problem as before: How do we quantify the mind? I have had some success in achieving a state of mind I find desirable, and using pondera to keep it. Unfortunately, it's easy to forget I'm doing it and when it's not in the forefront of your mind, it can easily get away.

There were some interesting goings on today. While I'm still playing with focus, my emotions are now comfortably in control. Verification came today in three events. The first was a fight with my girlfriend. I don't want to talk about the details fo the fight, but what's important is that the entire time I was in complete emotional control. I never got angry, or hurt, or prideful. To be clear, there was still a fight. Being free of negative emotion doesn't mean that you can't still be passionate. I still had some very important points to get accross. The difference was that I didn't say things I didn't mean. I didn't say things out of emotion. I could choose every word with logic, and as a result, the fight ended up turning into a positive experience for both of us.

The second event was on the drive home from Denver. a lane of traffic had been closed off and we had to sit through traffic for about a half hour. In this situation, it is normally very very difficult to keep my temper. Using pondera, it was quite easy.

The third event happened a few miles from home. There was a sudden torrential downpour. Visibility was close to zero, the roads were flooding, and hail was pelting the roof. Normally this situation would be not only stressful, but also quite scary. Using pondera, I stayed entirely calm, altert, and focus, and I was able to get the car home safely

Controlling emotion has become somewhat second nature to me now.

One last thing - I've been a little discouraged in my physical training. I started with weight lifting, and while pondera does help to reach your limit, it's difficult to convince your mind that you are in equilibrium when your muscles are failing. Today, I tried jogging. This was much more effetcive. Now, if you're less out of shape than I am, then this won't sound impressive, but I was able to run for 5 minutes without the slightest discomfort. I stopped after that because of time restrictions. Much of the success of pondera on a given action seems to be the action's sustainability. Clearly, running is a more sustainable action that lifting.

Focus

I've been experimenting thus far emotions and physical strength. I'd like now to experiment on one of the most crippling problems in my life - my ability to focus. Anyone who knows me personally can tell you that I have a bad case of A.D.D. I've already used pondera to fix my road rage and my posture problems; I wonder if I can use it to fix my concentration problems as well.

It seems to be a different kind of thing entirely. Both emotions and physical strain are things that can be consciously sensed and quantified. Focus, to me at least, seems a little more abstract. What am I tuning out?

I guess I know how to actually focus on something, so maybe what I'm tuning out is anything that distracts, and the overall discomfort that comes along with staying focused on one thing for too long. I will give this a try today and report my results tomorrow.

A Word of Warning

One must take great care when exploring pondera. if you've read the second post, and you understand how it is achieved, then you might see that it can become quite easy to believe in things that aren't real. This is, after all, almost what pondera is - controlling your state of belief. What is easy to do is to observe something amazing that you've never seen before, and then try to explain it with whatever makes sense at the time. I would venture that the world's religions and cults started exactly this way.

While believing in dramatic things may produce more dramatic effects, I don't believe it is healthy. These are very powerful mental forces that we're dealing with here, and it's important that we stay gounded in reality, and even in science.

Physical, continued

I've noticed lately, about bodily control, that there are two basic realms. Controlling the body is always more difficult than controlling the emotions, but when it comes to the body, there are actions that are uncomfortable, and actions that will make your muscles fail. An action that is uncomfortable, for instance, is having perfect posture. You can sit and stand straight all day and you muscles won't fail; they will just be tired. Lifting heavy weights is different. No matter how balanced you are with pondera, you are still limited to the weights you lift.

Posture is certainly more easy to control, because you are simple modifying the fact that you are uncomfortable. Stretching is a little more difficult, because the effect becomes cumulative. It is more difficult the longer you do it. Lifting weights is harder still, because you muscles eventually fail, which sends somewhat mixed signals to your body. On the one hand, you're telling your body it's easy, but on the hand, you muscles eventually give out. Perhaps I simply haven't fully mastered this level of pondera yet.

It makes me wonder what else ponder has to offer once I master these techniques.

Beyond Emotions

Once I mastered my emotions, I considered whether it would be possible to take controls of one's physical body as well. It is a step more difficult, but it is indeed possible. It won't turn you into superman, but it will enable you do anything you do without difficulty. The easiest way to make the leap from emotions to the physical is to treat difficulty as though it were and emotion. If you can do that, then do something you would normally have trouble with, and then tune out the difficulty. You will still feel the effect on your muscles, but it will not feel difficult.

Just yesterday I lifted weights for the first time using pondera. I found that I need to be careful, because it's very easy to push my body to its limit. None the less, it should be fun to enjoy the benefits of weightlifting without working out.

Since I've discovered pondera, I've also fixed my posture. for many years I've had terrible posture, but it is now quite perfect, whether standing or sitting.

Another thing that I'm learning is that pondera is something that needs to be practiced. It's not something that can just be learned and taken for granted. It is like a martial art. Strong emotions are more difficult to tune out than weak ones, and lifting heavy weights is more difficult to make easy than lifting light ones.