On Buckets

I have heard and thought a lot about buckets during the past phase of my life. Metaphorical buckets at least. The metaphor is of a bucket that is full, but instead of liquid or jelly beans or pebbles or sand or whatever else a bucket could be full of, this one is full of your good emotions, your optimal sense of fulfillment. If you are hurtful to another person you are emptying their bucket, and likewise your bucket is emptied when someone is hurtful to you.

It is a simple enough analogy, easy to explain to children, but utterly, utterly wrong.

I will give a rather horrible example from my own life to suggest that in fact no one can "empty your bucket", that the responsibility for retaining a full bucket lies solely on our own shoulders.

I was in an argument with a friend of mine who got angry and told me (and I paraphrase to keep this article PG rated) to "Go to a horrible place where we are no longer friends, and have fun never accomplishing anything because you are a loser with no talent."

That is not a really nice thing to say to somebody, and my bucket emptied, and I felt awful.

One way to perceive the situation is what the bucket analogy regularly does. It says, "I was happy before this was said to me and now I am sad, therefore I must be sad because of what was said to me."

(Buzzer sound) Wrong. Sorry, points for effort, but that isn't at all accurate.

The hurtful thing in this example is like an arrow designed to pierce my bucket, but the reason I am sad is only vaguely related to the arrow.

I am sad because I believe the things that were said, at least is part. It is true that I struggle with feelings that I will "never amount to anything" or that I am not good enough to be published. In fact, it would later be admitted to me the only reason it was said in the first place: he knew it would have the affect he was going for. Points for observation skills.

My bucket is empty because I emptied it. Perhaps it would not be empty had my friend not said anything hurtful, but that is not the most valuable point.

If I did not believe the "hurtful things" then it would hardly matter when someone said them to me. Sticks and stones and all of that jazz. When you are hurt by someone else's thoughts it is usually (maybe not always), but usually because your emotional state mirrors the attack. Someone calls you stupid, and you feel stupid. You are usually angry and the reason is simply that it sucks when someone breaks through the lies we tell ourselves and shows us that we really were kind of faking it, and we felt stupid today, so thanks for pointing it out.

With the bucket analogy it is the actions of others that cause your pain. You have no control over those actions, and therefore no control over your pain. The solution can be properly communicating your feelings to the other person (you have made me feel horrible with your hurtful words) but in any case it involves conflict with the outside world. Once these actions are confronted and defeated (hopefully through proper communication and mutual respect) you can return to your state of optimum self-fulfillment.

Let's continue the example. What will happen should I communicate with mutual respect with my friend? Well in fact we did communicate. He explained why he said what he said and apologized (sort of) and lo and behold our friendship, which seemed so on the rocks for a time, remained intact. The bucket analogy must be right because communication can heal wounds and repair damage to relationships.

If the bucket analogy was right, with a sincere apology and a repaired friendship, my optimal state of self-fulfillment should be back in place and I should be happy. Therein lies the flaw of the bucket analogy, or the bucket way of thinking, for in fact the reason I am unhappy is because of my own abuse to myself, and not the actions of the outside world. My friend merely pointed out something that I struggle with when I am being an ass to myself. His apologies and our friendship are aside from the fact that my emotions are abused by my own attacks against them.

If actions of others are arrows, then armor is our shields, but how can you defend attacks from within? Your own attacks on your psyche are the most damaging, and are the true bucket destroyers.

When you wake up and feel that you are ugly, or that you are not smart enough for that promotion, or that you are a mean person who has let the people around you down, or that you are not witty enough to be interesting on a date, or the thousands of other things that we say to ourselves all of the time, these are the things that empty our buckets. They are the hardest to admit and surely the hardest to resolve. The actions of others are easy to work out. You confront, conflict, and sometimes you manage to even resolve. In many cases the resolution gives the whole situation a miss and you end up with an enemy instead of a friend, or the loss of a job, or the loss of a family member (hopefully only metaphorically).

Most confrontations are just a way of avoiding working on your own bucket. Put off the work of refilling the bucket or repairing the leak by blaming it all on someone else. Focus your upset(s) on another person instead of focusing them on yourself. This is where hatred stems from, or at least one of the places. It is the creation of a fictitious entity who exists inside the real body of another individual. This fictitious entity becomes the focal point for all of your problems. You use grand words like "You are the reason I am unhappy. You make me not want to come home from work. You make me feel stupid. You have stolen from me." The fictitious entity is always easy to spot. It is always apparent in sentences where "You" can be replaced with "I" and the sentence still makes sense. "I am the reason I am unhappy. I make me not want to come home from work. I make me feel stupid. I have stolen from me."

When it comes to emotions there is only one conflict, and that conflict is eternal. It is the conflict you wage with yourself. It is literally all in your head. No one can hurt my feelings by telling me that I am stupid, or at least it would be a very rare day indeed if that were to happen. The reason for this is because while I believe many things about myself, being stupid is not one of them. Only an idiot would call me stupid, because a smarter person would have picked another adjective which might have had more effect, like loser or ugly or something like that.

Why do we say things like that? Why would I ever say to someone, "You are ugly"?

It is a defense mechanism, exactly the same as the stink from a skunk. Someone has probably said something to me, or done something, and my internal douchebag that lives in my head has gone to town, and so I lash out at somebody else.

It all starts with your bucket. You hurt me and emptied my bucket so now I'm going to hurt you and empty your bucket. It isn't that simple though, because usually you won't hurt the person who emptied your bucket because if you had enough brains to do that they couldn't have emptied your bucket in the first place. No, instead you'll hit someone easier, someone closer, someone who might put up with it and not hit back. So you'll find someone that you perceive to be weaker than you, or you'll find someone who you believe has to put up with your crap: the smaller kid at school, the shy guy from the copy room, your sibling, or your spouse.

Everyone goes around kicking everyone's buckets and all that happens is water splashes around a lot and the really wise ones of us go get a mop and fill up their own buckets with the liquid no one else seems concerned about losing.

If someone calls you a name and it bothers you and you think that maybe you should talk to that person about the name they called you, stop. Look instead at why the name bothered you and start there. If you can resolve the why then the rest will work itself out. The name will not bother you anymore, you will be happier than before the person called you the name in the first place, and you can in fact thank the person for helping you realize something that was bothering you and getting in the way of your optimal sense of fulfillment.

RAMBLINGS IN PHYSICS #1

RAMBLES IN PHYSICS

by John T. Bennett

THE UNIVERSE IS "DIMENSIONLESS" or "DIMENSIONMORE"

So I got to thinking, as is sometimes the case, about the nature of our Universe, whether it is expanding, contracting, what shape it is, etcetera. Firstly let us lay down a few principles for the sake of this argument. Principle number one is that mathematics is a language. A language is a series of symbols, gestures, and expressions to help describe something. A language, therefore, while pointing to the truth, cannot actually be considered "the truth". In essence what this boils down to is a flaw in reasoning that because a mathematical equation, theory, what-have-you, is logically sound and consistent, it constitutes actual truth.

Let's give a brief example. Einstein can be attributed for the inclusion of a fourth dimension (time), where math had previously only been concerned with three. One of his peers whose name I've forgotten (starts with a 'K' I think) offered up a beautifully written piece describing the universe in five dimensions. When you worked in five dimensions the math allowed for special and general relativity and Maxwell's electromagnetic laws (field theory).

String Theory uses the same trick. Each time you insist upon a new law of nature, you can try to wrangle it and force it into the pre-existing framework like a puzzle piece that doesn't want to fit OR you can simply add another dimension which you assume must be folded up within the original three/four dimensions, and the math comes out smooth as a cucumber--though I assume incredibly complicated.

Now, this raises questions. How many dimensions are there in the Universe? It is easy to convince someone that there are three. We can go forward, up/down, and "through", so there you have x, y, and z. Pretty simple. But can you prove it? Mathematics has shown that the Universe can be worded different ways. A 2 dimensional universe can be conceived as a 3 dimensional universe all wrapped up like a tight ball, and it is just as sound and consistent. So if this is the case, how could you prove which one is true?

Physics does not like ambiguities, at least not classical mechanics. A system must be able to be traced back in time, and with the ability to "wrap up" dimensions, it would be impossible to know at any given point whether you were a 2 dimensional universe, or an 11 dimensional universe, and they cannot both be true. Well, they could, but that's another argument for later.

I would suggest, by pointing out the obvious, that neither is true. Dimensions are an abstract concept used in mathematics, which we have already decided is a language. If I am trying to communicate I do so in a variety of ways, but one is by adding complexity to simplify speech. For example perhaps I am talking about a kitchen and have come up with the term shelf. It would become complicated to keep talking about the kitchen if shelf were the only term I had.

"Put the milk on the shelf."
"Put the cup on the shelf. No, not the same shelf as the milk. A different shelf."
"Put the pancake mix on the shelf, but neither the shelf used by the milk or the cup."
"Put the plate on the shelf, using the same shelf as the cup unless there will then be not enough room for other cups, in which case the plate should go on another shelf that is definitely not the same shelf used for pancake mix or milk."
"I would like to specify that the milk should go on the shelf that is kept cold. So for future reference I will call it the shelf that is kept cold, and we will call the pancake mix shelf the shelf that is..."

The term shelf is great, but communicating with one term, or let's just call it a simple term, becomes complicated over time. In a kitchen with only one shelf there would be no reason to have more than one term, but language evolves along with the kitchen. We invent terms which are usually more than one syllable long, and we will call those terms complex terms. Complex terms possess much more information than the number of bits contained within them. For example, let is take a simple term, like shelf, and compare it to a complex term, like refridgerator.

What information does shelf tell us? Well we know that shelves are flat and that they are generally mounted to a surface, and used for putting things on. That is roughly all that the word shelf will tell us. For any more in depth information you would require other words, such as big shelf, or small shelf, or 3 ' by 4' shelf, etcetera.

What does the word refridgerator tell us? A refridgerator tells us to look for an object with a door, inside of which will be several shelves, and probably at least one drawer, and inside the temperature is kept cooler than outside, though only if "powered" by some means whether than be electricity or natural (such as a cold storage--namely that it is conceivable that a 'fridge could be powered by some other means and retain all the other functions). The word refridgerator becomes a specific location without having to specify the location. If I go to almost any house in the world and someone tells me to put something in the refridgerator, the only information I require to find the refridgerator is where the space they use for a "kitchen" is. Kitchen, of course, is also a complex term, meaning simply that it is one word with many other words "wrapped up" as it were.

I am using the term complex term. You could exchange complex term for concept but for the nature of this argument, I am going to simply continue to speak in terms of complexity. Complexity, according to information theory, also adds depth, and it also generates entropy, and we will come to that later.

So, what are dimensions? Mathematically speaking, dimensions can be seen as simply complex terms. More complicated bits of language that in fact make communication much simpler. It is irrelevant, therefore, to speak of how many dimensions the universe has. That is like asking how many words does it take to describe an elephant? By definition you could narrow it down to, let's say 10, and everyone agree that an elephant can be described in no less than 10 words, but that would never be true. An elephant could be described in one complex word (concept) that automatically contains those other 10 words. This is true of language, as an elephant is a complex term describing an animal of a specific size (very large) and generally colour (usually grey, to describe an elephant of another colour, you would have to include a separate word--if you say elephant it is grey, if you want to talk about a pink elephant you have to use the word pink), weight (very heavy), physical features (large trunk), fears (scared of mice) and so on and so on. The word elephant conjures up many words to your mind. The definition of a complex term is one that when you think about it and write down your thoughts, you will unravel a long list of thoughts. Simple terms, like blue, are a much shorter list. Blue really only describes the "blueness" of an object, and nothing else. For any more information, you require more words, like navy, to get more specifity.

So long story short, it is a flaw in reasoning to assume that the universe possesses a set number of dimensions as dimensions are an abstract concept of a language used to communicate about the universe. When we talk about something, the something does not automatically get captured in our speech like a soul was believed to be captured by a photo. The something we are talking about is independant of our language to describe it.

The Universe, therefore, has exactly as many dimensions as are useful in making communication simpler. If it is just as easy to speak of the universe in four dimensions, then it has four. If it is easier to speak of it in five dimensions, it should have five. The Universe could have any number of dimensions, all of which are indeterminable. Again, it would be like trying to work out exactly how much information is in the word elephant. The amount of information in a word is relative to the amount of information in the mind of the receiver. If I say elephant to a zoologist, the word will contain much more information than if I say elephant to a secretary (unless the secretary used to be a zoologist). Words that are abundant in information can also possess no information, as in the example that I say the word elephant to someone that does not know what an elephant is. In this case, I must manually unravel the word in order to explain it to the person, at which point, elephant will become a word that will from then on mean all of those things (or at least the ones that person remembers).

Dimensions are the same thing. Describing the universe in fourteen dimensions is great. It is however useless if you do not take the time to explain to "outsiders" what those extra ten dimensions stand for. And does the Universe have fourteen dimensions? Yes. Obviously. If I can prove that elephant includes the word "grey", then I can prove that the universe has those dimensions as long as it is consistent and logically sound. Elephant does not include the word abyss, for example, because elephants are not composed of abysses (that we know of). If I can describe something with language, it is assumed that the thing I am describing has those qualities. Even fictitious objects possess the qualities I imbue them with, and are subject to the same laws.

Take the word "life" for example. As the various fields of science, philosophy, theology, etcetera all expand their reasoning, life becomes a much more complicated term. Life now includes words such as organism, which themselves are complex terms. Therefore you have complex terms wrapped up in more complex terms, ad infinitum. The Universe is the same way, and for this reason I will eventually get around to my HARD DRIVE UNIVERSE theory, which is not so much a theory as simply a way of perceiving things that I think is handy.

So the Universe must have fourteen dimensions if you can describe it using fourteen dimensions. But the underlying point is that the universe, (or let us just say reality) always has more dimensions than we are describing. Using the term elephant for example, fails to accurately describe even the simplest of elephants, namely one sketched by a two year old with no talent. The complex term is a tool for communication. The barrier of any language will be its ability to completely describe anything that it is talking about, and math is no exception.

So, in conclusion, if you view the varying types of mathematics as grammatical rules to make describing a system more simple, than mathematics is no truer than the word elephant. The goal of math is to create the best term for description and nothing more. Mathematical "proofs" are not true in and of themselves, they are only consistent within their own language framework.

This point leads into my next point, but for now I will stop here as I have other things to do today.

Rambling Dream Fever (the creative process?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv6ZN2BaCEU

I created this song years ago, some time around when I first started learning how to play the guitar. It was really just a way to take what were (to me) a gibberish poem I had scribbled down late one night and set it to the few chords I happened to know at the time.

Lately a friend lent me a little device called a Maschine. It is neat once you figure out how to make the buttons do things, and I'm just tenacious enough with things that make noise to do just that. I am not exactly sure what the technical name for such a piece of equipment is. It is some sort of sequencer/synthesizer device. Simply put, you push buttons, and it makes noise.

I was listening to a hip hop song called Dead and Gone and I had been struggling with this little do-hicky thingamajig for about a week, thoroughly convinced that anything that could make so many different noises must be a good thing, but equally convinced that I had wasted a whopping amount of time creating sound patterns I would probably never do anything with it.

I suddenly remembered this old rambling song that I rarely play.

It took me a few days to "finish" the new version, which is quite different than the chords I used to pick out on the guitar. I was not able to add guitar to the song because of the tunes incredibly strange tempo. In fact, the backbeat little piano melody thing keeps horrible time.

More importantly I do not think that anything I did on the guitar actually added to the song.

It is what it is.

Life comes full circle some times. "Rambling Dream Fever" is a song created from a "poem" I wrote back in high school, written at a time when I hardly knew how to play the guitar. Ten years later it has taken a new form, created entirely on a new instrument, this time called a Maschine, that I hardly know how to play.

I wish I had more time to learn all the instruments I would like to play.

I love making noise.

The Tragic Story of Bob

Can the flapping of butterfly wings in Timbucktoo cause the tornado that blows Dorothy to Oz?

Would you be surprised if the answer seemed like it could be yes?

Bob wonders. He really wonders. You see, Bob tried to get a job selling batteries. He won't get that job for a variety of reasons. Someone was cheated. Someone else was hurt. In another town, a guy named Alan was let out of jail and pardoned for his crimes. It turns out that Alan was not as deserving of his special treatment as it had been originally surmised. A wrong decision was made.

Many people were upset that these terrible things were happening, and it was confusing since in many cases the people who were the most upset were not the people who actually had the bad things happen to them. 

Bob made the mistake of going to a bar one night. In retrospect he probably shouldn't have. Butterfly wings are very powerful.

Bob punched someone at a bar. The person very likely deserved it. Bob received an assault charge and a criminal record. He had to take an anger management class and serve some community service. Later he would tell people that he felt very bad for having punched the guy in the bar who deserved it. It was a silly thing to have done.

Bob could not have known at the time that there were more obscure reasons for not punching the guy at the bar who deserved it, reasons that extended far beyond that it was simply a silly thing to have done. A man named Alan was pardoned, and Alan should not have been given a free pass. Alan was not responsible for the someone who was cheated, or the someone who was hurt, but had the system not been flawed enough to grant Alan a pardon in the first place, then it seemed logical to assume that these other bad things might not have happened.

People were tired of bad things happening. They tried to put more laws in place to stop bad things from happening, but for some reason that had little affect. They decided that the only thing left to do was make sure that punishments were more severe and long lasting. Mayors and Prime Ministers and such were fine with the decision since they were tired of bad things happening as well. Every time something bad happened, like the whole Alan incident, their names kept getting thrown around negatively in the newspapers.

The Mayors and Prime Ministers had long ago determined that it was very hard to fix holes in existing plumbing. It was much easier to simply remove the plumbing and let the shit fall where it may. A bill would be passed eliminating Bob's chance to ever receive a pardon for having punched a guy in a bar who deserved it. It was foolproof. No one could complain about Alan being given an unfair pardon if nobody could receive pardons anymore.

Why wouldn't a peace loving society pass a bill eliminating pardons? Bob could be a person who cheated or hurt people, or might some day be wrongfully let out of prison. Right?

Unlikely since Bob was never in prison in the first place, though he does share at least one thing in common with the above mentioned man named Alan, in that they both have a criminal record.

Meanwhile, a corporation somewhere decided that it was okay to push the boundaries during their interview process. They got away with asking some questions that they should not have been able to ask. After all, it was written in black and white under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that the corporation was not allowed to ask the sorts of questions that it asked.

Bob did not know when he punched the guy in the bar who deserved it that corporations were getting away with asking questions they were not allowed to ask. He was not aware that the company that sold batteries was one of those corporations. At the time he would not have even cared because Bob always wanted more for himself than working for minimum wage selling batteries, but he punched a guy in a bar who deserved it, so many of his options went the way of the Dodo.

Bob, it turns out, thinks that it is horrible when bad things happen to people. He feels very strongly that people should not be cheated or hurt, and people who should be in jail should probably stay there, and that some people should not receive pardons. What Bob did not understand when he punched the guy in the bar who deserved it was how those things he believed very strongly in would have anything to do with him getting a job selling batteries.

Too bad for Bob. Butterflies flapped their wings. The battery company is going to ask Bob some questions that they are not allowed to ask. If Bob answers these questions he will not get the job. If he refuses to answer these questions, he will not get the job. The battery company is able to ask the sorts of questions it is asking, which it is not supposed to be allowed to ask, because someone was cheated, and someone was hurt; somewhere someone stole a cookie from a child, and somewhere else some vandals wrecked a tombstone. Plus there was Alan.

Bob deserves what is coming to him. After all he once punched a guy in a bar who deserved it. Why would we want someone of that calibre selling us batteries? Bob was irresponsible once, so there is absolutely nothing to say that he won't be irresponsible again some day.

Of course, that is the price for freedom. The Bobs of the world get swept under the rug, then the rug gets driven over by a Mac Truck. Tolerance and Understanding breed weakness, and Criminals like Bob prey on weakness. Everybody knows that.

Right?