Fascinating post about life, evolution and in particular: the role the human species plays in the “management” of the ecosystem

Posted on 2012/05/02 by New Media Works

When life was new on Earth, it invented photosynthesis. Photosynthesis takes light from the Sun and captures it as useful energy. It also produces waste oxygen.

We like oxygen, because we breathe it, but we forget that chemically, it’s pretty nasty. Oxygen gas is implicated in lots of bad things, from rust to explosions. It’s not stable, and it’s highly chemically reactive. It sits on the periodic table next to fluorine, and if you know anything about fluorine, you know you should stay away from it. And when photosynthesis first evolved, oxygen was deadly to most life on Earth….

Read the whole post here! :)

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Life is defined by death: Therefore, the definition of what it means to be alive requires a definition of what it means to be dead

Posted on 2011/11/05 by New Media Works

With so much talk about life, its meaning, significance and importance, few people think much about death, dying and how this is related to the significance of being alive.

Benjamin Franklin is purported to have said “nothing is certain but death and taxes”, and whereas this is funny and shows a playful humor with respect to taxes, people do not think about the truth of the statement with respect to life and death.

I think this is primarily because it seems difficult to say what could be considered a “successful” (or “failed”) death. It seems as though simply because everyone dies, that “success” in dying seems assured. Yet: If a life can be saved, is it also possible to save a death? Consider the Hippocratic Oath:

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will not be ashamed to say “I know not”, nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

As we respect life, so we should also respect death. Because death defines life, we could not enjoy life without death. How do we respect and enjoy death?

Although I can’t answer that question decisively, I am certain that understanding the meaning of life requires an understanding of the meaning of death. For shame whenever someone pretends one could exist without the other!

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I would add that the unexamined death is not worth dying.

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Independence is not a goal worth following — it cannot even be “followed” at all

Posted on 2011/04/12 by New Media Works

A little short note to add to yesterday’s post: Independence cannot be a goal. It is a logical fallacy that it could be, because if it were, then we would seem to be dependent on independence.

No, instead: the goal is always integration and cohesion of “life-giving” forces. The meaning of life is simply not to die (or get sick), so anything that promotes life is something we should adhere to, not to become independent of.

It is when there is symbiosis of life (and “living forces”) that life becomes worthwhile — worth living. Therefore, the aim is not to become independent. The aim is to become more alive.

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2 Primal Forces: The urge to be wanted + the desire to be independent. [Field Theory, KurtLewin, Kurt Lewin]

Posted on 2011/04/11 by New Media Works

I have for a long time been a big fan of psychology — and one prominent psychologist I admire is Kurt Lewin. He came up with something referred to as “force field analysis”:

Force field analysis provides a framework for looking at the factors (forces) that influence a situation, originally social situations. It looks at forces that are either driving movement toward a goal (helping forces) or blocking movement toward a goal (hindering forces). The principle, developed by Kurt Lewin, is a significant contribution to the fields of social science, psychology, social psychology, organizational development, process management, and change management.

Over the past several days some ideas regarding such force fields have come together for me (in this regard, I feel there is also some overlap with Freud’s “Civilization and its discontents”). Generally, there is self-actualization — roughly equivalent with being independent. Yet there is also the relationships to others — and I would differentiate here between the “significant other” (who we need to be in any form of relationship whatsover) and the more universal belonging (the relationship to e.g. civilization, a species, life, the cosmos, …).

The reason why these different kinds of relationships occurred to me now is that they also seem to function as forces. Each attracting and repelling certain kinds of behavior. In particular, I recently asked a group of young people whether they had any difficult goals they are pursuing — and whether they would be open to receiving help in order to reach those goals. I was amazed to hear many say that yes, they are pursing difficult goals, but no they do not wish for anyone else to help them — they would like to be independent.

Now of course many young people want to be independent… — of course? Why do we train our children to seek independence? Is this not a failure of guidance?

Likewise, I recently queried youths about trusting other people — and in the test question, both youths and adults responded resoundingly that they do not trust others.

Such phenomena make me feel very sad about society — and critical of it. Therefore, I too wish to remove myself from the mass of people who lead lives of quiet isolation. I seek to join, and I find independence-hungry isolationist individualists revolting.

That seems like a contradiction — a situation in which I constantly vacillate between these 2 forces which tear and tug at my heart. So far, I do not feel as though I have grown from this exercise. Instead, it feels more like gasping for air while swimming under water. The air is probably there somewhere, but it’s not here, now, or even faintly within reach.

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