I'm back now... In case no one mentioned it.

Picture: "I'm back now... in case no one mentioned it." by Andrew Bell

Why we're more scared of gay marriage and terrorism than a much deadlier threat

Why we're more scared of gay marriage and terrorism than a much deadlier threat.
By Daniel Gilbert
L.A. Times, July 2, 2006

NO ONE seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won't involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium.

The odds of this happening in the next few decades are better than the odds that a disgruntled Saudi will sneak onto an airplane and detonate a shoe bomb. And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year to prevent global terrorism and well, essentially nothing to prevent global warming.

Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster? Because the human brain evolved to respond to threats that have four features features that terrorism has and that global warming lacks.

First, global warming lacks a mustache. No, really. We are social mammals whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others. Understanding what others are up to what they know and want, what they are doing and planning has been so crucial to the survival of our species that our brains have developed an obsession with all things human. We think about people and their intentions; talk about them; look for and remember them.

That's why we worry more about anthrax (with an annual death toll of roughly zero) than influenza (with an annual death toll of a quarter-million to a half-million people). Influenza is a natural accident, anthrax is an intentional action, and the smallest action captures our attention in a way that the largest accident doesn't. If two airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened.

Global warming isn't trying to kill us, and that's a shame. If climate change had been visited on us by a brutal dictator or an evil empire, the war on warming would be this nation's top priority.

The second reason why global warming doesn't put our brains on orange alert is that it doesn't violate our moral sensibilities. It doesn't cause our blood to boil (at least not figuratively) because it doesn't force us to entertain thoughts that we find indecent, impious or repulsive. When people feel insulted or disgusted, they generally do something about it, such as whacking each other over the head, or voting. Moral emotions are the brain's call to action.

Although all human societies have moral rules about food and sex, none has a moral rule about atmospheric chemistry. And so we are outraged about every breach of protocol except Kyoto. Yes, global warming is bad, but it doesn't make us feel nauseated or angry or disgraced, and thus we don't feel compelled to rail against it as we do against other momentous threats to our species, such as flag burning. The fact is that if climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets.

The third reason why global warming doesn't trigger our concern is that we see it as a threat to our futures not our afternoons. Like all animals, people are quick to respond to clear and present danger, which is why it takes us just a few milliseconds to duck when a wayward baseball comes speeding toward our eyes.

The brain is a beautifully engineered get-out-of-the-way machine that constantly scans the environment for things out of whose way it should right now get. That's what brains did for several hundred million years and then, just a few million years ago, the mammalian brain learned a new trick: to predict the timing and location of dangers before they actually happened.
Our ability to duck that which is not yet coming is one of the brain's most stunning innovations, and we wouldn't have dental floss or 401(k) plans without it. But this innovation is in the early stages of development. The application that allows us to respond to visible baseballs is ancient and reliable, but the add-on utility that allows us to respond to threats that loom in an unseen future is still in beta testing.

We haven't quite gotten the knack of treating the future like the present it will soon become because we've only been practicing for a few million years. If global warming took out an eye every now and then, OSHA would regulate it into nonexistence.

There is a fourth reason why we just can't seem to get worked up about global warming. The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to changes in light, sound, temperature, pressure, size, weight and just about everything else. But if the rate of change is slow enough, the change will go undetected. If the low hum of a refrigerator were to increase in pitch over the course of several weeks, the appliance could be singing soprano by the end of the month and no one would be the wiser.

Because we barely notice changes that happen gradually, we accept gradual changes that we would reject if they happened abruptly. The density of Los Angeles traffic has increased dramatically in the last few decades, and citizens have tolerated it with only the obligatory grumbling. Had that change happened on a single day last summer, Angelenos would have shut down the city, called in the National Guard and lynched every politician they could get their hands on.

Environmentalists despair that global warming is happening so fast. In fact, it isn't happening fast enough. If President Bush could jump in a time machine and experience a single day in 2056, he'd return to the present shocked and awed, prepared to do anything it took to solve the problem..

The human brain is a remarkable device that was designed to rise to special occasions. We are the progeny of people who hunted and gathered, whose lives were brief and whose greatest threat was a man with a stick. When terrorists attack, we respond with crushing force and firm resolve, just as our ancestors would have. Global warming is a deadly threat precisely because it fails to trip the brain's alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed.

It remains to be seen whether we can learn to rise to new occasions.

If only gay sex caused global warming (thanks, K!)

Why we're more scared of gay marriage and terrorism than a much deadlier threat.
By Daniel Gilbert
L.A. Times, July 2, 2006

NO ONE seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won't involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium.

The odds of this happening in the next few decades are better than the odds that a disgruntled Saudi will sneak onto an airplane and detonate a shoe bomb. And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year to prevent global terrorism and well, essentially nothing to prevent global warming.

Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster? Because the human brain evolved to respond to threats that have four features features that terrorism has and that global warming lacks.

First, global warming lacks a mustache. No, really. We are social mammals whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others. Understanding what others are up to what they know and want, what they are doing and planning has been so crucial to the survival of our species that our brains have developed an obsession with all things human. We think about people and their intentions; talk about them; look for and remember them.

That's why we worry more about anthrax (with an annual death toll of roughly zero) than influenza (with an annual death toll of a quarter-million to a half-million people). Influenza is a natural accident, anthrax is an intentional action, and the smallest action captures our attention in a way that the largest accident doesn't. If two airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened.

Global warming isn't trying to kill us, and that's a shame. If climate change had been visited on us by a brutal dictator or an evil empire, the war on warming would be this nation's top priority.

The second reason why global warming doesn't put our brains on orange alert is that it doesn't violate our moral sensibilities. It doesn't cause our blood to boil (at least not figuratively) because it doesn't force us to entertain thoughts that we find indecent, impious or repulsive. When people feel insulted or disgusted, they generally do something about it, such as whacking each other over the head, or voting. Moral emotions are the brain's call to action.

Although all human societies have moral rules about food and sex, none has a moral rule about atmospheric chemistry. And so we are outraged about every breach of protocol except Kyoto. Yes, global warming is bad, but it doesn't make us feel nauseated or angry or disgraced, and thus we don't feel compelled to rail against it as we do against other momentous threats to our species, such as flag burning. The fact is that if climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets.

The third reason why global warming doesn't trigger our concern is that we see it as a threat to our futures not our afternoons. Like all animals, people are quick to respond to clear and present danger, which is why it takes us just a few milliseconds to duck when a wayward baseball comes speeding toward our eyes.

The brain is a beautifully engineered get-out-of-the-way machine that constantly scans the environment for things out of whose way it should right now get. That's what brains did for several hundred million years and then, just a few million years ago, the mammalian brain learned a new trick: to predict the timing and location of dangers before they actually happened.
Our ability to duck that which is not yet coming is one of the brain's most stunning innovations, and we wouldn't have dental floss or 401(k) plans without it. But this innovation is in the early stages of development. The application that allows us to respond to visible baseballs is ancient and reliable, but the add-on utility that allows us to respond to threats that loom in an unseen future is still in beta testing.

We haven't quite gotten the knack of treating the future like the present it will soon become because we've only been practicing for a few million years. If global warming took out an eye every now and then, OSHA would regulate it into nonexistence.

There is a fourth reason why we just can't seem to get worked up about global warming. The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to changes in light, sound, temperature, pressure, size, weight and just about everything else. But if the rate of change is slow enough, the change will go undetected. If the low hum of a refrigerator were to increase in pitch over the course of several weeks, the appliance could be singing soprano by the end of the month and no one would be the wiser.

Because we barely notice changes that happen gradually, we accept gradual changes that we would reject if they happened abruptly. The density of Los Angeles traffic has increased dramatically in the last few decades, and citizens have tolerated it with only the obligatory grumbling. Had that change happened on a single day last summer, Angelenos would have shut down the city, called in the National Guard and lynched every politician they could get their hands on.

Environmentalists despair that global warming is happening so fast. In fact, it isn't happening fast enough. If President Bush could jump in a time machine and experience a single day in 2056, he'd return to the present shocked and awed, prepared to do anything it took to solve the problem..

The human brain is a remarkable device that was designed to rise to special occasions. We are the progeny of people who hunted and gathered, whose lives were brief and whose greatest threat was a man with a stick. When terrorists attack, we respond with crushing force and firm resolve, just as our ancestors would have. Global warming is a deadly threat precisely because it fails to trip the brain's alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed.

It remains to be seen whether we can learn to rise to new occasions.

Infinite and Beyond

One of the most difficult things about life, when you try to analyze it, is to put it into perspective and organize your thoughts about it. When you think about it, you seem to have clear view of your beliefs and personal dogmas! Once you start writing about it, you realize that life itself might be far more simple than the paths to explain it.

The mind is a powerful tool inside of us. It dictates much more than the way we function, it is simply one of the ways and obstacles of our personal evolution. Constantly we juggle with ways to make It understand Him, for example. Occasionally we put ourselves in the horrific situation of trying to make sense of our instincts, as well. Why do we not just leave then be the way they are? Why do we have to dissect, distort, stretch, magnify and finally comprehend what sometimes does not need to be understood?

Well, I am certainly one of those people who do that all the time. More than that, even when I am feeling that I am simple and letting things happen simply because they need to happen, I know that silence is my mind trying to make sense of all the confusion it appears to be going on. Hm, but that is my mind. It is the way it is… And that is the great beauty of learning to NOT make sense of things that do not need to be understood. My mind is that way, so I will respect it and learn my way through and around it… Ignoring sometimes, using it other times.

To better organize my thoughts and try to make sense of what should not have sense at all, here is a list of the things that I absolutely believe in life:

- Life is eternal
- Everything is made of the same “material”, be it a rock, a newspaper or a baby
- That “material” carries a conscience and this conscience carries information
- This information is being transferred since the Universe was created
- The age of Universe is irrelevant
- The actual definition of infinite is irrelevant
- The past does not exist because it is already gone, therefore not part of what is fact. The future has not happened yet and the same way nonexistent since is not fact as well. The present is so absurdly fast that cannot be measured, cannot be contained, cannot be felt. Time does not exist since it cannot be measured.
- If time cannot be cannot be measured, infinite cannot be measured, proving that its length is irrelevant.
- If present is not measurable, it is infinite.
- If present is infinite we are eternal.
- Basically what we have in life is a moment. A single instant almost graspable that we describe as present. Once you start to understand how difficult it is to measure it, we start to get confused because in reality it seems that we are not living at all.

It all starts with this ideal preconception we have about what life is. Some people believe in only one life, some in Heaven, some believe in reincarnation and some in eternal life. Some people simply do not believe. And that is the way things should be. Each of us having a way to see life. It does not change what is true and what is not. It does not change what is a fact and what is interpretation. Because in the end, facts do not exist. Only what we see do, and what we see will always be interpretation.

If I could point the single thing that defines life for me, it would be our vision. Yes, our ability to see or not see things. We all know that there is no such thing as a person being equal to another. Probably even clones have differences since they will have different environments to change them through life. So, if we have differences it will mean, physically that we are not able to see the exact same thing that any other person does. We cannot see the same red that the friend beside us does. We cannot see a dog chasing bones as any other person. We see differently than blind, who see with other senses. Because we are indeed different.
What is fact then? Did it ever exist? How can we know that a table is indeed a table? That Napoleon lost the war against the British, that the man really touched the moon floor. Who knows? Those are only interpretations we created for something that might or might not have happened. They say that the winners write History, and it is really true. Or not. How can we verify that? How can we be sure that our sources are correct? We cannot!

So we trust. We trust our history books, we trust our parents, our friends. We simply trust that what we learn is The Truth.
What about what we feel? Do we trust it? Do we ever trust our feelings the way we trust history books? Are they more or less trustworthy? What is truth, anyway? In our own systematic world it seems to be Common knowledge, doesn’t it? The version that was better accepted… Hm, the winner’s version.
But what if we started realizing that, in fact, our feelings are more part of the truth than all the information we have. Even our feelings which are deeply influenced by this enormous amount of information we receive every day. (Note that I use the world information and not knowledge. The first is simply what is there to be used and the second is what we do with that when we combined with other information and create something that is greater than the sum of both).

When we close our eyes and forget where we are, we feel. When we feel and do not explain what is there… Then we try a bit of what Truth is. Then we experience a bit of what infinite is. Then we start understanding without analyzing it. That is when we truly find out that we did not learn anything, we remembered.
Life is full of this moments… that we forget. We forget to taste them, we forget to live them. Because we think that what we believe is a fact is more important than what we feel is the Truth. We are so insecure we keep looking for a confirmation that is right there, inside of is.

Each one of us has one unique nature and truth. One essence and mind. Each of us is formed by an enormous number of tiny us, who have in them information as well. Better information than the ones we read in books or find anywhere else. Because this story, a confusion of information, is US, is who we are and what we are. We have in us all the knowledge needed to evolve. And we often do not use it. We often ignore it. Pass is as confusion of a crazy mind. But deep down we always know what is true and what is not, don’t we? When we let the silence walk in and we let the sounds of our self sing. That is when we start remembering and stop learning. That is when we start living.

Byebye

Well... this blog moved elsewhere! :)

See you in another life!

Me and my flying friends

Adagio by Barber

There is a song I feel the need to hear when things in my life take an unexpected turn.

I started with this habit around the time I was 12 and since then the song has found a way of penetrating through whatever wall I build to protect myself from hurt.

I listened to it when I found out I was pregnant and through out the 7 months that followed. I listened to it the first time my heart was crushed and I felt like it was time to give up on someone. I listened to it when I was alone and had no one to turn to for help. I listened to it when someone very dear to me needed me and I had to find in me the strength to hide my hurt and help. And I am listening to it tonight.

Life has interesting ways of telling us we must heal a wound. It gives us the first blow and it is like it is saying: “Fix yourself now”. And then when you do not… It just comes back and gives you a second blow and says “I gave you the first chance. This is the second… Want to risk experiencing a third?”

Oh God! I don’t! I honestly don’t.

I always saw my life as a combination of my dreams. The ones I made come true and the ones I had to say goodbye to. My biggest dream was to have children. And that one I received as a present. The greatest gift I have. But it came to me with the condition that I would have to give up on some other dreams I had. And I did. I did it without looking back once. I cannot imagine life without this dream. I cannot imagine where I would be today.

I cannot lie and say that choosing between one dream instead of another came without pain. Oh, it hurt. And it hurt deep. Somehow I realize that it left scars that are far deep. It left me with a certain amount of anger against a source with no face, no name… no shape. I am ashamed of that anger. Really ashamed. But it took me almost 10 years to realize it was there.

Today I can feel the pain of losing a dream that was not mine. And another one that was.

I feel wounds that I could not heal being reopened. I feel all the anger of feeling a love that has no purpose. I feel all the anger of feeling something inside that was not wanted. I feel the anger of the one who was stabbed in the back. I feel all the anger of the one who wants to hate more than anything… but just can’t.

Today I am alone. Alone with the anger that has no face and the hurt that is too fresh to be understood. I am alone to face the fears I see pilling at my door. I am alone. All alone.

And still… I am not the one who hurts more… I am not the one who lost. I am not the one whose heart I mourn.

I am the one who got the dream… but later in life, lost the love…

Music Without Words

Life has funny ways...

Since always I remember music being part of my life. In one way or another it has been there, as a constant companion. I played the piano, I sang along, I just listened to it, I cried and I laughed. I found love and I found hatred. Every single important moment in my life has a song attached to it. The soundtrack of my memories.

In the same fashion, writting and reading because part of me. I wrote dozens of juvenile poems full of hope and dispair. I wrote editorials that only I would read, I wrote letters, long stories, make believe trip journals, real trip journals, short stories... And then I read... I read and read and read. Oh, how much I read. I cannot begin to count the number of exams I did not study to because I was reading a book and could not leave it.

I still love music and I still hear it playing inside my head. I still read quite a lot. But I rarely write or play my piano nowadays... I needed something to fill up that void!

I am learning photography (ok, let's be honest: "to take pictures"). And it is so overwhelming, so much fun, so inspiring! It is like music, it is like prose and poetry... But it is all that in an image.

I know this might sound ridiculous... Images were always important to me... However, I saw them more often inside my head than out of it. I imagined them more often than really saw what was around me.

Phography has been giving me a new layer, a new "sense". I am not thinking of becoming a professional, of being amazinly good as a lot of people around me here... or anyting other than what I am... An apreciator! I do it because it gives me pleasure. I do it because I makes me happy. I do it because it teaches me about myself and about the world. I do it... most of all because I can hear music when I take a picture.

And that is why I know photography will always be special for me. It is music without words...