The Promise of Infinity

By Steve Rensberry

Why does life go on for any, when one, just one, must go away?
When the smile, the touch, the words of another,
are snatched from the world of the living against all will
-- because this fragile, flesh-bound vessel we use,
has the permanence of sand.

Here but for a spot in time we are, then gone.
Friends, lovers, strangers and families.
Overlapping lives beyond all space and time.
Minds and hearts in infinite juxtaposition.
A baby's smile. A mother's tear.
A sea of dreams in a cosmos that defies understanding.

Seven billion lives and climbing
Yet not one, left as human, will avoid the inevitable.
Victimized, collectively, by that which gives them life.
One hundred billion perhaps, from all time.
Walking, talking, striving to manifest the impossible
Laughed at by the universe.

But what is time if not infinite,
and what is matter if not eternal?
Is it possible, given time, that the cycle can be reversed?
That the future might hold the impossible in the palm of its hand?
That the lives we've lost, our own flesh and blood,
will some day live again?

Imagine a world a million years hence.
Where the past and present can be bridged.
A quantum world. A multiverse of infinite possibility.
Where the human will finds its rightful place.
Where infinity equals immortality.
Where death is but a thought.

Imagine still
that we are already there.
But for the eyes
with which we see

Existential Anesthesia

By Steve Rensberry

What is life,

but a game

of competing illusions?

Its true meaning

slips our grasp.

So we make a dream.

Like sand castles in the sun,

we build and define.

To make permanent a lie.

To ease the pain.

Space, Time and the Human Condition

 By Steve Rensberry

  Researchers at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at the University of California, San Diego have estimated that the awe-inspiring, spiral-shaped Milky Way Galaxy, in which our own earth resides, contains more than 400 billion stars. Other estimates place the number around 300 billion, but either way we are talking about an incredibly large number.
   Furthermore, the Milky Way Galaxy contains nearly the same number of planets, scientists say, with microlensing observations suggesting that those in the habitable zone may number as high as 10 billion. The galaxy is composed of a galactic center; a rotating, flattened disk area containing a very large number of stars (along with large amounts of galactic dust and various molecular and atomic gases); and a spherical halo of presumably dark matter, whose presence is inferred by its gravitational effects on the visible portions of the galaxy. (a)
   "The halo consists of the oldest stars known, including about 146 globular clusters, believed to have been formed during the early formation of the galaxy with ages of 10-15 billion years from their H-R Diagrams," states one online tutorial written by Professor H.E. "Gene" Smith. (b)
   While an enormous amount of dark matter is theorized as being integral to the milky way's existence—and indeed the composition of the entire universe, alternative theories do exist. Astronomers at the University of Bonn, whose findings were published by the Royal Astronomical Society, are among those who have called the existence of dark matter into question.
   "In their effort to understand exactly what surrounds our Galaxy, the scientists used a range of sources from twentieth century photographic plates to images from the robotic telescope of the Sloan Deep Sky Survey.
   Using all these data they assembled a picture that includes bright ‘classical’ satellite galaxies, more recently detected fainter satellites and the younger globular clusters," the RAS states in a May 2012 update. "The astronomers found that all the different objects are distributed in a plane at right angles to the galactic disk. The newly-discovered structure is huge, extending from as close as 33,000 light years to as far away as one million light years from the centre of the Galaxy." (c)
   Lead author Marcel Pawlowski and team member Pavel Kroupa have suggested that what we are really seeing is the remnants of a collision between two galaxies billions of years ago.
   Evidence calling into question the existence of dark matter also was presented on June 18 from data collected in an unusual underground experiment at Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory, designed to detect the "weakly interacting massive particles” (WIMPs), which many scientists suspect dark matter to be composed of. Yet after 225 days of data collection, using an instrument far more sensitive than had ever been used before, the elusive dark matter particles remained as elusive as ever. (d.)
   To the contrary, this past month astronomers at the University of Michigan claimed to have observed what they call a filament of dark matter between two relatively adjacent galaxy clusters.
   As stated by Zeeya Merali in the July 4, 2012 online issue of Nature: "The presence of dark matter is usually inferred by the way its strong gravity bends light traveling from distant galaxies that lie behind it — distorting their apparent shapes as seen by telescopes on earth. But it is difficult to observe this 'gravitational lensing' by dark matter in filaments because they contain relatively little mass. (Jörg) Dietrich and his colleagues got around this problem by studying a particularly massive filament, 18 megaparsecs long, that bridges the galaxy clusters Abell 222 and Abell 223." (e)
   The exact nature and possible existence of dark matter, as with dark energy, is very intriguing and likely to be debated for some time. But let me turn the corner and draw your attention to something which I believe is far more fundamental.
   What needs to be debated and vigorously challenged is the human propensity to resign itself to a philosophically constricted and scripted view of the human experience; that says everything—everything—must have absolute meaning in order to have value; and which reasons that death is inevitable and merely transitory.
   How can humanity transcend the physical limitations of its existence in a real and practical sense—as opposed to the fantasy worlds built by superstition and spiritualism?
   This is the question we should be asking.
   Will we ever reach the stars?
   Not if we fail to think outside the framework of tradition.
   Not if we don’t stop ourselves from dying in the process.
   The three-star Alpha Centauri system, the closest stars to our own, lies an estimated 4.37 light years away. The red dwarf known as Barnard's Star lies 5.96 light years away; Wolf 359 lies about 7.78 light years away; Lalande 21185, also a red dwarf, lies about 8.29 light years away; Sirius lies about 8.58 light years away; Luyten 726-B about 8.73 light years; Ross 248 (HH Andromedae) about 10.32 light years; and Epsilon Eridani about 10.52 light years.
   Astronomers with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) published research this past year which said that there could be as many as 100 planets within 30 light years of earth. Billions more are presumed to exist throughout the broader Milky Way Galaxy. (f)
   But herein lies the problem.
   As defined, a light year is the distance that light in a vacuum travels in one year. That distance is calculated to be a little under 10 trillion kilometers—6 trillion miles in other words. This calculates to an incredible 186,282,297 miles per second. If we wanted to reach even the closest star system beyond our own, the Alpha Centauri system, and managed to reach speeds approaching 150,000 miles per hour, it would this infinitely flight-worthy ship roughly 18,000 years to arrive at its destination. Think about that for a minute.
   We could surely send ourselves on a one-way voyage to some new world millions of light years away, counting on the cycle of reproduction to ensure the continuation of the species, as in Paul W.S. Anderson's 2009 Sci-Fi thriller Pandora, but what would be the point when the people who arrive will be 180 generations removed from those who first began the journey? The odds of maintaining some semblance of sociological, psychological and physical continuity would seem to be slim if not impossible.
   I would not go so far as to say that such a quest would be irrelevant, but I will say this: The need to overcome disease and death, to overcome the genetic and physical imperfections of the human organism in the hear and now, in my opinion dwarfs any perceived need for space travel. When we finally get to the point where serious life extension beyond the pathetically-short 100 years or so we can hope for now becomes a reality, when the people who set off on the journey into space are the same people who will land on that new world in some distant part of the galaxy, then we'll have reason to celebrate.
References
(a) Nature, Vol. 481, pg 167-169.
(b) Astronomical Tutorial
(c) Do the Milky Way’s Companions Spell Trouble for Dark Matter?
(d) New Cern Tests Attack the Existence of Dark Matter
(e) Dark Matter’s Tendrils Revealed
(f) Astronomers Find First Habitable Earth-Like Planet

Foundations of Belief

By Steve Rensberry

So utterly 

convinced, some 

people are, that what they 

believe is the unmitigated truth.

But what, please tell me, is the criteria?

Feelings? A changed life? Intuition? Circumstance?

An infinitely subjective spark from deep within the mind?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Would you not have to have absolute knowledge, or be 

absolute yourself, to know with certainty that 

nothing at all exists to prove otherwise?

Surely to grapple onto absolute truth, 

or what one thinks is absolute, 

is to embark on a journey 

of one's own making. 

-----------------------

Think of the time. 

The decades. The years.

Wasted. Chasing rainbows.

Confusing effect with the wrong cause.

Believing death is not death, 

but merely a doorway. 

Fabricating reality 

out of emotion.

-----------

Must not
belief, to be valid,

rest on sufficient evidence,

rather than on fanciful promises or 

the dogmatic, fear-laden tenets 

of institutionalized 

superstition and 

myth?

Time in reverse

By Steve Rensberry

What a strange and disturbing world we live in.

According to the World Health Organization an estimated 1 million people or more commit suicide each year and another 10 to 20 million make the attempt. Suicide is the leading cause of death among teenagers and people age 35 and under.

Data from just five years ago shows suicide in the United States as the 11th leading cause of death, outnumbering murder by a rate of 2 to 1. More people die by suicide than from liver disease or Parkinson's. The rate has also increased worldwide, according to WHO reports, most noticeably between the years 1999 and 2005 and among persons ages 40 to 65.

In an April 18, 2009, article by Keith Hawton DSc and Kees van Heeringen, published in The Lancet, Vol. 373, Issue 9672, the authors cite the estimate of 1 million suicides each year worldwide but suggest that under-reporting likely means the actual number is much higher.

“Suicide accounts for 1.5 percent of deaths worldwide and is the tenth leading cause of death,” they write.

The authors also point to geographical differences, noting higher rates in northern European countries as compared to southern ones, and apparent differences in respect to latitude in Japan.

“More than 30 percent of suicides worldwide happen in China, where 3.6 percent of all deaths are by suicide. In developed countries, the male-to-female ratio for suicide is between two and four to one, and this seems to be increasing. Asian countries typically show much lower male-to-female ratios, but these might also be increasing; although in China more women than men die by suicide,” the authors write.

I'm raising the issue to make a point, but first let me make something clear. I am not urging people to commit suicide. I am not justifying it or saying that it is an intelligent or rational act. I am not saying that it accomplishes what those who follow through with it think it is going to accomplish. But what I do want to do is to knock some false notions out of the minds of the living about those who do choose to end their own lives, and to introduce, philosophically, a more sane and humane way of looking at it.

I have one more reason for raising the issue. Years ago I had a friend who killed himself. He was the boyfriend of my girlfriend‘s closest friend. "Everyone thinks I'm a jerk," he said in the note he left behind. Oddly enough, he was the last person I would have ever considered a jerk. Still in high school, he was amazingly talented at the guitar, had a devoted girlfriend and was just all-around cool. In the years since then, I have come across dozens more suicide cases in my line of work, each different, each a puzzle and most -- in my opinion -- grossly misunderstood and wrongly condemned by the culture at large.

No, I do not think there is a good reason to commit suicide. However, I do think there is a right way and a wrong way to think about it. If you want, call it sad. Get mad at nature and the inhumanity of life. Get mad at ignorant and callous human beings. Just don’t automatically condemn, rejoice over, ignore or devalue the life of the person who commits it. Suicide to me represents a significant, powerful act and the most blatant reminder there is of the fundamental inhumanity of our existence -- an existence which none of us has any choice but to endure within the parameters laid out for us.

The points I would like to make are this:
1. Suicide, attempted suicide and the thought of suicide is much more prevalent than people want to admit or think about.
2. Suicide is not necessarily a selfish act, the result of mental illness or an example of someone who is out of touch with reality.
3. It doesn’t help to treat suicide as taboo or too private to acknowledge.
4. Suicide is "needless" only in the sense that all death is needless.
5. Treating suicide as a crime against either man or deity is absurd.

There are certainly approaches which fall outside this framework which I admire, such as that from Australia's Wesley Mission services.

In their words:
"Dealing with the issue of suicide is both challenging and complex. Given that the nature of the topic in itself is distressing, the complex circumstances and psychological variables of people in crisis only make it more difficult . . . . Suicide is a complex issue which, while tragic, confronts families, friends and wider communities. It results most often from an accumulation of risk factors, and it intersects with problems and concerns across society: mental health, drugs and alcohol, family issues, employment, cultural identity, law enforcement and criminal justice, education and poverty."

I like their approach and this statement for what it says about the complexity of the act.

But why exactly does society seem to downplay it's prevalence? Why does murder, which occurs less requently, gets 10 times the explosure? Why do we not admit and deal with the reality of suicide, in all its implications?

I think part of the answer is because it occurs so suddenly. It's a shock to the senses. Death from old age. Death from illness. They're both gradual, expected events. Suicide, like a sudden accident, leaves us bewildered and at a loss to manage our attachments and emotions.

Calling suicide selfish or the action of someone who is mentally ill is also something which in my opinion is a profoundly ignorant and selfish act in its own right. It is blaming the victim. It is thinking so highly of oneself that anyone who who commits suicide stands guilty simply for exiting your presence. Blaming the victims allows the living to brush it off and ignore the difficult-to-swallow, existential implications of what suicide is all about. It is to create an artificial world for oneself with plastic categories and paper boxes and nicely painted little pictures that serve no other purpose than to insulate oneself from the brutality of physical reality.

Suicide is the ultimate existential act that in one singular moment places all of humanity, all of non-humanity, and every last particle of matter and energy that exists within the universe's infinite expanse -- past, present and future -- momentary under the absolute control of the person committing the act. In one irreversible instant, at one moment in time, a person is able to rise above the nature, the illusions, the unfathomable mass of self-gratifying putridness within which the great body of humanity resides, and return at last to the selfless realm from which we all came. If it is a place we are all destined to go, what is so wrong with allowing us to choose the exact time in which to make the transition? Yes it's shocking. Yes it's sudden. But is it wrong?

"Perhaps it is the rest of us who are deluded about the value of life by our evolved primate survival urges," writes Michael PJ on blog.talkingphilosophyl.com.

Another writer, Levi T, exclaims, "Well it is said that there is but one truly philosophical problem and that is suicide, judging whether life is worth living or not amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."

My own opinion: Suicide has a whole lot more to do with what sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann called the social construction of reality than it does with any one individual's particular mind or psyche.