Cap'm America

Monica Rambeau was a police lieutenant from New Orleans where her cool demeanor and swift reflexes earned her the role of ‘chief hostage negotiator’. One day a negotiation turned into a bloody firefight at a munitions warehouse. The incident changed her trajectory. She's no longer seen in New Orleans. Some sightings place her in the mixed martial arts ring where they call her El Tiger. She can transform into a feral beast and attack her opponents with the stealth and power of a puma. Others say she has become one of the deadliest forces on the planet …a solitary predator with supernatural powers. There have been sightings across a wide range of the Americas covering more ground than any other mammal we know. Legend has it she can stalk her prey from miles away …then strike suddenly, without a sound …ripping their heart out and gnawing on it while it’s still beating …sending them into a world of torment that lasts an eternity in one of the outlier regions of the nether worlds where she has dual-parallel residency. It’s a unique status that allows her to coexist in several dimensions at once. Go figure. Sounds like the firefight in New Orleans spawned multiple versions of the original Monica …each traveling a different trajectory across the universe ..or multiverse as some like to call it.

a fortuitous juncture

I believe we occupy a fortuitous juncture in time and space where the balance of cosmic events  favor life as we know it. The planetary whip of the sun and resulting elements of light, mass and energy have come together to form just the right biosphere.  Inside the biosphere, a system of sensory processes developed that binds these elements together and give rise to our conscious experience of it.

In addition, cosmology and neuroscience inform us that our conscious experience may be just one in a larger number of universe-like phenomena ..a multi-verse ..where many universe's co-exist (at different junctures) giving rise to different sensory processes. Who says our conscious experience is the only one possible ..? At different junctures - different ways of experiencing may have developed. There's inter-dependance between cosmic development and embryonic development ..and a different narrative begins at each juncture.  

I have no idea what I'm talking about ..

milky way

above Santa Cruz California

quantum tunnelling

In space, the powers of creation and destruction work differently than they do here on earth. Matter appears, dissolves and reappears just like here but  in  a   much   s l o w e r   m a n n e r.  Matter that makes up you and me. On earth we’re refreshed at such high rates of speed that the particles of matter disappear and reappear in essentially the same place ..making our position more or less predictable from one instant to the next. In space, however, it’s so cold that things take a little longer ..when measured in nano-seconds. So, instead of the high-speed collisions that we see on earth .. particles are refreshed by way of quantum tunneling in space [link]. This means we could wink out of one place one moment and reappear in another place the next ..kind of like looking at someone through a strobe light. And not only that .. this kind of delay lowers the probability of particles sticking together ..meaning there’s a good chance that we could dissolve in the process.

out of bounds

In the language of the Huron Indians, “orenda” is a word that refers to the spiritual power that resides in all creatures and things. If you’ve got enough of it, you may be able to declare at least partial independence from your own past. You can better shape the life you want rather than being subject to the limitations of karma and conditioning. When I was visiting Santa Cruz a few years ago I met a guy named Charlie. Last time I was there I asked my friends about him. They said he wandered away and moved to a small town at the edge of the Mojave Desert. He liked living at the fringes of space they told me. Gave him a sense of being outside the boundaries of fate. Made me wonder how much orenda that takes.

Proceed in slow motion

  Thors Well Oregon

Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology Reading: Do you plan your meals while you’re meditating? Do you text-message as you drive? Do you simultaneously eat a meal, pay your bills and watch TV? If so, you are probably trying to move too fast and do too much. Even in normal times, that's no good. But in the coming week, it could get downright crowded. You need to slowwww wayyyy dowwwn. You've got . . . to compel yourself . . . to do . . . one thing . . . at a time. I say this not just because your mental and physical health depend on it. Certain crucial realizations about your future are on the verge of popping into your awareness .. but they will only pop if you are immersed in a calm and unhurried state. 

Planet Hollywood

She’s a clear signal appearing in the center of noisy space. Everything else gets pushed to the edges. When she laughs ..she takes command of the place without even trying. I can see people frozen in the distance. Like a deer caught in the headlights ..so am I. When we talk ..her attention is mine. I can feel the warmth of its glow. When she leaves ..there’s a wake in the fabric that the rest of the world falls into. Fortunately there’s a trace or her that persists until next time ..making me feel  more at home on this planet.

Selene

Four and a half billion years ago, a celestial female body named Theia crashed into the male body ProtoEarth. The remaining debris gave rise to the moon Selene. Looking back, astronomers have tried to piece together the whole story surrounding this cosmic event. Given the discursive nature of the analytic mind, one story split into three:

• Theia crashed into ProtoEarth and Theia  was obliterated. Her remnants were reconstituted as Selene..our moon.
• Theia crashed into ProtoEarth and both were obliterated. Remnants of the two constitute the moon Selene.
• Theia crashed and merged with ProtoEarth. A vapor trail created in the heat of the union coalesced into the moon Selene. 

Given the interpretative nature of the mind; I’ve heard each possibility extended into a  lengthy discourse regarding the human condition. I just want to take a moment and pay homage to Selene as she appears in the night sky

Comfortably numb

I do things just to get them behind me and move on to other things ..so I can get those behind me too ..I don’t often see what’s in front of me .. I’m looking too far forward or backward. This morning I’m doing the dishes, while watching images of events gone by. I see Anne stopping by to say hi (from yesterday). Next, an image of my friend’s mother appears who suffers arthritis from washing dishes. That’s when I missed grabbing the knife by its handle and saw the blood in the sink. Pain arrived a split second later followed by a scream because my hands were numb from the water. Now my eyes are wide open and I’m thrashing around the bathroom cabinets looking for antiseptic and bandages ..swearing at myself for being so clumsy ..as well as the knife for being so stupid (!?). I drop by Prof Neal’s office for a chat and he interrupts me to ask why my hand is bandaged. I give him a brief explanation and shrug it off, but I see he’s not going to let it go that easy.

“Tell me what happened.”
“That’s all there is to it ..”
“Why don’t you take me back there.”
“Why ..?”
“Indulge me.”

Ok, so I give him a more detailed account ..leaving out the part where I called the knife stupid. Afterward, he tells me I’m interfering with the ‘binding principle’ when I do that. “Do what ..?” I ask “Drift away .. not enough light gets through for you to put together what’s in front of you.” He goes on to tell me that I probably grabbed the knife the same way I grabbed the last utensil because, while I’m drifting away ..my brain is computing the likelihood of the next event (knife) based on a set of light waves it received from a prior event (spoon). He goes on to say “While you’re out there creating one narrative ..your brain is constructing a counter-factual model of what’s at hand. Your observation didn’t come back to the dishes until the separation became too great for you to be in both places at once.” He lost me but I try to cover it up. “I suppose you’re going to tell me if I hadn’t cut myself ..I may have followed a narrative leading somewhere else instead of here.” He nods and goes "That’s right! You see, that’s what makes every moment worth paying attention to ..even when you’re washing dishes. You don't know where they’re going to lead.” I look around the office and go “OK, I’m buying this ..but can anyone else hear what we’re talking about ..?”

Extraterrestrial adaptation

Robert Sapolsky

If an alien creature invaded earth by entering the brain of human beings, hijacking their nervous system and driving them to engage in high-risk ventures sure to lower their chances of survival .. you’d think some of us might notice something. Yet something disturbingly like this may be happening without notice. When mice get infected with toxoplasmosis, an alien bacterium, the toxoplasmum goes dormant inside the amygdala of their brain and reduces their fear of cats [link]. Cats eat the reckless mice and ingest the toxoplasmas where they wind up in the intestine mingling with others of their kind. Toxoplasmas reproduce sexually only in the gut of the cat, so suppressing the fear response in rats and mice is a sure way of gaining entrance into the cat intestine. Neuro-practitioners call this ‘adaptation by behavioral manipulation’ [link]. A parasite learns to manipulate host behaviors that enhance their own chances of survival. In other words, these alien bacteria learn to perform brain surgery in order to get rides to wild parties where they can exchange DNA and procreate!

Apparently these clever little creatures have found their way into people too. Nearly one third of all humans have dormant toxoplasmas sleeping inside their amygdala. Since people are pretty high up in the food chain ..the only real threat comes from themselves (or perhaps an unsuspecting bear or mountain lion). Chances are, infected individuals will start acting recklessly and wind up getting killed in a car accident involving excessive speed. So they only appear in the traffic section of the paper, or the actuarial tables of an insurance company. Otherwise, symptoms appear close enough to schizophrenia that they wind up in a psychiatric population and are never heard from again. I think I would call this a successful alien predation.

Cosmic Charlie

It is well known that the matter, making up the tissues of our body, is in a perpetual state of decay and replenishment. We are not the same cellular material we were the week before. What I want to know is what kind of ‘blueprint’ do these ‘replenishment cycles’ follow ..? What keeps me from dissolving into the atmosphere at the end of the week ..? It only makes sense that some sort of ‘cosmic memory’ exists to pass information from one replenishment cycle to the next. Because what I’ve been told, even the scaffolding gets demolished. While it may be incomprehensible to me, I refuse to dismiss it. Since I have no basis for it, I have to start somewhere familiar.

Embryonic journey: It is well known that the cells of our body already contain information about their destiny. Genetic material guides embryonic development from one generation to the next. Even this was a mystery until the discovery of ‘epigenetic memory’. The contents of epigenetic memory (epigenomes) are what persist in order to tell chromosomes how to express the characteristics of our ancestors. You erase epigenetic memory and you have ‘equipotentiality’ ..the ability start fresh and be whatever you want to be. Anyway, it wasn’t until we had a set of ‘seer stones’ that we could actually sense the presence of epigenetic memory (it resides in deep layers of DNA, at what are now called the sites of telemere and centromere). I hope someday we acquire a set of similar stones to penetrate the mystery of cosmic memory.

Cosmic zone

Dawn is breaking on the continent of Capella. Overhead, the star of Davriel is still visible in a purplish blue sky. A meteorite trail flashes by. Sallareä bows her head in homage to all she does not know. She’s unaware that, momentarily, what she does not know will be paying homage back. Flickering particles of crystal enter a sector of Sallareä’s narrative-space. Passing through the prism of her senses, an apparition emerges. Sallareä sees a constellation of linked images that, to her, resembles a mandala. It has a message. Whoever this presence may be is telling her that everything is OK and would like to know if they can join her narrative-space and play.

Sirens of Titan

Is it a coincidence that the Cassini space probe inexplicably stopped sending images as it was about to fly by Titan, one of the moons of Saturn? Titan is known to harbour conditions necessary for life. Another place considered to be a likely candidate for extraterrestrial life is Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. However, the canyons of Europa have eluded attempts at observation as well [link]. Early radio astronomers claim to have received signals, leaking from Titan, that suggest the presence of an extraterrestrial species. However, they are trapped and shielded from detection by parasitic aliens from another galaxy ..aliens who have been exploiting Titan’s resources for eons [link]. This explains why conditions there have deteriorated to an almost “pre-biotic” state. The result has been a sort of reverse-geo-evolution. In it’s day, Titan could have been just as hospitable a place as Earth is today.

Narrative space

Proceedings from the Symposium on Extraterrestrial Psychology

Dr. Latimer: Language is nothing more than a stream of symbols that signify nothing until we recognize something we have either seen or heard before and can find it's meaning stored in our mental dictionary. In a plurality of worlds, without a storehouse of shared experience, efforts at communication would be an exercise in indecipherable gestures. Verbal communication is the manipulation of symbols to which meaning is assigned by culture. An important point to keep in mind my friends is that the events experienced by members of a culture over time are what make up the narrative thread of that culture.

Dr. Zhavern: When we look into space, we don’t see things as they are. What we see is a narrative thread winding it’s way through the cosmos ..a cosmos that may be shared by narratives other than our own. However, to it’s participants ..each narrative looks like the only cosmic game in town. Like language, we skew space to resemble something we’ve either seen, or heard before. It’s the only way we can come to grips with it.

Dr. Orloff: I think human consciousness is a fragmented and unstable process. It creates rapid models of factual and counterfactual worlds inside the brain for things it cannot observe ..but only infer. The brain keeps track of these different versions until only those that contribute to narrative coherence receive sufficient signal strength to survive while those leading nowhere dissolve into noise ..and disappear into non-narrative space .. all in an instance.

Dr. Pangloss: I think consciousness is made up of searchlights, projected from different mental versions of the world we create. They eventually converge to form concentric circles in the brain that illuminate the focal points that contribute most to narrative events, and fade rapidly at the periphery with fewer contributing points until things go black somewhere around the edges of non-narrative space.

My feeble brain ( hasn’t got a clue ): Are you saying that the narrative threads of extraterrestrials aren’t likely to uncoil very closely to ours ..(?)

Extraterrestrial psychology

Astrophysicist Gregory Benford says we need to consider extraterrestrial economics when looking for signals from outer space. He suggests SETI narrow down its search to what we can reasonably expect extraterrestrial to achieve at such great distances ..assuming they’re not omnipotent. I applaud him for his pragmatism, however I think we also need to consider extraterrestrial psychology if we are to expect a reasonable chance of successful contact. Otherwise, I don’t see how we hope to achieve any kind of meaningful communication. Since we have no basis from which to conceive of the extraterrestrial mind, I think we have to start with something we can observe ..and I believe that would be us.

Psychologists already know that rational thought is a spatio-temporal process. It’s powerful but limited to weighing evidence about the physical universe. Other-worldly experience is out-of-scope. I believe this would also apply to the thought processes of any aliens we encounter. First, we’d only know we’ve encountered them if they share the same spatial-temporal dimension as us. Second, those we do meet would have to have some way of processing information about this shared dimension that is similar to ours. In other words, like us .. they would also have to integrate sensory information into a coherent model of the world they inhabit. So, I believe the first step in contemplating extraterrestrial life is to better understand our own. I mean, lets face it .. at this point it’s all we got.

Science tells us that knowledge is often knowledge of differences. Given that the human brain is tuned to receive only a narrow band of information available on earth, which is further constrained by culture ..I’m not sure it’s safe to assume that the alien mind is similarly tuned. They do not share the same background. We know that human perception is based on background information as much as information from the present ..and that the brain integrates information selected by the senses with information available in memory to create a coherent whole. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect extraterrestrials, who do not share our planetary history, to perceive our surroundings the same way we do. The way I’ve heard it explained best goes something like this:

“We could try and introduce ourselves to them ..but all they might see is a sparse dusting of energy waves occurring in a vacuum ..with some probability of identity based on their backgrounds ..not ours.”

Presented at the ~> SB Institute for Consciousness Studies

Across the universe

Stephen Hawkings recently said that any space aliens we are likely to encounter would be nomadic in nature. They will be traveling through interstellar space, going from one galactic replenishment opportunity to the next. It’s best that we avoid contact with them, he says. Extraterrestrials, arriving on Earth, would lead to a scenario not too unlike Christopher Columbus landing in the new world. As I recall, it did not go well for the indigenous people of the new world. Apparently Dr. Hawking believes that self-preserving behaviour is selected for by evolution across the universe, as it is here on Earth. I, on the other hand, do not have a clue.

Alien discourse

On a ridge top overlooking Los Angeles, a team of alien cryptographers are busy deciphering messages encoded in streams of light that circulate the city at night. I try explaining how those are like transport vessels, indirectly responsible for carrying genetic information from one generation to the next ..and thinking how ‘evolved’ that must’ve sounded. They look at me with undecipherable expressions and I feel deflated ..like they saw right through that attempt at impression-formation. I hear them say it would take as many as four planets to sustain the level of eco-plundering they see. I imagine how threatened they must feel ..like we’re inter-planetary-expansionists or something. I try to explain that we’re really not like that ..we make progress more by stumbling around than by calculation. Another round of indecipherable expressions and I suddenly feel like I just admitted to whatever it was I was trying to deny. I try backing-up to start over again when I realize how pointless that would be ..they communicate telepathically. My thoughts are clearer to them than what I say ..same as my doubts and fears. They don’t need invasive devices to probe my brain ..they’ve got a system of highly evolved sensors doing that.

In Pluto's defense

Admittedly, Pluto is a fringe dweller. It orbits at the outer-most edge of the solar system. Lately, however ..it’s been seen passing in and out of mainstream consciousness .. like the punks and the freaks we see in high school. Now, we may diss’ Pluto, and even question it’s right to exist as a planet ..but we can’t deny its presence. It’s there ..way out there ..twisted and possibly trans-gender .. but definitely there. And it’s not alone. It travels with a swarming pack of fellow Plutinos and other planetoids we still haven’t been able to identify. We know one of its peers is Neptune ..or what the early Vedic Seers called Varuna ..the goddess of the oceans. Another companion is Tau ..or what the local tribesmen call Quaoar .. a formless, genderless force that brought into existence some of the cosmic beings we know as Father Sky, Mother Earth and Grandfather Sun. I’d say Pluto lives in a pretty respectable neighborhood. I wouldn’t dismiss it as a backwater space entity any longer.

Wine country

Water from the Pacific Ocean hits the coast and vaporizes ~ the vapor gets sucked up by thermal drafts and separates into molecules ~ the water molecules get carried away by the jet stream and turn into clouds that rain over the vineyards of California ~ the rain water gets sucked into grapes and the grapes are turned into wine ~ the wine is consumed by people on the coast who dutifully return it to the Pacific Ocean where it crashes into warm coastal air and vaporizes again ~ so, I think what I’m trying to say is ~ the next bottle of wine you drink may have originated in your own backyard.

Indy

A moment of lucidity ~ I’m enjoying the new Indiana Jones movie ~ but have to keep reminding myself what he’s after ~ crystal skulls ~ real-world entities that, according to legend, were made by the hands of other-world beings ~ beings who visited earth, before Columbus, and were worshipped as gods by the early Mayans ~ the skulls are said to have mystical properties that could put us in contact with their creators ~ I repeat this to stay grounded ~ and bring context and coherence to this high-speed adventure. It’s really spectacular. Afterwards, I ask my friend’s 10-year-old daughter if she caught the part where they reveal the meaning of the skulls ~ “uh, kinda” she says ~ “I like the part where they were flying through the jungle and sword fighting.” ~ You got it ..I tell her.