Individuals

     I think an area where Darwinism is relevant is the whole concept of individualism.

     Early life on Earth consisted of cyanobacteria.  Relatively primitive bacteria that could derive energy from sunlight through photosynthesis.

     Bacteria existed as just single celled organisms for almost three billion years, then something happened that caused many of them to take up symbiotic relationships with other cells to for example become the mitochondria in the cells of all mammals, or to differentiate and take up specific roles within a colony.

     Man lived pretty much independently or in very small groups until the invention of agriculture.

     At that point we had more time to do things other than collect food.  So we started developing technologies and making all sorts of goods.  It became in our interest to aggregate together to exchange these things and villages were born.

     Just as cells in your body differentiate to provide different functions in different organs to sustain the survival of our bodies, so today we as individuals differentiate into different functional units to help sustain civilization, a kind of super-body of which we are all cells.  And just as our bodies cells usually don’t have any choice in what they become, it is usually a function of location and various chemical gradients, so also do we often have not much choice.

     If the cells in our body behaved the way many of us do, did not function for the sake of the whole organism, the whole of our society, the whole of humanity, then we are to the body that is civilization, a diseased cell, and if we’re bent upon amassing resources and reproducing, cancer.

     I’ve been a diseased cell of society, maybe even a cancer.  I know what drove my desire to reproduce was the knowledge of my own mortality.  What allowed me to get past that was the discovery that there is more than this physical plain and that on some level we will live on indefinitely.  I think that many animals, cats and dogs, and others, know this either intuitively or perhaps they don’t forget their past at the end of a life or prior to the beginning of a new life, and that is what draws me to them. Also they have somehow learned to live their nature and yet not be at odds with each other. Now I desire that society become as functional as possible so that we might collectively realize that which was intended for us.

      It’s hard to do though if we’re all fighting.  At one time I thought we were fighting for resources, but these days it seems more ideological. Someone wronged someone three hundred years ago and descendants that had nothing to do with whatever the original assault was still seek revenge.  Perhaps the societal equivalent of an auto-immune disease.

     I don’t know how we get past that, Jesus tried to get us past that 2000+ years ago but we’re still at it.

Social Darwinism

     This article is worth some consideration I think.

     There is one big fallacy in social Darwinism not pointed out though and it is simply this, NONE of us live forever.  Dick Cheney might be on his eighth heart but sooner or later one will fail or he’ll die of a stroke or cancer or some other disease.

     The Golden rule, the people with the gold make the rules, well that’s true here on Earth but our stay here is exceedingly temporary.

https://2408blog.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/social-darwinism/

     And so much is done in the name of safety as if safety could allow us to live forever or even significantly extend our lives.  Yet, all of these things prevent us from really living what short lives we have.

     There is a reason I have come to think more highly of animals that are not people, than animals that are people.  The former are honest, most of the latter are liars.  I do cherish greatly those few who are capable of honesty. The former have the guts to live life on life’s terms, the latter mostly shelter themselves in cubicles. The former have no interest in control, the latter are obsessed with it.

     For being supposedly the most intelligent species on Earth, we humans do a lot of stupid shit.  We obsess over safety, we try to dictate the behavior of others, men try to amass wealth in the interest of reproductive rights.  But if one copy of you doesn’t get it, what makes you think 50 are any more likely to figure it out?  It is as King David often pointed out, all is vanity.

     Sometimes I wonder if there is any point to writing.  Is there anyone out there still capable of an independent thought or has every independent thought out there already died from loneliness?

Weird Dream

     Had a strange dream where I seemed to be in kind of an alternate but related reality.

     In the dream I was still running an Internet service although the technology was somewhat different than what we have.

     My sister was actually nice to me.  Her occupation was different.  In real life, the last time I talked with her she was a nurse, but in this alternate reality her function was that of a hair dresser and she had some unique fashion ideas.  This is totally different than my sister who is usually in the middle of the middle.  She would not stick her neck out on an unproven and unpopular style, but in this dream she did.

     My office, instead of being in a spare bedroom in my house, was in this weird basement cubby hole, but it was finished, not like basement in real life.

     In the dream I knew I wasn’t awake but I was trying to be but I had a very hard time exiting this dream and coming into waking reality.

     This was from a few days ago. Tulips eyes are now good. We got some eye drops for her conjunctivitis and it has cleared it up.     Lucas resting in his cat apartment after consuming some catnip. Hasn’t set it just yet.  Actually he bounces off the walls naturally. I had forgotten how high energy kittens can be. They routinely distribute everything on my desk to the floor.  It was so good he was licking his lips afterwards.

Monster and New Kittys

     Last Sunday, Monster suffered a major stroke leaving the right half of his body paralyzed and lost consciousness about five seconds later.  He remained unconscious for about ten minutes then suffered a grand mal seizer.  He did not regain consciousness.  I made arrangements to have him euthanized but his breathing was already growing shallower and by the time we got to the vets he had passed.

     He was a wonderfully loving and affectionate cat but unfortunately succumbed to feline leukemia virus.  The virus had not actually given him leukemia but had suppressed his bone marrow badly and he could not make blood, hence the stroke.

     This Friday my wife and I went to Paws and adopted two more cats.  In a way I worried that it might seem disrespectful to Monster’s memory but after not having cats for ten years I decided I really liked having one around and I feel Monster being the loving cat he was would not want me to miss out.  He really struggled to stay with us.

     We had planned on adopting “A” cat but there were two kittens that had been together and they were both super friendly, and my wife, ordinarily not a cat person, was so taken by them that she suggested we adopt them both so we did.

     This be Tulip.  She is 7 months old and was three weeks pregnant when spayed (they aborted the fetuses).  She had just been spayed yesterday so was a little hissy with her partner in crime but still warmed up to us humans something incredible.  She loves to lay in my chair either next to me or behind me.  She is a very small cat, in part probably because of the early pregnancy, and is grossly underweight but she is eating well, ate three cans of kitten food the first night we had her, two cans the subsequent day, so we expect this to be a temporary condition.  She also appears to have some conjunctivitis in her right eye.  We will be seeing the vet on Monday.  She is a Siamese mix, the only place the non-Siamese part of the mix is apparent is on a few of her toes which are white, like a Siamese with socks.

     And this guy be Lucas.  Lucas is five months old and generally is in one of two states, passed out or totally bouncing off the walls.  But he too loves human attention.  He is a mix between  solid gray and a gray tabby, the tabby markings are visible but faint.  His beak doesn’t stick out quite as far as Tulips but he isn’t flat faced either.

     Both of these cats share two qualities in common with Monster, they love human attention in general, and they love a good belly rub which most people know is uncharacteristic of cats.

     Tulip has been a bit hissy with him, he always wants to play and she wants to recover from the surgery so there is a bit of a conflict of interest at present.  He just had his nuts whacked but doesn’t seem at all concerned or slowed down.

     At any rate having these guys in my life is a delight. They’ve both been tested for feline leukemia virus and come up negative.  We are keeping them as indoor cats so that they stay this way.