Life without the internet

Update: After writing the post below, I lost my internet connection for over a day! Aaaaaargh!

Yesterday there were periodic outages on the net. Daily Kos didn't come in for a while. Sci-blogs were spotty at best. And then it cleared up. I haven't read any news reports that explained the outages.

Then today my internet connection disappeared periodically -- for hours at a time. I have no idea if these things are related but I do know that I hate when anything gets between me and the internet. It's my lifeblood and I think many of you can identify with this.

It made me think about the old days. Life was deadly boring and so slow before the internet arrived and saved us. I mean, before the net you actually had to look up phone numbers in a book! Can you imagine?! And driving directions were something you got from Uncle Otto -- if he was sober enough. Life was not good.

Computers were the first step. I've always said that if computers weren't invented when they were, I would be dead. I would have succumbed to boredom and killed myself, truly. But computers did come along and they allowed me to do things fast. I like fast. Suddenly life picked up its pace. And when the internet came along, the picture really brightened.

I cannot live without my computer and the internet. Take anything else away: food, medications, TV, heat, A/C -- I don't care. But don't you dare touch my internet.

Just a thought

I don't know about you but I detest doing chores. Anything I have to do repeatedly gets my dander up. I try to be all Ghandi about it but it doesn't work. I do not want to be making sandwiches, cleaning, setting up the coffee pot, doing laundry, etc. These tasks drive me crazy.

And you know what's the worst thing? An odd feeling I sometimes get when I'm taking care of a chore -- a feeling that I've always being doing the chore. Like I'll be putting pills into those damn plastic pill-popper things and I'll think, "Wasn't I just doing this, like five minutes ago?" When this happened recently, a thought occurred to me.

What if that's the truth? What if I've always been putting pills into pill-holders, and the rest -- my supposed life -- is just a dream? Maybe some aliens want pills put into plastic holders so they got a slave, me, and, to keep me happy they inserted some code into my brain that makes me think I have a life. But really all I do is put these stupid pills into these stupid plastic slots.

Does this strike a chord within you -- a scary, Twilight-Zoney chord?

If only life had software controls

From the moment I encountered a GUI, a graphical user interface, I was sold. This is how I wanted stuff to work: just drop a file on a program icon and it jumps to life (well, these days, anyway). Perfection.

But now I want more. I want life itself to work with software controls. I want to drop an image of my laundry on a washer icon, and boom, the laundry's done. I want to drop a quiche on a oven icon and smell it cooking within fifteen minutes. And I want to drop my housecleaning (I see it as a tiny, messy blur) on a maid icon. Voila! The house is clean.

But most of all I want to drop an image of myself on a baseball icon and find myself at Fenway Park, watching the game.

Gimme a software interface for life. Gimme!

It's not about who has the most toys

Recently I caught up with friends from bygone days and was shocked when they immediately told me about their possessions. It's like they were saying, "this is my life." It isn't, you know.

What's important is how you feel. That's the story, not whether you managed to buy something expensive in your travels. Where did your life take you? After all the twists and turns, did you end up happy, sad, resentful, broken, undaunted? Are you proud of your life?

Much to my surprise, at 63 I'm the happiest guy in the world. That's the news I have for my old friends: "Hey, I ended up happy!"

As for money, I'm still a hippie about it. It seems foolish to me. I don't have any, don't want any, and have never spent one hour thinking about money in my whole life. I've never balanced my checkbook -- I just go by feel. I also don't want many things so I'm easy to please. I seem out of step with others on this topic but I'll never change. Money is boring.

Yesterday morning I saw a poll on CNN Money:

When will you become a millionaire? 

1. In five years
2. Ten years from now
3. In twenty years
4. Already am one
5. Never

They should have added another choice: "6. Don't care." We hippies have no respect for money, none at all. Isn't happiness and feeling good about your life vastly more important than money? Just saying.

Does life have a purpose?

I don't think life has a purpose, at least not right out of the box. "But," you say, "aren't survival and procreation purposes?" 

You'd think so, but survival and procreation are life. That's pretty much life's definition. So is that a purpose? It does accomplish something but procreation is merely replication, life's trick that allows it to survive into the future. If that is purpose, then the machine replicators on Stargate SG-1 had purpose. More, more, more. It's the cry of life but is it purpose in the way we humans use the term? Of course, human purpose may just be an illusion that comes with these bodies we inherited. We have to consider that possibility, too.

Still, we humans can do a great trick -- we can accord our lives a purpose. We create purpose, we design it and set it loose in the world. We can do anything we want, unlike animals that must rely on an unchanging way of life to survive. We change, we grow. We adapt easily and it's all because we can think in a comprehensive manner. That's the game changer.

So does this mean human life has a purpose? No, not unless humanity itself decided in a unified way to have a lasting purpose, such as pursuing world peace, and then kept it up for eons. Beings in the future might look at us and say, "Boy, those humans really have a purpose: peace." I guess then you might say humans had a purpose.

But there's little chance of that sort of high-level purpose emerging from our race. Much to our chagrin, we have seen that people only want to eat, buy things and have sex (and note that the last two often coincide). If humanity has a purpose, human nature is at cross-purposes with it. We can't even change our behavior when all life on our planet hangs in the balance. (Climate change, anyone?)

To answer the original question we first have to answer a more basic one: "What are we?" In the year 2011 we still don't know the answer to this question. We don't even know how our brains create the illusion of a mind.

Richard Dawkins suggested in "The Selfish Gene" that it is our genes that are the prime component of existence, that it is they who "want" to proliferate into the future, to continue to exist for all time. In other words, it may be fair to say that they are the key "beings" in life. Thus the name: "The Selfish Gene". But that's just the replicator thing again. What of purpose?

All sorts of biological activities occur within our bodies without our knowledge. Our health is maintained by the production of new cells, by antibodies patrolling our body and taking on invaders, and a host of other, wildly sophisticated biological activities. But we're not even aware of this. For that matter, nine-tenths of "our bodies" aren't even made of human cells. The bacteria inside us far outweigh our human components. And all this activity happens outside our view. This is one level of "our" lives.

We, the personalities we call "us", ride atop this maelstrom of internal processes. And we are in an enviable position: we drive the car (our body) and can take it in a direction that accomplishes a purpose of our own design. We make purpose. That is our job description: it's what we do.

But life itself seems to have no purpose other than replication. In the vast sea of non-purpose that surrounds us, it seems we are the alien creatures. It's both strange and beautiful.

To me, it's almost like we're fairytale creatures that magically emerged from the long and bloody evolutionary process. To think that we came from that pool of pain and suffering and yet we can pick our own values, the things that we consider important and true -- that's so amazing. And as a result of this ability we live meaningful lives. To me, this is a true fairytale. Disney ain't got nuthin' on this story.

But as I said at the outset, I sometimes wonder if anything really matters. We seem to have purpose -- at least, to our eyes. But how fogged are our eyes, how primitive and unseeing? Do our purposes really rise to the level of "purpose"? I don't think we're in a position to judge. 

It's unthinkable that we are the pinnacle of creation. It seems highly likely that there are creatures in the universe that far outstrip our meager mental abilities. Perhaps they have true purpose. I treasure this idea and find it hopeful. If any creature makes it to a higher level of understanding, something well beyond our meager scope, then this is a very successful universe in terms of purpose. 

And I want that. I want at least one race to snag the golden ring and perhaps live forever in a Utopia beyond our ability to imagine. As long as one race gets there, I'll be happy. It doesn't have to be us. In fact, I don't think it could ever be us. We're too flawed.

And to think that all of this came out of elementary particles and their tendencies to group, spin, attract, repel, etc. This is the most amazing thing, and it too gives me hope. Reality is fascinating.

The joy of obituaries

There have always been obituaries in newspapers, but I can't say I noticed them until I entered my sixties. Suddenly they were interesting.

First, a note to obit writers. Do not omit the person's age! I can't believe how many obituaries don't list the age. This is essential to the message. Was this person 12 or 96? It matters. And now, on to other aspects of obituaries, such as the thrill (okay, the fun) of reading them.

I don't know how others react to obituaries, but I find myself poo-pooing people who die in their 40s or 50s. Don't these people have any mettle? What happened to their stick-to-it-ive-ness? Weak as water!

The most amazing thing about them is the three or four-word summary of the person's life.Three words? That's so scary. But I must say they do a damn fine job of it, at least at the Times. Among today's offerings we find, "Wright-trained architect"; "Writer of Gentle Wit"; and "Shaper of Hit Records". You have to give them credit for packing a ton of information into such a tiny space. Then again, there are some obits that may as well say, "Had good appetite," given the person's lack of achievements. These, of course, are great fun to read. "Liked big parties". Indeed. Yes, there is humor in obituaries. You just have to look for it (and perhaps you should be somewhat old).

And of course, we ruminate as we read the obits. Oh, that one was my age! Gasp! This one was a writer too, and he died younger than me and just before he published his first book! There's a ton of this as we pick our way through them and relate their situations to our own. But we can't die! It only happens to other people. This goes round and round and I don't know why I call it fun, but I do.

With the exception of very young people dying, I don't feel sympathy for any of them. First, they're usually titans of corporations and I couldn't care less if they died. Mind you, I only read the Times obits, so it's partly due to their focus on the rich.

And as a regular reader of these things now, one thing I notice is the obscene lifespans of so many rich people. There are tons of 97-year-olds and 102-year-olds in the Times obits, and most often they are people who led luxe lives with excellent, lifelong access to health care. Money seems to make a big difference in how long you live, at least in this country. Sadly, there is inequality even in obits.

They're fascinating and I suppose they'll only become more interesting as the years march by.

UPDATE: In this morning's Boston Herald there is an obituary with the following four-word summary: "Ceramist Responded to Holocaust with Art". I feel a kinship with this fellow because I've responded to the American decline by writing books. Obits are interesting; they just are.