the soul of my shoe

here is a question that matters:

• do souls exist?

fuck if i know. but i'll take some time to try to establish a concept of the soul that can be used to reasonably accept their existence.

first off, i'd like to say that i don't believe in religion, but how can i not believe in it when it obviously exists..? instead, i'll just say that i don't accept most religious doctrine. there are aspects that i find compelling and especially important for shaping morality, but all in all, religion is founded off of man's thoughts and man's thoughts are always led by impure motivations.

the conception of the soul that seems most mainstream in today's society is one based primarily off of religion and the prospects of an afterlife. people are souls with bodies. the body lives on earth..but when it dies, the soul transcends and continues existence in heaven.

"people are souls with bodies" - this makes me want to figure a distinction between souls and minds. personally,  i hold that the mind is the control unit for the body. is it a distinct entity separate from the brain? that's a silly question whose answer is entirely up to speculation. i speculate that the mind is the nervous system in action with consciousness coming in degrees with respect to the complexity of that nervous system. but is a nervous system necessary? if a being has some sort of control over itself, then it has a mind..it just can vary in complexity and conscious awareness. robots and computer programs can have minds. we just haven't yet seen any that have minds that adequately mimic those of the typical human. can other things have minds? do computers as they currently are have minds? prolly not what i'm tryna get into right now.

the relation of the mind to the soul..?

not the point of this post.

the soul...transcends physical existence free of a body. how can something transcend physical existence? it's not that i can't experience anything other than physical interactions with the world..i can certainly experience my internal mental life. it is that life that we expect to transcend our physical being when life escapes our bodies. we expect our selves to as well. our selves..our souls. but if our minds are simply instantiations of the complexity of our physical structure and the self is seated in the mind, then what are we to think of the soul and its transcendence. the soul must not be the self that arises from the functioning conscious mind.

transcendence happens.

heaven or not..our souls, and even our selves (in a sense), transcend our physical bodies and continue to exist as long as our impact on existence continues to have an impact on existence.

we live to affect the world...and all of existence. the effects that we have on existence do not die with us. the soul of steve jobs will no doubt continue to exist as long as apple and pixar exist. but more than that. the soul of steve jobs will exist eternally. existence will always show traces of the impact left by steve jobs. this is the case for us all.

coming to a point, our souls are immortal in the sense that the impacts of our being in existence are permanent.

be good and your soul will exist in heaven as those who remember you by thinking of your impacts will think of the good you left on earth.

be evil and your soul will still continue to exist, but this heaven/hell concept is nothing other than a subjective mental placement of identity in the minds of vastly different individuals. if you think it's good to kill americans so you act in that direction, then - although americans see you as evil for performing those acts - you will still transcend physical existence and take a seat in heaven in the minds of those that hold the same opinion as you about killing americans. 9/11 terrorists are remembered positively by their al qaeda co-conspirators and have therefore transcended into some heaven for the time being.

heaven is just the idea of ultimate goodness subjective to each individual. hell is the opposite. those who are good go to heaven. those who are not do not. it's all in the mind.

we don't know what happens when we die. i believe we stop existing. our souls live on as i've said. so what about other things that discontinue existence even without ever having life?

this is where we get to the title of this post. and my reason for believing that all that is must have a soul or there is no point in thinking of souls at all.

my shoes, my shirts, my computer, my bed..all objects i interact with must have souls. they impact existence and their impact is permanent. even when they no longer exist, the impact that they've had will continue to exhibit itself in the ripples and waves of existence.

the soul of my shoe is a reflection of the function it served nearly every day i wore it last year. without it, i would be a different person, and this world would be a slightly different place.

if you have a soul, then so does my shoe.

we are all circles

everythings a circle. everythings a cycle. it's all just movement in loops and spirals.

one of my favorite books is titled, "I am a Strange Loop" - it's basic point is that the concept of the self arises from nothing more than our mind's ability to represent itself and continuously update that representation as it is affected by experience. it serves as an argument for the computational nature of the mind and the possibility to computationalize consciousness. The concept comes so naturally that I had no trouble accepting nearly every point as i quickly turned through the pages.

This account of our conscious awareness won't be the focus of this post, but it will be beneficial to understand the foundation off of which i intend to contemplate the nature of interpersonal love.

to distract myself, i often spend my time on tumblr, usually favoriting and reblogging pictures that resonate with my mindset. about a week ago, a picture (accompanied by some text) on my dashboard caught my eye. i was quick to favorite it and after a few days, when i had time to spend updating my personal page, i reblogged the photo and added a caption similar to what is now the title of this post - "we're all just circles"..here is the photo:

for all of my life and, i assume, the lives of everyone living today, homosexuality has been one of the most culturally controversial topics. I have posted once before about the concept of marriage and the inability of many to accept the transformation of the term - and, in turn, our culture - to account for the union of homosexuals, but i have hardly delved into the topic of homosexual love.

to be clear, i've got a strictly hetero-orientation. I'm just nearly obsessed with the concept of love because, in my opinion, it is an all-encompassing notion that can explain all interaction. not only does it impact our interpersonal relationships, but it really is the driving force behind every interaction a being can have with its environment. beings love beings and that love is what guides them in continuing their existence. everything in existence should be thought of as a being. all of existence is the greatest being of all and that is my concept of god. if there is a word denoting a tangible concept, then in my mind, i would consider that concept as a being. say we have concept x, if we can say x is being x, then x is a being. the sweater i am wearing is a being because the sweater is being a sweater and an item of clothing and whatever else you can think of the sweater being (if i wear it as a turban, then it is being a turban). and i am certainly a being - there should be no qualms with that. there is some degree of love between me and my sweater and that love is what has guided me to wear it today. i love existence, so i choose to continue to exist - to interact with the beings of existence.

so..about the picture..

as you can see, people are represented as circles with protruding shapes representing their gender. sexuality is guided by love. sexual orientation is accounted for by how these different shapes overlap.

while it is important to be aware of the sexual inclinations of others in some instances, for the most sexual orientation should have no bearing on the judgments we make about the people we interact with. i love women..but i also love men..and i love all animals - independent of their gender. it's our expression of love that causes people discomfort.

when in a relationship of mutual love (in an ideal world, this would be a redundant phrase), the best thing to do is learn and be aware of the desires and tendencies of your relationship partner. it's best to express love in such a way that all parties involved are satisfied with the nature of the loving relationship. the only way to have this awareness of desires is to communicate with your partner. it is not enough to signify their sexual orientation with a silly symbol.

we are all just circles. attracted to other circles through our loving tendencies. maybe one day, each person will be expressed by their own unique symbol to allow for computer analysis to determine all orientation and desires of that person - in this hypothetical world, love would not be free. luckily, in this current day, we are all internal. while our bodies are the unique symbols that represent all that we are, there is no computer analysis that can determine exactly what it is that will make us happy. often, not even self-analysis can reveal that.

it takes action and interaction. eventually, through this, we can hopefully find others whose satisfaction and happiness is inversely correlated with our own.

this is easy with simple objects lacking happiness or the ability to feel.. we can project whatever happiness we have held within onto these beings and feel satisfied with the pleasure we receive from these interactions. once the concept of life is introduced, we must have a much more keen awareness of the states of the beings  we interact with. everything that lives has goals. the ability for us to understand those goals and do what we can to assist, or at least not hinder, the being's pursuit of goals is the sole(soul) purpose of love.

man or woman, gay or straight, we should all love each other. we should work to understand where we all stand amongst each other and act accordingly. we love for each other. life would be incomplete without it. we're all circles and none of us wants to be empty.

flushing waste and wasting flushes

so i'm thinking about words again.

I've been in Richmond Hall writing a paper for the past couple of hours. I just made my second trip to the bathroom - didn't wash my hands either time..totally badass. sucks for whoever will be using this keyboard next.

As I approached the door to the bathroom, I could hear water running. First I was surprised at my thought that somebody may be in there, but once I entered, I realized that that really the flush lever was stuck from my previous visit to the urination station. I immediately unstuck it so the water would stop running.

I thought to myself, "what a waste."

why was it a waste?   Because clean water was flowing somewhere only dirty water should go. We missed out on the opportunity to use clean water. The clean water was wasted.

It would not have been wasted had it been dirty water. When we flush normally, it does not seem like a real waste of water (unless it's a really inefficient toilet or something).

Sooo...when the flush contains human waste, we would not say that the flush was a waste of water.

when the flush contains no waste, it is itself a waste.

when what is flushed is waste, the flush is not wasted.

circles.

it's friday night. i should be the only thing getting wasted.