Lets talk about evolution theory… from Matt Jarvis on Vimeo.

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If you think about how it was perpetuated in the time of the middle ages, society was a very hierarchical one, where the natural way of thinking was to expect what happened in the heavens to affect what happens on the earth. At that time there was a lot that was a mystery to us and it was much more dangerous and hazardous world than we consider the world to be today and at that time, astrology could offer a sense of having some control over our lives. The idea that there is some sort of hierarchical system is difficult to believe today. Yet astrology is still very popular and many people are very attracted to check the readings of the stars.

Einstein, born on the 14th of March, was a Pisces. Traditional astrological Pisces traits include being imaginative and sensitive, compassionate and kind, selfless and unworldly, intuitive and sympathetic. People born into this sign are known for their ‘airy-fairy easy-going look at the world’ and it was said that actually, Einstein was said to have intuitively reached his conclusions and understandings.

However, given that personality is so complex, what influence could the position of a planet have on an individual personality? There are all sorts of possible explanations about how astrology might work, but the most likely seems to be simple co-incidence. When we look at a clock on the earth, we develop a sort of feeling about the time. We have a feeling about the day every instance we look at the clock. It’s all about reflection. Some astrologers believe that as we go through life we physically and mentally we develop a rhythm and we can see aspects of our rhythm in a sort of universal ‘clock’ in the universe.

People who call themselves astrologers are extremely perceptive people who can help us think about our psyche and how we put our thoughts together.

We do now however, understand very much about how the universe actually works, but perhaps astrology still has a use in today’s society. Science simply asks question after question and what is so satisfying to people is certainty about things, even at a pseudo-scientific level. Maybe this is the placebo affect. The great thing about the placebo affect is that it works whether or not we believe in it. There have been scientific tests to test placebo and it turns out that we have a built in mechanism to benefit from a placebo affect whether we know it’s a placebo or not. After reading horoscopes we feel as though something has been made sense of. Being such a vague system and having so many interpretations makes it very hard to disprove astrology and sort of provides a mental framework for a solution. The worrying affect of this however, is that it may be part of a slippery slope of irrationality.

Astrologers have the ability to place a blind faith into a mechanism. They don’t know how it works, they just believe that there is a connection from the positions of the stars at your time and place of birth affect your personality. The important thing is that they believe there is a connection and, if you give them a map of the sky, they will tell you what affect that has on your personality.

Mathematics is a modelling tool. The way science works is that you observe the world, you make models of that world and mathematics is a useful tool for doing that. You can predict different behaviour and look for more behaviours. It is the experimental method, combined with mathematical models has given us the 21st century world that we see today.

This ‘modelling tool’ is exactly what astrologers use. What are we doing in science other than taking a mechanism of mathematics and saying that we believe the universe can be described by mathematics, we don’t know why mathematics is true, we just know that it works. We know that if we formulate a string theorem, despite whether there is any evidence for or against it, we know that it will provide results because it’s a beautiful mathematical theory and we believe in it.

If we take a physical theory, such as quantum theory and using mathematics as a modelling tool, what we are admitting is, this isn’t true in a philosophical sense. In quantum mechanics, there isn’t a 1:1 correspondence between our mental idea of quantum mechanics and how the world actually behaves.

Quantum mechanics therefore is a model which has a relative scientific truth and we will hold to it for as long as it’s born out of successful experiments. This is the only real difference between an astrologer reading their star charts and a scientist accelerating protons at 99.99999% the speed of light in a large hadron collider hoping to see the conditions that were present at the time of the big bang when we believe the universe was actually created. Maybe at some point we will discover that in another parallel universe, everyone just believes what they read in the paper.

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Go on! Enter the Twitterverse!

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This is a nice article explaining why this might be so:

Is Google Making Us Stupid? – The Atlantic (July/August 2008)

I think this can be related to the Continuous Partial Attention Syndrome, I’m not sure though.. my mind is now focusing on something else.. I’ll update this entry when I’ve written more about it

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Passionate love is a drug.
It’s symptoms overlap with those of heroin (euphoric well-being, sometimes described in sexual terms) and cocaine (euphoria combined with giddiness and energy) [according to Julien, 1998.] And [Bartels and Zeki, 2000 with Fisher, 2004 describe how] parts of the brain are altered, with passionate love, including those parts which are involved with the release of dopamine. This is like drugs that artificially raise dopamine levels. Therefore love is like a drug, and if you take it once a month you do not become addicted, whereas if you take it everyday, you will. However the brain reacts to a chronic surplus of dopamine and develops neurochemical reactions that oppose it and restores its own equilibrium. Like drugs, when withdrawn the brain becomes unbalanced in the opposite direction; pain, lethargy and despair follow withdrawal from cocaine or from passionate love.

Does this mean nobody can stay in love forever? Well, there is the other type of love, companionate love. Passionate love doesn’t turn into companionate love- they are 2 different processes and have different time courses. There are 2 danger points in passionate love, one when you can’t think straight and it burns at it’s maximum temperature- this is when people can get married during the first few weeks or months of madness. The other point is when the brain has rebalanced from this crazy obsessional high. This usually happens in one of the lovers, the fire has calmed and they can now see all the faults in their partners they couldn’t before. The other lover becomes confused. One of the lovers may decide the game is up, and they made decide to break up. This could be a mistake however as they would never have given companionate love a chance to grow. True love, the love that is behind strong marriages, is simply strong companionate love, with added passion, between two people who are firmly committed to eachother [These are 3 components of Sternberg's (1986) triangular theory of love]. Two graphs here (quick drawn up in MacDraft) describe the differences in the two types of love. In the 1st graph we can see that companionate love looks weak. Taken over a longer period of time however, it’s the compasionate love that looks like a flash in the pan, trivial affair, and companionate love that lasts a lifetime.

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The Hunter
The man who has seen if not spoken to almost everyone else in the bar. This type of guy will only try and pick you up if you have never slept with him before and he considers you some sort of challenge. You should resist this guy if you want to take him home one night.

The Care taker
This type of person wants to look after you. They try and attend to your every need, hoping to lure you in using your very insecurities to make them your resource to feel good about yourself, so should you ever choose to leave you will be depressed.

The Victim
This type of guy usually drinks a lot and hangs around the bar rather than dancing. He’s waiting to be picked up, yet because he thinks of himself so badly. He puts out a good first impression and drinks to cover what he believes to be his inadequacies. Usually he gets so drunk that should a hunter try and pursue him he turns them off and so maintains his state of being the victim. Could be suited to the care-taker, if he can put him off.

Mr Popular
Never without words, this guy will do his up most to grab and keep your attention. Usually while in the queue for a karaoke performance, he will crack cheap jokes and impersonate popular movie stars in well known scenes. The only way to shut him up is to kiss him- should he let you close enough before he jets onto the dance floor to enact his pre-rehearsed routines to the songs he requested the DJ to play.

High-rolling Dude
Should he not be in the smoking area, or the bathroom, this guy is always on the search for a ‘pick me up’ substance. He’s so obsessed with escapism you will either find your conversation with him extremely philosophical or directly intensely about getting you home. If you get home with this guy you might loose your head, especially if you don’t end up actually sleeping.

Mr Romantic
This guy would rather take you to a meal than take you home. He’s interested in a long term relationship and will buy you more drinks than a brew-master trying to sell to a bar. He’ll be interested in cinema and have longing eyes while wearing only his heart on his sleeve. No matter what you do, you are sure to break his heart, so just say no now and save you both the pain.

The Lad
Usually in sports wear, this one is out for anything he can get. He’s interested in the High-rollers and the Hunter’s mainly, while loves to show off his latest trainers while spilling beer all over them en route to the dance floor. He just wants to experience a great sex life and play football and his Playstation or Xbox with a joint afterwards.

The Drama Queen
This guy is so bitter insecure he dresses everything up to a stage performance. Nothing is ever good enough for this guy and in his disappointment of life he attempts to control and manipulate every situation to his advantage just to get a kiss. When something doesn’t work out if gives him more ammunition to insult everyone’s morals. Most of his friends only hang out with him because they feel sorry for him, but in return he makes them laugh.

By definition, “recursion is a process by which a method calls itself over again until some process is complete or some condition is met.”

Our basic need to be with someone else in a passionate way is possibly the strongest will in humanity. But how do we find our partner? We decide what we like and we go out looking for it. These types of personalities can be found in most of the gay bars around the world and having met and tried with all of these types, and my personal criteria not being met, I realise all I need is to love myself.

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At one point a small group of us split from the main group early in the morning after being up all night and we were laying by the docks discussing life and loves, an hour or so after the sun rose above us. We were all staring at the skies. One of the renegade collective started talking about how she could make out some forms in the skies from the clouds, in fact she mentioned she could see homosexuals making love! So we all looked, and it was so- up there in the skies there was a formation of cloud which looked like an art work by Tom of Finland or a shape of one of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos.

Another friend pointed out another formulation, this one was more like a cartoon dwarf playing or dancing upon a large-breasted woman. I was lying there, and it started. Where ever I looked in the sky I could see sex! It was an image of the biggest orgy I could imagine, going long on into the horizon! It reminded my of those ‘magic-eye’ pictures, if you stare long enough you might see something, but this was different. This was induced by one friend building a particular theme or rule.

As we regrouped with the rest of the posse to enjoy more of the entertainment, we shared what had happened to us. It was a hot sunny day, however there were many disparate clouds in the sky. Our friends one by one and at different times, as they heard the story spent some time looking up to the clouds. I had expected them to see the same things, but they each came up with another story. They saw tractors, windmills, horses, houses, even what one said was god. Nothing as exciting as the ‘cloud-porn’ we had shared earlier in the day.

It was strange, it seemed to me that in a small group we shared our vision together, yet as a larger group we all saw completely individual stories. This was my first real memory of my encounter with emergence. One theme, a lot of random vapour and some sun burn, we all saw the same thing. However when this collective group gets bigger, we didn’t manage to share our visions, even though the rule and the subject are the same- the environment and our observations had changed.

Next time you are relaxing outdoors, wear some sun screen and take some time to watch the skies. Let your imagination run wild, you’ll be surprised at what emerges to you. It’s nice to share it, it can show how close you are with your friends and if you are on the same level. You never know what might come up with. Just be careful what you tell your psychologist.

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