Texas Ascendent

I believe we can attribute the last 8 years of Oilmen dominating politics in this country to the 70's. During that era of inflation and a poor economy, people working in the oil exploration field were driven to the top. Big oil's rise brought many to the top strata of society. They were mostly conservative, religious, and as anyone with new found wealth, capitalists to the core. These economically advantaged people had their success drive their ideas to prominence. This is mostly because in this country, as in the world throughout history, money buys influence and power.

If you look back in history, you'll see that spending your way to prominence is not the way to form a lasting empire. The Dutch apparently funded much of the Spanish Empire because they were economically prominent. I'm not sure why they didn't form their own empire, or if the Spanish were ever able to pay them back. Imagine all of Central and South America speaking dutch today. The Dutch did not have the religious zeal of the Spanish, either. Verona is another example of a country without a specific creed or ideals, just a long run of economically prominence. They faded from history and today are mostly forgotten, although in their heyday they managed to have relations with nations on both sides of the Muslim/Christian divide.

I liked it better when we out-thought our way to prominence. We came up with better ideas and then put some blood sweat and tears into the equation to get ahead. Today's method of passing down wealth and influence and trying to rig the system to stay on top doesn't seem sustainable. I wonder what our country would look like right now if someone had come up with a 70% efficient solar cell that could be produced inexpensively in 1976 in Seattle. Imagine if wealth and innovation had flowed from some more liberal and free thinking part of the country. Imagine if our way out of the same energy crisis 30 years ago had been a sustainable and home-grown solution, rather than drilling our way out of the problem. I wonder what free thinking open minded people would have done with their wealth and power and how they would have transformed the country.

Oh well, it didn't happen that way then. I just hope it happens that way now.

Romans Always Won

I was listening to a podcast about ancient Roman history when I heard an interesting phrase. He said that the Romans always won in battle because they always handled their logistics correctly. They did everything the same, each time they moved off to war. They carried or collected enough supplies and had their transportation lines open and secure. Sometimes the warriors and the strengths of the armies were not so different, but the preparations and standardization of how to fight made the difference. So Rome dominated because they had a plan and a method.

The Roman Empire had a nice two episode spread in National Geographic a while back. It showed how their achitecture and engineering and their language, laws, and culture persisted after all this time. The history of ancient Rome podcast I have been listening to has concentrated on their wars and political development.

Roman influence has survived a long time, yet one of the things people also focus on about the Romans is that their empire eventually failed. When I was young, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire was a very popular book. Many people have simplistic explanations as to how they fell from lack of morals and opposition to Christianity to outsourcing their military. Many people have drawn parallels between the America and the Roman Empire. If you consider Rome having a reign of around 800 to 1000 years, there is no comparison to America, we are simply too young. If you want to point out influence, wealth, power, and technology, you may have something there. I was going to say that one difference is that we don't go out conquering other countries, but you could argue that we do that economically.

What is interesting is the way a winner or leader is copied and emulated, as well as opposed and plotted against. Just by virture of their wealth and dominance, Rome was always at odds with the barbarian tribes around it. Their success made them a target. It is clear that they slowly stopped being what they were as far as the transformation that made them fall from grace. They lost much of their ideas and drive.

It doesn't matter that Rome itself fell if you consider that it's ideals and ideas infected the world and survived without the actual empire in existence anymore. The same would be true of America if we were to be surpassed as a world leader. Our organization and methods have already infected the world. Look at what some consider to be our biggest rival - China. They embraced capitalism and market economies in order to get where they are today. They may still call themselves communist, but who is kidding whom here? They are communist in name only. One little factor I keep hearing in the news is how many engineers and scientist each country has or is producing. The idea is that whoever the technological leader is will also be the world leader. That's based on the American model as well as the Roman model.

Just like sports teams can't win forever, one country or one group cannot dominate forever either. Countries may rise or fall, but what endures is the ideas that came out of the countries through their literature or works.

That's a good question

I listen to a lot of podcasts and many of them are on science. Science Talk by Scientific American, Science Magazine, Science at NASA, Science Friday by NPR, the Nature podcast, and the Naked Scientist, to name a few.

I like the way scientists talk to each other. I find that they are usually very respectful to each other, which is something I enjoy. They love turning a subject over and inside out and looking at it from all angles. They are very patient when people call in with questions, because at least when the questions aren't that great, they are an opportunity to teach and to explain how they themselves followed a line of thinking to get to the point they arrived. When the questions are really good, they almost always say "That's a good question."

When I noticed that this was a very common response, I was a little irritated by it. It sounded so patronizing. Sometimes it sounded derogatory, like they were patting the questioner on the head. Other times it sounded like a habitual dodge, a way to buy a few seconds while thinking of a response.

Then I started to realize what it meant. Sometimes it meant, "Oh yes, that direction of thought leads to many new and exciting or unexpected things." Other times it means, "that line of thought never occurred to me." The whole root of scientific discovery is asking the right questions. Sometimes asking questions means challenging preconceptions. Sometimes it means looking in new directions. It doesn't matter what the point of the question is, it's always an opportunity to turn the object of inspection over and look at it from a new angle, which is the best way to learn something new from it. Scientists welcome questions for the most part. They love being challenged and fleshing out ideas through rigorous inquiry.

Many people don't consider what scientific thinking is all about. If they did, I think they would practice it more, because it is fun. Imagine you go to an old mansion with tons of rooms. Let's say the place was abandoned fully furnished, with nothing disturbed. I'm imagining an enormous building with dozens of rooms, long corridors lined with doors. Can you imagine exploring such a place? Particularly if you found something of great value, say a drawer full of jewelry. Scientific discovery is like that. It's an awareness that there is a vast area of information that is just waiting to be uncovered. It's the thrill of the mystery - "What's behind this door?" And frankly, it's the search for treasure.

Most fields of knowledge are not straightforward. They have many facets and are continually branching out into multiple possibilities. I often wonder when I read about the history of scientific discovery if there aren't very interesting lines of investigation that were missed as we moved forward, waiting to be rediscovered. A science fiction short story I read a long time ago was about an alternate reality where science and magic were both developed into full fledged and useful applications. When I learned about Witta and Druidism years ago, I wondered if they were not on the verge of developing a society in touch with nature, and in some ways better able to take advantage of it. We still suspect that the ancient Egyptians and Aztecs were onto things that we have since forgotten. The Incas were able to fit enormous stoneworks together without mortar, a feat we still cannot repeat. Did someone know the secret of antigravity?

There is a theory in quantum physics called the multiverse model. It supposes that each instant of time has an infinite number of possibilities that can branch from it. Should you go to breakfast or go for a run? Will you turn right at the corner or go straight? Are you going to execute some random move in the middle of your day or suddenly blurt out something in the office with little thought or care? Any little decision can lead to a completely different outcome in your day. In the multiverse theory, every alternate possibility does happen. The universe is constantly cleaving into alternate universes where you did turn right, go straight, and all the other options, like suddenly jumping on your left foot and singing opera. Scientific discovery is kind of like that. The possibilities are endless, so you just keep following those branching corridors until you find something interesting. Then you do it again. There's no limit to the search. What else are you going to do with your life?

Mapping Out Ideas

Sometimes you know where you're going, and other times, you wander around until it all makes sense in retrospect.

While there are many things in life that are pointless and there is no excuse or justification for them, some things make a lot of sense. Some journeys, some discussions, some books, some ideas, some undertakings make a lot of sense. They have a theme or purpose, they are rich with meaning.

The question is whether that was planned or accidental. I was telling Andrea about how Stephen King's Gunslinger series took over 30 years for him to write and in the end was all tied together and made sense. In fact, it tied many of his other books together and made them all make a greater sense. How could you hold a plan together in your mind for 20 years while you wrote it all out and described it? The answer in this case is that Stephen King didn't. When he got in his accident in 1999, he had just recently restarted his efforts in writing the Gunslinger series. He had completed the 4th in what would eventually be 7 books in the series. The accident left him in pain and uncomfortable. I had recently read the 4th book and was anxiously awaiting more when I heard an interview where Stephen King admitted that the accident had taken a lot out of him and that he did not have any idea how to finish the series. Yet when it was finished, 5 years after the accident, it was complete in a way that few stories are. Everything was tied in and meshed together, every element was essential in making the completed whole.

So the question is, was it planned or accidental? If it was accidental, how did it later make such sense, as if it was planned?

This is not just a phenomenon with this one book, this is analogous to what happens in many situations. Whether ideas are embedded in our subconscious and we aren't aware of them until we flesh them out, or whether working on an idea is a matter of uncovering some underlying truth inherent in the universe doesn't really matter. What is important here is that you understand and comprehend the totality of something once you have fully mapped it out.

I remember describing to Andrea how people in the age of discovery were always making maps of the world. If they didn't know something firsthand, they would gloss over it. It's amazing how often they got the broad strokes right when they were completely clueless about the details. How is that possible? We also talked about how some trips we take can easily be described by some theme or unifying purpose after we return, when the intent when we set out was nothing near that conclusion.

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon in dreams. I could describe it as Dream Idea Packets. You may have noticed in a dream when you entered a new location or started a new activity in a dream and you already knew the backstory. In your dream, it was already in your mind, a memory of all the stuff that led up to that point, although you didn't dream it in realtime, it didn't unravel slowly, it burst forth as a complete nugget of memory. These little dream packets are sort of like zip files. Back when everything was dial-up on computers, and memory was short, you sometimes compressed files into zip files so they would take up less room. Sometimes you zipped several files into a single compressed file, taking up a fraction of the space of the original material. When you got a compressed file and opened it up (unzipped it) it was sort of like a flower blooming. All this information that was compressed into a little kernel. Actually, that is a lot like a flower blooming or a seed sprouting. All the potential for the whole plant or flower is already in the seed or bud, and then it opens up and unfurls and becomes complete. Or was it already complete when it was in the seed or bud or zipped file?

Are ideas like that? Do we have kernels of ideas already in our head and they only await the proper fertilizer, sun, water, or motivation to sprout?