Another night of talking about something neat I found online:

Over at a blog called Under the Saltire Flag, Kei Miller writes about the strange pattern of Caribbean ghosts. According to folk lore, in order to prevent many spooks in Trinidad, Jamaica, and Guyana from disrupting the sleep of grown-ups and children, you are supposed to leave out something for them to count, such as rice or even the words of the Bible.

Miller speculates that the ghosts suffer from OCD.

Then, over at CultureBy.com, anthropologist Grant McCracken discusses the idea of people segmenting their lives to fit different sections of their life. McCracken writes about writer Brit Marling, who went from an analyst at Goldman Sachs to writing, staring, and producing for a show called “Earth 2″. Surely, she did not use the same skill set in both careers. As McCracken postulates, she had to transform and skip from one Earth to her own personal “Earth 2″. I also like the term “isle of personality” to describe this phenomenon.

Sort of like I used to do with “Jordi Scrubbings” the blogger and “Mike Lortz” the analyst. Now I don’t care. I am who I am. All of my traits live on the same isle. Hopefully I can do a thing that would bring them all to bear, but if not, I will pick and choose the tools I need to be successful in the work place.

The goal is not to “be” my job. I’m personally trying to avoid falling into the life of The Wizard in the cinematic classic Taxi Driver.

Look at it this way. A man takes a job, you know? And that job – I mean, like that – That becomes what he is. You know, like – You do a thing and that’s what you are. Like I’ve been a cabbie for thirteen years. Ten years at night. I still don’t own my own cab. You know why? Because I don’t want to. That must be what I want. To be on the night shift drivin’ somebody else’s cab. You understand? I mean, you become – You get a job, you become the job. One guy lives in Brooklyn. One guy lives in Sutton Place. You got a lawyer. Another guy’s a doctor. Another guy dies. Another guy gets well. People are born, y’know? I envy you, your youth. Go on, get laid, get drunk. Do anything. You got no choice, anyway. I mean, we’re all fucked. More or less, ya know.

So taxi drivers are going to drive or shoot pimps because it is who they are, ghosts are going to count rice because it’s who they are, and I am going to be who I am. Although considering I need a job, I am flexible. But like Meatloaf, I won’t do that.

Whatever the hell that was.

(Pic from ProKill.com, which surprisingly is not a hitman-for-hire website.)

I love this line:

Beauty, or rather our perception of it (for only in an eye does does it reside), is a prod to curiosity. It’s a invitation to invest attention and emotion, which are expensive.

Beauty is the reason guys get nervous around a beautiful woman. With her, he must commit time, emotion, and then cognitive thought with what brain power he has left. Yet at the same time he must assume the guy position of social power, confidence, and strength. Doing so is tough until he gets used to her human beauty.

That’s the difference between beauty that outlasts us and beauty we live longer than. Beauty such a sunset will be beautiful until time eternal. We don’t feel nervous around it because we know it will be there tomorrow, even though we might not be. We also don’t have power over it. We know that.

We feel more nervous around fleeting beauty. We take pictures of it, frame it, and try to keep it forever. But the sad reality is that no beauty lives forever. Eventually of course the Earth will be swallowed by the sun, which will be swallowed by a black hole, which will be swallowed by other black holes, and the Big Crunch will occur. And all beauty as we know it will be lost.

We also try to control beauty far too often. We overreact. We corner it and tell it what to do. We have to treat all beauty like the aforementioned sunrise or sunset and let it breathe. To do otherwise would be to ruin it’s innocence.

But to digress briefly back to the subject of women, beauty is also used as both status – fake boobs, extensions, liposuction, etc – but also in the concept of arm candy. Many status-obsessed men must have a certain level of physical beauty in their lives – be it a certain car, girl, or home. It shows achievement, power, and to an extent, control.

So what do you think? What is the epitome of beauty to you? Is it physical? Intellectual?

(Pic found at WorldGallery.co.uk)

I am going to take two completely different subjects and weave them together today. Only because I love the post heading.

This past weekend, I finished reading Greg Prince’s fantastic book “Fear and Faith in Flushing“. Prince is a super diehard Mets fan who is also one of the prime voices at the “Fear and Faith in Flushing” blog. I’ve been reading Prince and his co-blogger Jason Fry for several years now. The “Fear and Faith” book is like a solo album by someone who has been in a band for years.

I highly recommend the book for any baseball fan, but especially those who are, were, or will ever be Mets fans. Prince is a master story teller who tells the story of his own life as it intersects with the Mets from 1969 to 2009. Prince is able to weave in the Metsian community into every aspect of his life, and you get the impression that after 40 years of being a fan, Prince and the Mets are almost one and the same.

The “Faith and Fear” is not so much about stats and standings as it is about family and fandom. And like the title states, fandom is nothing without faith.

Which leads me to part two of this post.

According to news reports, the government of Tajikistan has prohibited children from attending religious services.

While some in the Western world might scream holy bloody murder at the idea that children would be raise faithless, I think it is a brilliant idea. Children minds are too fragile to be exposed to something as dangerous as religion. They should not be able to be brainwashed by religious doctrine. They should be free to choose their own faith and expose themselves to the stories of religion when they are mentally ready.

It is a lot like the old baseball warning that you should not teach a kid how to throw a curve ball before they are 13 as their arm muscles are not developed enough and they will only suffer in the end.

Children should be raised to be good people independent of religion. They should be taught respect and discipline and to say please and thank you without the threat of “hell” or sin or any other boogie man looming over them. Then, if they so choose, they can belong to a church, mosque, or synagogue. They will still be good people whether or not they join or not.

There is also the added benefit of removing children from possible extremists who could use them as child suicide bombers.

And without God or Allah or Jehovah or Ra or Zeus or whoever else, when the kids do reach of age, who knows, they could eventually find solace at the altar of Gooden, Strawberry, Wright, Seaver, or Piazza.

Oh well.

But since I found it once again and still really want to share it with you all, here is the link followed by a bunch of discussion questions. Feel free to start conversating in comments.

Back in September 2010, Wired.com posted an article entitled “The depression map: genes, culture, serotonin, and a side of pathogens“. This article discussed how different people in different parts of the world were more or less chemically prone to depression. Studies found Western people were less prone to depression and Eastern cultures, particularly those in Asia, where more chemically prone to be depressed.

However, there is a bit of a problem. Diagnoses prove the opposite is actually occurring. Western people are getting depressed far more often than people from the East.

According to Wired.com, several scientists concluded that the answer lies in culture. Eastern people had become more communal to compensate, while Western cultures had breed individuality, almost to the point of breaking people.

It’s all rather deep, although very worth the read.

So here are the questions I have, and if you have read any of my stuff on String Theory and Natural Rhythm, the Philosophy of Community, or Whether or Not Man is Inherently Evil, you can kinda guess what I think about these ideas.

Are the results of this article scientific evidence towards collectivism? There is no doubt the risk/reward for western individualism is high, which, if un-achieved, could lead to depression and health risks.

How could we foster a culture of collectivism? Should the institution (government) be the one to promote it from the top-down? Or should it be from the bottom-up?

All major religions preach collectivism. The only predominant theory that advocates individualism is capitalism – the overarching economic (political?) philosophy of the West.

Also, keep in mind, a melting pot without the right integrative attitudes will cause splintering and semi-individualism – a permeating us vs. them conflict.

So what should we do? Is it possible to balance community with capitalism or, on the other hand, individualism with communism? What role should religion play? What about the family element?

Feel free to discuss.

If you think about it, that’s the ultimate job interview. Sure, they are looking at your credentials and all, but appearance counts. Especially if you didn’t die doing something heroic like saving a herd of kids from a burning schoolhouse. Then you have an excuse. But if you die normally, then you better look sharp: teeth brushed, face shaven, and get a haircut. Everyone knows Jesus was the last hippie to go to heaven.

But anyway, a few years ago (seven to be exact), I wrote a piece for the FSU and Florida Flambeau about prophesies and predictions. So being that I don’t have much time left, and that I have more important things to do (like get a haircut), I’m re-posting it here for my final blog post.

Like Ozzy said, see you on the other side.

Preaching the End

Since the dawn of time, humankind has pondered when time will end. Knowing nothing lasts forever, hundreds, if not thousands of philosophers, scientists, religious leaders and everyday laymen have proposed their own ideas on the eventual demise of humanity.

Religion often goes hand-in-hand with apocalyptic forecasts. Just as many beliefs have their own creation story, their teachings usually conclude with a story about humankind’s or even the Earth’s final end. Possibly the most famous of all the end of the world predictions is the Biblical Book of Revelations.

Many organizations travel around the world preaching their interpretation of Revelations to the masses. One such organization, the Sure Word Ministries, recently visited Tallahassee. A flyer describing their 10-night event detailed such sermons as “How Near is Armageddon and the End,” “666 Part 1 and Plagues Upon the Land” and “Revelation’s False Prophet and his Cult Leaders.”

Surprisingly, one of the first “doomsday prophesies” predated the writing of the Bible. According to The Interactive Bible’s online library of date setters of the end of the world, the ancient Thessalonians had heard Christ had returned in 53 A.D. and that “the day of the Lord was near.”

The online library also lists other organizations that have attempted to warn the world of its impending conclusion. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, have issued predictions the world would end in 1874, 1878, 1881, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975 and 1984. Another organization, the Jack Van Impe Ministries, predicted disaster in 2001, bringing in “international chaos such as we’ve never seen in our history.” They further added that there will be “drought, war, malaria, and hunger afflicting entire populations throughout the [African] continent,” Islam would be larger than Christianity and “a one-world church will emerge, controlled by demonic hosts.”

Sometimes interpretations of the Bible have directly led to conflict. The online library discusses a 16th Century German peasant named Muntzer who, along with a group of followers, thought attacking the German government would cause God to return. Muntzer believed “the Lord promised that He would catch the cannon balls of the enemy on the sleeves of His cloak.” As could be predicted, Muntzer’s rebellion was suppressed when they were “mowed down by cannon fire.”

Even modern conflict has coincided with apocalyptic predictions. In 1991, Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan called the Gulf War “the War of Armageddon… the final War.”

Visitors from outer space have been cited as the future cause for the end of humankind as well. According to a Web site appropriately named “It’s the end of the world as we know it…again” (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/9941), The Sacerdotal Knights of National Security announced in November 1997 that an alien had been captured. This alien cracked under CIA interrogation and “revealed his species’ nefarious plan to attack with a massive space invasion force, stripping the world of every last of its natural resources and enslaving all humankind.”

Opinions on the types of aliens that are planning to invade vary. California psychic Sheldon Nidle claimed that angels would join the “16 million space ships” arriving on Earth in 1996. In stark contrast, Robert Hallman called the extraterrestrials who were planning to destroy the world in 1998 “Satan’s minions.”

Finally, it must be noted that even the most respected historical figures have tried their hand in doomsday predictions. Sir Isaac Newton, famous for his writings on the Law of Gravity, not only wrote that Christ would return in 1715, but according to recent news reports, he also concluded the apocalypse would occur in 2060. Newton further predicted he would be one of the many saints to rule over the earth after this apocalypse.

(For the Star Wars geeks, Hawking is also basically a human version of the BT-16, the spider thing in Jabba’s palace. According to Wookiepedia (again!), a BT-16 is a robot spider that carries the brain of an enlightened monk. Or in Hawkings case, a super smart astro-physicist.)

Now all that said, Hawking has been ruffling the feathers of the faithful over the last few years with comments that God wasn’t needed to create the universe and his most recent statement that there is no afterlife.

While I am not going to dispute his statements there, I am going to call BS on his reasoning for the latter.

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail,” Hawking said. “There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

(Quote from Space.com.)

If the brain is truly like a computer, then it must be completely understood as a computer. A computer only runs when hooked up to electricity or a battery. It doesn’t work without a spark. When the computer becomes outdated or the motherboard or chips fail to work, the power in the battery and the electricity in the wall doesn’t vanish. It becomes potential energy back in the battery or on the grid. The energy is still there. “Life” for the computer is still there. There is just no consciousness.

Likewise, when our parts stop working an energy that ran us needs to go somewhere. While our consciousness is gone, the energy should still exist. That’s Newton’s Second Law, or the Law of the Conservation of Energy. The energy that drives Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity should be default also exist in humans. We don’t have a special “non-energy” that propels our existence. The same energy that energy that exists in all atoms and galaxies is the same energy in us.

Using the notion of an all inclusive energy and if you believe that “all is one and one is all”, then the energy that was “us” is no longer contained in us when we die but is now potential again. Hawking should know that all the energy in the universe is spawned from the Big Bang or may possibly slip through to other dimensions and alternate universes, depending on what theories of astro-physics you believe.

With the understanding that energy can not be created nor deleted, Hawkings statements can be seen as somewhat off. Although I agree that we have no consciousness of an “afterlife” with Pearly Gates and saints and a life among the clouds, the energy that was in us will still be there after our life. Whether potential or kinetic, the energy that drives human life will continue to exist, always and forever.

(Yes, that means unless energy is deported to another dimension or universe, the next Big Bang should be just as epic as the one that created our universe.)

You can call that energy God or the Tao or the Great Spirit or whatever you want.

But you can’t deny its existence.

America in the late 1970s wasn’t doing so hot. There were high gas prices, political turmoil in the Middle East, a president no one took seriously, and the Bee Gees. People were still suffering from the social fatigue of the Vietnam War. Then on February 22nd 1980, 20 college hockey players gave America something to believe in again. If these college kids could beat the vaunted Soviet Hockey Machine, then maybe all of American could stick it to the USSR. The team and the victory gave people hope. They made people proud to be Americans.

I was reminded of my essay and the 1980 Miracle on Ice after reading a recent blog post on the eloquent Pitchers and Poet‘s blog. Pitchers and Poets compared a late inning baseball victory to the death of Osama Bin Laden and described the concept of sports and national victory.

Even though I see the comparison, I don’t think one man’s death is anywhere near as big as what happened in Lake Placid. It is a small victory for us and a small defeat for the concept of Islamic radicalism, if it even can be called a defeat.

It is important to remember Bin Laden’s place in American culture. He was an evil mad man soaked in a mysterious philosophy. He was a dangerous international unknown and the type of boogeyman parents use to get children to stay in their beds or advertisers use to get people to buy American-made used cars. He was part Freddy Kruger, part David Koresh, part chupacabera, and part Dr. Doom.

Bin Laden brought out the best of American ignorance. He was the leader of a sect in a religion few Americans knew or cared about, despite the fact that their numbers dwarfed the number of people living from sea to shining sea. Their ignorance both drove him and fed their own impressionable fears. It was a villain-generating machine of the best sort.

Similarly, the Cold War-era Soviet Union stood as a mysterious threat to our American Way. Their political and economic philosophy was all that was bad in the world, even if it was fairest way to ensure group prosperity in theory. They used their secret police to round up dissidents, used fear to keep smaller nations in line, and made Archie Bunker’s life a living hell.

This past Sunday night I watched thousands upon thousands of Americans take to the streets and revel in the death of Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt the Bin Laden killing will have political effects for American policy going forward. It is a definitive strike in the public eye in War on Terror. For the terrorists, although terrorists are replaceable, international icons aren’t.

Another factor to consider is Bin Laden’s role. He wasn’t the chief of operations for Al Qaeda, even if you believe in “One Mighty Al Qaeda to Rule Them All”. He was a figurehead, the Bobby Bowden of Radical Muslim International Terrorism. Removing him may even provide room for growth for a more ambitious Muslim leader.

What bothers me however is that whereas in 1980 we celebrated a sports victory, in 2011 we are cheering death. We didn’t score a five-hole goal or hit a game-winning home run against the Al Qaeda National Team. We killed a man. In that we are no better than those who cheered when the Twin Towers fell.

Ask yourself, if former President George W Bush died in any manner and you saw Iraqis cheering, would you be upset? What if it was those who lived a prosperous life under Saddam prior to the US invasion? Not that some might have benefited from the removal of Hussein, but surely those whose lives are worse or who lost loved ones as collateral damage might loathe our former leader. Bush gave the orders that killed thousands of Iraqis and caused billions in damages. Shouldn’t some Iraqis hold the same hostility towards him that we collectively held towards Bin Laden?

The idea of cheering for death creeps me out. It’s like Ancient Rome and Navy Seal Team 6 is our border-crossing lions. Perhaps however that is only my liberal education talking. Maybe I need to fall back on my natural American psyche.  According to anthropologists, America may be more barbaric than our European predecessors. We are forged both from the wilderness of Lewis and Clark and the gutter instincts of a New York sewer rat.

Because we hadn’t faced an immediate threat to our borders since the days of Pancho Villa, we christened Bin Laden as our number one threat. Now he can’t take away our life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, nor will he ever dress Lady Liberty in a hajib. But realists (not realist theory supporters, but real world realists) would argue that there was no way Bin Laden actually could anyway.

There are and will continue to be columns and posts and essays and articles written about what the Death of Bin Laden means. Like Weird Al and his plate of mashed potatoes in UHF, we all know “this means something“. Whether or not the symbolism is closer to the 1980 Olympic hockey victory or a baseball team winning the last game of the season to avoid a 100-loss campaign has yet to be seen.

A Critique of Religious Thought as a Response to Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell

In Exodus 3:13, Moses asks God what He is called.  God responds with the enigmatic answer of “I am who I am.”

“I am,” when used in the second person, becomes “He is,” leading the reader to believe that God “is.”  Is what?  The Bible and the Christian faith lead us to believe God is everything.  He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-being, yet, at the same time, He is Himself.

This sort of all-inclusive individuality is also discussed in Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception.  Huxley writes of himself as being “One with all” during his experiment with the hallucinogenic drug peyote.  His “not-self,” or his being viewed as merged with the collective universe, experiences a “oneness” with the world.  He feels at peace within himself, that all the world’s objects are, simultaneously, both their total “selves” and their “non-selves,” blended in the entire universal grand scheme of things.

Could Huxley have possibly stumbled into a realm that he should not have entered?  Quite possibly.  A more probable explanation for Huxley’s feelings of all-inclusive individuality is that we have taken the Biblical Word of God too literally.

For example, in Genesis 1:27, the Bible states “God created human beings, making them to be like Himself.”  Can this be interpreted to mean God walks and talks like us?  I do not believe so.  My belief is that God gave all men the power of all-inclusive individuality, to be one with the world.  Aldous Huxley was merely seeing life as God originally intended man to.

The materialistic consequences of original sin took away our ability to view the world as Huxley had under the influence of peyote.  According to the Bible, Genesis 3:7, once Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit, they became consciously aware of their material environment.  The serpent in the creation story told Eve that by eating the forbidden fruit she and Adam would be more like God.  This is in complete contrast to the truth.  Adam and Eve were more God-like prior to eating the forbidden fruit, for they were unaware of their materialistic environment.

Ideas of nonmaterialisticness are concurrent in many aspects of Christianity.  Examples of this are found on both sides of the Christian spectrum.  Satanists believe that by indulging themselves in material things and satisfying every physical desire, they will remove themselves from God.  The Christian Church, on the other hand, believes individuals should dismiss all material objects from their lives to become closer to God, hence the ideas present in the vows priests, monks, and other men of the cloth take prior to joining the holy life.

There is more to getting closer to God than the aforementioned, of course.  Unfortunately, Christian churches seldom directly preach the objective of oneness.  However, in order to achieve and maintain the level of oneness that is so elusive yet so important to our existence, one must focus one’s mind outward onto a higher level of consciousness.

Examples of individuals reaching this higher level of consciousness are witnessed during forms of spiritual worship.  Outward signs of worship- chanting, preaching, singing, etc- sometimes lead people of faith to proclaim, whether truthfully or untruthfully, that they were “possessed.”  In actuality, during these times, people of faith have completely let go of their conscious thought and reached the higher level of the mind.  Sometimes the actions of these individuals while on this higher level are construed as super-human.  These feats are not super-human; they are merely what the mind was created to do normally.  Humankind’s self-constricted intellect and need for material satisfaction have blinded it of the open-mindedness needed to classify these actions correctly, and to see them for what they truly are.

If man was created to normally perform feats classifiable as super-human, then what should we think of Jesus Christ?  According to Scripture, Christ could routinely perform super-human feats.  Could Christ have been the “perfect” human being?  A sample of what we would have been if not for original sin?  Again, maybe we have taken the Biblical Word of God too literally.  If Christ is the Son of God, then as God’s Son, He is God’s offspring, His creation.  Therefore He must be similar to the creation of man in the Genesis story.

Christ was a pure creation of God, the first since Adam and Eve.  Quite possibly, Christ’s mission during his brief tenure on earth was twofold, to show humankind how it could have been had original sin not have occurred and also to show how to become closer to God.  Similar to the actions in the story of original sin, humankind did not listen to God’s message and acted as it so desired.  The Romans crucified Christ, killing His physical being.  Yet when one lives not on the physical substantial plane but on the higher mental plane, the killing of the physical being matters not.  This is evident in the Biblical story of Christ’s resurrection.

So how can one reach this “higher plane” of being?  How can one attain peace within his or herself and, at the same time, become “one” with the universe?  In his book Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley suggests two methods: hypnosis or ingesting a chemical substance (i.e. mescaline, lysergic acid, etc).  There must be more ways than this.  For if someone lets go of his or her entire materialistic being then maybe, just maybe, they can break the barriers of the mind, the “doors of perception,” and attain a new level of consciousness.  A level of consciousness that would allow them to reap the benefits of all-inclusive individuality, being “one” with the universe.  Which is, as Huxley writes, the closest we can get to Heaven before our physical being ceases to exist.  He could not have been closer to the truth.

This is going to be a quick review but I wanted to give my two cents on both Star Wars and Philosophy and The Dharma of Star Wars as I thought they were both good and interesting reads.

Star Wars and Philosophy

Star Wars and Philosophy is a compilation book written by several college professors, most in the philosophy field. They explore ethical challenges and moral conundrums and dilemmas in George Lucas’s universe, such as “are droids are type of slave?” and “why do Jedi always have to wave their hand and manipulate people to get their way?”.

Star Wars and Philosophy also touches on the religious aspect of Star Wars, namely the behavior and attitudes of those in tune with The Force. There is a chapter entitled “The Far East and Star Wars” that goes into depth on the Buddhist leanings of the Jedi. This chapter is an interesting one, especially when paired with The Dharma of Star Wars, which I will get into shortly.

Perhaps my favorite chapter in Star Wars and Philosophy however was “Moral Ambiguity in a Black-and-White Universe” by Richard H. Dees from the University of Rochester. Dees changed my entire of view of Lando Calrissian in less than five pages. Whereas I once thought of Lando as a scoundrel and individualist, not unlike Han Solo, Dees argue that in The Empire Strikes Back, Lando is stuck between a rock and hard place the moment Darth Vader arrived. As Dees writes, “No matter what Lando does, Han will be captured by Darth Vader: either he will surrender Han to Vader or the stormtrooper will capture him on the their assault of the planet”. Not a good position for a leader to be in. Dees concludes that by immediately joining the Rebellion and leading the attack on the second Death Star, Lando is actually one of the most morally courageous people in the Star Wars saga.

Lando, if you read this, I’m sorry I misunderstood you all these years. I owe you a Colt 45.

The Dharma of Star Wars

Written by Matthew Bortolin, an ordained member of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing, The Dharma of Star Wars takes a different approach than Star Wars and Philosophy. Whereas Star Wars and Philosophy was an exploratory look into ideas and notions, The Dharma of Star Wars is more of a guide to a way of life.

In The Dharma of Star Wars, Bortolin parlays his wisdom of Buddhism with his knowledge of the Star Wars Universe. He discusses key elements of The Force such as meditation, patience, and oneness. As each of these are also prominent in Buddhism, Bortolin compares and contrast the practices of a good Buddhist with those considered a good Jedi (Obi Wan, Yoda, Luke Skywalker, etc.). Bortolin also compares the actions of Jabba the Hutt and Jar-Jar Binks to those who do not practice the teachings of the Buddha.

(Here is a great interview with Bortolin about the book. He also has a personal blog on the StarWars.com website.)

My personal favorite part of The Dharma of Star Wars is the second to last section, the “Padawan Handbook: Zen Contemplations for the Would-Be Jedi”. Here Bortolin re-writes several Zen koans and makes them applicable to the Star Wars universe. I am fan of Zen koans and have several books of them, so I thought this section was particularly interesting.

Among Bortolin’s contemplations are thoughts on life, desire, wisdom, time, and several other concepts. Although there are many good lines and words of wisdom in this section, as there are in the entire book, my favorite specific line is in the “Contemplation on Time”: “The future, then, is unreal because it is not the present. Only the present is real; only this moment is alive.”

I often hear that I take my interests too seriously. That I dissect everything I like in a way that for most people would kill the fun. But to me that is fun. And without that curiosity, I’d have never read Star Wars and Philosophy and The Dharma of Star Wars. If you, like me, like a little deep thinking in your pop culture fodder, you should check these books out.

And May the Force be with you.

Published in 1962, Island is an absolutely great book about a a journalist’s visit to an island called Pala. Pala is a land inhabited by a peaceful people who are struggling against a militant neighboring nation called Rendang. In a scenario that has become almost cliche today, the rulers of Rendang and their cohorts in the global oil industry have targeted Pala due to it’s bevy of natural resources.  If the plot of Island sounds similar to James Cameron’s Avatar, it is because it is.

However, it blows Avatar out of the water.

Island is much more in-depth philosophically than anything done today. Huxley thoroughly describes the religious, educational, and social foundations and philosophies of the people of Pala. Most profound is their hybrid Buddhist-Hindu mindset, which is, like other Huxley novels, enhanced through the use of psychological drugs – sort of how Native Americans use peyote to enhance their religious experience. There is no mention of any other philosophy among the residents of Pala, their communal behavior is guided by more of an overarching mindset than a “religion”- sort of how Islam guided early Muslim communities in the 8th Century. There is no “church” nor “state” on Pala, just a proper way of being and attention given to the present moment.

Island is a culmination of many of the other Huxley books I have read. It follows Huxley’s thoughts on hallucinogenic “oneness” discussed Heaven and Hell, The Doors of Perception, and Brave New World. It also features characters that are stereotypes of religious fanaticism, military dictatorships, consumer lust, and impersonal corporate greed, opposites of the people of Pala, yet traits the Palanise attempt to live alongside.

(Heaven and Hell inspired me to write my first ever philosophical book review. It was that deep. I might have to find that and post it here someday.)

If Island was told today, there would be some insane twist at the end, such as in Avatar when the natives overthrew the soulless exploiters. To be honest, with all the detail Huxley put into describing the Palanise people and the fact that there was no mention of a military confict, I almost expected the journalist, Will Barnaby, to be dreaming his visit to Pala, a la “The Newhart Ending“. But in Huxley’s novel, Barnaby wasn’t dreaming. Like any journalist stuck in a war zone, he could do nothing more than watch the collision of two nations. Island definitely ends with what I call an “Empire Strikes Back” ending – where the good guys don’t win. The antagonists don’t necessarily win either, but they have the advantage.

Huxley often preached about the dangers of power: who has it and how societies exist under it.  He believed in decentralization, the power of the individual to make his own decisions, and idea that people could unite in societies under common goals without the need for an aggressive power-hungry government. Those themes are exceedingly evident in Island.

(Check out this 1958 interview between Huxley and CBS mainstay Mike Wallace where Huxley discusses the potential for authoritative governments to take over. Eerie.)

It is fitting that Island is Huxley’s last book before he died in 1963. Huxley intended Island to not just be a story, but a message. A message movies like Avatar touch upon, but lose among their Hollywood glitz and glamor.