Tag Archives: Philosophy

Preservation of Constant Inconvenience

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Yesterday I was musing to myself over an idea that I’ve been mulling over ever since I bought my Apple iPad. My thoughts centered around the concepts of content, specifically content itself, the price, cost, and format of the content and what ethical or moral obligations are present on content. There is so much content to speak about, but yesterday it was centered on books, but it could also arguably also be about any sort of content, music, photography, sculpture, anything created by people for other people to consume and/or enjoy.

It came to the question of books. In our world we have books and they cost money to write, print, publish, distribute, catalog, and manage. We also have public libraries, where these books are purchased and then shared amongst the people for ‘free’. Technically it’s tax money that pays for the books, but the libraries lend those books to people for no money charge and since there are so many people the burden of the cost of the libraries isn’t readily visible. I imagined what a regular person who doesn’t pay taxes (say a young person or someone who is unemployed) who also happens to be a voracious reader could do, value-wise. They could chew through the libraries collection of books and without having to spend one single dime of their own money consume the content without actually paying for it. This person effectively is cheating all the previous people out of money by the fact that we have libraries that lend for ‘free’. So instead of this person paying their fair share for the book, giving the bookseller, the distributor, the printer, the author and all the others money for the consumption/enjoyment of the content, they essentially steal it right from under the nose of all these people. In our society using a library is not a moral or ethical problem for anyone, we all accept that it’s perfectly fine for anyone at all to do when the library is running and open and lending. What is the limit of a library? Contention for content, libraries don’t have an endless supply of books either in-author or even in-title, so while someone has Widget Book A, another person can’t have Widget Book A.

When I started thinking about all of this, I wanted to concentrate on the ethical and moral ramifications of downloading books from the Internet. Specifically books that I could obtain from the library (KPL or Waldo or LoC) or books that were already present in my house. To me, it really wasn’t a matter of money, because the content creators were paid by (the platonic form of) “The Library” or they were paid by my household, in that the physical paper book was in my actual house and I can grab it and show it to people that I own it. What I wanted to explore was what was really at the core of things, what did people really care about. I discovered that my actual question was, what do people covet? I also distilled this argument down to the core question of content format. If I have a physical book, or I can freely acquire a physical book, is it ethically or morally wrong for me to download the book from the Internet and upload it to my eBook reading device because reading it in that format is more convenient and pleasurable than any other format? After discussing it at length with Scott, I have learned that content creators hold a kind of format tyranny over their content. They sell a book, they sell a paper book that weighs five pounds and THAT and ONLY THAT is how they have licensed you to enjoy their content…

It isn’t about money, it isn’t about ethics or morality, it is all about the preservation of a certain constant of inconvenience. Library supply contention is an inconvenience, format tyranny is an inconvenience, and even while arguing the idea that I could buy my own scanner and disassemble a book in the privacy of my own home to make my own e-book files, this is in itself also an inconvenience. So what in the end is the moral and ethical implications of downloading an e-book from the Internet when you either own a physical representation of the book in your home or can arguably acquire it for ‘free’ at any (platonic form of) “The Library”? It is apparently ethically and/or morally reprehensible to break the law of the preservation of constant inconvenience. That inconvenience must be paid, must be respected, that everyone in the supply chain must be satisfied that you are somehow inconveniently thwarted. You pay for books by suffering inconvenience.

As I wrote above, this is expandable to other kinds of content, such as Music. Oddly enough the realm of Music apparently has abandoned the fighting arena that books enjoy, that being format tyranny. But the existence of Library also plays out here; I could walk down to the KPL and borrow a CD and rip it onto my device? If I own a CD, Music isn’t really concerned anymore that I rip it to my iPod, so if I borrow a CD from the library and rip that, it is wrong because there is a late-binding violation of the law of preservation of inconvenience? I sense some erosion.

What about Comic Books? Now this is an interesting field. If I own longboxes of comic books and I happen to have their digital representations as well, this is wrong, because I have broken the format tyranny and violated the law of the preservation of inconvenience.

What is the future for this law of inconvenience? Since Music has given up their domain of format tyranny, does that mean that one failure in content can eventually expand to other kinds of content? Does Music’s failure to remain vigilant mean that books and comics will eventually face the same erosion of ethics when it comes to the contention of format tyranny? I think that time will tell, that people when faced with technology will change their definitions and concepts of what is ethical and/or moral. Just as the ethical violation of the existence of Libraries has dwindled to nothing, may format freedom eventually attain this same dwindling? Again, time will have to pass and when everyone no longer really cares, then I think the definition of ethical and/or moral upset will fade away.

Technology, Humanity, Evolution

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An interesting thought occurred to me while I was walking back from a technical support call. What if technology is actually a selection pressure in an evolutionary context? Those “more fit” individuals who can embrace technology survive to pass on their traits to the next generation, while those who cannot or will not embrace technology find themselves out of work, starving, and ultimately not passing their traits on to the next generation. What traits come with the actual embracing of technology? Obviously intellectualism, idealism, curiosity, determination, independence and interdependence all come to mind. What other traits may be involved? Perhaps expanded social interactions, bolstered by technology will help push us, evolutionarily speaking towards being a more social and connected species. I find it fascinating to note that technology is rendering physical barriers to socialization meaningless. The idea of space being a limiting factor, and watching as that limit erodes is changing how we behave in a global and local setting. Eventually the ‘outside’ will evaporate as our social interests in that setting will have progressively less meaning than it did before. What will happen to us as we create new technologies and those technologies create a new us? Are we set on a path of technological and biological unity?

On Death and Dying

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My experience with Death is limited to the loss of both my paternal and maternal grandmothers. I have stood witness to their passing as well as the ramifications that sprang from those events.

Both of their passing, and my curious individualistic faith has formed the basis for my perceptions and thoughts about death and dying. I lost my Christian faith many years ago. I was raised as a Christian protestant, in the Presbyterian tradition, but I have developed my own unique viewpoints as I have lived my life and experienced it.

There is no real death in this world. The death that we know is one integral step we must take on our path. Each life is filled with steps, and they all lead somewhere, we are born, we grow up, we lead our lives, and eventually we die. I approach death both with metaphors and metaphysics. My metaphorical approach to death is the bowling analogy. Life is like a game of bowling: the shoes to rent, the ball to fondle, the lane to look down and goals to reach. Our lives are lead as the bowl hurdles down the alley, precariously streaking along a certain path, never one we think we selected but the path that was meant for us, one that could reach the pins or reach the gutter. When the ball strikes the pins, we die. While the pins knock over, they do not stop existing, they are gathered up, reassembled, and the ball is returned for another game. We are the pins, we are the ball, our death is when the ball strikes the pins and the gathering up and reassembly is the job of God.

When our lives end, when the ball strikes the pins, we do not simply cease to exist. There is a part of us, the part of us that is aware of awareness. It’s more than simply our consciousness, as consciousness fits within the crib of our sentience, it is the part of us that is just as permanent as the rest of the surrounding Universe. This part is our soul. When we die, the soul is released from the body but it does not just evaporate into nothingness. The soul is purpose. The soul is both the selector of the path and the path itself.  In each of our lives our souls are driven to experience a certain path, and we take that path whether we are conscious of it or not. For most people, they remain asleep to their souls and consider the events of their lives to be chaotic and random. Other people who are on the path of awakening to enlightenment understand how their live is structured and respect and have faith in the path.

This touches upon Good and Evil. The path selected is a means unto itself. People attribute valuations of “Good” and “Evil” to explain events that defy logical or rational description. It is because the consciousness cannot apprehend true reality that we are lead to make this fundamental attribution error. We don’t know, and without any further proof to the contrary we affix a label to events, calling them “Good” or “Evil”. Then we rail at a God who allows “Evil” into our world. In each situation the “Evil” serves a purpose that we cannot apprehend with consciousness. There is no real “Good” or “Evil”. There are only souls being and making paths for our bodies to follow from lifetime to lifetime. Death is not “Evil”. Death is merely a part of the path, one step that leads to another. It is pointless to upset oneself over “Good” versus “Evil” as any upset to a souls path never is permanent, the soul will select a path to follow that it must, irrespective of free will to the contrary.

The matter of enlightenment still remains. When consciousness awakens and expands it can break free from Maya, the illusion of reality, and catch glimpses of the reality the soul exists in. The rewards of awakening are immediate: you can catch a sense to your path, you are filled with the serenity of knowing you are where you are supposed to be and that you are doing what you are meant to be doing. That you are on the path, your path. I can only imagine that when a person achieves true enlightenment, true awakening, their consciousness has a full view of their souls, an incredible thing to contemplate.

I also approach death analytically. I see the body as a very fragile yet exceptionally complicated tuner. When we are born, we don’t have the biological complexity required to fully ‘tune in on’ our souls, so from birth to about 3 years old we are wholly indistinguishable from our nearest evolutionary progenitors, the chimpanzees. After our 3rd year, our bodies show enough raw complexity that tuning the souls attached to our bodies can begin. This tuning goes on throughout life, constantly getting more and more refined. The soul uses the body at that point, it’s a type of symbiosis. As we age the soul begins to dominate the relationship. Our bodies aren’t immortal, they were never meant to be. They have accidents, become damaged, and erode. When the body is damaged or begins to die, the soul begins to depart the body. Death is not a pinnacle moment, it is a process – we call it dying and when people are dying, their souls gently slide out of tune with their bodies. Considering everything, this is quite possibly the most merciful part of life, especially when the body is trapped in extreme suffering. When I saw my loved ones progressing along the route of the dying I have seen this ‘tuning out’ for myself. The soul moves on, it cannot die because it is not physical – it is energetic. I have seen my loved ones alive and animate, and I have seen their bodies dead and inanimate. The dead bodies closely resemble my loved ones, but they appear different, without the spark of the soul, the body is just a shell. The connection of the soul to the body actually looks like something, when the soul is gone, you know it, when the soul is departing, you can see it go.

Death is not the end. Death is a step, a transformation, the soul released so it can discover a new body. It has been my experience that souls do not flit about like fireflies, but rather tend to ‘flock’ together with other souls. From lifetime to lifetime through reincarnation each of our souls touch each other over and over. The roles, the genders, the relationships, they are always in flux, but the souls always find ways to be reborn together, to ‘flock’ together, if not by selecting bodies that are near each other, they arrange the path to bring the bodies together over and over. Our human drama plays out over and over, we dance with the same people we’ve always danced with, from lifetime to lifetime.

So then what is the purpose of it all? Christians believe that death is the route to the afterlife. A place of perfection and perfect happiness. My experiences, even my past-life memories which I do have possession of, indicate to me that the afterlife is not the destination. It may be ‘a’ destination for some, but at least not for me and the souls that I recognize in this lifetime. I think instead that the purpose of life is experience. That souls enjoy Maya, they enjoy the challenge, the struggle and in some ways they enjoy the suffering. I believe it to be more a matter of a fascination with experience, the new situations and the learning that drives life.

If death isn’t the end of existence and souls are born together over and over again, then there is absolutely nothing to fear and death should be regarded as just another adventure in living. It is a natural and unavoidable destination for the body and a chance for your soul to continue on to find new ways and new experiences. It shouldn’t be full of sorrow, it should be a celebration of a life lived well. Paths selected, existence experienced, love enjoyed.