Things Made Really Simple

Wouldn't it be great if things were simple? Actually they are. 

LIFE 

We are more complex than our inanimate surroundings. The surrounding keep trying to pull us back down to their level. When this happens is when we die. We require sustenance and care to maintain our higher complexity level. Injury or illness represents a step downward but not all the way to the level of the inanimate surroundings. Since the surrounding environment can provide only a limited amount of sustenance that brings us into potential conflict with others.

MISTAKES

Since we are at a higher level of complexity than our inanimate surroundings there is not enough complexity for all that we can conceive of to be true. This is why we can be wrong about things and can conceive of things that do not exist. It is also why we require senses, to tell us just what is in our surroundings, and brains to process it. 

WORK 

We can impose our own complexity on our surroundings but it takes the expenditure of energy on our part. We need food as sustenance to maintain our higher level of complexity. We need shelter against the inanimate surroundings that are trying to pull us down to their level of complexity. We need transportation because our higher level of complexity makes it necessary for us to move around to get the sustenance we need. It is true that energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changed in form, but we cannot reuse the energy we have spent because it is lost to the lower complexity level of our inanimate surroundings. 

WHY THINGS GO WRONG

In everything we do, we are at a higher level of complexity and our inanimate surroundings are trying to pull us back down. We are at a higher complexity "altitude" and if we slip or misstep there will be a fall. Technology is us imposing our complexity on our surroundings and when it breaks down it is a fall. Whenever we plan something, the more complex it is the more risk there is of a fall. 

ART, MUSIC AND, SPORTS

Art, music and sports transmits patterns. Before we could develop complex technology, such as integrated circuits, we had to first work out the complexity in complex art. Have you ever noticed how the operation of a car engine, with the rythmic movement of the pistons and camshaft, resembles the rythm in a song? It is not a coincidence. Before complex machinery, with moving parts, could be developed, we had to work out the complexity with complex sports and dance movements.

RACE 

The earth's latitudes get different amounts of sunshine. Humans began in Ethiopia and developed melanin in the skin to protect against the sun. But melanin is a higher energy state and, when people migrated from Africa to cooler climates they gradually lost melanin because it was unnecessary. If they later returned to a hot climate elsewhere, such as south India, they would regain melanin. The widespread high terrain of central Asia exposes the eyes to more solar glare, and those who migrated over that developed slanted eyes as protection.

POLITICS 

Like technology, our economy and our society is as complex as we are. This makes it difficult to see the full "big picture". It is much easier for each of us to see only part of the picture. Since we each have different experiences that gives us different viewpoints. Each economic transaction involves both a buyer, represented by the left, and a seller, represented by the right. It is much easier for each of us to see either one side or the other, rather than the big picture. Politics has to represent all of the different viewpoints.

THE MIDDLE EAST 

Imagine putting a box on the floor and then covering the box with a sheet. The box is the long history of the region and the sheet is Islam. Historical events back to ancient times are being reenacted, but usually done in the name of Islam.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR 

The last third of the Nineteenth Century and beginning of the Twentieth Century was a long period of mostly peace and general prosperity, with a lot of technical progress and scientific discoveries. It was called the Victorian Age. In America it was sometimes called the Gilded Age and, in France, the Belle Epoque. But peace got boring after awhile. When a war started in Europe, that wasn't really over anything important, crowds were actually cheering the declaration of war. They were under the delusion that the war would last only a short time, but it turned into a war like the world had never seen before.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND COLD WAR

The West had been getting more secular for decades. But people are designed to believe in something, and when they don't believe in God they will just replace Him with something else. All kinds of political-economic ideologies were emerging, democracy, socialism, communism. Some ideologies, like fascism, had a nationalistic or racial component. The Nazis in particular did a magnificent job of giving people something to believe in. There had been a devastating economic depression and military production was proving to be the best way out of it. What ended up happening is that people chose one or another of these emerging ideologies, which provided them with something to believe in, and then slaughtered millions of each other that had made different choices.