Unity

Why am I here? Why am I not in some other country or even another planet?
Why am I here now? Why not in some other era?
Why am I a human? Why am I not some other animal or something else?
Why am I this human? Why not some other human?

We are biological machines and we have a natural programming. We are programed to feel separate, independent, autonomous. This is an illusion, because we depend on this planet for air, water, food, warmth. This planet can sustain life because of the Sun. The Sun is part of a galaxy, the galaxy is part of the Universe. We can live without an arm but we can't live without the Universe.

The Universe is the unity, we are part of it. We may feel separated but we are all one, not just humans, but other animals and plants, bacteria, even rocks and stars and planets. All that exists is part of the Universe.

There is no "I". I don't exist as a separate being, I am part of the whole, along with you and everyone else and everything else. We can't really destroy anything or create anything, this unity has always existed and will always exist in one form or another because energy can't be created, can't be destroyed, it can only be transformed. Matter is a condensed form of energy, so it too will exist forever in one form or another.

Our lives are a blink of an eye in the life of the Earth. The Earth is like a speck of dust in this enormous (maybe infinite) Universe.

If we are all one, why do we feel separated? Evolution favoured selfish genes. A brain that's aware of the unity has no survival advantage, on the contrary, it may even be fatal. When you know that nothing really matters, not life, nor death and this struggle is futile, the most important things in life become pointless. There's no point in struggling for survival if life and death are the same.

Memories help us form identities, if we lose our memories, our identities are also lost.

In many religions, through meditation, a communion with the Universe is achieved. This happens by deactivating a region of the brain. It seems that this region of the brain makes us feel separated.

Everything is an illusion, life and death, love and hate, pleasure and suffering, even reality. As Einstein said: "reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one".

Science tells us that all our atoms come from the center of a star, we are all made of star dust. We will live as long as the Universe, in one form or another. We are all one.

Economy

The economy is basically divided in 3 sectors (three-sector hypothesis):

1. the primary sector (agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining)
2. the secondary sector (manufacturing)
3. the tertiary sector (services)

Economic development has been divided into three phases:

First phase:
This phase corresponds to the Middle Ages and current developing countries, where the workforce is divided like this:

• primary sector: 70%
• secondary sector: 20%
• tertiary sector: 10%

Second phase:
This phase corresponds to industrializing nations. More machinery is deployed in the primary sector, which reduces the number of workers needed. As a result, the demand for machinery production in the secondary sector increases. The workforce is divided like this:

• primary sector: 20%
• secondary sector: 50%
• tertiary sector: 30%
  

Third phase:
This phase corresponds to developed countries. The primary and secondary sectors are increasingly dominated by automation, and the demand for workforce falls in these sectors. It is replaced by the growing demands of the tertiary sector. The workforce is divided like this:

• primary sector: 10%
• secondary sector: 20%
• tertiary sector: 70%

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You might see a pattern here, that is, employment in every sector grows at the beginning and after a while it starts to shrink, because of automation. Nowadays, a few percentages of the workforce can feed the entire world, because of modern agriculture. Industry needs fewer workers as technology advances because they are replaced by machines.

As the first two sectors shrink because of automation, only the third sector is left to absorb the workforce. The third sector has already started its automation.

My mother used to work in a bank and there were a lot of people employed there but one day they brought computers and a lot of people were laid off because of increased efficiency. This is technological unemployment, where technology makes you redundant.

In this sick society it is normal to fear technology because it can replace you. As the third sector becomes more efficient and it needs less workforce, what will happen?

In a sane world, people should rejoice when new technology is developed, because it should make life better and reduce the work hours for everyone. This does not happen. Indeed, the work hours seem to get longer and more stressful.

People fear losing their jobs to machines and to other people (there's always an army of unemployed waiting to take your job). In another interesting twist, people become xenophobic as foreigners are willing to work for less money and are more docile and subservient. Fear makes us lose our dignity. This society is a spineless society.

The current trend is to brainwash people so that they buy more things (which they don't need) so that they can keep this absurd system going. This is why a lot of companies spend more money on advertising than on actual production. This system creates the desire to want more, to want to be rich, to own as much as possible. Of course, as one man owns more, others own less, so, the system is encouraging selfishness. Is this the direction we want to go in?

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At one point the system will fail. That point will be reached when less and less workforce is needed for the three sectors. At that point, unemployment will rise sharply. As people don't have a job, they can't afford some things. The first sector to suffer will be the tertiary one, because people need food more than they need haircuts. They will go less to restaurants, restaurants will close and so on, this leading to rising unemployment and rising unemployment taking down the economy with it.

Employers want to have as few employees as possible, because they will have more profit. As technology will be able to replace more humans, employers will do just that, they will replace humans with machines. So people have to find new things to produce and convince the others that they need them, even if they don't really need them. This is already happening, as the market is full of stuff nobody really needs, but they are convinced they need them.

When supermarkets open, a lot of small shops close, because supermarkets are more efficient and need less workforce than those small shops put together.

The end of the system will be like this: few people will produce a lot but only they (who produce) will have money to buy what they produce, so it will be a closed circle. All the land, all the factories, everything will be owned by them, by those who produce. Nothing will be owned by the rest of the people. So those who produce nothing will try to do stuff for the producers in return for money. This leads to a continual depravation of society, where every service possible is sold for survival and every possible thing is produced and resources are exploited in vain, just to create more trash. Damn, we are here already. Everything can be bought.

Life

In nature, organisms are mostly concerned with finding food and reproducing. There is never enough food because life has the tendency to multiply exponentially. This leads to competition for food.

Even reproduction is a hassle, because you have to find a mate, rear offspring, find enough food for them also, not just for you. Also, offspring have to be protected from predators.

Even finding a mate is no easy task, because you need to like the individual. Liking is more complicated than it seems. Of course, females are more selective than males because they have the tough part, of rearing the offspring, so females need to find good genes so that their effort doesn't go to waste. This is why males compete for females. Males can waste lots of sperm, because there is a lot of it. Females need to be more careful with their reproduction. This is why we have so many examples of sexual selection, one of the best examples being the peacock.

Liking has a lot to do with the way an individual looks, if an individual looks healthy, well fed and strong, it has good genes, genes needed to survive in that environment, so females tend to like them. Scent is also important, pheromones transmitting signals. Females tend to like pheromones that signal that the male has different genes than hers, this is because inbreeding has negative effects on offspring (meeting of recessive genes).

Have you ever wondered what is sex good for? Probably not. I'm going to tell you anyway. Sexual reproduction is better than asexual reproduction (cloning) because beneficial mutations can be combined (from two individuals) and because of variability. Variability is good for evolution, because natural selection can choose from more diverse individuals. There's not much to choose in clones, they are all the same.

Asexual reproduction (cloning) leads to little variability because all the genome is transmitted to the offspring. In sexual reproduction, meiosis shuffles the genes and it leads to different combinations. This is why children (of the same parents) are different (except for identical twins, which are a sort of clones). In asexual reproduction all offspring are like identical twins and they are also identical to the parent.

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If there was a new island and plants would start to grow on it, having been brought by wind, by waves or by birds (seeds in feces), there would be an untapped amount of food there. Of course, birds could eat some of it. Let's say that the island has a lot of grass growing on it. If we would bring a male and a female grazing animals (same species), they would multiply. The amount of grass on the island can sustain a certain number of grazing animals, because it is finite.

The grazing animals would multiply until they eat the grass faster than it grows. That's when the grass would not be able to sustain the population and a lot of them would starve.

So, you see, that's what life does. Even if that island is, at first, a paradise, life makes it a hell for itself. Evolution thrives in hell, it doesn't work in paradise.

Organisms don't agree to have a certain number of offspring, so that they could have a paradise, a sustainable environment, not exceeding the carrying capacity of the land.

Of course, I wish there would be heaven on Earth, but without suffering, without the constant struggle for survival and reproduction, life would not be where it is.

It's odd that some life forms have time to think about the meaning of life, not struggling for food and reproduction.

You should see this:
What is sex good for?

waves of spacetime

As far as I know, matter is a condensed form of energy. Einstein showed this through his famous equation, E=mc². What is energy, then? I think that energy is movement, or vibration. All matter exhibits both wave and particle properties, this is called wave-particle duality.

Matter and antimatter annihilate each other because they are opposite waves.

If energy is movement, movement in respect to what?
I think that these waves (of which everything is made of) are, in fact, waves of spacetime. Maybe spacetime is made of particles, like, "atoms of spacetime". This would mean that spacetime is all that exists, everything we experience is a consequence of waves in spacetime.

Maybe gravity is not matter affecting spacetime, but waves which affect the density of spacetime. Where there are waves of spacetime, there is more space, more time (or less, as we will see). Where there is more space, more waves can be there, they also increasing space and so on. This may be gravity. Also, if there is more time, time goes by slower.
There may be positive and negative waves of spacetime, positive waves increase the density of spacetime (matter), negative waves decrease the density of spacetime (antimatter). This would mean that antimatter is repulsive towards antimatter, a kind of antigravity. So, matter attracts matter, antimatter repulses antimatter and there's no attraction or repulsion between matter and antimatter.

Maybe there is exactly as much antimatter as matter in the universe, but antimatter is very scattered and we don't detect it. If antimatter repulses antimatter, it would not form stars or planets, or anything really. Maybe antimatter is the reason why the Universe is expanding, because of its antigravity.

Maybe the speed of light depends on the density of spacetime, just as the speed of sound depends on the density of air. This would mean that light travels faster in strong gravity than in no gravity.

I believe that finding out what exactly is spacetime will be the basis of the "theory of everything". I think the answers lie there.

These are just my ideas, maybe they are wrong, my knowledge and understanding of physics are weak.

healthcare vs evolution

Healthcare interferes with evolution by natural selection. In fact, I don't think we have any kind of selection in developed countries, I think we've entered some sort of genetic drift, so people with beneficial mutations aren't favoured in the detriment of those with harmful mutations.

Healthcare gives the chance to people with harmful mutations to live and have children of their own, thus transmitting their harmful genes to the next generation (50% chance per child).

There are far more harmful mutations than beneficial mutations, so the general state of health of the population should decline more and more after each generation, because harmful mutations accumulate.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against healthcare. I believe it's great that we have it but we need to be reasonable. We should not let people with genetic diseases have children just like that. It's irresponsible not only towards their children but towards the entire human species. We should only let them have children if we insure that their harmful mutations don't get passed on, by in vitro fertilization and checking their genes.

I once read an article about blind parents who had blind children. Their disease was genetic and it was passed on. I don't know about you, but I believe they should not have the right to do that.

I don't want natural selection to be back, I think that artificial selection is the only reasonable option we have, no selection is much worse than both, which is what we have now.

Spartans used to kill babies who were considered "puny or deformed". They had the right idea for their purpose, which was to have healthy and powerful soldiers. I don't believe there is any need for such inhumanity nowadays in order to have healthy, powerful, intelligent children or whatever trait we consider important.

Genetics is pretty advanced and we should take advantage of it in order to evolve in the desired direction. I believe that our aim should be health and intelligence in future generations.

pleasure vs pain

What is pleasure?
What is pain?
What is the difference between pleasure and pain?

I believe that pleasure and pain are very similar, they are both sensations, they are both interpretations of stimuli. The big difference between them is that one creates a reward response in the brain (pleasure), the other creates a punishment response in the brain (pain).

If they are both responses of the brain to stimuli, why do we perceive them as we do? I mean, why don't we like pain and dislike pleasure?

If we would like pain, our chances of killing ourselves would be bigger. For example, if we put a hand in fire and we like it, there is a bigger chance of keeping it there and provoking severe burns.

People who don't feel pain usually die young because they accumulate injuries and they don't feel diseases, so pain has a very important role in survival.

Thus, we are programed by evolution to interpret some stimuli as pain and others as pleasure. Objectively, there is no difference between pleasure and pain but subjectively there is a huge difference.

One man asked why do we feel pain as we do, why don't we see red lights and hear alarm sirens when we put a hand in the fire? A biologist answered that red lights and alarms are not as effective as pain at making us get away from danger, thus, saving our lives.

It's obvious that only beings that can move can be selected for pain. I'm pretty sure that plants don't feel pain, at least not the way we do. They may feel some sort or pleasure in the light and pain in the shadow, but I don't think a tree will feel pain as we chop it down, simply because trees which felt such pain did not have bigger chances of survival and reproduction.

Nature selects for survival, it doesn't care what you feel, it can't care. We feel pain and pleasure as we do because it's good for survival.

There will always be suffering in this world, not only human suffering, but other animals will suffer. As long as life exists, suffering will also exist. We may strive to reduce suffering as much as possible and this, I think, is a worthy gole. Suffering will end along with life itself, unless if you believe in eternal suffering in some hellish place (in the eventuality of afterlife).

Insignificance

The Universe is very big, maybe even infinite. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has over 100 billion stars. The observable Universe has about 100 billion galaxies. So, there are billions of billions of stars in the observable Universe, the number is just huge and I don't want to put here a number with over 20 zeros.

It is estimated that our galaxy has billions of planets. We have identified hundreds of extrasolar planets until now but that number is rapidly increasing as new planets are constantly discovered.

If the Sun was a 10 cm ball (in diameter), the Earth would be 10 m away from it and it would be 1 mm (in diameter). These are rough estimates, of course, but it shows us more realistically the size/distance ratios. I don't know about you, but when I made the calculations, they boggled my mind.

Our brains are not adequate to understand such things, evolution did not equip us for this, it did not have any survival benefits.

You can compare the Earth with a speck of dust. Of course, we (humans) are much smaller and more insignificant than that. It's pretty funny that humans have thought for most of history that the Universe was "created" for us. We are so small and yet we think we are so important.

Most of the Universe is uninhabited by life, because it is mostly unfit for it, so it is strange that many people believe that the Universe is "created" for life.

An atom is 99.9999999999999% empty space. The nucleus of the atom is like a fly on a stadium and the electrons are like tiny gnats circling the stadium. This means that anything composed of atoms is 99.9999999999999% empty space. This is a nice trick that reality plays on us, as everything seems so solid. A brick wall doesn't seem so empty when you crash into it, does it?

If the Earth disappeared, the Universe would carry on as if nothing happened. Energy can't be created or destroyed, so the Universe will follow its path, no matter what we do. It doesn't matter if we destroy ourselves or even if we destroy all other life on this planet.

If humans were more important than any other life form, they would not be killed by viruses. Nature does not discriminate because discrimination does not really exist, we are all life forms and it's the same if atoms are used to build a human or a dog or mosquitoes or even soil. You are not more important than a mosquito. The mosquito you are killing is you, now you are here, now you are not. It's just life fighting life, there is no you.

You should see this video:
Pale Blue Dot