Love and Lust, Fear and Anger

Dichotomies in Emotional States of Human Beings

Wow, that title almost sounded scientific. Too bad this isn’t science.

I’ve accepted for a long time that love and lust are basically two sides to the same emotion. And, for the same reasons, I’ve accepted that fear and anger are two sides of the same coin as well. And I can use what little I know of psychology to back my position (any experts in psychology out there? Weigh in, let me know someone’s actually reading this crap, eh?).

First, let’s tackle love and lust. Lust is a biological drive—the need for sexual relations which all animals feel, including us of the human kind. Love is the desire for a continued relationship. Love is what allows a couple to demonstrate to others that they are committed. But what is the biological use for it? Science hasn’t been able to say. So, I’m filling in the blank with my own (very unscientific, gut-based, intuitive) theory:

Love is the drive which allows the chance for success in raising a child. If one parent or both are not successful within about 4-5 years, love fades (thus the divorce rate, etc.). Loving your partner is not merely about companionship for you; it’s about ensuring that a good parent is there for your child. In those who have similar values about children, and who apply these values as principles to guide their child-rearing activities successfully, we should expect that the divorce rate is roughly half the norm.

This will require more data to even reach a proper hypothesis stage, but it should still pretty much make the idea clear.

And now for the fear/hate mechanism. Fear is “flight” and anger is “fight”. They are part of the same mechanism in the brain, which we call the “fight or flight response”. When you feel either, your survival instincts climb. Maybe I shoulda started with the simpler one. Meh. It doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid. Not angry. Well, not about that, anyway.

Jedi Studies

There are people in the world who actually embraced the philosophies first presented by George Lucas in his Star Wars movies. Lucas never intended for it to start a religious philosophy, and in fact the movement really took off a few years ago as a kind of joke-turned-serious. But in studying the philosophies of the Jedi, I’ve come to a few realizations about what I believe, many of which are reflected in the Jedi way.

• Symbiosis is the act of living in balance and harmony with all things, in all places. A Jedi in the films was as “at home” in the wilderness as in the cities. The Jedi understood the concept of interdependence, and lived it fully.
• Jedi also understood the need for legacies. This was why the requirement of apprenticeship was necessary: legacies are a way to ensure that ideas are continued and continue to develop long after one’s own death.
• The Jedi as a whole practiced martial arts for the health of mind and body. Martial arts are about 75% mental, and 75% physical (yes, there is overlap where it’s both, and it still comes out to 100%). The parts where no physical portion is present are philosophical (about 25%). And in the middle of this philosophy, objective critical thinking was taught.
• There is the Force, which in a way is like God: it is the source of all life, and it surrounds all living things, connecting them to the universe. This concept is similar also to the Tao. One of the possible translations of Tao is actually “Force", though the most direct translation is “Way”. I’m sure Lucas thought about this very carefully.

There are other things that I find interesting and even captivating.

But one thing that the modern-day Jedi adherents are adamant about: they don’t claim to have control of the Force in the way that the movies do (thus, no psychic powers), nor do they claim to have light sabers. And they don’t run around in movie costumes repeating lines like “You want to go home and rethink your life” or something else from the movies. They carefully avoid the cynical trappings of their movie origins (and fully admit to the origin being the deep philosophies of these films), and are serious about developing the Jedi philosophy.

Because they’re careful not to make false claims, I think they’re worth checking out. The Institute for Jedi Realist Studies seems to be a great place to start. Google is sure to be a source for other sites.

I guess I’m a Jedi Realist. Wow, who’d have thunk it?

Psychic Ghost Hunting Through UFO Sightings

That’s right: I’ve decided to work on a database which incorporates UFO sightings, ghost-like activity, and claims of psi. By creating a tool which correlates these events, we can see a variety of possible links between these types of activities. I mean: what if what we think of as ghosts are actually aliens? And what if all of these things are actually created by people who don’t know that they’re psychic? And what if it’s all just in our heads, and actually correlates to each other in a way which implies mental illness? And what if it’s all real?

The only way we can even hazard a guess as to whether or not any of this is a workable theory is to collect the data all in one place and to tell the computer to analyze it. My own analysis of some 15,000 reports of different kinds of activities seems to indicate that there is indeed a kind of effect at work. But to prove it, I’m going to need closer to 25 million reports—this represents about 10% of the total number of reported cases.

I contacted ASSAP about this a couple of weeks ago. They want a research proposal, and I’m a little flustered. I can do the research myself; what I need is a boatload of help in creating, designing, deploying and updating the web site, in addition to the data entry. It’s going to take years for a large group to enter in all of that data, classify it, and error-check it. I couldn’t do that in a lifetime by myself.

The end result is a tool which everyone can use, not simply a research project. I might as well write up the research proposal, and focus on the tool’s development. I don’t really want to go about it that way, because the research I want to do requires the tool, and is quick and painless once the tool is completed

I just wish I knew how I was going to do it. It’s going to take more than I can actually do, and I don’t know how to ask for money. Or from whom. Or where to get help. Any ideas, readers?