Okay, this theory has been in my head for a few days. I got to get it out!


Do you know that a baby's perception of numbers are very different from ours? Babyies think of numbers and quantity COMPLETELY different than adults. And children have to be taught how to count. If they are never taught how to count, they would experience numbers logarithmically. The way we think of numbers is sort of... artificial.

Honestly, instead of me trying to explain how babies and an Amazon tribe thinks logarithmically, I'm going to stick this link to RadioLab.

Take a few minutes to listen from 04:00 to the end in order to understand what Robert Krullwich, Jad Abumrad and Lulu Miller can explain much more elegantly than I.

So, almost all children in the world learn this world of numbers from their parents/school/culture. But how did we come to count like this in the first place? Did the gods teach us? Aliens?

First off, let's dance.... with a bird.

A study was done on a bird to figure out if a bird was dancing (moving its body to the rhythm of a song) or just moving to noise or other ques so it just looks like its dancing. It showed that birds can indeed dance because it takes nerves and muscles control in order for a bird to create noise to communicate, dancing might be a side-effect. Sound effects muscles.

Again, I'm not the best to explain this study, Adena Schachner and Bob MacDonald are better at it, so here's a link to Quirks & Quarks. Or just listen to the mp3.


So, imagine the first tribes of man trying to make sense of the world. A shaman has the power to talk to the gods by doing a certain dance. If the shaman, most likely high on the autistic spectrum, does this dance that he created, the rains will come, the hunt will be good, the winter will end.

But the shaman is getting old and knows that some day he will die. If there's no one to do the dance, then the world will end. So he has to teach the next generation to dance this dance properly.

Now, I have personally done stage performance. I loosely call it "choreography" but I did need to learn a few acts.

And what's the easiest way to memorize a specific dance?

one - two - three - KICK
five - six - seven - TURN
nine - ten - eleven - STEP

So, through dance, early man thought of numbers as a sequence in time than as logarithmic quantity. And counting the beats "five - six - seven - eight" we were able to make the abstract connection between quantity and sequence.

And now we have math. The kind that eventually charted the stars and the days and the years. And then we got into measurements and geometry and calculus and physics.

I wonder if it would be easy for mathematician to learn the Cha-Cha?


...okay. I'm sure there might be a good argument against the "Dance Theory" because I wouldn't be surprised if that Amazon Tribe mentioned in RadioLab could dance. BUT dance is temporal. Time is, at least to us, sequential. So counting days might have also been a factor in the way we think of math. Think of it. Early man may have noticed that the Moon goes through its cycles. When the moon is full, its easiest to hunt at night. Then someone might have realized that it takes 28 days for the moon to cycle.

Anyway, these are just theories that might sound interesting in a comic or things I use to sound smart to my friends at a bar.

P.S. If any real scientists think I actually have something here, then put a link to my webcomics on the scientific paper you'll eventually write. www.theorofeverythingcomics.com If some other scientist had already written a paper on this, then it would be cool if you posted a link in the comments.

Labels: blog, lecture, philosophy, podcast, science

Labels: Jim Henson, philosophy, video

What is consciousness and what is the human soul?

Big questions, and I realize that I'm just a guy who bought two years of hosting and can draw and write pretty well. So my ego's foolish enough for me to give it a shot.

I don't think these are "things" but rather "actions". Consciousness is what the brain is doing. Consciousness is a verb.

So, this action is what's going on from some point when you're in your mother's womb to your death. It is a performance. You are an act. A role.

A human is being.

And its weird because we think of a person as a thing, but forget how this "thing" is based on time. Consciousness is happening, not TO you. But it also IS you. Again, the metaphor of performance.

It's sort of like light: sometimes it acts like a wave, sometimes a particle. This depends on what sort of experiments you do to it.

And maybe we're sort of like light. We are a thing. We are an action.

So what are you gonna do? Dance the cosmic dance? Be? Do? Lose yourself in the action? Or is the action the self?

Why don't you just have a seat and breathe. That's what Buddhist Monks do, stop the action. Why? Because action is karma, and it just keeps you stuck on a hamster wheel, always running, going nowhere. Ego is action.

And what's left? I don't know, probably the human soul. Which is probably an action too, because its weightless (some doctor in the old days weighed a person just before they died and right after). It is happening. By what? "God" would be a good answer, but intangible things like "god" and "the human soul" are just place holders for "I don't know", especially in a blog that's trying to use some sort of reason.

(This is why Christendom has its sacraments or "mysteries".)

But, then again, I'm a guy who draws funny books and manages to sound smart every now and then.

But we all know its just an act.

Labels: philosophy

Labels: Alan Watts, philosophy, religion

(Basically, I need a chaser from that last post. It's the Roman Catholic in me that needs to apologize.)

Grant Morrison is one of the best comic book writers to grace the Western World. Deepak Chopra is a best-selling author of self-help books and has been successful at repackaging Indian Philosophy for a Western audience. I was fortunate to see them at a panel discussion on Sunday at San Diego Comic Con.

Here's an article from wizarduniverse.com and from comicbookresources.com. They go more in depth than me. I didn't take notes.




At the beginning, Chopra was asked about the Human Soul and instructed the audience to "Turn your attention to who's listening. Do you feel a presence? That's your soul." I have felt that particular feeling several times-- at church, in meditation, prayer and ritual-- but I wouldn't necessarily call that particular feeling the "Human Soul". But I do know what he was trying to get at and describing the Human Soul probably wouldn't give us time for the Q&A at the end.

Although, I'm sure that the audience members who really loved Morrison's run on Batman and came to the panel discussion out of curiosity have never felt that side of themselves before and might find the world a bit more interesting after that panel discussion.

Morrison went on to explain super-heroes and stories/mythology. One thing he said that really struck me was the stories we create. The world's current story is of global ecological disaster, a story that stems from the prevailing Book of Revelations. The World has been through much worse than Global Warming and has seen countless species come and go. We don't need to save the World. Morrison proposed a different story, where global warming is sort of a necessary stage in the World's development ("World" meaning the planet and the things that live on it as one whole system or organism). It's sort of like one's teenage years when hormones are going off, we're having violent growth spurts, and everything's confusing. A story where all this chaos that's going on right now is only a precursor to something better. To paraphrase Morrison, "Who cares if its not true. If you change the story you change everything!" (This was sort of a theme in Morrison's opus, The Invisibles.)

To segue on the importance of story, I was just listening to the Radio Lab Podcast and Robert Krulwich was giving the commencement speech at California Institute of Technology. Very interesting stuff.

Also, this isn't the first time that these two gave a discussion at Con. Two years ago they gave a discussion on The Seven Spiritual Laws of Super-heroes.

I couldn't attend that year, but at least I found this video with really bad audio.

Labels: comics, Grant Morrison, philosophy

I know, I'll blog something smart. This is sort of an amendment to an old blog from my old myspace blog.

LIFE AS ART

In Buddhism and Hinduism, you are told that reality is an illusion. In Taoism, reality is like a dream. In Gnosticism, you are told that reality is a creation by a misguided deity. These are all very similar views. The basic idea is that this reality that we find ourselves in isn't all there is. And of course, all the sages of these traditions had a biased point of view. The Taoist sages were dreamers of sort. The Gnostics came from an oppressive empire. Hinduism and Buddhism were coming out of an older religious system.

I am in no way any sort of sage, by the way. I'm just someone who likes to doodle.

But my approach to viewing reality is more like that of a piece of art. It's very constructed. In some way, it's sort of predictable. It's not GREAT art, but it's art none the less. It's enjoyable.

Everything one does on the canvas is part of this cosmic play, dharma, circle of life, system, or dream.

Everyone is sort of a piece of art. They play their role. They live their life. Eatting is an art. Sleeping is an art. Making love is an art.

For example, my ego is a constant performance. The way I dress says something about my place in this world. The color of my skin says something about my heritage. The way I speak, the way I walk, what I choose to do in my spare time.

Now the thing about Art is that it is essentially a form of communication, even if what you're communicating has no words to convey. For example, when R. Mutt, aka Marcel DuChamp decided to put a urinal on a pedestal, he created art.

In my view point of life, this essay puts a frame around the world, and now it is art.

A photograph of the planet Earth is art. But not the planet Earth. Well, how about we take out the middleman? Look how beautifully constructed the world is. Either crafted by Deity or by probability.

And the thing is, if you realize that your life is Art, things don't anger you so much. It is just something that is fabricated.

Labels: Art, Lessons in Cartooning, Life, philosophy