Cogito Ergo Sum! Okay. It’s Latin. Much of our language is founded on other languages. Get used to it!
I’m not good at remembering jokes, much less sharing them, and there are only a few that stick around my memory core for any length of time. But, here goes…
A wife asked her husband, “Do you want to go to the party?” Without thinking he replies, “I think not…”. And Poof, he disappears…
Now. If you caught the joke then maybe the title of this blog makes sense. Maybe. Think hard about it before replying. Cogito Ergo Sum
Recently, it seems, there have been folks thinking that we are just a figment of imagination in someone’s alternate reality or dream. Change the reality. We disappear. Awake from the dream and we are just a fragment of thought. Here’s a headline:
Elon Musk says he firmly believes reality is a simulation created by a superintelligence.
[Source]
According to him, potentially, we are in a simulation that is created by a superintelligence. I remember a Twilight Zone from my childhood. It contained a story about some situation that occurs on earth, and suddenly the night sky is pulled back by a toddler in an even larger universe peeks in at our story, with a voice telling him to “put that down.” And if you have any ounce of imagination you could imagine an even larger universe above the toddler peeking in at his situation. Ad infinitum.
Okay. So you don’t like my example. Have you figured out the Latin phrase yet?
My science teacher from my Junior High Days, Mr. Doolittle, told us to imagine the nucleus of an atom with all the electron’s and proton’s spinning around and around, much like the planets around the sun. In the palm of your hand, you have a billion atoms in existence. Now, clap your hands! Pop! You just killed some universes. Do it again! Before long you will have wiped out millions and millions of potential life that is simply smaller than we can imagine! No telling the damage you may have caused on others that survive!
His thought: I wonder if there are even smaller particles that look like our universe that makes up those billions of universes in your hands… Think that one through!
Here’s my thought today. I woke up thinking about our influence on others and how we can easily alternate the pathway someone is on. For the good. And the bad. Positive. Negative. Left. Right. Up. Down. Forward. Backward. The way we look, act, speak – all are influences. Yes. Even the way we think about something is an influence. And it impacts many others around us.
Back in the ’60s Hippie movement, we were either for the change or against it. Much of their music is now played in elevators today. Marijuana is legalizing itself all around us, and some cities are setting up drug zones where you can receive medical attention as you shoot up. Long hair, psychedelic clothing and weird hairdo’s get replaced by even more permanent piercings and body ink. Don’t even get me started down the rabbit trail of this generational adjustment! We would have to back up and consider the Roaring 20’s and the Gay 90’s (1890’s, that is)…
This makes me wonder how the modern adaptation of who we are will be accepted in the next generations thought process. Will their music become “space shuttle” music and even freakier modifications of our bodies in the next generation. I imagine genetic replacements and additions. “Need a third arm? Here’s let’s grow you one.” After all, we are in the process of growing replacement organs for future surgery needs…
Each generation has its share of generational rejection! It's a given two-way street. The new shucks off the old, and the next new shucks off the old new. Share on XI’m sure, and almost positive of it, my grandparents (WWI, Depression, technology birth and growth) rejected some of the things that my parents generation (WWII, Boomers, Airline travel) experimented with… Just as I know my parents struggled with the things that my generation faced (Vietnam, JFK, RFK, MLK, Nixon, exponential growth of technology)…and I face with what my kids are now accepting as okay… It will only keep changing!
Every generation faces this, and especially in these fast moving times! Things my grandparents would probably never dream of happening are now common place. And as I have vague memories of great grandparents, it makes me wonder about their old time views…
“If they could only see us now!”
Since I believe the Bible is as real and valuable to us in our current culture revolution as it was back in the days when the events were real time, I wonder how Jesus would speak to various groups? Would he get away with using the same language?
Woe unto you… Hypocrites… Vipers
Regardless of the words, and all I truly understand are what the translations tell me his words, he speaks valuable lessons on how to treat one another.
But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return;
and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.
For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.
Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.
“Judge not, and you shall not be judged.
Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom.
For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”
(Luke 6:35-38 NKJV)
We struggle with how to react to all the variances of life and living. Inclusion is sought for, but then others are rejected because of their beliefs, hence, the includers are really just excluders on a different level.
If you close your mind on how to deal with it, then you will be like that joke I mentioned. Poof! You’re gone! But if you can look past that outward expression and contemplate the heart, then you are a thinking person who can look past the fault and see the need.
Understand Latin yet? In English, “I think, therefore I am.” [Source] Rene Descartes…circa 1644…
Be a thinker and not a reactor. How we connect with our past and future is so important. The past looks forward in dismay, and the future looks back and just shakes their head. Think about it. Future generations will be so different that some future offspring many generations removed may just say of you… “They would not understand us!” Well, the flip side is equally true. I don’t understand you. And I’m not even there yet!
Hoping you have a blessed day!
Audio: Listen to “Episode 183 – Cogito Ergo Sum” on Spreaker.