Directly Down Life Faster Than The Life

My goodness, how time flies when you’re having fun. What is it, half a year since I posted here? What was my blog about before?

It was going to be all about philosophy, especially my conversion (or awakening) from buddhism into the light of reason. Then I just got bored with the sound of my own typing, and the next thing I knew I was reading about a strange little brainteaser on the JREF forum (and everywhere else, apparently), the question of whether it’s possible to build a vehicle that goes directly downwind faster than the wind (DDWFTTW) powered only by the wind, “steady state” (which means not just as a passing burst, but settled at that speed).

There is so much to this, which I’ve been immersed in since at least December, both as a physical phenomenon and a social one, that it’s really hard to know where to begin.

I learned a lot in these few months. I learned how a little cart with wheels and a propeller can go directly downwind faster than the wind. I think…

Crossing the Mystical River: Part 1

I’ve been trying to think how to describe my philosophical position. Changing so deeply in such a short time, I suppose I am actually trying to decide my philosophical position. The vague yet monumental vista of a divine universe, in which my human life was inherently meaningful and redemption its natural end, collapsed.

It is so important to transcend duality, though, in understanding these things, or anything: we should try not to think in black and white or, if that is impossible, remember that we think in black and white. The great redemptive hope was not simply my belief, solid and unchanging, but something I saw a certain amount of sense in, yet sometimes doubted. Now, it is not a false view that I have rejected, but a theory that I strongly suspect is false. Similarly, I need to keep taking on that worldview again, doubting its negation, in order to check my reasoning and my intuitive feelings or imagination (call it what you will): the alternative is to be closed-minded.

But what is it I’m trying to work out? The word ‘mystical’ keeps coming to me, dragging a set of curious associations. I described myself on a forum yesterday as a ‘recovering mystic’, but this morning awoke to a train of thought that it would have been easy to label as a mystical observation, at least in the absence of a dictionary and before my first cup of coffee.

A Tale of Two Paradigms

I decided to write this blog for a number of reasons: first of all, I felt that I had something interesting to say; I was writing a lot of stuff on forums and thought it would be good to put my ideas together somewhere; I wanted to write a book, but never seemed able to organise it logically and kept finding new perspectives; I’ve always kept a journal, so blogging fits the style I’m used to writing in; if I want to publish a book (or just more of my writing), it’s probably best to use electronic means for environmental reasons.

In fact, this is my second attempt. When I took the plunge for the first time, thinking that I had gained enough clarity about my work to dare to publish it, the whole edifice seemed to fall apart within a matter of weeks. One of my tasks is to reassess what, if anything, is still valid from that earlier philosophy and what must be ditched, as well as to educate myself on subjects that have opened up to me within my new worldview.

I made a paradigm shift. That process itself was not entirely unexpected. My philosophy involved paradigms and paradigm shifts very centrally. I was not at all surprised to move through one myself, indeed I was working towards deliberately inducing one, it’s just that I hoped it would be a very different kind.