But we don’t yet know whether the Universe is open or closed. More than that, there are a few astronomers who doubt that the redshift of distant galaxies is due to the doppler effect, who are skeptical of the expanding Universe and the Big Bang. Perhaps our descendants will regard our present ignorance with as much sympathy as we feel to the ancients for not knowing the Earth went around the Sun. If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding Universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the Universe devoid of all matter and then the matter suddenly somehow created, how did that happen? In many cultures, the customary answer is that a God or Gods created the Universe out of nothing. But if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: where did God come from? If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the Universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step, and conclude that the Universe always existed? That there’s no need for a creation, it was always here. These are not easy questions. Cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries, questions that were once treated only in religion and myth. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
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On This Day In: | |
2020 | Increasing Importance |
And Now Joe | |
2019 | But Yours |
2018 | And Smile More Often |
2017 | He’s Keeping The Light On For Us |
2016 | The Results Of Trying Too Hard |
2015 | Make Me Look |
2014 | Fresh Drink |
2013 | Good Business |
2012 | Unsure Spirit |
2011 | A Lost Valuable |
Posts Tagged ‘Carl Sagan’
I Welcome The Questions
Posted in Faith, Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Big Bang, Carl Sagan, Cosmology, Creation, Doppler Effect, Earth, God, Philosophy, Questions, Quotes, Redshift, Sun, Uncertainty, Universe on March 5, 2021| Leave a Comment »
But That’s Certainly Irrational
Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Dodecahedron, Irrational Numbers, Philosophy, Polygons, Pythagoreans, Quotes, Regular Solids, Science on February 23, 2021| Leave a Comment »
There can be an infinite number of polygons, but only five regular solids. Four of the solids were associated with earth, fire, air and water. The cube for example represented earth. These four elements, they thought, make up terrestrial matter. So the fifth solid they mystically associated with the Cosmos. Perhaps it was the substance of the heavens. This fifth solid was called the dodecahedron. Its faces are pentagons, twelve of them. Knowledge of the dodecahedron was considered too dangerous for the public. Ordinary people were to be kept ignorant of the dodecahedron. In love with whole numbers, the Pythagoreans believed that all things could be derived from them. Certainly all other numbers. | |
So a crisis in doctrine occurred when they discovered that the square root of two was irrational. That is: the square root of two could not be represented as the ratio of two whole numbers, no matter how big they were. “Irrational” originally meant only that. That you can’t express a number as a ratio. But for the Pythagoreans it came to mean something else, something threatening, a hint that their world view might not make sense, the other meaning of “irrational”. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
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On This Day In: | |
2020 | The Butterflies Are In Trouble |
2019 | The Deep Center |
2018 | Oh, Heaven (Too) |
2017 | Now Pausing Makes Sense |
2016 | Just Spicy |
Only One Part | |
2015 | Positive Acts Of Creation |
2014 | One Thing Is Clear |
2013 | Corrections |
See Greatness | |
2012 | Gemutlichkeit |
2011 | Back On The Asphalt |
Democracy, Pandemic, Economy And Climate Change
Posted in Economics, Environment, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged #46, Carl Sagan, Economics, Paris Agreement, Paris Climate Accords, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Science on January 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »
In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
[An Inauguration and rejoining the Paris Climate Accords are just a start. — KMAB] | |
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On This Day In: | |
2020 | Hoping For #46 In January 2021 |
2019 | Interesting, But Not Fascinating |
But Try To Eat The Low-Hanging First | |
2018 | Me, Too |
2017 | Apt Enough? |
2016 | Now Or Ever |
21, Pause, Restart | |
2015 | I Am Shocked, Sir, Shocked… |
Lucy & FSND-2 | |
2014 | Less Difficult |
2013 | The Spirit Of Liberty |
2012 | The Essential Freedom Of Aloneness |
2011 | A Problem Of Scale |
Fred Doesn’t Live Here Anymore | |
2010 | Another Book, Another Jog… |
(Hopefully) Good-Bye To The Trump Dark Ages
Posted in Education, Faith, History, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Carl Sagan, Darkness, Faith, History, Philosophy, Politics, Prayers, Predicting The Future, Quotes, Science, Superstition, United States on January 20, 2021| 1 Comment »
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
[Perhaps, having seen the corruption and malevolence of the Trump Administration, the next four years can see the beginning of an American renaissance… I hope so. As I prayed four years ago: “I may not agree with all (or any) of this President’s policies, but I pray he makes America a better place.” Hopefully #45 was the “just” the darkness before the new day’s dawn. KMAB] | |
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On This Day In: | |
2020 | Posting As A Continual Exercise |
2019 | Border Security – Yes, Border Wall – No |
2018 | Supporting Survival Values |
2017 | Inauguration Day 2017 [Sometimes, I hate it when I’m right! — KMAB] |
2016 | Or A Pot Of Gold After The Storm |
2015 | One, Two, Three… |
2014 | Lend Your Hand |
2013 | Amnesty, n. |
2012 | Best Resolv’d |
The Clock Is Running | |
2011 | Magic |
Our Fate Is Up To Us
Posted in Environment, Faith, History, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Environment, Faith, God, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Winter, Ozone Layer, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Science, Technology on January 4, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Since this series’ maiden voyage, the impossible has come to pass: Mighty walls that maintained insuperable ideological differences have come tumbling down; deadly enemies have embraced and begun to work together. The imperative to cherish the Earth and protect the global environment that sustains all of us has become widely accepted, and we’ve begun, finally, the process of reducing the obscene number of weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps we have, after all, decided to choose life. But we still have light years to go to ensure that choice. Even after the summits and the ceremonies and the treaties, there are still some 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world — and it would require the detonation of only a tiny fraction of them to produce a nuclear winter, the predicted global climatic catastrophe that would result from the smoke and the dust lifted into the atmosphere by burning cities and petroleum facilities. | |
The world scientific community has begun to sound the alarm about the grave dangers posed by depleting the protective ozone shield and by greenhouse warming, and again we’re taking some mitigating steps, but again those steps are too small and too slow. The discovery that such a thing as nuclear winter was really possible evolved out of the studies of Martian dust storms. The surface of Mars, fried by ultraviolet light, is also a reminder of why it’s important to keep our ozone layer intact. The runaway greenhouse effect on Venus is a valuable reminder that we must take the increasing greenhouse effect on Earth seriously. | |
Important lessons about our environment have come from spacecraft missions to the planets. By exploring other worlds we safeguard this one. By itself, I think this fact more than justifies the money our species has spent in sending ships to other worlds. It is our fate to live during one of the most perilous and, at the same time, one of the most hopeful chapters in human history. | |
Our science and our technology have posed us a profound question. Will we learn to use these tools with wisdom and foresight before it’s too late? Will we see our species safely through this difficult passage so that our children and grandchildren will continue the great journey of discovery still deeper into the mysteries of the Cosmos? That same rocket and nuclear and computer technology that sends our ships past the farthest known planet can also be used to destroy our global civilization. Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil. It is as if there were a God who said to us, “I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It’s up to you.” | |
— Carl Sagan | |
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On This Day In: | |
2020 | Still Willing |
2019 | Another Prayer |
2018 | After Silence |
2017 | Are You Looking Forward To A Trump Presidency? |
2016 | Three Errors From Eureka |
2015 | Limiting Choices |
2014 | Praise The Lord And Pass The Hypocrisy |
That Sound | |
2013 | Still Waiting For Answers |
2012 | Informal Leadership |
2011 | A Little More Progress |
2010 | Bec’s Gone Again… |
And Most Adults Don’t Either
Posted in Education, Quotes, Reading, Science and Learning, tagged Carl Sagan, Exploration, Quotes, Reading, Science Fiction, Scientific Literature, Scientists, Solar System, Ten-Year-Olds on November 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Many scientists deeply involved in the exploration of the solar system (myself among them) were first turned in that direction by science fiction. And the fact that some of that science fiction was not of the highest quality is irrelevant. Ten-year-olds do not read the scientific literature. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Happy Thanksgiving (2019) |
2018 | And Smiles… |
2017 | Or Savor A Little Longer… |
2016 | Sometimes I Just Want To Smell The Flowers |
2015 | One Truth – Done Well |
2014 | Now In Imagination, On The Other Hand… |
2013 | No Plan, No Map |
2012 | Singing About Love |
2011 | The Awesome Power Of Truth |
The Blind Squirrel And The Suppression Of Uncomfortable Ideas
Posted in Environment, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged #PresidentIdiot, California, Carl Sagan, Climate Change, CO2, Environment, Politics, Quotes, Salination, Science, The Blind Squirrel, Wade Crowfoot on September 20, 2020| Leave a Comment »
There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That’s perfectly alright; it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that many of his ideas were wrong or silly or in gross contradiction to the facts; rather, the worst aspect is that some scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky’s ideas. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system, and the history of our study of the solar system shows clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
[Accidents happen… As the saying goes: “Even the blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.” And, so it appears President Trump has (purely by stupid chance) stated a truth… | |
A few days ago, while visiting California to view the destruction being caused by wildfires, the President was advised one of the reasons for the massive fires is “Climate Change”. Trump replied: “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.“ | |
“I wish science agreed with you,” Crowfoot (Wade Crowfoot is California’s secretary for natural resources) countered. | |
“Well, I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump said. | |
As bizarre as it sounds, President Trump is correct (for all the wrong reasons). To start off, in less than a week Autumn starts. Followed by Winter! So, yes, the daily temperature will start getting cooler. The second part is the “squirrel finding the nut“. No, “science” doesn’t KNOW if the climate will stay hot or get hotter. Just as science doesn’t KNOW the sun will rise in the East tomorrow. Science does, however, have a pretty good certainty that IF the sun does rise tomorrow, it will be in the East. President Trump’s BASELESS claims “Climate Change” is a “hoax” and / or invented by the Chinese to cripple our economy are both as unscientific as they are silly, but that doesn’t make his “uncomfortable idea” wrong (from a scientific perspective). His claim also erroneously conflates two issues: 1) is climate change real; and, 2) if it is real, what is causing it? | |
And, this is the problem (for science and all rational humanity): we have overwhelming data supporting the theory of climate change; we don’t have overwhelming evidence of causation – just a LOT of data of correlation. Our little blind squirrel is denying both the substantial data of change AND the substantial data of correlation. | |
True science requires that we admit the possibility “Climate Change” is not happening – despite the multiple decades of data which support the scientific conclusion “Climate Change” 1) is real, 2) has already happened, and 3) is getting worse. More precisely, we must admit the possibility that our current understanding of why “Climate Change” appears to be happening is not valid, i.e., it’s not being caused by human production of CO2 in the atmosphere. | |
The policy question is: What if our little squirrel is correct? Well, if he is correct and there is no climate change, then “eventually” the consistent rise in temperature which the planet has been experiencing with revert back to the norm. If humanity is lucky, this will happen soon (and quickly) and life will go on pretty much as it has for the last 10,000 years (or at least since the last major ice age). Policy decision: do nothing and hope for the best. | |
Alternatively, if he is correct the climate change (which has been accelerating for the last 50 years) is not caused by humans, what IS the cause and how do we slow, stop or reverse it? If we don’t discover the “real” cause, humanity (and most of life as we know it) on Earth will become extinct. Unfortunately, because the data has been so one sided (climate change is real and is happening NOW), we don’t have any good / reasonable alternative theories to human caused CO2 emissions. Policy decision: we need to pore tons of money into research to come up with an alternative root cause which we can then pore TONS more money into correcting / fixing. (All the while hoping and praying we’re not too late to fix the problem.) | |
And if our little squirrel is wrong about Climate Change and its cause? Well, despite what we’ve seen over the last 20 years (droughts and wildfires / hurricanes and typhoons), you ain’t seen nothing yet! Forty(40%) percent of humanity lives within 60 miles of an ocean. What happens when the ocean levels rise and large swathes of that coastal area becomes uninhabitable due to flooding, storm surges and salination of coastal water supplies? What happens to sea life when the salination in the oceans changes due to the increased ice melts dumping fresh water into their environment? What happens to the rest of the life on Earth when there is a vast die-off of life in the world’s oceans? Policy decision: we better get busy because our window of opportunity to save the habitable planet we’ve known for the last 10,000 years is closing fast!!! | |
Our little squirrel is in his 70’s and probably won’t live to experience the full results of his blindness. Somehow, I don’t find that comforting. — KMAB] | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Future Tools |
Three Swedish Girls | |
2018 | Four Loves |
Favorite Westerns | |
2017 | Faith In Science |
2016 | What The World Calls |
2015 | Say What? |
2014 | Start Today |
2013 | Fly!! |
2012 | Greater Love |
2011 | Before |
A Tiny And Fragile World
Posted in Environment, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Carl Sagan, Earth, Environment, Human Beings, Philosophy, Quotes on August 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth? Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished. | |
Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Day 1: Done |
#IncompetentDonald Fails On All Three | |
2018 | I Put It Down To Bad Teachers |
Day 34: In And Out | |
2017 | And The Future Is Now |
2016 | I Am |
2015 | Positively Aiming Higher |
2014 | Suspicious Minds |
2013 | We Are Not Alone |
2012 | Lawyer, n. |
2011 | Each Day Remember… |
2010 | Impossible Dreams of Camelot |
In 50 States And Voting Against Trump
Posted in Leadership, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged #NeverTrump, American Leadership, Carl Sagan, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, The Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution, Vote Nov 2020 on August 24, 2020| 2 Comments »
When we consider the founders of our nation: Jefferson, Washington, Samuel and John Adams, Madison and Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine and many others; we have before us a list of at least ten and maybe even dozens of great political leaders. They were well educated. Products of the European Enlightenment, they were students of history. They knew human fallibility and weakness and corruptibility. They were fluent in the English language. They wrote their own speeches. They were realistic and practical, and at the same time motivated by high principles. They were not checking the pollsters on what to think this week. They knew what to think. They were comfortable with long-term thinking, planning even further ahead than the next election. They were self-sufficient, not requiring careers as politicians or lobbyists to make a living. They were able to bring out the best in us. They were interested in and, at least two of them, fluent in science. They attempted to set a course for the United States into the far future — not so much by establishing laws as by setting limits on what kinds of laws could be passed. The Constitution and its Bill of Rights have done remarkably well, constituting, despite human weaknesses, a machine able, more often than not, to correct its own trajectory. At that time, there were only about two and a half million citizens of the United States. Today there are about a hundred times more. So if there were ten people of the caliber of Thomas Jefferson then, there ought to be 10 x 100 = 1,000 Thomas Jefferson’s today. Where are they? | |
— Carl Sagan | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | My Last Must Be My Best |
2018 | Making Friends |
Day 28: A Normal Loss And A Headache | |
2017 | Sea Worthy |
2016 | Rising Integration |
2015 | No Worries |
2014 | Devouring The Present |
2013 | But So Far… |
Twice Moved | |
2012 | Just Like Bubbles |
2011 | Caring and Driving |
Achieve Greatly | |
2010 | Unwise To Trust |
Attitude | |
If The Mind Is Not Tired | |
Irrationally Crazy | |
2nd Pair – Shoe Review | |
Ahnu – Gesundheit! | |
2009 | As for me… |
Health Care Reform Now!! | |
Necessary And Desirable
Posted in Education, History, Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Carl Sagan, Experiments, History Of Science, Hypotheses, Philosophy, Quotes, Science, Self-Correcting on August 7, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Scientists, like other human beings, have their hopes and fears, their passions and despondencies — and their strong emotions may sometimes interrupt the course of clear thinking and sound practice. But science is also self-correcting. The most fundamental axioms and conclusions may be challenged. The prevailing hypotheses must survive confrontation with observation. Appeals to authority are impermissible. The steps in a reasoned argument must be set out for all to see. Experiments must be reproducible. | |
The history of science is full of cases where previously accepted theories and hypotheses have been entirely overthrown, to be replaced by new ideas that more adequately explain the data. While there is an understandable psychological inertia — usually lasting about one generation — such revolutions in scientific thought are widely accepted as a necessary and desirable element of scientific progress. Indeed, the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property, and sets it off from many other areas of human endeavor where credulity is the rule. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | The Far Side |
2018 | Hold On |
Day 11: Just Plain Tired | |
2017 | Why Don’t You Tell Us What You Really Think? |
2016 | Discontent |
2015 | Do You Know Me? |
Appetite For Life Update | |
2014 | Tough Journalism |
2013 | Things I’ve Learned |
2012 | Abstainer, n. |
2011 | Rain, Rain, Rain |
Test Your Strength | |
2009 | End the mistakes… |
I’m Just Being Skeptical
Posted in Faith, Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Carl Sagan, Faith, Hypotheses, Inspiration, Philosophy, Quotes, Religion, Revelation, Science, Skepticism on August 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can’t all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It’s a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I’m not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they’re called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | We’re Eating Faster And Enjoying It Less |
2018 | Great Views |
Day 8: One At A Time | |
2017 | Trump Supporters Will Always Find An Excuse |
2016 | More Posts |
2015 | A Last Request |
2014 | It Matters |
2013 | And You Are? |
2012 | Not Too Late |
2011 | Persistence |
2009 | Health Care? |
Magical Voices In My Head
Posted in History, Quotes, Reading, tagged Books, Carl Sagan, History, Magic, Quotes on July 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The whole idea of what happens when you read a book, I find absolutely stunning. Here’s some product of a tree, little black squiggles on it, you open it up, an inside your head is the voice of someone speaking, who may have been dead 3000 years, and there he is talking directly to you, what a magical thing that is. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | And I’m Not Letting Go |
2018 | The Continuing Failure Of Speaker Paul Ryan |
Day 3: Approaching The Half Way Point | |
2017 | Orange Comb-Overs Unite! |
2016 | Speaking Of Which |
2015 | Complexity Has A Strict Architecture |
2014 | Just Support |
2013 | Wandering Free |
2012 | Contribute = Paying Taxes |
2011 | How Will You Be Judged? |
You KNEW That Man Was Trippin’
Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Cannabis, Carl Sagan, Getting High, Lenny Bruce, Marijuana, Perceptions, Philosophy, Quotes, Smoking Weed, Soviet Union on May 25, 2020| Leave a Comment »
There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we’re down the next day. | |
I had become friendly with a group of people who occasionally smoked cannabis, irregularly, but with evident pleasure. Initially I was unwilling to partake, but the apparent euphoria that cannabis produced and the fact that there was no physiological addiction to the plant eventually persuaded me to try. My initial experiences were entirely disappointing; there was no effect at all, and I began to entertain a variety of hypotheses about cannabis being a placebo which worked by expectation and hyperventilation rather than by chemistry. After about five or six unsuccessful attempts, however, it happened. | |
There’s a part of me making, creating the perceptions which in everyday life would be bizarre; there’s another part of me which is a kind of observer. About half of the pleasure comes from the observer-part appreciating the work of the creator-part. I smile, or sometimes even laugh out loud at the pictures on the insides of my eyelids. In this sense, I suppose cannabis is psychotomimetic, but I find none of the panic or terror that accompanies some psychoses. Possibly this is because I know it’s my own trip, and that I can come down rapidly any time I want to. | |
The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights — I don’t know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate. | |
Cannabis also enhances the enjoyment of sex — on the one hand it gives an exquisite sensitivity, but on the other hand it postpones orgasm: in part by distracting me with the profusion of image passing before my eyes. The actual duration of orgasm seems to lengthen greatly, but this may be the usual experience of time expansion which comes with cannabis smoking. | |
I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I’ve had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor. Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds. A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feelings for what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word “crazy” to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us. In the Soviet Union political dissidents are routinely placed in insane asylums. The same kind of thing, a little more subtle perhaps, occurs here: “did you hear what Lenny Bruce said yesterday? He must be crazy.” | |
When I’m high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won’t attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights. | |
There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we’re down the next day. | |
Incidentally, I find that reasonably good insights can be remembered the next day, but only if some effort has been made to set them down another way. If I write the insight down or tell it to someone, then I can remember it with no assistance the following morning; but if I merely say to myself that I must make an effort to remember, I never do. | |
I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social issues, an area of creative scholarship very different from the one I am generally known for. | |
I can remember the night that I suddenly realized what it was like to be crazy, or nights when my feelings and perceptions were of a religious nature. I had a very accurate sense that these feelings and perceptions, written down casually, would not stand the usual critical scrutiny that is my stock in trade as a scientist. If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I’m high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say “Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!” I try to show that my mind is working clearly; I recall the name of a high school acquaintance I have not thought of in thirty years; I describe the color, typography, and format of a book in another room and these memories do pass critical scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs. Such a remark applies not only to self-awareness and to intellectual pursuits, but also to perceptions of real people, a vastly enhanced sensitivity to facial expression, intonations, and choice of words which sometimes yields a rapport so close it’s as if two people are reading each other’s minds. | |
My high is always reflective, peaceable, intellectually exciting, and sociable, unlike most alcohol highs, and there is never a hangover. Through the years I find that slightly smaller amounts of cannabis suffice to produce the same degree of high, and in one movie theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the cannabis smoke which permeated the theater. | |
There is a very nice self-titering aspect to cannabis. Each puff is a very small dose; the time lag between inhaling a puff and sensing its effect is small; and there is no desire for more after the high is there. | |
I think the ratio, R, of the time to sense the dose taken to the time required to take an excessive dose is an important quantity. R is very large for LSD (which I’ve never taken) and reasonably short for cannabis. Small values of R should be one measure of the safety of psychedelic drugs. When cannabis is legalized, I hope to see this ratio as one of the parameters printed on the pack. I hope that time isn’t too distant; the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. | |
— Carl Sagan | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Kingslanding |
2018 | I’d Bet On Taxes |
Ooops! I Spoke Too Soon | |
2017 | A Cautionary Wish |
2016 | Slogging |
It’s About… | |
Man / Man | |
2015 | Memorial Day – 2015 |
Content People Love To Share | |
2014 | I Resemble That Remark |
2013 | Long Range Exploration |
2012 | UBI |
2011 | Opportunity |
Here’s Hoping So
Posted in Quotes, tagged Carl Sagan, Celibacy, Clergy, Fanaticism, Heredity, Quotes on May 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. | ||
— Carl Sagan | ||
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On This Day In: | ||
2019 | I Struggle With One At A Time | |
2018 | An Infectious Political Cancer | |
Site Update / Poems Page Evolution | ||
2017 | Our Thirst | |
2016 | History Favors The Victor | |
2015 | This We’ll Leave Them | |
2014 | Sounds Like Faux News To Me | |
2013 | Reasons | |
2012 | American Libertarianism | |
2011 | The Goal | |