Our intellects give us human animals the impressive ability to model reality. The realities so modeled can even be the modelers themselves, as well as hypothetical realities which our models predict to be possible. Our models will always be imperfect and incomplete though, and forgetting this fact can effectively limit our minds within our own models and cause us to fail to perceive an aspect of the modeled reality which is not specified in the model. In this way, beliefs can be masks which prevent us from seeing the underlying reality. When the reality being modeled is ourselves or humanity, our beliefs can mask our deeper selves from our own awareness. Such unintentional masking stealthily occurs when an emotion happens to reinforce a belief yet is not actually a core component of the belief itself. In this case the emotion will reinforce our conviction in the belief without us even needing to be aware of the actual nature of the emotion behind the belief. Such emotionally charged belief is commonly seen in religious persons. For me though, it occurred in relation to my belief in the value of communication, and what that belief was effectively masking was my fear of loneliness. What I realized was that some of my idealistic attempts to communicate with certain persons at ill-chosen times were in reality very much motivated by a fear of loneliness. Realizing that my belief was unintentionally masking an emotion and therefore inhibiting my self-awareness enabled me to peer more accurately at the causality between my emotions and my actions, and to consciously confront the fear itself.

The atheist's beliefs are imprisoned within the current scientific paradigm of materialism. The theist operates outside of the limited paradigm of materialism, but the theist's beliefs are polluted by prior unmet emotional need which he/she transforms into a deity. Quasitheism is a formalized acknowledgment that there is indeed something beyond material reality, but does not go so far as to declare that this immaterial reality is a sentient deity, while still admitting that it could be something that we would call a deity. There are simply too many hypotheses that cannot be selected for or against within our current understanding. Quasi- is a prefix which basically means "almost", and I felt that it was the best available prefix to encompass the range of unknowns in the search for "divinity". Quasitheism could arguably be classified as a permutation of agnosticism, but what distinguishes quasitheism is that it definitively states that there is something beyond material reality.

In my adolescence I formed the belief that awareness was always the first step in personal growth; that without awareness no progress could be made. This core belief of mine has strongly shaped my interactions with people, especially when they needed guidance. People have thanked me for encouraging their awareness, but some of these same people have also suffered repeatedly from moments when I misguidedly pushed too hard towards awareness. I have come to realize that awareness is not required as a first step for all people; that in fact some people can intuitively move towards a state of higher quality without being aware intellectually. Just because my intellect is more honed than my intuition and so has been a more expedient tool for my own personal evolution does not mean that everyone is in the same state as me. By believing that awareness was always the first step for everyone I was really just misguidedly projecting myself onto others. I wrote the belief that awareness was always the first step for everyone on a piece of paper, and burned it in the Beltane fire, as a symbolic gesture reinforcing that I was removing that belief from within myself.

music: MT-TV

Contemplating the fact that simple equations like z_n+1=z_n²+c can produce the infinitely intricate geometries of a fractal can honestly fill me with a sense of blissfully superlative awe, more so than any church ever could.

The basic equation I cited above produces the Mandelbrot Set fractal, as well as the Julia set fractals. The Mandelbrot Set is essentially a map of Julia sets. If you would like to see a visual representation which dynamically and interactively demonstrates the relationship between Julia sets and the Mandelbrot Set, the program Fraqtive does a beautiful job. You would need Linux in order to run the Fraqtive program though, so...

( How to acquire a free bootable Linux CD )

Update: There are now versions of Fraqtive for Mac OS X and Windows, though I have never run the version for Windows so I cannot personally attest to its stability or performance on that platform.

The divide between childhood and adulthood is the acquisition of [a degree of] autonomy. The goal then of parenting and education is to ultimately empower children with the autonomy that they will need as an adult. Many parents in our modern culture though try so hard to keep their children from growing up ["too soon"]. In such homes these progeny are treated as mere children right up until the day that they move out of their parents' home, at which point they are suddenly thrust into an adult world in which they are somehow expected to instantly function as adults, despite inadequate encouragement and training in their parents' home. A healthier approach to creating adults would be to actually encourage the child to become an adult, and to gradually grant the child rights commeasurate with responsibilities until the child has all the rights and responsibilities of an adult. In older cultures they concretely symbolized this transformation with rite-of-passage ceremonies to emphatically acknowledge a child's transition into adulthood, but our modern culture lacks adequate rites-of-passage. (Did you feel like a fully empowered adult at your high school graduation?) When imagining how a teacher could provide a meaningful rite-of-passage to a student (though not the final rite), I came up with the following document...

( Mantle of Curricular Authority )