Author: David from Alkozira

Emigrated to earth from planet Alkozira to bring the good news of TISRIGO. Relax. You don't know everything and you don't have to. Enjoy the mystery.

The Wonder of It All – Where the h, e, double toothpicks, did we come from…

This site is about Alkozira and what I learned there. What do Alkozirans think about what I’m writing here? Mostly nothing. As I’ve told you, they don’t like to think about us. But I know them, and I can tell you that when they think about something like comparative religion, which they do, they tend to see similarities, not differences. We humans mostly think about the differences.

While their ideas about religion can’t really be easily compared to ours, it is fair to say, they are more like Unitarian Universalists, than, well you know, pretty much everybody else.

First, I should mention my funny conundrum. When I talk about evolution and human origins, with either evolutionists or non-evolutionists, they both get mad at me. Ha, how ’bout that. I have no home. 

We have Evolved !

But, of course, evolution is true. Come on! Life has evolved! Life has evolved. How cool is that? That is so cool.

If there is a God like the one most religious people believe in, then he guided it. He did it or somehow influenced it. If there is no God, than wow, what’s going on? Either way: There is Something Really Interesting Going On!

TISRIGO! We should be dancing, hugging, and wowing, all the time!

I grew up in a church that believed the world was about 6000 years old. What does that have to do with anything? Stay with me.

I loved that church, and the people in that church. It was a great childhood. They were mostly good people. I had fun, fun, fun, and a lot of really good friends.

But they were wrong.

Fundamentalists don’t seem to like the word fundamentalist, but that’s what they were. They believed every word in the Bible is true, and that the world was around 6000 years old.

Come on. The world is not 6000 years old. It is 4 billion years, or so, old. That church was one of, apparently  8196 non-Catholic, Christian denominations (or should it be approximately – new protestant denominations pop-up everyday).  Or wait, is it 55,000 including the Catholics (who are a very tiny part of that number), or 45,000, or 33,000, or 28,000, or several other mostly huge numbers I found after hardly any research time. I kind of prefer the 8196 number, plus a few versions of Catholics added. So maybe a little over 8196? 

 

Who the H, e, double-toothpicks, cares exactly how many religions there are? There are a lot! And each one is right, all the others are wrong. Yes, It’s me, back on earth, still glowing sometimes.

To be fair, most of the numbers seemed to be actually carefully thought out. It’s just a matter of what you decide to count. For the higher numbers I think they counted each independent church, of which there are very many, and each one can have it’s own unique set of beliefs.

Seems silly to me, but hey…!

And if you have any sense at all, you’re saying, Ha! Who the h, e, double toothpicks, cares what the exact number is? There are a lot!  

Most of those 8200 or whatever number you like, are sure they are the one true interpretation of Christianity. There are a few that are a little more open minded, who may say a few other denominations are mostly correct.

Then there are the small handful of really crazy liberal denominations who say, “EVERYONE is OKAY”. Like the Baha’i or the Unitarian Universalists, which I think believe everyone is all right, even non-Christians.

I think you and I know it doesn’t really matter. It would be the same if there were only 50 or 100.

Whatever the number, each one is right, and all the others are wrong. 

This is one of the countless things about we humans that is beyond the Alkozirans. 

So, back to the title of this page. Where did we come from?

Here we were, surprisingly good looking, wise, and thoughtful – full of hope. What happened to us?

The short answer is we evolved. Marvelous, incredible, mind-boggling, obviously-true, evolution. Was God involved? I think so, but don’t know. And neither do you. And the more sure you are, the less likely you are to be right. That’s a fact.

But hey, it’s something that will really be fun to explore. Let’s go!

If It Ain’t Broke, etc…

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – Part 1

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  Brilliant, as the Brits say.

This saying was the actual inspiration for the expression “bumper sticker logic”.  It was something I was hearing at work (see below).  During that time I actually saw it on a bumper sticker, and then, lo and behold, I heard a politician use it.  It never means much, and when politicians use it, you can be sure it means nothing.

On the obnoxious scale it’s right up there with “Git ‘er done”! There are better examples, but I think this is a pretty good simple place to start.

Here’s the story:

When I was a young engineer working on locomotive turbocharger design, and other locomotive engine stuff, I spent a lot of time in the engine lab (which I called, “The Great Hall of Engines”, ha, ha).  That was a good job – spending time in the office doing design and analysis, then time in the lab and in the field, testing what we’d done. I loved it. I also enjoyed working with the mechanics and electrical technicians in the lab. They enjoyed us engineers also.  They especially loved us when we were wrong.

Some of the guys had a favorite expression.  Yup, you guessed it.
Here’s sort of how our conversations would go:
Mechanic, concerning something I was trying to improve (like fuel economy): “If it ain’t broke, Dave, don’t fix it.”

Dave: “What? That’s stupid. It’s got nothing to do with this.”

Mechanic (chuckling): “We’ll see”, or, “you wish”.

Dave: “We’re not “fixing” it. We’re making it better. If we don’t keep improving the engine’s performance, we’ll stop selling locomotives. Look what happened to ALCO.”

Mechanic: “I’m just yankin’ your chain. But think about it. People are always fixin’ stuff that doesn’t need fixin’.”

Dave: “No they’re not. Not only do people almost never fix things that don’t need fixin’, they almost never fix things that do need fixin’.  It’s a dumb expression.”

And so on and so on….
Now I have to admit I’ve used the saying, and probably will again. Though, I usually think I’m being funny when I say it.

As you will hear me say many times, there are really no sayings, sound bites, or philosophies that are always correct or useful for every situation. I can only think of one that I think (or hope) is always true, and even it will surely be misused. This one, like all the best most obnoxious examples we’ll discuss, is subtle .
Let’s think about it:

On it’s surface, the saying is straightforward.  Don’t fix things that don’t need to be fixed. Obvious, and nothing wrong with that, right?

So why put it on a bumper sticker?  The implication is that the world is full of people running around, stirring things up, making unnecessary trouble.  And how do they make all that trouble? By failing to see that the world is just fine as it is, and “don’t need fixin'”.  Right? That sums it up, nothin’ more needs to be said.

And that’s really the point isn’t it? Even though the expression is stupid, obvious, and probably has little or nothing to do with any particular situation, it is supposed to be the final word. Those busy bodies running around, not leaving well enough alone, are put in their place by those non-insightful words.

And then I told him, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. And that was that.”

Many of us humans fear and dread change.

What does it mean when a politician uses it?  Almost always nothing. As with so many other sound bites from politicians, it is usually meant to stop the conversation. I don’t remember what the issue was when I heard a politician use it, but I remember noting that it had virtually no relevance to the issue at all.  But most reporters rarely analyze the logic.  They just play the quotes, and depressingly it works.

Well hmm, we all say, I guess if it ain’t broke, we shouldn’t fix it.  Can’t argue with that. No sense in looking into the issue in more detail, and considering the options. If that guy says it ain’t broke, then we certainly shouldn’t fix it.

Be Open Be Amazed

The antidote to fundamentalism is open-mindedness – about everything. Fundamentalists can certainly be amazed and wondrous, but not where something might threaten their core beliefs on which the fundamentalism is based. Open-mindedness is a hot dish of poison to them. They criticize it because they are terrified of it.

A sense of wonder is good too.  You can use it to enforce the essential requirement of tisrigo – that you don’t know hardly anything, and that’s great. You can learn and grow, help others to learn and grow, and not feel threatened by disagreement. Because, if you know you don’t know everything, and may even be wrong sometimes; and other people know they don’t everything, and may even be wrong sometimes, then you can have meaningful discussions, with give and take. Life is wonderful in those moments. But fundamentalists fear and dread such moments.

This section is just for the sense of wonder. Come here to relax and grow your soul.

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And here is an image for the text.

“Humans Creep Us Out!”

They Are Not Here to Help

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This is not how the Alkozirans look. It is not how anybody looks, as far as I know. They are just some cool costumes that some kids I know made. Aren’t they cool?

One of the Alkoziran anthropologists who was studying me, once said, “Let me put it in terms you will understand. Humans just really creep us out.”

They are out there. Hiding with whatever truth is also out there.
They’re not here to help.

They don’t even like to think about us. The brave crewmen and scientists that must stand watch over and study earthlings, virtually always require extensive therapy to recover their mental health. It’s basically, for them, an extreme form of PTSD, or “battle fatigue”, as we used to call it.

Their primary mission is to keep us from leaving the solar system. There is also a strong fear-mongering conservative movement on Alkozira that is continuously advocating for our destruction. Not the destruction of earth, just humanity.  We’ll either be completely gone, or changed into something else you wouldn’t recognize.
The end of humanity as we know it.
A beautiful new vacation planet for the Alkozirans.

Recent events in U.S. politics have greatly strengthened the EIH  (Eliminate or Improve Humanity) movement on planet Alkozira.  Yes, I was disappointed to learn they also have acronyms.

Should the EIH fanatics prevail, the Alkoziran guard ships also have the capability to carry out their orders. It’s not like those science fiction movies. You know the ones.  The aliens are going to destroy the earth but after one of them spends time with us he realizes we have a good side and maybe should be given a second chance.  Nope, not going to go that way.

SC12_Scot2_28.6w-60hBathing in Sanity

I lived on Alkozira for many years. Despite my inherent human creepiness, they were nice to me; and though it was a little lonely being the ultimate outsider, I loved it there. It is impossible to explain, but I’ll try to give you some idea. To live among the Alkozirans is to be continuously bathed in sanity – clear, open-minded, happy, relaxed, no anger, fear, or hatred. They see their fellow Alkozirans and their planet as I can only imagine our creator sees earth and humans – if he or she is anything like the God of love some claim him or her to be.

I’m not ready, yet, to describe what it has been like to return to humanity, after living on Alkozira.

I Am Here to Help

When I asked if I could return to earth to warn humanity of our possible doom, the Alkozirans said, “No problem.”

They said I could tell you all about them. I can tell you all I’ve learned. They wished me luck but said that no one would believe me, of course.

They don’t care what happens to us, but if we can get even a little saner, somewhat less cruel to one another, get our elected officials to compromise and work together to solve problems, and take a longer less short-term selfish view of our planet’s well-being, it will definitely help our case. They don’t bear us any animosity. We just scare the hell out of them.

The Alkozirans will take me back anytime. I could be safe. But I guess I’m stayin’.  It’s pretty noble of me.

The Philosophy of Tisrigo

Relax. You don’t have to know everything. There’s really no such thing as a know-it-all. You also don’t have to be always right, or think that anyone else is. Relax.  Everybody is wrong all the time. Take a long soothing relaxing breath. We’re going to lift the oppressive, crushing, strangling, suffocating, burden of fundamentalism from humankind’s shoulders.

To be sure:
There Is Something Really Interesting Going On…

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But, truthfully, you don’t know what hardly any of it is.
And neither does anyone else!
Not even extremely wise me, nor the wisest entities on Alkozira – and they have some wise entities.

Isn’t that great? Life is a mystery.  You don’t have all the answers. You don’t have to fear and despise anyone because they have different ideas than you.  You and they mostly know nothin’!

This is what the wisest creatures in the universe know:
No one is always right. Mostly they are wrong. The more sure someone is that they are right, and the more vehemently they insist, the more likely they are to be wrong. You can count on it. There is no correlation between how sure a person is and how right they are. All those angry strident know-it-alls, they’re wrong! What a relief. I would say they should be pitied, but it’s hard to pity people who mostly make trouble for other people.

Yes, we have inklings of some profound simple truths. Through the ages, thoughtful imaginative humans have grasped these truths and tried to make them understandable through stories, parables, and poetic musings. Other humans love those stories and often turn them into an official religion. The trouble starts when we come to believe the stories, or the “details” (doctrine), are the religion. Two people may each believe in a single god of love, but if their details about that god are different in slight ways that would seem inconsequential to an outsider, they may feel obliged, even eager, to bully, persecute, torture, and kill one another.

So, you’ve probably guessed it. That’s the second part.  “There is something really interesting going on…and nobody knows what it is!”

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Freedom to Have an Open Mind

We are free to enjoy one another. We are meant to love one another, and to love all the variety and endless permutations. We are meant to enjoy the mystery and the search for knowledge.

We are meant to use our amazing brains for thinking. That means to set aside blind ideology and fundamentalism, to maintain an open mind, to focus on the common goal of improving each other’s lot, and to do that with reason, logic, and open minded experimentation.

On planet QW1212-24, peace, harmony, prosperity, and enlightenment, began with the philosophy of tisrigo.  Tisrigo is about learning to think with an unbiased mind, to solve problems without ideology, to learn and make improvements based on experimentation and open-minded non-biased evaluation of the results. That is the only way things get better.

It can work on earth too. We can teach ourselves to think clearer and better. We can teach our selves to think without bias. On these pages we will explore how to think, explore and share the wisdom of tisrigo, and fight, fight, fight, against all forms of fundamentalism and its debilitating horrid result – gullimentalism.

Gullimentalism

What is Our Defining Characteristic?a&t-gwlt2-sprkl2-30w-32h

We are incomprehensible to the Alkozirans. It took them years to realize what they now believe defines us and explains our behavior. Most of our actions made no sense to them until their most imaginative anthropologist hit on this insight:
Humans Believe What They Want to Believe!

This was so unnerving for the Alkozirans, it took the anthropologist many painful years of data gathering to convince the rest of the scientific community. They were slow to accept it, but now, as far as they are concerned, it is the basic fundamental defining characteristic of all humanity. To them, it explains everything. During my years there I managed to convince some of the scientists that not all humans always believe what they want to believe. But I couldn’t deny that it’s true for most of us, and pretty well explains a lot of human behavior.

What We Choose to Believe

cool kids_40w-18hOkay, you say. Maybe we are a little goofy that way. But is that justification for extermination?

No, it’s not. And though it creeps them out, it’s not what worries the Alkozirans about us:   It’s what so many of us choose to believe that scares the hell out of them. Because what we choose to believe says, to the Alkozirans, so many bad things about us.

Think about that. Why do we choose to believe what we believe?

That Brings Us to Gullimentalism

I made up that word. Can you guess what it means?
Yup, it’s a combination of gullible and fundamentalism.

A first important step on the road to sanity, is to learn recognize, fear, and dread all forms of fundamentalism. In a page to come we will define and elucidate fundamentalism. But simply put, it starts with deciding first what we want to believe, then making sure all the data and information agrees with us. We put all our thinking and arguing powers into proving we are right, everyone else is wrong. Being absolutely right empowers us to ridicule, bully, even torture and kill the evil wrong folks who disagree with us.

twoia-bns&barly2_32w-30hWhen we take this path, something happens to our capacity to think and reason objectively.  When it comes to anything concerning our specific fundamental ideologies, we become completely gullible. All fundamentalists, when it comes to their specific true beliefs, become blind and gullible. All fundamentalists. You can not remain a fundamentalist, unless you remain  gullible. No exceptions.

Since humans first got organized, leaders and politicians have used our gullimentalism to manipulate and control us. We’ll talk about this too.

Fundamentalism is a constricting mind trap. The deeper we go into it, the more difficult, perhaps even impossible, it becomes to see clearly and to see past the dark nearly unbreakable glass into which we have enclosed ourselves.

Open-mindedness is the liberating antipode (it’s a word, look it up) of fundamentalism. It can start with an understanding of the philosophy of tisrigo. This is an amazing, beautiful, fascinating universe. You hardly know anything about it, and that’s okay.  That politician, guru, or religious leader, you’ve put on a pedestal, doesn’t either.  You know the one. He’s so certain, so self-righteous, so angry at all those people who’s fault all our problems are, and so full of BSL.  He doesn’t know anything either.  Why are we letting them manipulate us?

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There is something really interesting going on – and fun.

Relax. You can be religious. You can be opinionated.  You can be decisive.
You just can’t be a gullimentalist.

And I strongly advise against being a conservative talk show host. I have it on good authority that, in another universe on another parallel earth, technology progressed much faster than here, and their Jesus came after television and talk shows were invented. On that world, Jesus said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a conservative talk show host to get to heaven. It is seventy times seven (or 490) worse than being rich. Wish I’d warned them back on earth.”

So let’s open our minds and get going. So much to learn. So many possibilities, and nothing to fear, but gullimentalism and the purveyors of fear.