Philosophical topics/speeches

[Dragon Writer]

actually, time DOES come into dreaming...kind of. ever notice how many people have dreams that come true? that does kind of involve time...theoretically, the dream world doesn't HAVE time like we do, which means you'd be able to shift through time and pick up information from your subconsiounce in the future AND the present...if there is a dream world. if not, i have no answers for you on the subject. Supposedly (i think) an injury while dreaming hurts because your mind thinks your awake...so it MAKES your body get the injury, whether that be by bursting a vain, snapping a bone...stuff like that.

[EricG1793]

OK well I guess I'll throw out a new topic since the old ones aren't being discussed anymore.

Hmmm... what to say, what to say, I had known what I wanted to talk about before, but it's been a while.... Ah, yes. Life after death!

What happens when we die? I think that the theory of Timeheart is an excellent one, in fact I think that all the theories of DD's in terms of matters of existence, etc. are really good. Or maybe the "Heaven" concept applies to everybody, even if they're not Christian.

Or do we simply hang around on Earth, dwelling over our bodies, or do we cease to exist? But what happens to our spirit, our thoughts, our personalities.... Or maybe our spirits just go up in to space and we end up forgetting about our life as a human and our spirits go in to an alien body and we live life as an alien? But when we get Deja Vu... do we have flashbacks of a past life or something like that? My dad was saying yesterday that he remembered some kind of family function where they were hitting golf balls to practice... although he couldn't remember where for the life of him. He said maybe it happened in a past life....

[Emi]

well in ancient egypt they believed that there was life after death because they would bury their pharohs, etc, with jewelry and boats and food.

But when we get Deja Vu... do we have flashbacks of a past life or something like that? My dad was saying yesterday that he remembered some kind of family function where they were hitting golf balls to practice... although he couldn't remember where for the life of him. He said maybe it happened in a past life....

i think that could be a possibility... no one, that i know of, has ruled out that there are past lives and you could be a reincarnation of like queen elizabeth the first or something. sounds pretty cool to think that you were the queen or something, but could you be a reincarnation of animals too??

[Dragon Writer]

i have very well developed theories on THIS! i don't believe in hell, nor really heaven...i believe in reincarnation. kinda. i think that your reborn again and again until you learn whatever lesson you need to learn, and once that's done you can choose whehter to reside in the after life, or be reborn...and maybe some people, even after learning what must be leaned, have a particular job to do on earth...something that their personality allows them to teach others, so they are reborn again and again until they're no longer needed...at the same time, the ammount of people in the universe changes, so sometimes there might be more boddies then there are souls. due to that, there's most likely some kind of waiting room, which might be heaven and hell...only thing is, while you can reward someone for that one life, by letting them wait in heaven, i think that to punish someone with hell, for the brief moment in time that is that one life, is kind of wrong, so i think while they might not go to heaven, they're just kind of left to hang around and wait for their next life in...nothingness. (or maybe they have to be ghosts, and see all the horrors they did to others.) don't know...and that's my take on the after life. what? i'm adhd! at various points, i think about just about EVERYTHING at some point or anohter in time...

[EricG1793]

Now there's a great theory!

I've never thought of it from that perspective before. Yes, maybe Heaven and Hell could be some kind of waiting room before you're reborn... however do you remember your past life? Do you remember everything you did in your past life so you know to move on to other tactics in the new life, to try and teach people that lesson you were talking about?

[starkruzr]

Most cosmologists seem to be able to agree that the universe is not only expanding, but accelerating in its expansion, pushed apart by dark energy.

What I am not clear on is whether *space* is actually expanding or just the matter inside it.

As we speak, galaxies are hurtling farther and farther away from each other. The question is, are they bringing space with them, or was it already there?

[Dragon Writer]

i think, during that period of waiting, you get to remember everything...or if not everything, then at least the most recent...i think what you learn stays with your soul, though it might not enter your consious mind, and continues to effect you in later lives. (which may be why some people who have had perfect lives end up doing bad things anyways...because their past experiances are still effecting them) it's kinda like karma, except it's not some higher power dealing pay back, but our own experiances continuing to effect us at a fundemental level....and if, even in regular life, these experiances stick with us, then they must also be with us during the waiting periods....during that point we can think, realize (hopefully) what we've done wrong, and hope that we do better in our next life....the interesting thing is, we also probably wouldnt' exactly LOOK like ourselves in the after life...if you have enough lives, your most likely going to take on the form you most enjoyed from another life, not necessarily the one you just had....or you might be kinda formless. not exactly sure on that front, since i'm jsut really thinking of it now...(as said earlier, i'm adhd...at some point or another EVERY thougth passes through my head it sometimes seems...)

[Tualha Bard]

Hmm. Reincarnation. Interesting topic as it is, I find a few flaws in its general idea.

Firstly, how do we know what life is which? Seriously, I can sit here and think and think and think until my brain explodes and not ever come up with a memory or recollection of something that happened in a life that was not mine (as in, in this physical body). Furthermore, if I did have a fleeting glimpse of a past life, how do I know that it's not just a sequence out of a dream? A hallucination? There is no way to be 100% sure on this.

Second, when does it end? If, like young reader suggested, we stay on Earth until a particular lesson is learned, or until we finish a job, what happens? Reincarnation is a circular aspect, in that life is never-ending. Think of a whirlpool. Now, visualize a leaf falling into it. It spins for a few moments until it is sucked into the middle and disappears. Then another falls in and repeats the process. (Okay, so it's not a good analogy; so what?) Anyways, according to my analogy, our "souls" are taken out of the "soul pool" and placed into a life. We go through that life, then die, and therefore end up back in the whirlpool, until we are sucked down into another life. When does it end? It's a cycle without a purpose. If a lesson is learned, why does it continue on after?

~

Okay, enough with the reincarnation. My idea, or rather, and idea that I've heard, is that we, as human beings, are composed of a great deal of kinetic energy - as well as a number of other types - and that if our physical manifestations are finite, energy knows no end. Therefore, when we "die" our energy just simply ... exists. Still without a purpose, but there we are.
Energy is everywhere. Electric energy, kinetic, heat, etc. So do we split up and become one with the universe? Or do we stay as a unit and simply "float" around?

~

On the topic of the universe, think of it as an arc. There was something here before the big bang - if the big bang is even real - and I like to think of it as ... Point A. So, Pt. A is where the beginning of our arc is. The big bang is somewhere near the middle (Pt. B). And there is a definite "end," or something that causes the motion of time (because time has no flow) to cease, now known as Pt. C. In accordance with the idea of entropy and how it relates to the universe, everything begins to degrade from the big bang. Think about it; something happened to spark it all, the universe, etc., and then it began its climb. Then the big bang happened; this was the turning point. Everything started to slow down (cool) and degrade slowly (remember how the Earth's running outta resources? bingo!). This also ties in with the expansion of the universe and the growth of dark matter. Eventually, the universe will be so spread out, time will cease and end because there is nothing there to be affected by it. The dark matter is relevant because that's all that there's gonna be left; it's a filler for the gaps in space (I think).

So yeah.
My first post.
Be gentle ...

[Emi]

On the topic of the universe, think of it as an arc. There was something here before the big bang - if the big bang is even real - and I like to think of it as ... Point A. So, Pt. A is where the beginning of our arc is. The big bang is somewhere near the middle (Pt. B). And there is a definite "end," or something that causes the motion of time (because time has no flow) to cease, now known as Pt. C. In accordance with the idea of entropy and how it relates to the universe, everything begins to degrade from the big bang. Think about it; something happened to spark it all, the universe, etc., and then it began its climb. Then the big bang happened; this was the turning point. Everything started to slow down (cool) and degrade slowly (remember how the Earth's running outta resources? bingo!). This also ties in with the expansion of the universe and the growth of dark matter. Eventually, the universe will be so spread out, time will cease and end because there is nothing there to be affected by it. The dark matter is relevant because that's all that there's gonna be left; it's a filler for the gaps in space (I think).

It's a good theory. I mean I do agree with some parts, because of the whole slowing down thing. It's true! Actually I agree with all of it. The whole thing about the entropy and the dark matter.... BUT how did the universe and start? AND what lead to the "Big Bang"? When did it start to climb? And why did it start to decline after the "Big Bang"? Maybe I should pay attention more to science.. so if someone could answer these questions?

Oh and welcome to the forums Tualha!

[Tualha Bard]

(Thanks!)

I don't know what might have sparked it; that's the question, isn't it? There must have been something there before that started it, unless all of this is in a cycle, and the eventual "end" turns in on itself and spews out another earth.

I don't even know.

>.>

[Rhi]

A lot of things in nature are circular (circle of life, water cycle, etc.) so maybe the universe is as well, always being created and dying and being reborn. We humans tend to think of time as being linear because that's how we perceive it, but that may not be the case; there's a theory out there about nonlinear time that's kind of cool, where time is more like a tree than a river (branching out instead of only flowing straight in one direction), so maybe there's loopular time, too. Or something Ah, poor little humans trying to make sense of the gigantinormous universe (okay, now I know my spellcheck's turned off )

Speaking of time, I've kind of made a realization and am wondering if other people are experienceing this too- it feels like time is going faster as I get older. When I was younger, an hour was long, the school day took forever, and summer break lasted for an eternity. Now time seems to be flashing by and freaking me out with how fast it's going, for instance, I've already been in school for about 6 weeks and it feels like I just walked through the doors. I've heard one theory where we perceive time as proportional to our age, like when we're small we haven't lived that long, so time seems slower, but when we're older time starts feeling faster because it's less time than compared to how long we've already lived (okay, that made no sense at all), but I'm curious to know if anyone else is experiencing this, and their opinion on its cause.

[EricG1793]

To Rhi, for the second section of your last post here:

I feel like that too. I don't know if it's because I'm older... or if I enjoy school/vacations more so it seems to go faster then when I hated it....

Since I got in to fifth grade in the middle school, the years seem to fly by a lot faster. Maybe because I liked my classes more, or because I had a best friend (not just a couple friends who I like the same amount, but I actually had a best friend).... The years seemed to go by so fast, and now that I'm in eighth grade, my final year in middle school, it seems as though seventh grade was incomplete... As though it should have been longer. I now feel like so much of a stranger when I walk down the seventh grade hallway and visit the teachers who were my full-time teacher but a few months ago.... I visit my fifth grade teacher every Friday morning. I hardly even remember what fifth grade was like, who was in my class, etc. My sixth grade teacher was cut because of the budget issues, and for seventh grade I couldn't visit him because he wasn't at the school anymore. He returned to the school this year, when I'm in eighth grade. He's teaching fifth grade now, and whenever I visit him Wednesday mornings it's like he's a stranger.... I haven't even entered his classroom when he was teaching when I was in sixth grade because I hardly even know the teacher who teaches in there now. She taught in the Elementary School, then she went to sixth grade in the Middle School and took my sixth grade teacher's place. OK, sorry, now I'm ranting about the teachers moving around, I'd better stop.... Anyway, my biggest point is is that I don't feel as though it was that long ago when I had them for teachers... but I try to remember things and I just can't, and it hits me that it was three years ago that I was in fifth grade!

I am feeling what you're feeling, I definitely am... although I didn't exactly elaborate my feelings in the best way.... But that answers your question.

[Kathy Li]

Oh, time definitely runs faster the older you get. The one one friend explained it to me is that you begin to experience a period of time in relation to the portion of your life it represents. That's why when you're five years old a year feels like forever--it's 20% of your life. But when you've hit 40, like me, it's 2.5%. Works as well as any other theory. But yes, these days I blink, and a month has gone by.

[EricG1793]

Ooh, this is really neat! I came on to check out the latest Forum topics and this one was second on top of the list.... I looked at it yesterday, but still.... and I noticed that the last post was made at 3:09 AM yesterday, and I'm looking at 3:09 PM today! I looked at that post exactly 36 hours after Kathy made it.

Well, anyway, I just thought of another philosophical topic. What about the industrial world? Greed is the problem. All of the jobs, going overseas to China... Good for China, though, there are plenty of job opportunities there.... But what about for all the other countries? I question whether it's an over generalization to say that EVERYTHING is made in China.... Not exactly everything, but close to it.

Now, let's see... random things near me... GE portable telephone, "Made in China." One of those visor glasses clip thingies... Ah, that's Korea! Cool! LG cell phone, also in Korea! Flash drive... China.... Dog bed: China. Dog: USA. My laptop: Shanghai, China. The family destop: ...Malaysia? Interesting. Anyway... HP ink cartridge: Oooohh, DD, Ireland! David, Jr. (My mini-stapler ): China. David Jr.'s food (Staples for my mini-stapler): China. Picture frame: China. Pencil sharpener: China. Electric outlet: Unknown, and I don't want to try and find out by ripping it out of the wall, either. Energizer battery: Oh my goodness, U.S.A.! Panasonic battery: Ah, good ol' Japan. Duracell battery: Goodness, another U.S.A.! Time machine: China. Wii remote charger: China. Webcam: China.

So. All in all, China wins. At least for many of the objects on and around my desk. So exactly why are so many things made in China? Money greed. Or maybe it could be something else. Is it possible that the people who run the big companies that are stationed in U.S.A. (or whichever country you live in) have their products manufactured in China (or elsewhere) are trying to make life hard for the people who live in their own country, making sure they don't get good jobs so they'll never be as rich as they are? Or are there other reasons that I'm missing completely?

....

Think about that.

[Tualha Bard]

About China:

I think that the reason why all of the jobs are going to China is because of their need for jobs. Think about it: China has a bajillionmillionthousandhundredfive people living over there, and all those people need jobs. SO ... yeah. I think. I mean, they all need money to support themselves. We all do. But since they have more people, their economic needs as a nation are greater than ours. So .. that's why they make everything; so that they can make money. :P
or at least, that's what I think.