A little light philosophy -I'm trying to sleep!

So I was sat in my garden the other day - I started off practising T'ai Chi but after admitting I'd forgotten the steps, I sat down and meditated for a while, looking at the garden. I noticed some litter in the grass. A can of coke, an old plastic wrapper and an empty tea candle. I stepped carefully into the grass and picked up the tea candle and that got me thinking (like I always do after T'ai Chi). What right do I have to remove this tea candle? What if the micro environment created by this tea candle had enabled some insect to survive and create a home there? Just because I see it as litter, does not objectively make it so and therefore I returned to my question, what right do I have to alter my environment in this way? In any way?

What are the indelible human rights? What does it mean to have a right to something at all? Do we have a right to the air that we breathe?

If we assume that we do have the right to the air that we breathe, what gives us this right? Is it our lungs? The fact that we can use the air to breathe gives us the right to use the air? Or is it an indelible right for any living creature to continue its own life?

This may seem unimportant, the ravings of a madman or both but the fact is we are stepping closer and closer to what the ancients would have considered the domain of the gods. We can create and destroy so much of the world at a whim - and not just corporations or kings or countries but the individual also has this power in a growing respect. These mundane or nonsensical ramblings about whether I had the right to move that empty tea candle extends beyond such trivialities and into the realm of the tangible, the significant and these questions of what right do we have are going to become more pervasive as the years go on and technology lifts us in its hands and carries us into the future.

1000 page views - disqus and more!

First the 'and more'. I'm finally on google searches! I'm so happy a tear is welling in the corner of my keyboard! Check it out yourself, go to google and type - "Write drunk; edit sober" -Ernest Hemingway - and I'm like the 5th result! (is it the same for everybody?) Anyway it feels like I've made it now that I've shown up in a Google search somewhere :)

Secondly the disqus - if you scroll down to the bottom (and please do :D), you'll see a new comment widget which allows you to comment with facebook, with twitter or any number of different ways including registering for a disqus commenting account if somehow you don't have facebook, twitter, g+ or  (takes seconds and you don't have to leave this page!) - Anyway you finally have a voice! Use responsibly ;P

And finally the 1000 page views - I've been plugging away for just over two months with this blog and I've resisted posting every 100 page views but I feel like 1000 is a nice milestone to brag about a little :) Now I promise you won't hear from me on the subject again until at least 5,000 or 10,000 (I havn't decided yet)


Okay okay, I'll leave you in peace now, but thank you for reading, I hope you've learnt something, or laughed at something in my blog these past few months. Or maybe you've just enjoyed watching the train wreck that is my degree flying past while I focus on this blog too much!

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Lots of love, Dan
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Turn off the air conditioner, go outside, love thy neighbour!

HOW MANY "LIKES" CAN I GET FOR THIS IDEA - Writing.Com

Follow the link - I ran into this post (article?) on writing.com and it's really sensible - give it a good read if you have time, it's not too long.

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Follow me on twitter @dancohen447
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A Nymph Beneath a Wishing Tree

Can you mend a broken heart?
My pain will cause the leaves to part,
Revealing solely unto me
A nymph beneath a wishing tree.

The softest skin I ever saw.
I've stood here in this place before.
I'm holding on, I fear too much!
Your fearless face I dread to touch.

For what, I fear, will come to me?
Devoured 'neath a wishing tree.
Alas, my fear, it was in vain
And here I stand, eyes filled with shame.

As I am forced to watch you leave
As gently as the forest breathes.
I turn my back and fairly step
Down from this stage where I once slept

And wonder, almost willingly,
"What waits for me beneath the tree
I visit next". My strength is sapped
Yet here I only feel trapped.

So I must go, make haste, set tread
And power onwards through the dread.
Until I find a place of hope,
With endless travel, I must cope.

I'll wander almost wilfully
To seek a place where I can be,
To drown my fears in icy pool
With waters still and forest's rule.

War isn't caused by religion

Whenever you go to that dark corner of the Internet, where atheists get all sanctimonious and start yelling at Christians, you'll find somebody saying something like "Without religion there would be no war" and swinging it around like a cricket bat.

I'm just here, to quickly say that you (Mr Irrational Atheist) are completely wrong. War is economic. Every single time, it is a response to the Malthusian principle that human population grows faster than growing agriculture can support. We start getting claustrophobic and being crushed up against our neighbours and so we lash out, we push them away (or kill them). Religion has to carry the burden of this blame because for years every time a country has had to go to war, they have used religion to rally the people under one banner. In this instance, as every other, religion is a tool. If we had no religion, we would use a different tool, war would still happen, and you are, now and forever, wrong.

Sex at dawn - the best book I've ever read!

Sex at Dawn

Sex at dawn is a book about the prehistoric roots of mankind's sexuality and the conclusions it comes to are staggering. I have rarely felt so vindicated in my life and it is truly liberating to have read this book. It gives me a new and much more open view of my innate sexuality - that quiet (sometimes loud) voice in my head telling me what I like and don't like, what I want to do and who I want to do.

Monogamy is a lie.

The Standard Narrative

This book covers a bunch of topics, starting with the standard narrative of human sexuality.

• Man
• wants to impregnate as many women as possible
• wants to ensure that he only raises his own kid.
• Woman
• wants to be impregnated by the highest quality male
• demands commitment
• demands monogamy - to ensure that all the mans resources go to her and her kids.

This leads to the conclusion that a woman will grab a man to raise her kids, while looking for a better man to have an affair with, likewise a man will sleep around with anybody he finds and both will constantly be on the lookout for infidelity. 

Humans are born to be promiscuous

Sex at Dawn goes on to prove the standard narrative wrong in myriad ways and show that this standard narrative flies in the face of almost all the evidence on human sexuality. The book presents a theory that human sexuality evolved as a method of social bonding and that we are  much more like the sexually promiscuous Bonobo (whose evolutionary path separated 5 million years ago) than the monogamous Gibbon (separated 22 million years ago).

Some Biological evidence in support of our promiscuous past

A Baboon's butt while estrous

• Our testicles and penises are HUGE compared to monogamous or polygynous (1 man many wives) apes like the Gibbon, Gorilla and Orangutan. A Gorilla's penis is about 3cm.
• Hidden or discrete ovulation cycles, shared with Bonobos. E.g. Chimps and Baboons are famous for having bright red butts, which flare up when the time is right. A hidden cycle encourages round the clock mating. Because we can't know the right time, we do it all the time.
• Female humans shouts and screams during sex will turn the heads of all men within earshot. What purpose could this serve? Promiscuous Bonobos share this female copulatory vocalisation (FCV) trait but the monogamous Gibbons do not.

There's a bunch more including face-to-face mating and all the social aspects of love making like kissing and eye-gazing which adds strength to the argument but if you want to know more, you gotta go to the source.

The solution?

The take away solution to married life's problems - be open about and willing to discuss your desires with your partner. Allow yourself to look away from societies accepted path of marry, cheat, divorce, marry, cheat, divorce, marry, cheat, divorce, die and instead consider an unjealous polyamorous (many lovers) relationship. It may help strengthen your relationship and - god-forbid - allow you to be happy within yourself.

The Bottom Line

This is a controversial topic tackled in a way that lets you take it less seriously and have some fun with the idea. This book will open your eyes to the world and make you really think about how you live your life. Highly recommend - I give it a rating of 5/5 penises.

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Follow me on twitter @dancohen447

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Read around the world!

I was just looking at my blogger audience stats - which I only do like... 3 times a day, and I noticed that I'm getting almost a third of my traffic from the US! I didn't realise I had so many friends overseas :)

The rest of my traffic is from the UK with a couple from Brazil, Israel, Germany, France and Malaysia for some reason.

Just wanna thank you for reading, it really makes my day to write these posts.

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Follow me on twitter @dancohen447
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