Automb leaves make me
sigh, summer is passing by.
Frost in the morning.

Physical Predestination

Predestination. First proposed by the Calvinists, it's the idea that you have no control over your future. The idea that GOD knows everything and is all powerful and has seen--no, has decided--what you are, what you will be, and ultimately what will become of you. In the terms of rennaisance Europe this translates directly into the idea that it is GOD and GOD alone who decides your salvation. Furthermore, He decides based on criteria that we can't possibly understand, and decides before you are even born. He decides, at the moment He houses your soul in your body wether or not it deserves redemption...and there is nothing you can do about it throughout your life because your soul is, in the eyes of GOD, inherrently good or evil.

Well, I don't know if I believe in that kind of GOD...maybe I believe in God....or maybe just in god. I'm not sure what you'd call it.
But I have news for you...the calvinists may have been out in the cold when it comes to the true nature of God, but they may have been on the right track when they were talking about predestination. It's not an almighty GOD that decides your fate though...you don't get the comfort of knowing that your fate was chosen by a higher purpose, it was decided by something much, much more powerful: simple physics.

A long, long time ago in a galaxy not particularly far away, a universe was born. In less than a second it exploded from a state so dense we can't even begin to comprehend it to being a million light-years across. Everything was created then and there. That primordial state of a universe so saturated with energy that everything in it practiclly glowed with it was our garden of eden, and in that instant everything was decided.
The fabric of space grew, like a room that gets larger from one minute to the next, and everything--every atom, every loop of energy, every compund--left this garden with it's fate predestined. They left with an initial velocity, and an energy state, and every other charcteristic that they need to decide your fate right now. You see, if everything gets going in a certain direction with a certain speed then it is only a matter of time and mathematics before it interacts with another thing, and so on and so forth. In this way stars were formed, and out of a giant, interstellar cloud of fiery gas our sun and our very own Mother Earth were born, as had to happen given the fact that physics and mathematics determined at some point that it must. Just because something appears random does not make it so...it's path has been determined by the events that have happened to it before, which were in turn decided by the THE EVENT, the big bang, in the very begining. The chemistry of matter was what made life occur on Earth four and a half billion years ago, but when you take chemistry and strip it down to it's most basic principles upon which everything else is founded, chemistry turns into physics. So ultimately, it was the physics of the molecules on our prehistoric Earth that dictated how and where and when life would occur. It seems as though life escapes this pattern, doesn't it? Animals seem to make their own choices and we are no exception. However, what most people do not know is that life, and even thought, reduces to chemistry, which as I just stated reduces to physics.
Allow me to explain. In the most basic organisms "decisions" are essentially a form of stimulus and responce: something happens and a series of chemical reactions within the organism decides how it responds. This is just as true for more complicated for organisms such as our selves. Even thought and sentience is, at it's most basic level, chemistry occuring within the neurons that comprise the brain...so are memories. Now, the matter that forms the chemicals of your brain was created in the big bang and it left with all of it's properties decided just like everything else, as did everything that ever interacted with any other part of your body, the bodies of your progenitors, and of every other living thing on earth. Since thought is determined by chemistry, and chemistry depends ultimately on physics, then it is physics that determines what you think both consciously and unconsciously; the physics of whatever the stimulus is and the physics of your neuron's responce to it. Since what you think determiesyour actions, everything you or anyone else has ever thought, said or done, and thus everything that has ever happened in our history was determined by the properties that those initial particles of matter took with them from the big bang. Your reaction to what you have just read was determined fifteen billion years before your were born, as was the fact that you would read it. If you chose to read every single word of this long explanation, then that was decided at the initial moment of our universes creation as were any lines that you chose to skip, and if you didn't make it to the end of this post and will never read these words, then that was decided too.

Now I will tell you that I have just said is true. Every line of reasoning i have put into this is not in any way incorrect, and yet despite that I can tell you with a fair degree of confidence that your future is the result of your actions and choices. Your thoughts are your own and were not decided at our genesis all those long years ago, despite everything that I have said being true. Or at least, there is the possibility that it is not true, and that is enough for me. Your freedom rests on one single reason; one single aspect of life in particular and our universe in general that may free you form predestination. I know what it is, but I'm curious to see if anyone alse can think of it or perhaps think of others. So I would like to encourage you to post your thoughts on the matter to see what you think. I will give my own explanation in a bit.

Uhhhh...yeah

So a horse-drawn carriage is galloping around Muhlenberg right now.
Weird.

Seen through the eyes of my enemies...

Who am I?
A wise man once said that to truly known a man you should look not at his friends, but at his enemies. I don't remember which wise man said this, but I know it was one of them and that he was pretty damn wise. I would say that an enemy (on a personal level) is someone whom you fight with, who wants to hurt you, or whom you want to hurt. So, to give you a differnt look at me, here are my enemies in no particluar order.

A local taxie cab company. We had a fight when they said they would pick me up and never did...every half-hour or so I'd call them and ask if they were coming (this is after they were a good thirty minutes late) and they'd say "oh, we haven't gotten you yet?...well we'll be there if about fifteen minutes. After a while I gave up and took a ride with a friend, and when I called to tell them that I didn't need them anymore the conversation culminated with the dispatcher screaming at me that I was on their black list and that he would "put [me] in their black book and they wouldn't ever help [me] anymore," and that I'd get what was coming to me.
I hate them with a bitter passion, and we are not on speaking terms.

A man from whom I took the thing he valued most in the world--or so he claimed. I don't excuse what I did, nor do I think he ever really had what he thought he did to begin with...but then, if he thought he had it, is there a difference? The last time we spoke (over the phone) he told me that he'd beat me within an inch of my life if we ever met again, and maybe he even had the right to.

A man whom I conisder to be the most disgusting and revolting person I have ever met. He stalked at least two girls in my grade back in highschool, and there was a long time when there times that I wanted to hurt him so badly that I could barely breathe. I never did though, both to my infinite relief and regret. I don't think he ever realized how much Ihated him, and I can honestly say that I have never hated someone with such depth, purity, and intensity as I did him; most likely because there were times--not often mind you, but times--when he reminded me of the very worst parts of myself (not because of the stalking, because of other stuff)...and so I came to loath him.

A person who, when we parted ways, tried purposefully and successfully to put in as much pain as possible and make me ashamed of whom I am and what I do...and for a long time, was successful. It is in the past now.

An elementary school bully who, in retrospect, I doubt ever knew he ever hurt anyone and just had a bizzare sense of fun. He is the only person that I have ever had to use force against in order to put trouble between us to an end. Years later, I realized that he was more pathetic than anything else and should be pitied rather than reviled. Now, I hope that he somehow managed to make something of himself, though I doubt that he has what it takes in him. Still, years later I wish him only the best.

In general, those who would take anything and everything that makes me happy away from me. We all look out for ourselves, and I reserve the right to do so just as much as anyone else.

So these are my enemies, what does this say about me?