Visit From Xooox

I was visited by an alien last night.

I wasn’t expecting it, to be honest. I’d just settled down with a book and brew.

“Hello” said the alien.

“Hello” I responded.  “Can I make you a brew? The kettles just boiled.”

“No, thanks. I don’t, with being a non-corporeal being and all” I should probably explain; this alien wasn’t one of those little grey fellas you see on the TV.  He was more of a shimmering light floating about eighteen inches off the top of my sofa.

With hindsight, asking him if he fancied a brew was probably a stupid question.

“So, why are you here?” I enquired (recovering from my shock, my questions were becoming a little more relevant)

“Oh, you know, just bobbing by”

“Are you going to give me an anal probe?”

“Well, I could if you wanted, but I’d prefer not to. Is this something you often ask of house guests?”

“No” I responded, relieved. “Not usually”.

We chatted for a while.  I asked him his name.  He said it didn’t really translate well into our language, but would sound something like “oooooooooooooo”.  He said he liked to add an “x” at the start and the end so it was spelt “Xooox”, to break up the vowels and sound a little funky.  I suggested he could have put the x’s in the middle, but he had some kind of beef about that.

Conversation with an alien isn’t as easy as you might imagine.  They’re generally not interested in local weather, or the football.  So I asked:

“How old are you?”

“Why?”

“I was just interested”

“Oh. Well, I’m not sure how to answer to be honest.  Do you measure time based on your planets circulatory pattern of the local star?”

“Erm. Yeah”

“OK. Well, in that case, I guess I’d be about 37 million circuits by your reckoning”

“37 million years old!?  Wow.  That’s really old.  And I was worried about approaching 40.”

“37 million of your years isn’t that old you know! Your planet is 4.5 BILLION years old.  Do you have any idea how big a number a billion is?”

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Well, it’s fairly big I suppose” was the best response I could muster.

“If you sat there and counted to 4.5 billion, it would take you about 140 of your years.”

“Does that include toilet breaks?”

“No” replied Xooox.

“It’s pretty amazing though isn’t it?” I asked

“What is?”

“This! Here I am sat here, a sentient life form, talking to another sentient life form from a completely different planet!  I mean, there really is other life out there.  Of all the flukes and quirks and chances involved in creating life, and then evolving to sentient life, that two sentient beings from different planets should ever meet like this is just amazing.  The odds must be minute!”

“Not at all! Life is common. Almost inevitable really, in the right conditions, and given enough time.”

“Really?”

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Oh yes. Most definitely. Listen: your planet is 4.5 billion years old.  Yet within 500 million years, by about 4 billion years ago, life has already formed as single-celled organisms.  It took another 2 billion years before they started to develop into the first complex cells, and it was 1.2 billion years ago by the time multi cellular life forms appeared.  Half a billion years ago you started to see the first back-boned fish and by 400 million years ago, you started to see life on the land too.  By 250 million years ago, your dinosaurs were in charge and remained so for almost 200 million years.  Your species has only been about 2 million years in comparison.

“But my point is” Xooox continued “that life appeared very quickly in the history of your world, as it does in many others. In fact, life has been present for 4 billion of the 4.5 billion years your world has been in existence. It didn’t take that long, in relative terms, to get started, and then marched consistently on from that point”

“And now it’s culminated in our existence. Humans! Sentient species.”  It was starting to make sense to me now.  We were the end result of 4 billion years of life and evolution!

“Hardly!” responded Xooox with a chuckle

“What do you mean?” I asked, sharper than I’d intended.

“Well, look at you.  I mean all of you. As a species.  You’re hardly the culmination of anything.  Sure, you’re sentient, to an extent, but you’re not the end result.  Just another dead-end I’m afraid”

“What do you mean, dead-end?”

“Listen: over 99% of the organisms that have ever existed on your planet no longer exist.  Why should you be any different? And what makes you think you are the culmination? The end game?”

“Erm”

“You’re not the end game.  You’re just another dead-end, I’m afraid”

“So what’s the end game?”

“I can’t tell you that.  You wouldn’t understand it.  You’re still tied to your corporeal world”

“So should we evolve into something like you?”

“Possibly. Eventually.  But not your line.  Your line isn’t a keeper. More a throw-away draft.”

“Well if not humans, then who?  Chimps?”

“Listen, I need to get going.  I’ve hung around too long, but thanks for the chat.” Xooox started to fade.

“No, wait…you’ve got to tell me…is it the chimps?”

“….no……you’re thinking too laterally….” Xooox responded faintly

“No? Erm….the birds?”

“………..no………..” came the almost inaudible response

“Not the ants?!”

“…………………………”

I bloody hate ants.

 

Snowy Day in Late March

It was a rare occurrence, but every so often the earth would grind to a halt on it’s orbit about the sun and suddenly swing into reverse.

And then spring would once again be awash with winter snow.

Next the dead leaves would jump back into the trees like bungee jumping lemmings and before you knew it full grown sheep would be casting nervous glances at their ever shrinking lambs.

 

People Problem #1

It is actually possible to walk down a street, which isn’t very busy, without acknowledging anybody that you pass!

Think about that for a moment!

I live in a small village in the North West of the UK. There are about 3 or 4 housing estates, 3 pubs, 2 churches, 3 social clubs and a number of small shops. Population around about 5,000, surrounded by fields in every direction.

That’s why I like it. It’s not a sprawling metropolis. I don’t think I could cope with city life.

But despite all that, the surrounding fields and the small village setting, I’ve just walked to the local shop (about half a mile away) and passed about a dozen people, without receiving acknowledgement from a single one of them! We just walked straight past each other. Imagine that!

OK – maybe you’re thinking that isn’t so strange, and perhaps you’re right. But think about this: we have evolved as social creatures. We have evolved to work together in social units. We have dispersed across the world from small tribes in Africa until we talking monkeys now occupy almost every crook and cranny of the world. And yet we can pass each other in the street without so much as a nod of recognition.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being all superior here.  They didn’t acknowledge me and I didn’t acknowledge them.  It’s a two way thing, I agree.  And normally, I do make a point of saying hello to anybody I pass.  But because I was slightly distracted I didn’t today.  Even when I noticed, and started paying attention, I noticed people really weren’t even looking for acknowledgement.  They were happy to just pass on by.

All these people, with their lives, their loves, their stresses, their joys. Each with their own history of battles won or lost, their memories and histories.  All, just ignored and passed by.

As a species, it’s more natural for us to know all about the people in our social group, or tribe.  We’d know their histories and who they were.  We could never walk past them in the street without acknowledgement.

But today there are over 7 billion of us world wide!  7,000,000,000!!!  That’s a lot of zeros.

7 billion histories.  7 billion faces to recognise. 7 billions loves, losses and joys.  How can you even scrape the surface in attempting to understand all that?

Even in my small village of over 5,000, how can I possibly really know and understand more than a small percentage of the people I might bump into?

So for me, that’s People Problem #1; there’s too bloody many of us.

But next time I go out for a walk, I will be sure to say “hello”.

 

Black and White and Purple

I’m not a big believer in absolutes.

Too many people only see things in black and white.  It either is or it isn’t; it’s right or it’s wrong.  I think such simple terms can rarely be applied in practice.

I studied law after leaving school, so maybe my perspective is down to that; looking at everything from multiple angles, arguing every case for and against. Not that I took up law for a living.  I always felt it was an interesting subject, but a dull lifestyle choice. But, hey, what do I know?

Anyway, black and white always seemed far too simple for me.  Not that I’m a fan of grey.  Grey is also dull.  I like to see things in shades of purple.  Prince knows what I’m talking about.

Life isn’t simple.  It isn’t split into well delineated categories.  It’s complex, without some infinite book of rules to tell us how to respond to a situation.  Our decisions are the result of a lifetime of experience, or lack thereof. What makes them right or wrong?  Perception?  Group assessment?  Peer review?  A holy book?

In my view, we’re all just talking monkeys.  We’re apes that have grown too big for our trees.  There’s no purpose, no right or wrong, somehow written into our existence.

We’re just here.  Evolutionary quirks and freaks, everyone.

We’ve no manifest destiny.  We’re not subject to the whims of stars or gods.  We just are.

So do I believe we can just do what we want?

Well, technically, yes.  But that road is bleak and leads to chaos, so it’s not one I advocate.

If we’re here, why not enjoy it?  Everyone likes to be happy, don’t they?  So do what makes you happy!

But, in a purple world, there needs to be conditions on that.  To be happy, you need to live in a condition that enables you to be happy, where people are not preventing you from being happy.  Also, for other people to be happy, they need to live in a condition that enables them to be happy, where other people (including you) are not preventing them from being happy,  Therefore, if people focussed on making themselves happy, but not to the exclusion of others being happy, we’d all be happy. Wouldn’t we?

Is it really that simple?  Probably not.  It’s more purple than that in practice.  But it’s a start.

This is obviously nothing new.  It’s been said before: “do onto others as you’d have them do onto you”.  It is a simple concept.  Not that I’m a religious man (you’ve probably gathered that from the above) but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognise that some religions have had good ideas from time to time! (Purple thinking in action).

So if this idea is so simple, why aren’t we all happy?

Probably two main reasons:

• we’re all only focused on the first part, making ourselves happy, to the exclusion of the latter part, making others happy
• we’re probably chasing the wrong things to make us happy in the first place, focussing on quick fix happiness, rather than long term happiness.

There I go using that “wrong” word again.  That’s not very purple of me.  But you get my point, don’t you?

Maybe if we focussed on the people around us and how we can influence their happiness, rather than just focussing on how they could (or even should) make us happy, we’d find that just making them happy made us happy in the long term.

Afterall, we talking monkeys are such simple purple creatures.

 

Tapes Rolling….

Hello.

Hello?

Can you hear me? Are we recording? We are? Ah!

Ok.

Hello!

Is there anyone out there?

(silence)

How do I know if anyone is there?

I don’t?

Ah!

Ok, here goes.

Ermm……

What to say?

OK, well first off, about this blog thing….it’s probably not going to work out you know. I mean, what do you expect? It’s just random drivvle after all. It’s not like I’ve got anything important to say. Just lots of half-baked ideas and no one to force them on.

So this is just an outlet. A way of spouting crap that nobody really wants to hear. But that’s fine. No one’s going to read it. This is a safe place. I can get it off my chest now. Let it all pour out.

Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow, and all that. Or is this more of a backstreet abortion?

We shall see I suppose.

So what can we expect from this blog?

Expect nothing!  I don’t owe you a thing!

But, IF I do make use of it, there will be some half arsed ideas, some moaning about people in general, and probably me harping on about what good music means.

Nothing original though.  I’m not convinced we can be original any more.  It’s all been said and it’s all been done. I won’t intentionally plagiarise, and will always credit where I’m aware, but let’s face it, if you look long enough I’m sure you’ll find someone who’s said it before.

So that’s it for now.  I should probably have a think about what to put on here.

Adios!