A Phone Call, Deep and Open Thoughts.

Out of the blue, an old friend and romantic acquaintance called me last night and initiated what some would call a strange conversation, but which seemed perfectly normal to both of us.

'I watched 'What the Bleep Do We Know!?', and I thought of you. You'd like it. Have you seen it?'

'I've seen it, but I haven't watched it...'

So, after I get done with the stack of books I am reading, I'll watch the DVD. In the interim, I have to find it.

This is actually a normal conversation with friends of mine. They think of me when they see/read/hear things like this, and I'm not particularly sure why. It's not a complaint, but since the 90s I've gotten that - somewhere around 1996. It doesn't bother me, in fact I like it, but I'm not sure what that actually says about me. I have a copy of Descartes works around here somewhere, a birthday gift from the late 90s, where another old friend and romantic acquaintance wrote an inscription along the lines of 'pondering existence'.

I must exist; my life would be much simpler otherwise. :-)

But as I got done with another one of Tagore's works on OpenDepth.com ('The Fugitive
), I realized a pattern that has shown up in the works over there that I did - subconsciously. With the exception of Ayn Rand, Charles Darwin and Sun Tzu, all the authors there are connected to each other somehow.

Nikola Tesla, one of the dead people I admire the most, used to work for Thomas Edison. Guess who another employee of Edison's was? Henry Ford.

Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Tesla - I think it was on the occasion of Tesla's 70th birthday - congratulating him on his life's work. And, Albert Einstein went out of his way to India to meet Rabindranath Tagore - while he was in Sanitiniketan. The picture is here. This also gives hints about what I will work on next once I'm done with Tagore's works....

What's amazing is that, sort of like the Axial Age, these minds from around the world appeared around the same time.

Now here's the funny part. Pick two of those people at random, and play this phone conversation in your head:

'I watched 'What the Bleep Do We Know!?', and I thought of you. You'd like it. Have you seen it?'

'I've seen it, but I haven't watched it...'

'You'd like it. I want to know what you think.'

Or make it email, or a weblog, or an RSS feed, or a hologram. That's the stuff good science fiction is made of; it's the stuff that reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke and Richard Heinlen - the greats, as far as I'm concerned; the originals. The trendsetters. The people who created such deep ruts that many science fiction writers can't warp themselves out.

I think one of the thoughts that keeps me interested in living is seeing or hearing about something like that happening in the age of the internet. Nothing we have done since then really seems to weigh in as heavily as the works of these people; we have engineers, inventors, manufacturers, and poets galore... but... well, it doesn't seem like we're quite at that level. We have wackopaths, as I call them, who try to emulate the personas of these people - yet each persona was distinct. A flavor. Personality, and - while with strong cultural backgrounds, able to transcend personal culture and societal culture to add to the culture instead of being a slave to it.

This is one of the reasons why everyone must be connected. One of these people might be out there, right now, unable to get internet access - or even a phone line, or electricity, or running water. They rise, some would say, as they always do - and yet, how many minds have not been heard? We'll never know.

That's the problem with potential - it doesn't have value unless it is identified. And that's the real problem, I think.

Bah. What the bleep do we know? :-)

The image at top can be seen here.