## All Possible Worlds

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your Philosophy. –Hamlet

## The Bottom Line

After many years of thought, here is what I think is really going on:

 All Possible Universes Exist, and You are in Many of Them.

I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing for some time now, and it seems like the simplest explanation for everything we see, and most mysteries of the universe and life.

## What Exactly Does This Mean?

Let’s explain the picture in detail. Many ancient philosophers such as Plato and Socrates claimed that some mathematical concepts such as “circle”, “line”, “three”, “truth”, and so on have an existence which do not depend on the particular “kind” of universe we happen to be in, and that those mathematical “objects” are valid in all possible worlds, such as ours. At the same time, over centuries we have seen how our particular universe obeys mathematical laws, and the deeper we look, the more fundamental the mathematics seems to become.

But in no case do we see any of the mathematical laws being logically inconsistent with each other. Nor do we see any particular reason for some of the laws and constants (such as the fine-structure constant) to be the particular laws and constants that they are. Why not some other laws? Why not inverse-cube law for gravity? Why not?

So let’s define a “Possible Universe” to be any universe, governed by laws, which are not self-contradictory. We already know that — logically — contradictions cannot exist within consistent systems. It is quite easy to make up simple universes in which the laws are very simple. In fact, these days, many  people spend much of their time playing in simulations of worlds in computer games, which operate by various strange yet logical rules, and in some ways those games become very “real” to them.

What I am claiming is that all possible universes of all types exist. And that following the “weak anthropic principle“, the only ones of which we humans are aware of are the ones whose laws have allowed humans to come into existence. All of the other universes also exist, it is just that we do not live in them, because we cannot emerge from them.

## So What?

There are some interesting, some very strange and even some disturbing consequences of this theory.

Let’s take one of the really strange and extreme ones first, and lay it out as another story:

 The reason You exist is that there exists a Universe in which you eventually came to be in it.

This is a statement that goes beyond the weak (and even the strong) Anthropic Principle, and says that, almost certainly, the Universe that You see around you, including not just its laws, and its physics, and its cosmology, but its peculiar chain of events which resulted in the Milky Way Galaxy, the formation of our Solar System, the complex interplay over several billion years of Jupiter and Saturn to permit the formation of a life-sustaining Earth, the Extinction of the Dinosaurs permitting the rise of the mammals, the evolution of Primates, the development of the powers of speech and language, the splitting of the supercontinents into the continents, the recorded history of all the wars, philosophies, saints, martyrs, attrocities, art, science, and even the rise of modern western civilization, is all part of one very specific collection of universes whose flows of time closely parallel each other, and which still remain in a superposition now, as a small yet vastly uncountable number of universes in which You

— and I mean YOU, not me, and not your kids —

came to be conceived by your parents, and still be alive now to read this paragraph, as we speak.

The “So What” is exactly that. This universe in which we live (including You) has your name all over it. At the moment it also has my name all over it, but when I’m gone, if you are still here, this is most certainly only yours.

### Everyone is George Bailey

Now here is where it goes from strange to downright disturbing. Think of any awful historical event, whether the Holocaust in World War II, or the Black Plague in the dark ages, or any other person or event in the past that you would have wished never happened. Let’s assume that any one of these things could have turned out different, had only slight changes years previous happened.

It could have happened, for example, that just a slight change in breeze could have caused Adolph Hitler’s parents to not marry and have a child, and the whole middle of the 20th Century played out differently. Life in America now would certainly be different, and quite possibly the disruption to America and Europe and Japan and Africa would not have occurred (at least the same way). Would your parents have still met, and had the same life ? Probably not, but if my theory is correct, that whole collection of universes not only was possible, but they exist now, but elsewhere, and — the main point — you are not in those universes.

In other words, all of those awful things that happened in your past, are there because they are there in every single universe in which You exist. You are not to blame for those things happening, but I am afraid that the theory presented says that those awful things are a necessary part of the universes in which you live.

So this is kind of like “It’s a Wonderful Life”, but it plays out for practically everybody that was in the world’s history that allowed you to become possible. So even with Hitler, if he never existed, then almost certainly, neither would YOU.  Hitler gets no credit for you, it is just that he is one of the awful things that are probably in the superposition of every single Universe in which you have found yourself.

### You Have Probably Already Died, Many Times

Think back in your own past. Have you had near-misses? Maybe you were on a narrow hiking trail and almost slipped, but didn’t. Or maybe somebody shot at you, but missed. Or the lab report came back and surprise, you don’t have cancer. Many of those things may have been close calls, or even cases where you made a choice, and it just turned out that going down this alley in a small village in war-torn Afghanistan was not the one with the IED bomb.

It is quite possible that — like Schrödinger’s cat — you could have made the other choice, and that a universe existed (and still does) where you made that choice.

But you didn’t — Miraculously — and you are still alive to tell the tale. But here’s the thing: you are here and still alive, because this is the other possible universe, where you survived. I am sorry to say, you didn’t make it in the other one. And it’s not over, either. If you are still alive there will eventually be something that will get you, and many other choices to make.

The good news is, you will live as long as you (and specifically you) possibly can, making just the right choice at each step. I am sorry to say, it may come at the cost of everybody else you have ever known, and you will only die — for good, when there are no longer any possible universes where you will have survived, and all universes thereafter will be home to all the rest of humanity, who whom those universes are places where they can live.

This at least is what the “All Possible Universes Exist” theory means.

### A Simple Example

Let’s consider my life, for example. In 1937, my mother was five years old, and living with her older sister Pat and her parents Nick and Lennye Edwards in Paducah Kentucky. That year, there was a terrible flood of the Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi rivers which flooded all of Paducah. Nick decided to pack up the family and leave, but had to run the car past a police roadblock and drive right through a raging stream. If things went badly, which was quite possible, the whole family would have been swept away and so Lucille (my mom) would never have grown up, and I would never have been born.

But that didn’t happen. At least in the universe I live in. Perhaps in another one they didn’t make it, but I can’t see it from here.

So anyway, that’s what I’ve got so far.

## The Purchase

As I was only wanting to acquire a sextant for our book club discussion on Dava Sobel’s book “Longitude” (see below), I didn’t want to spend much money, and so put down $15 on Amazon for the brass sextant you see pictured above. I was hoping that the thing would be functional enough that I could demonstrate its usage, but found that not to be the case, as-is. I suspect that this object I bought was not so much a sextant, as a knock-off of a copy of a replica of a sculpture of an artist’s rendition of a sextant. I have now formed a vague notion that this item was produced in a back-alley of a run down area of Calcutta or Shanghai, by a person with little education but some skill in metalworking, casting, and possibly jewelry. Whether they have ever been on a boat, or could pick out the star Regulus on a clear night (city lights permitting), the question remains open. One way or another, the good news is that after realizing this object was not functional, in the process of making it so I found that I learned a lot more about sextants that I ever would have, had I bought a truly functional precision instrument (for$200 more) in the first place.

So let’s get to work.

## The Sextant

Though they look complicated, the simple idea behind a sextant (or quadrant, octant etc) is just to measure the angle between two things in the sky, either two bodies (like the moon and Regulus), or between one body (Polaris or the sun) and the horizon. This is easy to do on land, but at sea with everything moving it is difficult.

The clever idea (which it appears Newton had first) is to use two mirrors (actually, one and a half), in such a way that the two objects you are measuring can be brought “next” to each other optically by adjusting one of the mirrors. Once done, it is then just a matter of precisely measuring the angle the movable mirror was rotated. This nice diagram below (gleefully stolen from Wikipedia) shows how to get the (elevation) angle of the sun above the horizon:

Using the sextant and swing (From Wikipedia)

While we are on the topic, we should show the proper names of all the main components of the sextant:

The main elements are the frame, which is the 60 degree wedge that forms the base of the sextant. There is usually a handle on the other side of the frame so you can hold it. Along the outside of the frame is the arc, which has degree markings, starting from zero on the right. The frame also holds the fixed “horizon mirror“, which is only half-mirror, half clear glass. The movable arm is the index bar, which has a pointer (the index) that points to the angle on the arc. The “index mirror” is fixed to the index arm, and is a full mirror that rotates on a pivot and brings the second object into view. The shade glasses are deployed for shooting the sun, and prevent you from going blind. The drum allows you to do fine adjustment of the index arm, which whose angle on the arc you can see with the magnifying glass. Finally, the telescope is a tiny low-powered telescope which allows you to get a good look at the objects whose angle you are measuring.

Here is an oblique view of my sextant, lying on its side. Ordinarily the geared arc is pointing down toward the earth. You can see that the horizon mirror is clear on the left side, and mirrored only on the right. So when you hold the sextant with the the telescope pointing to the horizon, the left side is looking straight ahead, at the horizon. Meanwhile, the right side is reflecting light from the index mirror, which is coming in at some angle above the horizon (indicated by the index arm).

Here for example is the sextant with the index arm angle set to zero. This setting should allow the light from the horizon to bounce off the two mirrors and come into the little telescope at zero degrees. In other words, the view in both the left and right half of the horizon mirror should match.

## The Geometry

The first geometrical question to address is, how does changing the angle θ of the index arm affect the angle β of the light coming in from the index mirror? Intuition suggests that since there are two mirrors, the angle will be doubled. Indeed, the rule is:

 The angles on the arc of the frame should be marked like a protractor, but with the angular values doubled.

Of course (for me) this requires proof. We will need to draw a diagram:

The lines in blue show the path of light coming in along line CO, reflecting off the index mirror at O, continuing along line OA, and then reflecting off the horizon mirror at A, finishing along AB to the telescope. Let’s assume the index mirror makes an angle of θ with the line OB, and so the angle between the ray of light OA with the mirror  at O must be 60°-θ. Now light bounces off of mirrors at the same angle they came in, so the incoming ray of light CO must also form the angle COE which is equal to 60°-θ. Finally, the index mirror forms an angle EOD with the horizontal line OD of 60° + θ, meaning that the residual angle β we seek is the angle EOD minus EOC, that is,

β = EOD – EOC =  (60° + θ) – (60° – θ) = 2θ

so β = 2θ. That is, the angles marked on the arc, in order to properly represent the incoming angle β of light on the index mirror, must be a value of exactly twice the actual angle formed by the index arm at that point from the zero mark.

## The Warp Equation

I plan on using the trekkie terminology (and standard relativity) to state and prove the following interesting fact:

 The Warp Equation If you have a payload with mass $m_{payload}$, and a means of converting matter into kinetic energy with 100% efficiency, then the mass $m_{fuel}$ of fuel needed for you to travel at an effective speed of Warp $\omega$ where $\omega > 0$ is given by$$m_{fuel} = {\omega}^2 m_{payload}$$

So for example, in order to travel at Warp 2, a person of mass 80 kilograms would require 320 kilograms of (say) a proton-antiproton fuel in order to travel at that effective speed. That is roughly equivalent to 6,400 Megatons of TNT. Coincidentally, that is almost exactly the combined explosive power of all nuclear weapons now on our planet. That is a hell of a lot of energy, but the point to be made is that is within the bounds of our current technology.

The fact that you have to square the warp factor to get the amount of energy to go that speed makes perfect sense. Even in classical Newtonian physics, the energy related to going at velocity $v$ is given by

$$E = \frac{1}{2}mv^2$$

so doubling the velocity $v$ on the right hand side multiplies the energy by four. The fact that the energy happens to be equivalent to four times your payload’s mass comes from Einstein.

The way in which we’ll prove this is to first calculate how much matter is needed to attain an observed velocity v, and then figure out what the relationship is between the observed velocity, and what effective velocity the passenger actually experiences. Note: I have no doubt that there is probably an easier way to derive this formula. But this is the one I came up with and it isn’t all that complicated.

## Conversion of Matter to Kinetic Energy

Let’s start with Einstein’s equation:

$$E=mc^2$$

What we are going to do is to use this equation, together with the law of conservation of energy, to compute how much matter it takes to accelerate a payload $m$ to (observed) velocity $v_{o}$. Now as the observed velocity $v_o$ approaches the speed of light, the relativistic mass of the payload becomes:

$$m_{relative} = \frac{m_{payload}}{\sqrt{1-(\frac{v_o}{c})^2}}$$

Now Einstein’s equation for energy represents both the energy of the mass at rest, together with the (kinetic) energy of the mass in motion. And so, if this mass was put into motion by the conversion (at rest) of a certain mass $m_{fuel}$, where

$$m_{fuel} = \alpha m_{payload}, where \alpha > 0$$

Then since energy is conserved we can relate the conversion of the mass $m_{fuel}$ into motion $v_o$ by:

$$(m_{payload}+m_{fuel})c^2 = E_{rest} = E_{moving} =\frac{m_{payload}}{\sqrt{1-(\frac{v_o}{c})^2}} c^2$$

so dividing both sides by $m_{payload}c^2$

$$1 + \alpha = \frac{1}{\sqrt{1-(\frac{v_o}{c})^2}}$$

squaring both sides and solving for $v_o$ we get the following rule:

 Matter to Velocity Conversion For a payload of mass $m$ and a ratio $\alpha > 0$, if fuel $m_{fuel}=\alpha m$ is converted to kinetic energy, the observed velocity $v_o$ of the body will be$$v_o = (\sqrt{\frac{\alpha}{1+\alpha}})c$$

This jibes with what Einstein said about observed velocities, as the right hand side will never be greater than the speed of light $c$. As the ratio $\alpha \rightarrow \infty$, the velocity goes to $c$, so we can get as close to $c$ as we like — but no further.

## Velocity – Observed and Effective

So now we come to the idea of “effective” velocity. The weirdness of relativity comes from the fact that as the observed  velocity $v$ of ship approaches the speed of light, the passenger’s own time-scale is compressed by what’s called the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction, according to the formula

$$t_{effective} = t_{observed}\sqrt{1-(\frac{v_o}{c})^2}$$

(From this point on we will just write $t_e$ and $t_o$ for $t_{effective}$ and $t_{observed}$ respectively) Then given a fixed distance $\Delta x_o$ as measured by the observers on earth, the effective velocity as experienced by the passengers when traversing that segment of space over their time $\Delta t_e$  is:

$$v_e = \frac{\Delta x_o}{\Delta t_e} = \frac{\Delta x_o}{\Delta t_o\sqrt{1-(\frac{v_o}{c})^2}}$$

which in turn simplifies to this formula for converting observed to effective velocity:

 Observed to Effective Velocity $$v_e = \frac{v_{o}}{\sqrt{1-(\frac{v_o}{c})^2}}$$

The important thing to note about this concept of “effective” velocity is that we are computing the ratio of observed change in our distance with our own experienced change in time. Suppose for example that over centuries the earth residents went out and placed “mile markers” along your path to your destination. Then once you got up to warp speed, not only would your sense of time be compressed, but distances that you measure out with your tape measure would also be compressed by the same Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction. Consequently, if you were going at Warp 2, for example, your sense of time elapsed going from one mile marker to the next would be cut in half, but also (this is the point) the distance between those two fixed mile markers as the earth-people laid them out would also appear to you to be half. So if you were instead to calculate your velocity by dividing your measured distance by your time, you would never get a value at or greater than c.

Tech Note 2: “Effective” velocity is non-standard terminology. In the literature, this would be the velocity as measured by the passenger’s Proper Time.

## All Together Now

So if we start with fuel $\alpha m$ which we use to accelerate our mass $m$ to the observed velocity $v_o$, we can use the two formulas we just derived to express the effective velocity $v_e$ as a function of $\alpha$. We can rewrite the “Matter to Velocity” formula as

$$(\frac{v_o}{c})^2 = \frac{\alpha}{1+\alpha}$$

So our effective velocity formula simplifies the bottom of the fraction to

$$v_e = v_{o}\sqrt{1+\alpha}$$

and then substituting the formula again for  $v_o$ we see that our fuel mass $\alpha m$ gives us an effective velocity of:

$$v_e = c\sqrt{\alpha}$$

Thus if we have defined velocity “Warp $\omega$” to be $\omega c$, then we can write

$$\omega = v_e / c = \sqrt{\alpha}$$

So that to attain an effective velocity of Warp $\omega$ we must use a fuel-payload ratio of $\alpha = \omega^2$, ie

$$m_{fuel} = \omega^2 m_{payload}$$

which is exactly the “Warp Equation” we were to prove. QED

## Let’s Do the Time-Warp Again

It should be pointed out that of course to the observers on earth, even though you are going at an effective speed of Warp $\omega$ you will never appear to be going faster than $c$ and so it will take you a long time to get where you are going. You, however, will not experience that, and so you will effectively be travelling through time much faster than your friends at home. How much faster? According to our formula above relating $t_e$ to $t_o$, and expressing that in terms of the warp factor $\omega$, we can show that the time-warp you experience will be:

$$t_e = \frac{t_o}{\sqrt{1+\omega^2}}$$

And so, in our example, the 80kg person travelling at Warp 2 will feel like they’ve reached their destination in $1/ \sqrt{5}$ of the earth time, ie getting them there in about 0.44 of the time observed on earth, and exactly twice the time it would take light to appear to get there.

So, not only can you go as fast as you like, you can also travel as far in the future as you like. For example, to travel 100 years into the future, just get in a spaceship armed with 10000 times your own mass in matter-antimatter fuel, and then travel at Warp 100 for one year. When you reach your destination, one year will have passed for you, and 100 years (plus a little bit) will have passed on earth.

Of course, then you’ll have to get back to earth, so good luck with that.

## The Buckaroo Banzai Principle

 The Buckaroo Banzai Principle No matter where you go — there you are. — Buckaroo Banzai

The point of this exercise is that if you really understand what Einstein said, the idea should be that there is no absolute frame of reference. What this means is that even if you are travelling at 99.999 % the speed of light relative to the earth, as far as you know everything still looks and feels like Newton’s physics, where F = ma and you can always accelerate faster and faster. And not only that, but if you are heading for a specific location, the faster you go, the faster you will get there.

## No Free Lunches

Now having said that, there are some consequences that the universe may unleash should you decide to try to go Warp 100. This is because even though the physics of your spaceship will be the same even at this insane speed, you are also surrounded by the gases in your local galaxy, as well as all of the light from stars that are visible to you. And even though from the earth much of this light is nice, low-energy visible spectrum, and even though that light will still be reaching you at the speed of light, it’s relative energy is radically different when you are plowing through that light at Warp 100. In fact, what you will be observing is a massive Doppler-shifting into the deep blue/ultraviolet of all light coming at you in the direction you are headed (and conversely, red-shifted looking back towards earth). Some of this light may be equivalent to the powerful cosmic rays that hit the earth, and which were generated by massive explosions or quasars just after the Big Bang. The energy in these photons may be enough to kill you all by themselves, especially at Warp 100. You may need a very large and thick radiation shield, along with all the extra energy to carry that shield along with you and your ship.

And so as we already should have known, there are no free lunches. At least it is nice to know that a faster-than-light lunch is available, should one choose to pay the price.

## New Year’s Koan

Koan: a paradoxical question or story, used (in Zen Buddhism) as an aide to meditation and as a means to lead one to enlightenment.

The main problem with New Year’s resolutions and the reason they fail, I think, is that they are in the form of commandments. Humans are contrary by nature and any dictate — even one they have given to themselves — is doomed. The thing that motivates people is curiosity, and so in that spirit I offer up the following questions, upon which the reader (including myself) may ponder, and should any insight be gained, I am hopeful that it will lead one to a more fulfilling or meaningful life in the future. As with most Koan, I have no answer to these questions, and have no expectation for you to answer them — just to think about them.

## New Year’s Koan for Atheists

Koan A1: The atheist Christopher Hitchens once said “What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.” Suppose a close and lifelong friend tells you one day “I have been in love with you for years.” This comes as a complete (though pleasant) surprise to you. Should you dismiss this assertion without proof? Alternatively, do you demand proof or accept the statement on its face? Does Hitchens’ principle not apply in this case? If so why?

Koan A2: There is to date no scientific evidence that Free Will exists. Does it make a difference to you in how you experience the world by assuming that you do or do not have Free Will? In other words, do you live your life “as if” Free Will has been shown to exist and that you possess it? Would it make a difference if you learned that Free Will does not exist but is some kind of illusion? Why?

Koan A3: The atheist Chris Arnade is a former physicist who worked for Wall Street before working with and photographing homeless addicts in South Bronx. He observed that in these squalid homeless places, often empty shells of buildings, bibles were always found and that this bible was all these hopeless people had to carry them through the next day or hour. Suppose your otherwise healthy spouse or child told you they’ve given up and wanted to kill themselves, and by their attitude and mood you are convinced they are sincere and would carry out their threat. As an atheist, what could you tell them that would give them some hope or reason to carry on with their lives ?

## New Year’s Koan for Judeo-Christians

Koan B1: In Exodus 32:14, God changes his mind about punishing Moses’s people who had become corrupt, after Moses reminds God about the promises God had made to Abraham, Isaac and Israel. Let us leave aside the puzzle of how an omniscient god could change his mind. Do you have enough faith to talk back to God himself as Moses did, if you believe He has made a terrible mistake? If you were to talk back, what would you say?

Koan B2: If the Judeo-Christian belief is correct, then among those nonbelievers who have not been saved from damnation are Socrates, Buddha, Gandhi, Richard Feynman, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russel, Isaac Asimov, Albert Camus, Bela Bartok, David Hume, Bertolt Brecht, Heraclitus, Anton Chekov, Billy Joel, Joseph Conrad, Sergei Prokofiev, Eric Hofer, Camille Saint-Saens, George Santayana, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Dirac, Sigmund Freud, and Alfred Nobel … to name a few. On the other hand, the Emperor Theodosius, who executed children for playing with pagan dolls, and Charlemagne, who beheaded 4500 Saxons that refused to convert, were Christian and therefore saved. There is no question, this is simply something to ponder.

Koan B3: Do you believe that you have a soul, the essence of your spiritual self, and that it is eternal? If so, are the things you are doing in your life really preparing you for an infinite amount of time in which to spend your days? Remember, a billion years is a blink of an eye in the face of infinity. What will you do? And how will you keep from becoming bored beyond all measure? Knowing yourself, do you expect that a day will come in a quadrillion years in which you long for an end to endless wakefulness, in other words to Die? If so, how do you distinguish this place from what most would call Hell ? If you had a choice, would you prefer that your soul was only finite in time, say a thousand or million years ? Three score years and ten ?

## New Year’s Koan For Everybody

Koan E1: If the race of man is to advance, either through evolution or divine intervention, in what way could man as a species be improved? Having answered that, is there any way in which you can begin to manifest any of that change in your own life ?

Happy New Year.

Our house, December 2013.

## Grow Up!

I love a good novel, and the thing that makes a novel good is that it pulls you in, and is so well written that you are willing to suspend disbelief and swim in that world until the last page. And when it is over you wish there were more, because the story was so good.

I don’t buy most of the world’s religions these days because their stories aren’t believable, and I find myself putting down the book on page one. And after all, what is “faith” but another word for the willful suspension of disbelief ?

The world languishes from the lack of a religion for adults, who have had rich and varied life experience, a fully developed cerebral cortex and capacity for reason, complex emotion, and powers of direct observation of phenomena. A religion that has matured to the point that it admits that it does not have all the answers and is as flawed as we are, subject to revision pending new insights and findings as they come along. A story written by an unreliable narrator, who admits as much in the telling of the tale, but you don’t care because the story rings true.

The reason I don’t buy the stories told by the major religions of the world is that they sound like they were written by very small children, to whom their parents are perfect, omniscient, and will always take care of them to their dying days. What I don’t see in any of these stories is the humility of an adult, who has learned that their parents were flawed creatures at best, just like themselves, who didn’t know all the answers but tried their best, and at least has some hope that even if their own lives were screwed up, maybe the children of their creation will learn and do something good with this mangled beautiful mess of a world.

If for the moment, I buy the part of the usual story that we are created in the image of the universe’s creator, I would have to conclude that the creator was a fairly good mathematician and an artist, but like myself also mortal, and painfully limited in foresight about the consequences of one’s work, but hopeful that something good might come of all this after they are gone.

The first steps into adulthood begin when you realize that your parents are gone, and it is time for you to pick up the baton and do something yourself, with the realization that everyone else is in the same boat, and to have compassion for their own struggle with existence. If there ever was a creator, I am sure that they are long gone, but I’d like to say thanks for the good work, we will take it from here — as Ayn Rand would say — In the Name of the Best Within Us.

That is what I would call a religion for adults.

The world, with its undetermined future, is a vast blank canvas, and if there is any meaning in all of this, it reveals itself when you create something on that canvas that is beautiful.

Time to grow up.

## There is No Such Word as Have

I had a “revelation” of sorts in recent years, which in retrospect many religions would (rightly)claim they thought of first: which is that much needless suffering and misery comes from the use of the meaningless yet toxic word “Have”. The word “Have” is a story, and almost pure fiction, as about the only thing you can truly be said to have is this moment in time, and the choice presented to you in that moment. All else in this saha world is like water, which slips through your fingers no matter how tightly you grasp.

To put things in perspective, wherever you see the word “Have” replace it with “Take Care Of” (or similar active verb), and the issue will become clear. Here is a short list of examples:

1. You do not Have a baby.  The reality is, for the next 18 years you will be Raising an Adult Human Being. You are required to study for years and get a license to be a psychiatrist or teacher or financial planner (skills needed for this task), and yet all you require to be presented with a high-maintenance creature such as a baby is puberty and a poor sense of future consequences.

2. You do not Have a million dollars (when you win the lottery). The reality is, you need to Take Care of Money for it to grow (or even stay the same). The sad thing is, most people do not know what Money is and how it works. If you stuff it in a mattress, inflation will make its magical power vanish. If you buy things with it, and those things do nothing useful, then they will break down and you will again have nothing. If you suddenly are given a million dollars, what you would need to Do is to study finance and accounting, and try to find investments (ie, business verntures people Do) that are productive and profitable.

3. (My recent example) You do not Have a house. The reality is, There are weeds to pull, Adobe bricks to repair, air filters to replace, pool water pH chemistry to maintain, mortgages to pay, and so on. If you do not Do these things and Take Care Of the House, it will break down, burn down, be condemned, and one way or another, it will go away. If you don’t think you would enjoy Taking Care of a House, then don’t buy it.

4. (This one really pisses me off) You do not Have a puppy. You are entrusted with what will soon be a much larger and  highly energetic border collie mix, a herder breed, who by her nature needs to be walked several times a day, given her shots, kept active and busy or she will eat and destroy your plants, shoes, blankets etc, and needs to be trained not to herd your other pets and kids. You need to be aware of all of this before you give your kids the cute little puppy, so that later you don’t renege on your promise and one day in frustration drive the dog out to a lonely stretch of highway in the southwest Utah desert, and abandon it on the road to be killed by cars or coyotes. If you do such a thing you also abandon your right to be called a Human(e) being. Only if the animal is very lucky, will she find a home occupied by people who take responsibility for the creatures entrusted to them, because they know there is no such word as Have.

5. You do not have Have a Life. You are Living.

Other examples are left as an exercise to the reader.

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