Richard Seltzer's Blog: Richard Seltzer, page 13
May 17, 2020
Time Dilation
(excerpt from Lenses, a book-length collection of essays, looking for a pulbisher)
In the summer of 2012, driving back to Boston from Cape Cod, I came close to death.
I was alone, driving a van packed tight with stuff we had brought to the Cape for a two-week vacation. My wife, Barb, was cleaning the cabin and would be following in our other car in about an hour.
Three miles from the Sagamore Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal, I realized that my brakes didn;t work at all.
The traffic around me was travelling at 60 miles an hour. The distance between me and the car in front of me was a car length. The car behind me was also a car length away. There were cars to the right of me as far as the eye could see. To the left of me there was a metal barrier.
The car ahead of me slowed. I gently tapped my brakes. Nothing happened. I tapped again quickly. Nothing. There was no resistance to my foot pressure. Now I was just a couple feet away from the car in front of me. I stomped down on the brake peddle, and the peddle went all the way to the floor with no resistance and no change in speed.
Fortunately, the car ahead picked up speed. We were going downhill. I was coasting.
Options rushed through my mind.
I tried to downshift, but the gears were locked.
I considered using the emergency parking brake. But if I stopped suddenly, the car behind me would slam into me and I'd end up in a pile-up.
I considered turning off the ignition. But the van I was driving had power steering. If the engine turned off, the power steering would shut off as well.
After what felt like an hour but probably was less than a minute, around a curve, the hill ended and I found myself on a slight incline. Then, a grass median strip opened up to my left. I turned left onto the grass and the car started slowing down. In what felt like another hour but was only a few seconds, the car came to a stop, a few hundred yards from the bridge.
My heart was racing. I saw the van, the grass, the road, the traffic, the beautiful blue sky with a clarity I had never seen before. My mind was muddled, but I was feeling ever so high, so relieved. I was alive. I had never before felt so much alive.
In the summer of 2012, driving back to Boston from Cape Cod, I came close to death.
I was alone, driving a van packed tight with stuff we had brought to the Cape for a two-week vacation. My wife, Barb, was cleaning the cabin and would be following in our other car in about an hour.
Three miles from the Sagamore Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal, I realized that my brakes didn;t work at all.
The traffic around me was travelling at 60 miles an hour. The distance between me and the car in front of me was a car length. The car behind me was also a car length away. There were cars to the right of me as far as the eye could see. To the left of me there was a metal barrier.
The car ahead of me slowed. I gently tapped my brakes. Nothing happened. I tapped again quickly. Nothing. There was no resistance to my foot pressure. Now I was just a couple feet away from the car in front of me. I stomped down on the brake peddle, and the peddle went all the way to the floor with no resistance and no change in speed.
Fortunately, the car ahead picked up speed. We were going downhill. I was coasting.
Options rushed through my mind.
I tried to downshift, but the gears were locked.
I considered using the emergency parking brake. But if I stopped suddenly, the car behind me would slam into me and I'd end up in a pile-up.
I considered turning off the ignition. But the van I was driving had power steering. If the engine turned off, the power steering would shut off as well.
After what felt like an hour but probably was less than a minute, around a curve, the hill ended and I found myself on a slight incline. Then, a grass median strip opened up to my left. I turned left onto the grass and the car started slowing down. In what felt like another hour but was only a few seconds, the car came to a stop, a few hundred yards from the bridge.
My heart was racing. I saw the van, the grass, the road, the traffic, the beautiful blue sky with a clarity I had never seen before. My mind was muddled, but I was feeling ever so high, so relieved. I was alive. I had never before felt so much alive.
May 15, 2020
Pep Talk to Myself as I Get Older, and Time Goes Faster
(excerpt from Lenses, a book-length collection of essays in search of a publisher)
Physical time goes at a constant pace. But subjective time - the time you sense and remember - is relative. To a two-year-old, one year is half of his life. To a fifty-year-old, one year is 2% of the life he has led. Hence, as you get older, time seems to go faster. And the present seen in the context of an ever-expanding past becomes more and more insignificant.
But you can choose to perceive time differently.
A novelist chooses the perspective from which to tell a story, and the success of the story depends on that choice. Similarly, you can choose the perspective from which to view your own life. If you wish, you can keep your focus on the near-term, the here-and-now, and the near future.
You should do what matters to you, and accomplish what you can, taking pride in it in the context of the present and the near future, not in terms of the distant past and the distant future.
You should do what you can do in the time allotted to you. That is your role in life. That's where you may find the meaning of life.
Physical time goes at a constant pace. But subjective time - the time you sense and remember - is relative. To a two-year-old, one year is half of his life. To a fifty-year-old, one year is 2% of the life he has led. Hence, as you get older, time seems to go faster. And the present seen in the context of an ever-expanding past becomes more and more insignificant.
But you can choose to perceive time differently.
A novelist chooses the perspective from which to tell a story, and the success of the story depends on that choice. Similarly, you can choose the perspective from which to view your own life. If you wish, you can keep your focus on the near-term, the here-and-now, and the near future.
You should do what matters to you, and accomplish what you can, taking pride in it in the context of the present and the near future, not in terms of the distant past and the distant future.
You should do what you can do in the time allotted to you. That is your role in life. That's where you may find the meaning of life.
May 14, 2020
Our Time
(excerpt from Lenses, a book-length collection of essays in search of a publisher)
We perceive time very differently than machines record it. Would it be an advance in artificial intelligence if we programmed a computer so it could mimic human subjective time?
There is wide variation in time as subjectively experienced, ranging from sensory-deprived boredom to stress-induced trauma. A second can feel like and be remembered like an hour or a day or a lifetime. There are probably limits to what can be stored in short-term memory. In moments of life-or-death crisis that limit is broken and short-term spills over to long-term, and the mass of data that is perceived gets indelibly imprinted in long-term memory and takes up far more memory capacity than is normal.
You could think in terms of time itself going faster or slower, like varying speeds of the Now turntable. Or imagine that stress can trigger the brain as well as the body to operate in exceptional ways, enabling the perception, processing and storing of far more data far more quickly than normal.
This notion of variable subjective time or variable speeds of time reminds me of a radio receiver tuning in to different frequencies. It also reminds me of the video series Stranger Things which triggered this sequence of thought. In that story El/Eleven moves to another dimension or set of dimensions, the UpSideDown, through sensory deprivation.
I'm also reminded of a story called "Never-Ending Now" which I wrote back in college. In popular wisdom, when you are near death, your whole life flashes before your eyes. I imagined that in the moments before death that might happen over and over again, that time expands subjectively, in a variant of Zeno's Paradox. Just as Achilles never catches up with the turtle, you, subjectively, never reach death. That is the limit that you get closer and closer to but never reach. To anyone else, your timeline ends. You die. But to you, you keep getting closer and closer forever. Or perhaps the Now needle which is your self leaves the groove which has been your time or moves to another.
We perceive time very differently than machines record it. Would it be an advance in artificial intelligence if we programmed a computer so it could mimic human subjective time?
There is wide variation in time as subjectively experienced, ranging from sensory-deprived boredom to stress-induced trauma. A second can feel like and be remembered like an hour or a day or a lifetime. There are probably limits to what can be stored in short-term memory. In moments of life-or-death crisis that limit is broken and short-term spills over to long-term, and the mass of data that is perceived gets indelibly imprinted in long-term memory and takes up far more memory capacity than is normal.
You could think in terms of time itself going faster or slower, like varying speeds of the Now turntable. Or imagine that stress can trigger the brain as well as the body to operate in exceptional ways, enabling the perception, processing and storing of far more data far more quickly than normal.
This notion of variable subjective time or variable speeds of time reminds me of a radio receiver tuning in to different frequencies. It also reminds me of the video series Stranger Things which triggered this sequence of thought. In that story El/Eleven moves to another dimension or set of dimensions, the UpSideDown, through sensory deprivation.
I'm also reminded of a story called "Never-Ending Now" which I wrote back in college. In popular wisdom, when you are near death, your whole life flashes before your eyes. I imagined that in the moments before death that might happen over and over again, that time expands subjectively, in a variant of Zeno's Paradox. Just as Achilles never catches up with the turtle, you, subjectively, never reach death. That is the limit that you get closer and closer to but never reach. To anyone else, your timeline ends. You die. But to you, you keep getting closer and closer forever. Or perhaps the Now needle which is your self leaves the groove which has been your time or moves to another.
May 13, 2020
The Abraham Effect: The Future of Humanity Depends on You
(excerpt from Lenses, a collection of book-length essays, in search of a publisher)
Just as the entire Jewish people are descended from Abraham, the people who inhabit Earth a thousand years from now may all be descended from you.
You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents. The number of your ancestors doubles with every generation. Counting backwards 1000 years, about 36 generations ago, you had about 69 billion ancestors, which is that's 2 to the power of 36. But at that time, there were only about 50 million people alive in Europe, meaning that distant cousins mated with one another.
There were people alive in Europe a thousand years ago who were the ancestors of everyone of European descent who is alive today. In other words, everyone of European descent alive today is a cousin of everyone else, and probably in multiple ways due to distant cousins marrying, often without knowing they were cousings.
Fast forward a thousand years, taking into account that people are much more mobile today than they were a thousand years ago. In the year 3000, every human being alive on Earth, if the human race survives that long, will be a descendant of people who are alive today; and if you are a parent, there's a chance that everyone alive a thousand years from now will have genes that passed through you.
That is an awesome responsibility.
Be careful. Be proud. The future humanity race depends on you.
Just as the entire Jewish people are descended from Abraham, the people who inhabit Earth a thousand years from now may all be descended from you.
You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents. The number of your ancestors doubles with every generation. Counting backwards 1000 years, about 36 generations ago, you had about 69 billion ancestors, which is that's 2 to the power of 36. But at that time, there were only about 50 million people alive in Europe, meaning that distant cousins mated with one another.
There were people alive in Europe a thousand years ago who were the ancestors of everyone of European descent who is alive today. In other words, everyone of European descent alive today is a cousin of everyone else, and probably in multiple ways due to distant cousins marrying, often without knowing they were cousings.
Fast forward a thousand years, taking into account that people are much more mobile today than they were a thousand years ago. In the year 3000, every human being alive on Earth, if the human race survives that long, will be a descendant of people who are alive today; and if you are a parent, there's a chance that everyone alive a thousand years from now will have genes that passed through you.
That is an awesome responsibility.
Be careful. Be proud. The future humanity race depends on you.
May 12, 2020
Highly Unlikely
(excerpt from Lenses, a book-length collection of essays, looking for a publisher)
Chains of events that influenced my life and led me to become who I am were highly unlikely - one coincidence happening after another. If any event in the chain had not unfolded just the way it did, everything would have turned out differently.
If you ever fell in love, think about the events leading up to that moment. After the fact, the events feel inevitable. It is difficult to imagine how your life could have gone if those events had not occurred when and how they did. All the pieces fell into place miraculously.
The apparent likeliness of events depends on your perspective when recalling them. You know all the details related to coincidences that have affected the course of your own life. And the more you know about an event, the more unique it seems to you. Those same events when seen by someone else and considered separately, rather than in sequence, are subject to the laws of probability and seem ordinary and expected.
Every time you toss a coin, the probability of heads is 50%, regardless of the results of previous tosses. But a long chain of events such as heads, heads, tails, heads, tails, tails, tails... defies analysis. Only when you isolate a variable and simplify the context with a generalized perspective do the laws of probability apply.
According to Bernoulli's Law, one of the basic principles of probability, it is possible to predict with great accuracy the average outcome of many similar events, but it is impossible to predict, with certainty, any single event.
In other words, the more you know about a specific event and the chain of circumstances that led to it, the more unique and miraculous that event appears.
Known in detail, all events are highly unlikely, the result of multiple chains of coincidence.
Every moment of every life is unique and miraculous.
Chains of events that influenced my life and led me to become who I am were highly unlikely - one coincidence happening after another. If any event in the chain had not unfolded just the way it did, everything would have turned out differently.
If you ever fell in love, think about the events leading up to that moment. After the fact, the events feel inevitable. It is difficult to imagine how your life could have gone if those events had not occurred when and how they did. All the pieces fell into place miraculously.
The apparent likeliness of events depends on your perspective when recalling them. You know all the details related to coincidences that have affected the course of your own life. And the more you know about an event, the more unique it seems to you. Those same events when seen by someone else and considered separately, rather than in sequence, are subject to the laws of probability and seem ordinary and expected.
Every time you toss a coin, the probability of heads is 50%, regardless of the results of previous tosses. But a long chain of events such as heads, heads, tails, heads, tails, tails, tails... defies analysis. Only when you isolate a variable and simplify the context with a generalized perspective do the laws of probability apply.
According to Bernoulli's Law, one of the basic principles of probability, it is possible to predict with great accuracy the average outcome of many similar events, but it is impossible to predict, with certainty, any single event.
In other words, the more you know about a specific event and the chain of circumstances that led to it, the more unique and miraculous that event appears.
Known in detail, all events are highly unlikely, the result of multiple chains of coincidence.
Every moment of every life is unique and miraculous.
May 11, 2020
Listening to Life with a Tin Ear
(excerpt from Lenses, a book-length collection of essays, looking for a publisher)
I used to envy those born with perfect pitch. Unlike me, they could appreciate music to its fullest. I couldn't tell if a piano was out of tune or distinguish great from mediocre performances. But now I've reached an age when instead of regretting my limitations, I can be proud of them.
Perfect pitch is a curse and a tin ear a blessing. To someone with perfect pitch anything less than a perfect performance is painful to listen to. Yes, such a person can appreciate subtleties beyond my ken, but that same person might not appreciate and enjoy the vast majority of what passes for music for the rest of us.
I can appreciate a flawed performance on a piano that is out of tune. I can enjoy sing-alongs and amateur singing and karaoke and informal musical events. I can delight in whistling while I walk. My opportunities for musical pleasure are far greater because of my tin ears.
Similarly, I can appreciate and savor ideas that aren't thoroughly developed. I can enjoy a story, a book, a movie that is good but not great. I have everyday, non-professional expectations.
The world is far too complex to understand in detail. And I'd rather explore many subjects and try to arrive at a practical working understanding of many than devote myself to one narrow field and never arrive at certainty or complete knowledge of it.
Rather than seeking definitive answers to the "big questions", I want to arrive at personal answers − answers that make sense on the scale of where and when I live, rather than the vastness of infinity and eternity. I need lenses that help me look at the world with a perspective of immediacy, from the context of daily life.
Let's enjoy what we can know. Let's enjoy life as best we can, glorying in the imperfection of our tin ears.
I used to envy those born with perfect pitch. Unlike me, they could appreciate music to its fullest. I couldn't tell if a piano was out of tune or distinguish great from mediocre performances. But now I've reached an age when instead of regretting my limitations, I can be proud of them.
Perfect pitch is a curse and a tin ear a blessing. To someone with perfect pitch anything less than a perfect performance is painful to listen to. Yes, such a person can appreciate subtleties beyond my ken, but that same person might not appreciate and enjoy the vast majority of what passes for music for the rest of us.
I can appreciate a flawed performance on a piano that is out of tune. I can enjoy sing-alongs and amateur singing and karaoke and informal musical events. I can delight in whistling while I walk. My opportunities for musical pleasure are far greater because of my tin ears.
Similarly, I can appreciate and savor ideas that aren't thoroughly developed. I can enjoy a story, a book, a movie that is good but not great. I have everyday, non-professional expectations.
The world is far too complex to understand in detail. And I'd rather explore many subjects and try to arrive at a practical working understanding of many than devote myself to one narrow field and never arrive at certainty or complete knowledge of it.
Rather than seeking definitive answers to the "big questions", I want to arrive at personal answers − answers that make sense on the scale of where and when I live, rather than the vastness of infinity and eternity. I need lenses that help me look at the world with a perspective of immediacy, from the context of daily life.
Let's enjoy what we can know. Let's enjoy life as best we can, glorying in the imperfection of our tin ears.
May 10, 2020
Where There's a Will
(excerpt from Lenses, a book-length collection of essays, in search of a publisher)
We equate consciousness with rational thought and we can correlate thought with brain activity. And when there is no brain activity and hence, presumably, no thought, we define a person as dead − brain dead.
But we can act without thinking, and we can think one thing, make a conscious decision to do it, but do something else, even the opposite, surprising ourselves. In other words, the will, though associated with thought and a subject of thought, is separate from it.
Is the brain necessarily the seat of the will?
Language associates will with emotion and intuition and suggests. Language suggests that the will is centered somewhere other than the brain, for instance the heart or gut. Language also associates will with the vague, but persistent, concepts of "soul, "self," "spirit," and "life force."
Does the will necessarily cease at the same time that thought does? Might someone who is declared brain dead still have will, including the will to live?
Also, linguistically as well as in religion and myth, the soul or spirit is separate from the body and persists even when the body dies. So why presume that soul/self/spirit/will has a distinct physical location in the body, as thought does?
Thanks to my friend Dave Lupher for remembering this related quote:
"Your second paragraph reminds me of Paul: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." Roman 7:15. There were anticipations of this in Euripides and Ovid."
We equate consciousness with rational thought and we can correlate thought with brain activity. And when there is no brain activity and hence, presumably, no thought, we define a person as dead − brain dead.
But we can act without thinking, and we can think one thing, make a conscious decision to do it, but do something else, even the opposite, surprising ourselves. In other words, the will, though associated with thought and a subject of thought, is separate from it.
Is the brain necessarily the seat of the will?
Language associates will with emotion and intuition and suggests. Language suggests that the will is centered somewhere other than the brain, for instance the heart or gut. Language also associates will with the vague, but persistent, concepts of "soul, "self," "spirit," and "life force."
Does the will necessarily cease at the same time that thought does? Might someone who is declared brain dead still have will, including the will to live?
Also, linguistically as well as in religion and myth, the soul or spirit is separate from the body and persists even when the body dies. So why presume that soul/self/spirit/will has a distinct physical location in the body, as thought does?
Thanks to my friend Dave Lupher for remembering this related quote:
"Your second paragraph reminds me of Paul: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." Roman 7:15. There were anticipations of this in Euripides and Ovid."
May 9, 2020
One Beautiful Moment
(excerpt from Lenses, a collection of short essays, in search of a publisher)
God imagined one fleeting moment − a butterfly fluttering above a pond at sunset. And He created the universe − all the past and all the future − to make that moment happen.
Any moment, in all its detail, would require the miracle of all of creation.
The creation of any being would require all of creation.
Perhaps there was no beginning and will be no end, and every moment we witness the miraculous creation of everything and everyone.
God imagined one fleeting moment − a butterfly fluttering above a pond at sunset. And He created the universe − all the past and all the future − to make that moment happen.
Any moment, in all its detail, would require the miracle of all of creation.
The creation of any being would require all of creation.
Perhaps there was no beginning and will be no end, and every moment we witness the miraculous creation of everything and everyone.
May 7, 2020
Ventilation systems help spread coronavirus
I just found scientific corroboration for the point I made in an earlier blog post today.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hospital...
This means that in addition to hospitals, nursing homes, ships, prisons, and apartment buildings are very vulnerable, and that their vulnerability can be reduced by modifying the ventilation systems.
If you can, please get word of this Governor Cuomo's coronavirus team.
And please spread the word.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hospital...
This means that in addition to hospitals, nursing homes, ships, prisons, and apartment buildings are very vulnerable, and that their vulnerability can be reduced by modifying the ventilation systems.
If you can, please get word of this Governor Cuomo's coronavirus team.
And please spread the word.
Message for Governor Cuomo about coronavirus
Governor Cuomo said yesterday that many people staying home are getting infected. Why? he asked.
How many lived in apartment buildings in which multiple units shared a common ventilation system?
Ventilation might promote airborne spread.
Cf. ships and nursing homes and meat processing plants with huge fans blowing across open work areas.
How many lived in apartment buildings in which multiple units shared a common ventilation system?
Ventilation might promote airborne spread.
Cf. ships and nursing homes and meat processing plants with huge fans blowing across open work areas.
Richard Seltzer
Here I post thoughts, memories, stories, essays, jokes -- anything that strikes my fancy. This meant to be idiosyncratic and fun. I welcome feedback and suggestions. seltzer@seltzerbooks.com
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