Super Mensa Lumen, or "Luxsa" for short

Are you a Secret Super Brain?

(and don't even know it?) 

How about we consider some kind of expanding, brain-sizzling, angelically devilish entertaining questions before watching a mindless video on meditation? (get it?) those who do, continue reading.

Are you in league with Isaac Asimov or Buckminster Fuller and don't even know it? Let us find out! 

But before we do, let us give ourselves a name, so that people of exceptionally high intelligence might have a label with which to identify should the subject arise at their next dinner party. 

Let's start with Mensa. "Mensa" is Latin for table, so Beyond Mensa is Super Mensa Lumen, or "Luxsa" - our newly adopted and beloved colloquial expression for Smarty Pants. It also means that our desk now has a table lamp.

Disclaimer: If you are concerned with elitism, Luxsa might not be for you ... for elitism is the belief one is superior to one's peers, while elite is sufficient enough. As such, Luxsa is elite. 

Luxsa is not mindless Trivia without context. For to do well on Trivia, one only need be in possession of a well-furnished, overstuffed mind. But if Trivia is a favorite pastime, you'll find yourself in good company here. 

1. Which does not belong? George Sand, George Eliot, George Orwell? 
2. If while in a coffee shop you heard people discussing ullage and botrytis, what is it they were discussing? 
3. In the novel by Jules Verne, who went around the world in eighty days?

For the more arcane, how many imaginary places from world literature can you name? For the Super Arcane, how many landscapes from imaginary places can you close your eyes and verbally walk me through? 

Come back down from the slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds of the city and aim your spyglass and telescope back upon Luxsa for you will never tire of examining it, page by page, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, particle by particle, contemplating with fascination abstract notions of concrete realities such as absence and presence.  

Now that our minds are warmed up, let us start 4 hours after the meridian in Greenwich strikes 12 o'clock noon, which would be right about now. 

The following set of questions are relative to the unimportant matters or things one's mind considers. The tedious, never-quieting internal dialogue and debate on the nature of chicken-and-egg riddles and tyrannical influences and civil responsibility. The fun and charming challenges of nurturing a large working memory and the triumphs in fine mental tuning. Let us draw our own lines and color inside or outside them, and then arrange the elements in such a way as to arrive at a conclusion, a decision, or solution to some random and entirely important-in-the-moment thought ... to a place where our intuition resides. And by intuition we mean not some mystic or mysterious force that belongs in the realm of psychic phenomena. But rather a real, definable, and, to a greater or lesser extent, present in all of us accumulation of millions - perhaps billions or trillions - of tiny, "trivial" bits of information stored in the recesses of our memories that we harness, dust off, and bring together in an appropriate combination when the situation calls for it.

Armed with our thinking caps we enter a room filled with thoughts, and instantly we experience a feeling, either positive or negative. Let us pause and consider what creates that first impression? Are we hard-pressed to offer specifics? 

If our reaction be negative, what in the world, might I ask, is that human computer of ours doing? Is it being unruly? Focusing on facial expressions, mannerisms, a way of walking, and style of dressing - and with matching socks, dressing up these experiences with, and reactions to, "trivial" matters based on arcane or worse yet - boring information from the past? A kind of sad and desperate subconscious picture is drawn and in a fraction of a second reacted to that presents to the mind the notion of "bummer vibes?" 

The longer and more actively we engage our brains, the keener our intuition becomes. There are those who can take one look at a person, read a few words in a comment, or observe someone's manner and in an instant know precisely how that individual will react in certain circumstances. Dangerous, you say? Indeed, but only when used for ill. For there are those whose systems independent of their prowess of intellect adhere to higher grand principles from which to engage the world. Higher, not mindless and unexamined. 

Because the accumulation of facts is important to intuitive thinking, to the myriad of snap decisions and quick judgments one must make in order to go about one's day; trivia, in all its lack of glory, is part and parcel to our thinking experiments. 

We are almost compelled to conclude that Luxsa will be filled with Trivia and relatively unimportant matters or things, but these things can be another's essentiality. As we are not aware of the essentiality of others, those things by which they define their life purpose, we can only surmise - a few of us effectively - what those things might be based on their actions, words, complaints and celebrations ... for data examined is often illuminated. And fortunately for us, we have a light on our desk to see it. 

There will be some cramming in the head of information that one must merely suck up and learn, and by learn I mean not memorize. If there is a subject, rather than consult Google to see which posts rank highest and then take as proof of answer that which fits one's mindset; delve deeper, read scholarly journals on the subject, and "think" about the matter and allow your mind to openly wonder without bias and preconception. 

Travel along the neural framework you have carved for yourself with ceaseless thinking activities. If for any reason your neural framework is not functioning clean and clear of clutter, draw yourself a mind map of the 15 basic thinking paradigms by which your brain processes thought. Then delve down deeper into categories and subcategories and exceptions that belong to those areas of thought. Once you have mapped out where your thoughts reside, with a big picture view, you can now make the necessary adjustments to put your brain on your desired track. If you prefer to remain in the mire of twisting and turning and churning in your stomach over trivial matters, enjoy. If you consider that an unpleasant experience, retreat to a safe harbor, examine your mind's map, and adjust accordingly. 

One final thought, if you come to this activity with good cheer and sufficient rest for your mind, your enjoyment will be increased tenfold. In other words, you'll have more fun. If this latter comment on amusement was charming and nostalgic rather than illuminating, welcome to Luxsa. 

Match Wits with Luxsa

1. Describe how your perfectionism developed. 
2. Under which hierarchy has your critical perception and evaluation of values arisen? 
3. What is frustration and why is this question important? 
4. Define superiority and inferiority? 
5. Does thinking cause you disquietude? 
6. What is the value of agitation and anxiety? 
7. Does surprise and shock exist? 
8. How does one rectify moral failure (guilt)? 
9. Which positive maladjustments have you adopted? 
10. Does antagonism against social opinion and protest against the violation of intrinsic ethical principles make you feel better about yourself? 

Though uncomfortable, those who can answer these questions have the potential to fully realize and illuminate their mind map. 

In our next activity, we'll pull out our drawing utensils and make our very own mind map so that we might more easily keep our table lamp shinning bright. 

A Little Theory of Enchantment

A Little Theory of Enchantment 

(Saturday morning musings)

Pure reason supplies our over-arching concepts for grand and otherwise overwhelming items. When we are dazed and enchanted by a night sky full of stars, this wildness is somewhat tamed when we make use of the rational concept of space and time.

The deepest sense of the sublime is our recognition of this power of reason to grasp something extremely awesome and essentially unpresentable. It is the major artifice of intellectual power to grasp ideas in the first place.

Take a short historical romp with me through a few of the religions of the world to see the theory of enchantment in operation ...

Let us start with the ROMANTIC ... a sublimity in the intuition of oneness between nature, humanity, and the notion of existence. Nietzsche made the sublime encompass the entire domain of cultural symbolism and philosophic speculation - the entire net of culture as the territory of the sublime.

Whether this vast sublime domain is under the control of reason or the will to power, for it to be so it must FIRST be placed under the control of FANTASY, a fantasy which rests on pure existence. Out of everything, and out of nothing is pure existence ... be it manifest or unmanifest.

Human fantasy lays down the wholly fictional constructs that give grand coherence to each person's life. We see these examples expressed daily on social media. Consider the remarkable bond between the Chinese mind and the concept of the mysterious Tao, the absolute which uses Yin and Yang as its agents for creating the world. Those who discount this idea as a non-truth, might instead classify it as a great cultural fantasy which satisfied their civilization for centuries.

All of our major religions, cultural, and ideological beliefs are in this sense made possible by the psychological ability to construct a notion of fantasy and enchantment.

To dramatize this theory, we might consider a hypothetical dispute between a Methodist and a Catholic. For Catholics, Holy Communion has maximum sublime power because of transubstantiation. The Methodist believe that the supposed miraculous conversion of wine to blood is a superstitious Catholic fantasy, and that the Methodists have a better theory of communion, as a memorial service to Jesus as the Christ.

To a Zen Buddhist, the Catholic model and the Methodist model are both improper fantasies. If Augustine says that he feels sublime bonding to an invisible City of God, and if Marx says he feels such a bond to the socialist state, Augustine and Marx show the same symptom of deluded fantasy.

It is a little known Theory of Enchantment (little know for I have just now written it, in this post) ... that enables all theories to yield a powerful joy and simultaneously touch the deepest psychological core of jouissance and desire.

In my world, the Self and the Mysterious Other are best construed as one something seeking another something, because each entity is, in essentialist language, complete and whole in and of itself, an abundance, existence, a positivity that enables manifest reality.

If we are to have a true history of human culture, we need not decide who is right or who is wrong, but that there is room for all theories and realities to simultaneously exist in the cosmic vacuum needed by an expanding universe.

On a more simple level, we each have our tea parties to which we invite friends to achieve the perfect balance of harmony in the operations of the real world.

This is my Saturday morning story. I shall now sit atop Mt. Olympus with histories great Greek intellectuals and partake of a highly attractive breakfast of nectar and honey.

Bonne journée !

Facebook and Philosophy

"Facebook is a force that has changed the way we engage with the world." 

~Soph Laugh

An Experiment

It started as an experiment, a promise to myself. To search for wisdom, find my truth, and stick to it. So, I started a blog. Very shortly into my Socratic exploration, I had an epiphany. I liked humor and I enjoyed poking fun at that which we call "knowledge."

I was convinced the path to enlightenment was hidden in the paradoxical things that make us laugh the hardest.

An indecency decently put is the thing we laugh at hardest. ~Cicero

Happy Thoughts Travel Fast (HTTF) was born ... and along with it, the public identity known as Sophy Laughing (Soph Laugh, for short).

Starting on April 17, 2011, I traveled with Socrates in search of wisdom, posting my philosophically inspired humor articles on Facebook, today's Agora of Athens. In doing so, I uncovered what seems to be the spirit of the times, with all its impulses that drive society forward, no longer separated by unbridged chasms of space.

What did I learn?

People across nations believe in following their heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of right.

This mindset reflects a Confucian view of truth in relation to duty. Recorded in the journals of Confucius's pupils, the Analects state that Confucius thought education was the key to everything: A person should be so deep in study that he forgets to eat, so full of joy in learning that he ignores all practical worries, and so busy acquiring knowledge that he does not notice old age coming on.

Education was the process whereby civilization, and the minds and bodies of those privileged to enjoy it, breathed and lived.

According to onlinemba: 57% of FB users have "some college" and earn between $50-100k USD annually. From this perspective, there seems to be a correlation between people who value education and personal wealth, but not at the cost of losing touch with friends and loved ones (and themselves).

A Truth Soothsayer's Convention

One of the chief complaints on FB is the propagation of false information. Each day freshly transcribed versions of subjective perspective are emotively expressed. Similar to language used in newspapers, political speeches, advertising copy, literature and conversation, typical banners include:

Facebook (Unspoken) Laws

Like the first five books of the Torah, or Jewish Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, Facebook has it's own set of laws ... instruction, teaching, and guidance.

Good advice earnestly shared is the basis of public posts on anything from yoga and vegan diets to hopes and dreams, for ourselves and for our growing together global community.

No longer exiled from our neighbors, with a simple scroll of the screen we can now peer into someone else's world ... and with a simple click, transmit something of our own in return.

United by a passion for family, well-being, and higher meaning, 1.79 billion people are united by a new type of education: Societal Learning.

The Third Way

Human advancement drives development, which over time evolves and changes in association with our collective and individual successes and failures. It seems clear to me that no matter the economical, political, legal or intellectual institutions we erect for sustainable development, FB and other social media sites are the modern day Agoras, the place where society and economy rest and meet - and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Transforming Truth Into Money

Facebook's is making more money than ever. Between July and September 2016, FB revealed that it made $7bn in revenue - a 59% increase from 2015. The average revenue per user was thus $4.01.

With FB's market value about $350 billion and estimated to someday be worth a whopping $1 trillion, one tangible truth I uncovered in my philosophical quest was that independent of what FB is or is not for each user: modern-day agoras (social media platforms) remain one of the most impressive business models ever created. Our species have been meeting in squares and centres since the dawn of socializing.

The Power of "like" is a Societal Game Changer

Facebook demographics are evolving societal class structures. In 2015, 56% of society fell into the social category of low income, 22% were somewhere in the middle, and only 7% in the upper category. Societal classes are thus divided into three:

1. Upper class
2. Middle Class
3. Lower Class

However, thanks to social media, we now have a 4th category: The Connected Class.

The Connected Class transcends typical income groups, connecting people by common interest. Whatever one's individually held truth, the Connected Class is now a formidable group, with the power to influence perspectives on the global economy, our systems of government and the laws we enact.

Laughter connects you with people. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy."

~John Cleese

With Facebook accounting for 5.5% of all time spent online (in the U.S. in November 2015), it is no wonder that Facebook and other global social programs, such as WeChat is changing the way we 'think' about world, which in turn affects how we engage with the world.

Which brings me back, full circle back to my Socratic-inspired quest for wisdom, and whether or not enlightenment could be found in a cookie. In a way, enlightenment really was found in humor - in the sprinkles on the cake - simply because I discovered what humor meant to me and how much I truly value its healing force.

But to understand humor, I had to practice humor. To practice humor, I had to kick back and relax and share some jokes with a few thousand of my closest online friends.

Conclusion

Facebook is its own philosophy: A system of philosophical thought on the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially in relation to each person's place in society.

Facebook users are Socratic in the sense that each post offers an opportunity to explore virtue and what it means to live a good life. No doubt Socrates would have been on Facebook had it been available to the Ancient Greeks. I wonder how many followers his posts would have touched or inspired, and whether or not he would have unfriended Aristophanes for publishing The Clouds.

Happy Thoughts Moving Onward

Thank you to all who have followed my journey into humor.  For those who know me best, you know that good humor is ever-present in my own world. Admittedly, it took some deep soul searching for my brain to take humor seriously, but after doing so, the theories I had coming into the venture proved correct ... and I couldn't be happier about that. ☺

About humor, I learned this: 

1. Humor really is infectious. 
2. Humor does lighten burdens, inspire hope, and connect us to others. 
3. Humor increases our insight, keeps us grounded, focused, alert, and happy. 
4. Laughter is a universal language that we all speak, that stimulates both sides of the brain. 
5. Finding the humor in a situation enables us to understand the more important messages our serious brain does not immediately register. 
6. Feeling good enables us to remember things longer. 
7. We all learn more when we are having fun. 

Writing this blog has been a creative exploration in imagining and sharing thoughts that make me laugh, smile, or think. I hope it has been an enjoyable experience for those who have followed with me down the humor rabbit hole. 

As I move on from public humor sharing, the joke lives on. Good humor will follow me back into my professional world, onward into my personal life, and hopefully contagiously into the lives of the many people who laughed along with me.

Exploring and sharing humor on social media has broadened my mind and thinking like no other activity could ... meditation, rumination, philosophizing, theorizing, nor strategizing could yield what a simple laugh can produce. This is something I hope I never ever forget. 

Life has many complexities, many twists and turns, ups and downs, and things that make you feel as if the world just twisted your inners outside for the whole world to see. In other words, life can be unpleasant, to the extreme. But for those who maintain a good sense of humor (an ability to laugh at life and ourselves without self-deprecation, cynicism, or sarcasm), humor offers a much needed respite, a time out from the seriousness life can produce in our hearts and minds. 

When I started this journey I was in need of a little humor in my life. My professional persona was overshadowing my personal enjoyment of life. While I have worked diligently to make time for sharing jokes and posting in my blog under the auspices of humor, I have experienced a paradigm shift in my own awareness of how I present myself to the world. In other words, I was letting my ideal of what it means to be a professional overshadow the joy I feel inside of me. 

I used to believe that I needed to be serious to be taken seriously, when in reality, diligence and hard work have nothing to do with being serious. Being serious takes us away from the fun and enjoyment of living. When we see the fun, we see the many possibilities we can create. When we see the humor in a situation, we let go of limiting thoughts. The combination is what creates success. Being serious only impedes it. 

Being serious shrinks our brains

There is absolutely no reason to focus on serious thoughts. Come what may, I would rather be called silly or considered ridiculous than be called serious, ever again. Being a naturally analytically driven thinker with a penchant for precision in language, I know I can come off as dry, even if I am smiling on the inside. 

Sharing humor publicly has allowed me to let my hair down and show the world what is behind an otherwise reflective, determined, businesslike exterior. Even though I am taking a break from my regularly scheduled humor program, I do hope to someday publish a book of this fun-filled amazing adventure. 

Thank you again to all who have followed along and made me laugh harder than any joke I ever shared ... 

Humor is definitely best when shared !!!

The Tootsie Pop Problem

Another year has rolled by and I still don't know how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.  

"How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?"

Tootsie Pops are known for the catch phrase "How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?" This infamous challenge has plagued society since the animated commercial debuted on U.S. television in 1969. 

For those of you who don't know, the Tootsie Pop is a hard candy lollipop filled with chocolate-flavored chewy Tootsie Roll candy. It debuted in 1931. By 2002, 60 million Tootsie Rolls and twenty million Tootsie Pops were produced every day. 

         According to 

tootsie.com/howmanylick-experiments, 

Engineering students from Purdue University built a "licking machine", modeled after a human tongue, and concluded that it took an average of 364 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, but only 252 natural "licks" ... twenty of the group's volunteers assumed the licking challenge - unassisted by machinery - and averaged 252 licks each to the center. 

A chemical engineering doctoral student from the University of Michigan recorded that his customized licking machine required 411 licks, while undergraduate students at Swarthmore College concluded that it takes a median of 144 licks (range 70-222) to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. 

Harvard Grad students created a rotating mechanical tongue and concluded it took 2,255 licks on a normal raspberry Tootsie Pop to get the center showing. In 2014 the Tribology Laboratory at the University of Florida published a study examining the coupled effects of biology, corrosion, and mechanical agitation on the wear of Tootsie Roll Pops. In my mind, they WIN with the topic description alone. 

Self reported wear data from 58 participants was used in conjunction with statistical analysis of actual lollipop cross-sectional information in a numerical simulation to compute the average number of licks required to reach the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Roll Pop. 

The number of licks required, based on equatorial cross-section data, was found to be nearly independent of the licking style with the one-sided approach required 195±18 licks and the full-surface approach requiring 184±33 licks. 

Independent researcher Cory Heid presented his Tootsie Pop findings at the 2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings in January, and at the Michigan Undergraduate Conference in February, as a data analysis project using a data-driven model. His findings are presented in this post: Tootsie Pop Findings. Heid concluded that people love Tootsie Pops just as they are, even if they don't solve this problem.

While the list of unsolved problems in philosophy generally relate to the problems associated with language, ethics, knowledge, the mind-body connection and consciousness, the Tootsie Pop Problem is a preoccupation of lay philosophers across multiple disciplines. 

GAME

Journey to the Center of a Tootsie Pop

If Tootsie Pops are anything like people, no two are the same. 

While answers vary between 144 licks (Swarthmore College) to a whopping 2,255 licks (Harvard University), one thing is for certain, the world may never know ... unless they conduct their own experiment.

Free Cookies for All

Election Day 2016

It's that time again, when all the world becomes philosophical in the sense that you question who you are going to vote for. 

When you break down the word philosophy we get the Greek words philo (loving) and soph(ía) (wisdom) ... in this sense, liberally reaching, philosophers are "lovers of wisdom." 

When voting for the best candidate to represent a nation and thus a collective philosophy, despite its many nuances in expressing that philosophy, we each seek our own sense of wisdom, we each wish to be "wise". 

The reasons we give fall into different categories. 

1. The person who offers views or theories on who should be president based on profound questions in ethics, metaphysics, logic, or other related fields. 
2. The person who delves deeper into the bigger picture. 
3. The person who establishes the central ideas of a given movement, belief system, etc. 

At the beginning of C.S. Peirce's 11th Lowell Lecture, he asserts that "All men philosophize ... [t]hose who neglect philosophy have metaphysical theories as much as others - only they are rule, false, and wordy theories" (Lowell Lecture XI) 

Right Wing

Do women philosophize, too? 

These two differences of opinion represent a nation considering Trump or Hillary Clinton to serve as the United States Top Ambassador to the World. 

The way we vote is an exercise in forward-thinking as well as philosophizing. We deduce or induce certain scenarios based on the candidate who wins. In the absence of knowing the candidates personally, our opinions become a semantic debate (our perception of the language and logic used when discussing issues). 

Is anyone who ever voted a philosopher? Just as: Is anyone who has ever written a word on paper a writer? Clearly not, for the intended purpose of those terms. 

But here in the big grand scheme of things, we categorize ... and loosely categorized, we are all philosophers. 

Philosophy is, at its simplest, the application of reason to life. Anybody who conceives of, or has adopted a particular application of reason has become a philosopher. The degree to which they philosophize may lead them to a formal study of the history of philosophy or it may simply represent their natural cognitive response system to information they encounter, internally and externally. 

Whether or not one has set foot in a philosophy department, Descartian approaches to philosophizing are not uncommon. Even if someone has never read The Method ... which is funny given Descartes' rejection of the scholastic tradition in which he had been educated in favor of his own pursuit of mathematical and scientific truth ... people regularly examine and reexamine their own thoughts (as did Descartes), ever trying to validate their conclusions (epistemology). 

Epistemology is the study of the nature, source, limits, and validity of knowledge. It is especially interested in developing criteria for evaluating claims people make that they "know" something. 

However the nation votes today, for whichever multitude of reasons given, we vote in proportion to our own sense of wisdom, which is a culmination of all our qualities, good or otherwise. The soundness of our action or decision with regards to the candidate we endorse for President of the United States is our application of experience, knowledge, and good judgment at play. 

When there are only two candidates representing society, our wisdom becomes a representation of our shared philosophy - otherwise we'd vote for ourselves. 

The current position and deduced trajectory of the United States is thusly measured. 

Whatever side of the fence you find yourself voting this election season,

Just Vote