Hello World

[Note: "Hello World" is the name of first program that new computer programmers usually learn to write when starting to learn to program.  It simply prints "Hello World" to the screen.  (I have a slightly longer introduction.)]

Many years ago when I was going into college my mother, a devout Christian, gave me a bookmark she made that said:

"Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman than needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 Tim. 2:15"

--

Not long after that while tutoring in the University Math Lab, someone ridiculed the idea that one could be 'educated' if one was an expert in just one thing, even if it was a scholastically regarded subject such as Math.

--

A while later a fellow tutor in the Math Lab said one of the most important things I have ever heard in my life!

I don't remember what we were talking about, but I replied to something he said with: "I may not be the biggest genius in the world, but I do know that..."

To which he replied: "How do you know?"

I immediately launched into an explanation of how I knew the thing I claimed to know on whatever we were discussing.

He interrupted with: "No, I mean: How do you know you are not the biggest genius in the world? You *could* be!"

He said: "When I was in High School there where people who could tell you the make, model, year and owner of every car in the High School parking lot."

He said: "I couldn't do that. But I was really good at math. Maybe it just depends what you spend it on."

--

There were other factors involved in the following decision, but the above were the most memorably influential.

So I decided: I would read the most important works that mankind has created, in as many fields as I could. I would only have time for the highlights, so I did need to be picky. But I didn't want to be like most people who make up their minds on something without having thought about it from as many angles as possible.

So I set out to read (not a comprehensive list):

1) The primary texts of all the major world religions: The Bible (already had been required reading growing up), the Koran, The Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, Confucius, (and later the Hagakure).

2) Major figures in the modern Sciences such as: Darwin, Dawkins, Hawking, Einstein... and atheist philosophers such as Bertrand Russell.

3) Major philosophers in modern political and economic thinking such as: Plato, John Locke, Karl Marx, and Adam Smith. (I also later discovered Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and David Korten all of whom I think are quite relevant in current times and going forward.)

4) Classics in literature, from Homer and Dante and Chaucer to Jane Austin, Charles Dickens and Tolstoy and more...

5) The Hugo Award Winners for Science Fiction (which overlaps with classics, such as Huxley and Orwell) (I got that idea from the behind the scenes of Babylon5. And there are some great visionaries in this field!)

6) Military and Political Strategy such as Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Von Clausewitz

7) Whatever else seemed really important or a legitimate controversy.

--

I have not finished the list above, and there are other things I have finished that are not on it. However, constantly cramming as much of this material into my brain as I can means I have a considerable number of thoughts on a variety of topics, and I am at least passingly familiar with major and diverse views on it. Sometimes the 'extremists' are more right than they are given credit for, but usually not exactly in the ways they themselves think.

I have reached a point where there seems almost no division between subjects. I see something more like an evolving continuum of knowledge that forms a single non conflicting narrative about humanity and even to a small degree, the universe. Everything is connected, and making new connections between topics takes up much of my thought process.

With so much going on in my head, I often find myself writing for hours. I wrote over 100 pages of a book over the summer, titled: "How to Save the World." I am currently stalled on that project over some thoughts about restructuring education; video games could be a key here. ;-D (I DO intend to finish it.) But also too many hours of thought and writing go into emails to whoever happened to email me, or replies on FaceBook comments that stimulated my thinking or agitation.

So today I finally started a blog so that my thoughts can be accessed by whomever is interested, and so I don't spam unsuspecting victims with huge amounts of unsolicited thoughts on whatever topic they casually mentioned in their FB posts. (Actually, I still plan to do that, but at least it will be in the form of a link to my blog posting so they can more easily follow, or ignore it.)

While this blog is currently aimed to be mostly about my philosophical and political views, I am also a professional video game developer. I expect some percentage of postings will also be about topics related to the industry, programming, and my planned independent projects, business ventures, foundations, etc as I take them on going forward. I plan to sort various posts into topics to maximize usefulness, allowing people can look at only things they find personally relevant to them.

I don't expect everyone to agree with me, and my opinions are not set in stone. So challenge me on something if you think I am wrong. (But be prepared for a debate if you do. *Most of what I think is based on lots of thought and research.) But in the end, regardless, lets look for/at the commonalities more than the differences.

That is my intro in a nutshell.

So regardless if you are starting here at the beginning with me, or backtracking through it later, welcome to my blog.