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Thursday, November 29, 2018

Understanding President Trump

Previous blog articles have discussed how the Simple Explanation is a meme-based information theory. We all hold our own unique bundles of beliefs. These sets of beliefs define who we are and who we get along with. We get along best with others who hold similar meme bundles. The further apart our sets of beliefs, the less we have in common and the more we tend to distrust the Other.

We cannot force others to agree with us. The only way we can get along with those with whom we disagree is to adopt the basic meme of "Live and Let Live." "Live and let live" allows us to sit at the same table with others who hold different memes than we do. The opposite meme of "live and let live" is something like, "My way or the highway." 

"Live and let live" is a fundamental meme of democratic societies. In order to promote a civil society, we must be able to live with others who hold different memes than we do. 

We must realize that despite our apparent differences, most well-adjusted, healthy people hold certain memes in common, whether those people are Liberals or Conservatives, Atheists or Believers, Climate-change-Deniers or Mainstream Science Memers. (meem-ers--I just made that word up: "holders of memes")  

These common memes are called Universal Human Values. Our common values include rights of personal freedom, liberty, and equality, tolerance, and love of family. No matter our meme bundle differences, we can count on the fact that our bundles overlap when it comes to universal human values. For Americans, we also share memes related to our common history, the values of our laws, and the beliefs contained in our Constitution.

We already know the Left's meme bundle is radically different than the Right's meme bundle. In the past, Left and Right have been able to work together by focusing on their shared values and memes. It seems to me that the deep fear and distrust the Left has of President Trump boils down to their belief that Trump does not share their basic human values. We hear evidence of this mistrust every day as politicians and various mediated talking heads make claims that despite the President's declarations of good intent, he actually is a liar and holds no honorable human values. 

By continually discounting the Administration's declared goals and intent, the Left has cut out the middle of shared memes. And once you discount the Other's basic human values, even Trump's and Trump's voters, you have effectively marginalized them to inhuman status. Sadly, this denial of Trump's shared humanity strikes terror in the hearts of those who believe it. Actual terror. And unbridled hatred, because who would want an evil madman as their leader? 

However, it is my belief that these horrible emotions are not actually caused by Trump's words, policies, and actions, as uncouth or unsavory as they may appear to be, but by the ideological mindset of the listener that interprets and misinterprets his intent, and then ascribes malevolent motives to his every move. They have fashioned for themselves a frightening world. No wonder there is hatred and fear.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Simple Explanation Merchandise Storefront--Buy Here Now

The Simple Explanation blog has been up and running since May of 2010. In all that time I have actively resisted monetizing my site. I don't believe in promoting other people's wares and ideas on this site devoted to Truth and Enlightenment. Had I monetized my site, the Simple Explanation would be more "popular" because Google would make sure people were exposed to their advertisers' products. Same goes for Facebook. But I would rather have a handful of authentic friends and followers than a million false ones.
A Simple Explanation blog's all-time stats. 
If you would like to share the Simple Explanation philosophy with your family and friends, send them the blog link. Or how about purchasing the Simple Explanation book?
A short, easy-to-read theory of everything
Cyd Ropp sporting a "unit of consciousness on board" t-shirt and blonde hair.
I also enjoy wearing my Simple Explanation shirts to stimulate conversation. How about purchasing one of these to give to friends or wear yourself? 

Oh happy day! A blog follower wearing his Simple Explanation shirt on vacation in Spain!
Here are a few styles; there are more products available at the Simple Explanation storefront.
I Am Here, Now illustrates exactly where "here and now" is located.
"It all starts with a bagel" displays a profoundly simple cosmology
There are even less expensive gift items, like mugs and shopping bags--
"It all starts with a donut" speaks of your love of pastry as well as the toroidal universe.

"It all starts with a bagel" is my attempt to be funny as well as profound.
Hope you find something you like! If you experience any difficulties ordering the products you want, please email me and I'll personally work it out for you. cyd.ropp@gmail.com 

Friday, November 23, 2018

A Simple Bedtime Prayer

A few days ago, one of my blog readers asked for a suggestion for a good prayer to mull over at bedtime--a way to "show some gratitude and flush away the day's mental debris before heading into the unknown dream place. Thank you for the request, dear reader, and here you go...


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I am happy in this place You have created for me. I thank You, Creator, for my particular place and all of the experiences you bring to me. 

I appreciate my body. I thank all of the entities that exist to support me--all the Units of Consciousness within my skin devoted to keeping me alive and well. I realize I am not alone here, inside my skin, but am surrounded and upheld by billions of units of love. 

I thank all of the entities outside my skin, my neighbors near and far. I am ready to join hands with my neighbors to work for the common good with love, assistance, and information, according to Your plan. 

I recognize the well of living water inside of me, bubbling up from my deepest core, feeding me life, energy, information, and love. I am never alone. I am continually refreshed by Truth and Love. I will rest in this deep well of pure consciousness and awaken refreshed in the morning and ready to face the new day.  Amen.


Below are links to blog articles that will explain the Simple Explanation of this prayer:

I am happy in this place You have created for me. I thank You, Creator, for my particular place and all of the experiences you bring to me. 

I appreciate my body. I thank all of the entities that exist to support me--all the Units of Consciousness within my skin devoted to keeping me alive and well. I realize I am not alone here, inside my skin, but am surrounded and upheld by billions of units of love. 

I thank all of the entities outside my skin, my neighbors near and far. I am ready to join hands with my neighbors to work for the common good with love, assistance, and information, according to Your plan

I recognize the well of living water inside of me, bubbling up from my deepest core, feeding me life, energy, information, and love. I am never alone. I am continually refreshed by Truth and Love. I will rest in this deep well of pure consciousness and awaken refreshed in the morning and ready to face the new day.  Amen.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Process Note About Cyd's Hip Replacement Surgery



On November 5th, 2018, a surgeon sawed off the head of Cyd's right femur and hammered a titanium spike down into the bone marrow. He also carved out the top portion of the femoral rim and lined the socket with a titanium sleeve. The top socket and the new femoral head structure are linked by a titanium strut a couple of inches long.
The right hip looked like the one above prior to surgery. Many falls over the years had damaged it. The new titanium implant looks like this.
The surgery was conducted with a spinal block and "twilight sleep" induced by propofol; no general anesthesia. Yes, I could hear the electric saw cutting my leg in two, but didn't care. 

"Propofol? Isn't that the drug that killed Michael Jackson?" I asked the anesthesiologist. His eye rolling gave away the fact that he's heard this one before and is tired of it.  

"A lot of things killed Michael Jackson," he said. "Propofol is a wonderful drug and we're very glad to have it."

During the two nights I spent in the hospital, I took the drugs they offered. But by day two I could feel the "cascade effect" setting in. "Cascade effect" is when a medical procedure or remedy causes other symptoms which are then controlled by further medical procedures and remedies--usually drugs. Many, if not most, patients experience this cascade effect in the form of more and more medications trying to correct more and more symptoms, all caused by the "cure." In my case, the opioids caused nausea (take an anti-nausea drug) and constipation (take a laxative). 

I said, "No, thanks. I'll be just fine as soon as I get home. Besides, I don't want to get addicted to opioids."

"Don't worry about getting addicted," the nurses said. "If you take the oxy for pain only and stop as you feel better, a few weeks won't do you any harm."  Yeah. Right. That's how it always starts.

Before the surgery, I was told that I would be up and walking within a couple of hours. I was told I would be walked often in the hospital to aid in recovery. Unfortunately, mine was the last surgery of the day, so physical therapy wasn't available until the next day, around 10 AM. Despite my asking repeatedly to be let out of bed so I could walk off the pain, there just wasn't enough nursing staff to accommodate my needs. They only had time to offer me drugs and to take me from bed to potty when I insisted.

As soon as I got home, I stopped taking any drugs other than Tylenol and aspirin (prescribed to prevent clotting). I wasn't able to eat for a full day as the oxy moved its way out of my body, with no help from anti-nausea drugs or laxatives. By the next day at home, all was well again. Oh wait. I actually did take another drug. I smoked CBD buds whenever I felt pukey or super bothered by pain. Almost left that part out. I keep forgetting it's legal now and I have a prescription. My only prescription. 


These are the homeopathics I took to recover. I am using 4 of each, several times a day. They work just fine for me.
I also regularly use CALM magnesium supplement. CALM helps with overall muscle relaxation and stress reduction, as well as having a mild laxative effect.
I am extremely fortunate to have a wonderful support network here in my little village of Jacksonville. Living alone as I do now, my next-door neighbors have kept a close eye on me. They also are taking Gaucho-dog for his daily walks. 
Cyd's wonderful neighbors
My physical therapist, Jason Strock, is both highly intuitive and trained in Holland in osteopathic manipulations, so in addition to showing me exercises to correct imbalances, he also performs the most subtle of osteo manipulations to my hips and pelvis. I have to give him credit for his part in this. I'd originally signed up another, larger, physical therapy center, but it only took one visit, two days out of the hospital, to see that we were not a good fit.

I'm being driven to physical therapy by a number of folks I barely knew before this crisis, and they are also doing all of my grocery shopping for me. (can't drive for about 6 weeks after hip replacement surgery while everything knits into place.)  When Gary and I moved to Jacksonville, we joined an organization called the Boosters, a "do-gooder" group which engages in community service. It is the folks from the Booster's "Sunshine Committee" that are taking care of me. One lucky lady even volunteered to peel the support hose off my legs every couple of days, washing them and my feet, and then replacing the clean support hose on my legs--not an easy thing to do! 

I am keenly aware of my eccentric nature and I have tried not to overwhelm my new friends with too much philosophy or personality. It's a fine line.

The church choir at the local Presbyterian church has been praying for my recovery, so the supernatural as well as human conduit is open. They want me to get better in time to join the choir for the Christmas pageant. I sang with them for a time last year, but then I grew impatient with the preacher's weak sermons and dropped out. There's a new minister now, so I'm willing to see if I feel more comfortable in that church now.

My brother, Bill, has also helped me during this time with several long-distance hypnosis sessions. We have had some good emotional breakthroughs and highly effective post-hypnotic suggestions. I wondered, for example, if my late dog's hip tumor was emotionally lodged in my hip because I was so broken by her death. Bill helped Franny and me connect and then let go in the "healing pool," which made Franny and I both feel better. Gaucho noticed and in real-life he came over and licked the tears from my face while I was in the pool with Franny.
 
Cyd and Franny

I didn't let any theater folk know of the surgery because I didn't want it to affect next year's casting decisions, which are all taking place now. They knew Miss Mona had a medical crisis the final week of "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," when I showed up on a cane for the last two performances with bone-on-bone pain. I felt it made my tragic character ever so much more tragic--singing my last sad song while leaning on a cane. I have a casting callback on December 1 at which time everyone will see I'm up to snuff and ready to roll.
"Miss Mona" on her cane, "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" dressing room
That's the news about hip surgery. My friends, old and new, theists and atheists, conservatives and liberals, are all enacting the Simple "Golden Rule" by reaching out with information, assistance, and love. I am thankful to feel such love.

Meanwhile, I'm firing on all cylinders. Feeling creative and productive. Looking forward to embarking on the next chapter of this life.
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p.s. although I auditioned for several companies and plays after the surgery, not one cast me. I am taking this opportunity to work on my next book: The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated. See you there.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

A Simple Explanation of an Embryo's Development--It's a Torus!

Use of an amazing new microscope called light-sheet microscopy has yielded never-before-seen images of cellular development and organ formation in a living, implanted embryo. Over a two-day period, about a million images captured mouse cells developing from a simple sphere into an elongated shape as the embryo formed its organs.
These images track a mouse embryo from gastrulation through organogenesis.
K. McDole et.al. Cell/2018
 VOLUME 175, ISSUE 3P859-876.E33, OCTOBER 18, 2018
Here is the embryo's development in motion:



As the embryo grows, a depression forms and collapses inward to form the hollow tube of the mouse's gut, while a brightness appears at the opposite pole and streaks across the outside to become the neural tube and notochord. The cells that will become other organs appear throughout the developing thickness of the embryo, with the heart forming at the surface, around the mouth of the positive pole. The heart cells begin beating almost immediately after their appearance. 

The Simple Explanation suggests that we are witnessing the inner, unseen, proto-torus at work within this embryo. The Simple Explanation hypothesizes that there is a torus-shaped informational source embedded in every piece of matter in our universe. It is this torus-shaped fractal that informs each piece of our universe with the information it needs.

What I see here is the developing embryo following the energetic and informational data flowing out of the torus at the center.
Information and energy explodes out of the middle of proto-torus and flows along the pole.
Here's how I see it working. Imagine the white starburst is the crossover point between non-material space and our universe. Energy from the non-material metaverse explodes outward from the middle, pushing chi or lifeforce or whatever you want to call this, outward. Meanwhile, the fractal formula of our universe informs the emerging material of its shape and job. In this instance, the formula informs the mouse embryo how to become a mouse.

As the torus throws energy from the middle, at first, when the material is very small and close to the source, it appears as a round sphere. The spherical shape is the first expression of a toroidal source. Then, as the object gains mass, it becomes too "heavy" to keep its proto-toroidal shape. At that point, it will begin to grow into the shape of its own particular destiny--in this case, a mouse.
Developing mouse embryo with color-coded organ cells. In this image, the purple to the left is the emerging heart. The black circular void is the mouth of the cylindrical gut. The neural tube appears as a green line at the equator, with red notochord cells mixed in with and running up the neural cord's length. The other colors represent other organs' cells.
Imagine the torus oriented as the illustration below, with the pole of the torus running horizontally. As the mouse embryo gains cells and mass, the metaversal torus cannot sustain the spherical shape and naturally collapses inward along the path of least resistance--the pole. This collapse of material forms a void around the pole, becoming the colon.


The developing colon forms along the path of least resistance--the torus pole (violet). The (white) starburst at the middle is the crossover point between the immaterial metaverse and our universe, known as "chi" in Eastern traditions.
In the next step of development, the heart forms around the mouth of the pole, the point closest to the hollow conduit of energy that has become the tube of the colon, which runs without interference through the middle point of the torus. The heart cells gather around the feeding pool of energy coursing up that hollow pole, gaining direct energy from the originating source of life itself. Now the heart beats and life has entered our universe from the crossover point.
The heart cells aggregate at the mouth of the positive pole of the torus (green). At the same time, the neural tube and notochord traverse the outside of the torus from the negative pole towards the positive pole (yellow circle).
Meanwhile, the neural tube forms, beginning at the pole opposite the heart and running along the outside towards the opposite pole. This neural tube will develop into the brain, spinal chord, and nervous system. 
Various colors represent cells of different organs appearing. The heart cells are purple (circled by green) and the neural tube appears as green, with the notochord cells mixed in (yellow circle).
Philosophically, the fact that the colon runs up the pole and through the torus middle is interesting. That makes our gut the nearest organ to our originating source, not the brain or heart, although they arise at the same time.

It is also interesting that the neural tube seems to begin at the negative pole, opposite the heart. Here we have a visual schema for "heart vs. head." These two organ systems develop at opposite ends of the torus/embryo. Yet the neural cells quickly shoot across the outside to unify the body with the heart. Philosophically, we could say that our brains are there to interface with the material universe, hence the neural tube's placement outside rather than inside with the gut. The heart is also on the outside, also interfacing with the world. Yet it is close to the originating source, clinging like material around the event horizon of a black hole, deriving its lifeforce from the energetic middle.

I realize this Simple Explanation appears as foolish hooey to hardcore materialist scientists. But we are dealing with the mystery of life itself. There can be no denying that the emerging embryo is newly alive. It is not good science to discard any hypothesis that can describe and explain this.

Watch this excellent 6-minute film that shows this process unfolding more slowly:

Sunday, November 11, 2018

A Simple Explanation of Tuskless Elephants' Super-quick Evolution

African elephants are rapidly evolving to lose their most precious physical trait--their ivory tusks. In a stunningly rapid instance of observable evolution, African elephant females are refusing to grow the ivory that poachers kill for.
Read this excerpt from National Geographic by  

Under poaching pressure, elephants are evolving to lose their tusks

In Mozambique, researchers are racing to understand the genetics of elephants born without tusks—and the consequences of the trait.


"THE OLDEST ELEPHANTS wandering Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park bear the indelible markings of the civil war that gripped the country for 15 years: Many are tuskless. They’re the lone survivors of a conflict that killed about 90 percent of these beleaguered animals, slaughtered for ivory to finance weapons and for meat to feed the fighters.

"Hunting gave elephants that didn’t grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa. Recent figures suggest that about a third of younger females—the generation born after the war ended in 1992—never developed tusks. Normally, tusklessness would occur only in about 2 to 4 percent of female African elephants.

"Decades ago, some 4,000 elephants lived in Gorongosa, says Joyce Poole—an elephant behavior expert and National Geographic Explorer who studies the park’s pachyderms. But those numbers dwindled to triple digits following the civil war. New, as yet unpublished, research she’s compiled indicates that of the 200 known adult females, 51 percent of those that survived the war—animals 25 years or older—are tuskless. And 32 percent of the female elephants born since the war are tuskless."  read the entire article here

Scientists are calling this evolution, but tell me--have you ever heard of evolution occurring in only one or two generations? When I was taught evolutionary theory, they said it took thousands of generations of minute changes to populate a beneficial mutation to the stage where you could say it had "evolved." For instance, in 2012, Michigan State University researchers were very happy to demonstrate the evolution of citrate-eating e. coli bacteria after only 56,000 generations. 56,000 generations.You get the idea. 

I remember the day I  first learned about evolution in elementary school. There was an illustration in the textbook mocking the concept of Lamarkian evolution. Lamark had promoted the idea that giraffes who stretched their necks to reach the leaves on higher branches gave birth to calves with longer necks. "No, no," Darwinians said. "Natural selection is the way it happens, as only long-necked giraffes survive the lean years to give birth to more long-necked calves like themselves." That logic was supposed to have settled the argument.
The reason Darwinian evolutionary theory won out over Lamark's theory of epigenetic trait inheritance was that Lamark's type of evolution requires learning and volitional repetition, whereas Darwin's creatures were either born lucky to have long necks or were doomed to be short-necked losers. Even as a child or ten or so, I recall wondering why, if long necks were so valuable as to have evolved into our familiar, high-nibbling giraffes, then why don't all large grazing animals have long necks?
I happen to prefer the Simple Explanation's theory of evolution. My theory of evolution reinserts learning and choice into the equation and removes the element of dumb luck. Seriously--who would ever look around themselves at the varieties of natural adaptation and believe that dumb luck at the material level accidentally brought it all about? That doesn't even make sense. It defies the basic rule of 52 pickup, i.e.: if you throw a deck of cards up in the air, it never comes down stacked and in order. Never.


Here is Ropp's Simple Explanation of Evolution:  


Stipulated: that the basic matrix of our universe is consciousness.  
The Simple Explanation's model of evolution is information-driven rather than happenstance-driven as the conventional model would have it. What I mean is that the Darwinian model we've all been taught relies upon the brute force of superior survival mechanisms that allow the superior creature to procreate and thereby pass on their superior genes. And after a tremendous number of such superior generations, the inferior fade into extinction and the superior organism becomes the new normal.

All this time I've been thinking that the Simple Explanation is somehow essentially divergent from Darwin. In the Simple Explanation, there is an ontological pull upward toward more complex aggregations of consciousness. Darwin's model is, on the other hand, a case of the blind simply bumbling, by happenstance, by lucky accident, by dumb luck, to be a superior adaptation from the norm. Where I find it unlikely is that there would a billion such bumblings in the same direction that, by dumb luck, keeps heading in the upward and onward direction.

The Simple Explanation would say the patterns of superiority are few and fractal, so the wheel does not need to be reinvented over and over. The Golden Rule and hierarchical distributions of increasing complexity and responsibility  cover much of it. And, due to the transpersonal nature of universal knowledge, basic mechanisms, like hands and eyes, only need to be invented once and then deployed or adopted as needed. 

Consciousness is not a by-product of the human brain or even of complex systems of any sort. Consciousness is the ground state. Think of consciousness as the medium upon which is written the formulae of our universe. The Simple Explanation refers to this ground state as the Universal Unit of Consciousness, and it contains every law of the universe as potential expression that manifests when and where appropriate. Smaller, derivative Units of Consciousness are fractals of the originating Unit of Consciousness that express themselves in every single material expression of our universe.


All of our Units of Consciousness started out as stardust from the original stars that populated the cosmos soon after its inception. Some Units of Consciousness that became stellar gas may still be inhabiting their original elemental molecules in the intergalactic backwater of some far flung gaseous clouds, but most Units of Consciousness have moved on to occupy countless forms in the last 14 billion years.
The most ambitious Units of Consciousness continue to find themselves occupying larger and more complex physical forms. Those with the strongest wills eventually find themselves swimming in some primordial soup or another, perhaps here on planet Earth. Some of the Units of Consciousness that started in Earth’s soup have remained in the soup, never attaching themselves to anything more complex than a single-celled organism. The most ambitious little life forms found themselves returning to slightly more sophisticated organisms with each incarnation. Lessons learned are carried forward, always incarnating more and more complex structures and occasionally jumping to a more complex hierarchical level, driving the evolution of planetary life via memes accrued through karma.

Was Cyd’s Self Unit of Consciousness ever a single-celled organism? Probably so, beginning about 4.5 billion years ago.

Was Cyd’s Self Unit of Consciousness ever a jellyfish? Good chance it was, as the toroidal-shaped jellyfish is the oldest multiorgan animal on Earth, swimming our seas for the past 700 million years.

Was Cyd’s Self Unit of Consciousness ever a dinosaur? Well, maybe, maybe not.  I’d imagine the dinosaur memes and karma informed the development of reptiles and birds, not Cyd’s line. The first mammals apparently descended from a different lizard--therapsids.

Was Cyd’s governing Unit of Consciousness ever a lemur? Or a chimpanzee? Or a bonobo? Or an Australopithecus? Probably, since their proto-human memes and karma would have informed human development, and the Self Unit of Consciousness is attracted to familiar patterns.

In the Simple Explanation’s evolutionary model, no meme war is needed between natural selection and creationism, science and religion. The Simple Explanation proposes that everything in the cosmos is created through metaversal principles embodied in all units of consciousness, and that each governing Unit of Consciousness evolves according to personal inclination and ability, through established patterns of meme acquisition and adaptation, and the utterly fair and impartial mechanism of karma.

In the Simple Explanation’s evolutionary schema, Cyd is currently a human and probably has been for a very long time. Is Cyd, therefore, more evolved than her dogs? Not really. The family dogs are at the same level of hierarchical sophistication as the humans. The dogs’ billions of aggregate Units of Consciousness and their Self Units of Consciousness have all made decisions every step along the way that steered them into this life as these two dogs.
Franny and Zoey, Cyd's dogs
Every governing Unit of Consciousness is an integral part of one aggregate or another, hierarchically upline and downline. Every slot needs to be filled. The most you could say of Cyd’s state of evolution is that ambitious meme collectors evolve into ever more complex instantiations, and Cyd’s Unit of Consciousness and those of her aggregate Units of Consciousness are attached to some highly ambitious collections of memes. But whether or not this is anything to brag about is debatable. 

Back to the elephants-- The Simple Explanation of this ridiculously rapid loss of  tusks is that the elephants who were killed for their tusks carried that information into the transpersonal pool of universal consciousness upon their deaths and made that data available to subsequent generations of African elephants. That meme probably reads, "Hey, watch out! Those effers will kill you to get their hands on your beautiful ivory tusks! Don't grow 'em!"

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