Ghosts

Welcome to The Un-Zone, the only site that looks into the random thoughts that inhabit the mind of a strange KU law school student. Well, it's the only site that I know of. Well, there could be another site online, but I haven't seen them. I spend lots of time online, so I should know.

I like ghost stories, especially the local ones. The legendary Gateway to Hell located at Stull Cemetery. (There are two Stull cemeteries. The other church is located a few miles away. Due to vandals, trespassers, drunk people, and safety reasons, the old church was torn down. It was a landmark on Highway 40.) There's Sigman Nu's Virginia. The city of Wichita has Theorosa's Bridge. And there's a ghost inhabiting Kansas State University's old football stadium. Or so they say...

This post is about ghosts. Of course, given this topic, it would be more suitable for Halloween. However, I feel like posting this today, as it is gnawing at my mind and I have to post it. The ghosts I am going to talk about aren't the ghosts of horror movies and spooky stories, but more philosophical ones. The ghosts of reality; the ghosts of physical laws, the things we consider "real." Beware, the following may turn into one massive brain-twisting post. If you don't mind such things, read on. I ain't responsible for your future insanity.

Now what's a ghost? According to The American Heritage College Dictionary, a ghost is "The spirit of a dead person, especially one believed to appear to living persons or to haunt former inhabitants....A returning or haunting memory or image."
Given these basic definitions, ghosts have no matter and no energy. According to the modern views of science, ghosts do not exist in the physical world. Therefore, they only exist in people's minds. For all intents and purposes, anyone who believes in their actual, physical existance are either crazy or living in a primitive state of mind.Of course, the existance of ghosts depends on the context of thought a person possesses. People in Ancient Greece and Rome were as intelligent as we were; some of notable repute, even more that most people today. And yet, they believed in polytheistic religion, spirits, and other "foolish" notions. In that context, these things were as real to them as photons, atoms, and neturons are as real to us today. In our context, ghosts exist. We believe in them so thoroughly that they are real.

What the...? You don't believe me when I say these statements? I know what you're going to say. "Ghosts don't exist. They're imaginary. They're just superstitious beliefs like black cats and stepping under ladders. They only exist in your mind. Only crazy or nutty people believe in the existence of ghosts."

OK. Now think about this. We all know that atoms exist. We've seen them. Well, not exactly. We have these electron microspcope pictures that show little bumps and we have cloud chamber pictures that show the tracks that atoms leave, but we don't have really good ones. It's akin to the Loch Ness Monster or high scool yearbook pictures. Yeah. We all have had a bad school picture one time or another in our life. Um, I digress from the topic of this post.
Now atoms. An Ancient Greek named Democritus came up with the idea of atoms. Stemming from "atomos", the Greek word for indivisible, atoms were the building blocks of all things. Differently shaped atoms made the basic elements--earth, wind, fire, water. We now look at these notions as quaint, but it was accepted for years AS fact. We now know there are over 100 elements(up to 114 at last count) that make up all matter. We all know atoms aren't the smallest particles. But for many years, this was accepted as "real." Humans supposedly removed all of the superstition of the ghost-infested past.
Fast forward several thousand years. We discovered that atoms were made of things called electrons, protons, and neutrons. This was the "new" theory. Atoms were made of these three basic particles. Now, this was expounded as "real." Experimental evidence proved the existance of these particles. None of the "unscientific" junk of the past. They replaced "ghosts" with "fact", again.
Jump ahead to now. We now "know" there are other particles. Omega particles, tau particles, Z particles, W particles, etc. They are made of tiny things called quarks that have fractional charges. You need three quarks of three different colors--red, blue, and green--to make matter. This is called the quantum chromodynamics theory or QCD theory. And there are these things called "strings" that exist in the 10th dimension. Now, THIS is the new "REAL SCIENCE" replacing all the quaint superstition of the past.
Of course, given all of this, the theory of atoms must have existed before scientists came up with atomic theory. It would be crazy to think that before someone came up with the theory, atoms didn't exist. Modern atomic theory must have existed long before someone came up with the words to descibe it. The interactions in atoms, what particles are there in atoms, the forces, everything, must have existed. But when you think about it, this is plainly contradictary. It has no mass; it has no energy; it had no mind to exist in. Given these facts, it is nonexistant. And yet, it exists. It took the mind of Democritus to find them floating in space and to write them on paper. And string theory and everything else existed, but Democritus just didn't get them. Modern atomic theory with all those quarks and God knows what else, MUST be TRUE because EVERYONE knows it is true. All of our teachers TAUGHT us it was true. That's crazy.
Why? Atomic theory exists ONLY in the minds of people. It's just a ghost that people accept as reality. It HAS to be true because everyone tells us it is true. However, when you examine the subject, all the things that we consider to be "true," what we consider to be the "way things work," are all inventions of the human mind. Then again, even the human mind is an invention of humans. Mind has no matter or energy. It can't be given a specific location like "1.59 inches above fissure X and .37 inches to the right of the Y gland." No, we just can't do that. Laws of human nature--inventions of the human mind. The rules of logic--inventions of the human mind. We really don't know what these rules are in reality, but we come up with plausible explanations given the stuff we have. They are explanations to remove the ghosts that have infected past thoughts and to install rational, modern thoughts.
We are just as ignorant as those we mock. We mock others for their beliefs in ghosts and other superstitions. We are arrogant in our belief that we're superior in thought and in everything else. Then again, they might be superior becasue they recognize that they have ghosts. We have our own ghosts, but we don't recognize their existance. They still haunt us each and every day.
Everything in our world is run by ghosts--the spirits of dead people and the returning images and memories. People know, well at least I hope they do, that killing others in general is bad. There are, of course, exceptions, and exceptions to exceptions, and so on, but you get the general point. You could trace the line of thought that influenced you back to, quite possibly, the Bible or some other book. Jesus, Muhammed, prophets, whoever you want to believe wrote that book, is talking to you. Their shaping our thoughts. Our ideas of political thought are shaped by ghosts. Common sense is shaped by ghosts and even more ghosts. When scientists and experts come up with brand new ideas based upon a better understanding of the world, we'll learn a new reality which will be a new ghost for future generations to mock as unscientific and foolish.

You know what? A hundred, maybe two hundred years from now, people will laugh at what we considered scientific. "Can you believe what they thought back then? All those silly theories about self-esteem and ego. All those foolish notions about atomic structure. All those unscientific theories about the world they had back then! You would have thought they believed ghosts existed!" And they will believe we were foolish because they'll have new fantasies to belive. Even more "scientific" and "modern" than those before. And those ghosts will become reality. And the cycle will never end.

That's all for now.