Citizenschallenge: Diary Dec 31, 2023 - Reflections on this New Year's Eve.

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Saying good-bye to 2023.

Here's a quick year end hello and a note that this blog, ain't dead yet. Though it is mighty neglected.

There is hope, this past May was the 50th anniversary of my high school graduation and escape from Burlingame. Right now, this evening, 50 years ago, I was celebrating at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley, California and at the beginning of my fascinating long and strange and blessed trail of people and experiences. Considering what a lone wolf character I started as, and what a network of families bind my heart these days it's mind boggling. Given my crop of recent and (surprise!) future grandchildren, I feel a particular desire, perhaps even a challenge to write something different, and to share some memories with them, tell a few stories like only someone who was there can, before I'm gone.

As for my Earth Centrism project, it is getting pretty near completion. Been spending five years digesting the concept and the evidence behind it, I've written long articles and short bullet points, fielded some push and a lot of handwaving - there's only so many ways to refine something so fundamental and straightforward and that elusive final draft of my Earth Centrist perspective summary, is just around the corner, as they say.

I have been taking the discussion online at CFI Forum (Center for Inquiry) a small discussion board and have been receiving interesting feedback and pushback. I'm also participating in a college philosophy club. Then, this past July I wrote up a dialogue with a short book, Buddha Science, by Daut.

It made for a nice contrast to dealing with Don Hoffman's ideas, in that I agree with much that Daut wrote, but I do come at it from a very different evolutionary biological bottom up perspective and I enjoyed this excuse to review and try to enunciate my Earth Centrist concept in a more constructive atmosphere.

Science has learned a great deal about Evolution, our animal biology, and also consciousness across the entire animal kingdom. Philosophers and the general public would do good to lay to rest old brainteasers and to catch up on the significance of current scientific biological evolutionary breakthroughs.

This Earth Centrist writing project has been dedicated to people who appreciate nature and evolution and scientific understanding about how evolution weaves us together with all other living beings on this planet.

Which includes a deep appreciation for how our body/brain produces consciousness, as in, the inside reflection of our body communicating with itself (see Dr.Solms) and realizing how that offers keys to better understanding our own endless flesh vs spirit conflicts.

I'm looking to connect with people for whom a notion such as "Appreciating the Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide" makes sense and who are unfazed by recognizing themselves as evolved biological thinking creatures, products of Earth's processes. People, who glory in the Pageant of Evolution that created our body and love learning from serious scientific efforts.

These aren't irrelevant trifles, they are keys to a more straightforward understanding of those dogged questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Why doesn't my body do what I tell it to?