General Organization
This database is organized as two major sections: Sources and Ideas. Sources are linked to Ideas and vice versa. Web pages are designed to fit screens with 1.7777 width to height ratio (e.g. 1600px x 900px). Ideas are presented in no rational order. Minds don't think that way. They jump for one thought to another; writing is painful to most because it demands sustained logical order of thought. This site mimics the mind and presents no rational order, jumping for one idea to another. Sources are listed in the table below in order of their items of their arrangement in tables accessed in the last column of this web page.
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| Source | Description | No. |
| Journal | my journal entries, coded "yyyymmdd" | 595 |
| Poems | my poems, aphorisms, essays | 102 |
| Sages | quotes of Sages of the Ages | 97 |
| Letters | my letters, emails, internet comments | 67 |
| References | (only cited in other Sources) | 30 |
| Calculations | my calculations | 17 |
| Biography | incomplete notes for my biography | 13 |
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| Ideas | Philosophical ideas dealing with God, Death, Morality, Betterment and other spiritual concepts. Political ideas dealing with Law, Government, Morality and other human-interactions (see table at right for idea categories and links to their descriptions and linked sources) | 20 |
All sources are linked to associated ideas and vice versa. Every link has its opposite. If a journal page is linked an idea, a cross-reference link to that journal page is at the top of the idea page. I tried to mimic in HTML a Microsoft OneNote Database of similar sources and ideas. I think I did a pretty good job.
These ideas are from the mind of a typical human: old, god-loving, atheist, geologist, philosopher, registered sex offender, registered voter, among many others. I experience life as all people. I often use ideas, concepts, consciousness, awareness, common understanding, humanity among others as synonyms for what distinguishes us from other mammals, i.e. able to read this page and attribute shared meaning to it; able to drive a car; able to count to 10; and other abstractions or generalizations (i.e. reductionism).
Ideas are products of the human mind or imagination. Some say categories of nature are guided by logic, others say guided by God or the gods; I prefer random chance. Whatever the case, ideas live in the what I call the "other" world. This world includes language and its handmaiden mathematics and its handmaiden logic (or is it the other way around?). God also lives in the other world, the world beyond the senses, the world of mind, the world of human imagination. It includes morality, science, love, hate, selfishness, virtue, knowledge, vanity and others poets and philosophers have tried unsuccessfully to define since before writing began.
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Idea Categories
Ideas and concepts are synonyms on this website, recognizing tomes have been written on the differences. Concept is mostly used on this site. Ideas are divided into 20 categories (listed alphabetically in the table at right). I was able to classify all ideas expressed in the sources into the named categories. Therefore these categories represent the whole panalopy of human thought, at least mine. I am sure there are other more worthy classifications of ideas. This classification evolved as the database developed. The footnote gives a feel for development of the 20 concepts or ideas. Ideas could be reduced to Mortality, Morality, Meaning (God's 3M's) or even one: Thought (i.e. Epistemology)
Some categories had many associated sources, others few. Categories with less than 20 links were shoehorned into the nearest conceptual category(ies). I ended up with the original subcategories of Politics (e.g. Human Rights, Law, and Science). The table below shows the original categories in italics; red shows 20 survivors. All sources were linked to 42 original sub-subcategories before merging. Many links in journal entries preserve original catergory names (too many to change). This classification is arbitrary as are all classifications.
| Philosophy |
| Mortality (renamed Death) |
(Death merged with Death) (Heaven, Hell, Salvation merged with Morality) |
| Morality |
Acceptance, Betterment, Compassion, Desire, (Sin, Sexual Pleasure, Source of Morality merged with Morality) |
| Meaning (renamed Teleology) |
(Duty merged partly with Morality, partly with Law), Happiness, Purpose (renamed Teleology) |
| Epistemology |
Appearance and Reality (Idea of God merged with Idea of "Other") Idea of "Other", Idea of Time, Language, Human Nature, Senses, Souls, Thought Process (named Epistemology) |
| Politics |
| Humanism (renamed Human Rights) |
(Equality, Freedom and Security, Gender Rights, Racial Rights merged with Human Rights) |
| Instruments of Power (deleted) |
(Commerce, Duty, Education, Electronics merged with Law-Government-Commerce), (Hypocrisy merged with Morality), (Money merged with Law), (Music merged with Happiness), (Partisanship merged with Law), War |
| Law (renamed LawGovernmentCommerce) |
(Pensions, Random Selection, Sources of Authority merged with Law-Government-Commerce) |
| Science |
(Climate Change, Dinosaur Extinction, Energy, Origins, Population Control, Stratigraphic Boundaries merged with Science) |
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footnote: I formed a new category each time a source didn't fit in an old, already formed resulting in 42 sub-subtcategories of ideas. These 42 categories were classified by overiding categories of Philosophy or Politics (italics in table above). For example Morality experienced several changes during development. It started as two separate Medical Morality (subcategory of "Philosophy: Morality") and Civil Morality (subcategory of Politics: Humanism). I transferred Medical Morality and Civil Morality to subcategories under Politics and created a new category Source of Morality under Philosophy. I noticed many categories of Politics were used as instruments of power, so I created an "Instruments of Power" category under Politics and assigned the two morality categories to it. After completing classification of all 42 sources categories with concepts, I noticed Source of Morality and Medical Morality had less than 20 entries (my criteria for merging with another category). I merged them with Civil Morality and changed the name to Morality. I eliminated "Instruments of Power" as a subcategory, merging most entries into Law, Morality, or War. I dropped distinction between Philosophy and Politics.
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Sources linked to Ideas
Poems column includes Aphorisms; Letters column includes Emails and Internet Comments. Numbers are subject to change and were counted 20200808; ratios will not change much. Click Ideas (left-hand blue column) for description, click Total (right-hand blue column) for linked sources. |
| Source Documents |
| Ideas | Journal | Poems | Sages | Letters | Calcs | Bio | Total |
| Acceptance | 20 | 15 | 22 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 59 |
| Appearance and Reality | 49 | 18 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 77 |
| Betterment | 14 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 27 |
| Compassion | 22 | 11 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 38 |
| Death | 48 | 13 | 5 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 75 |
| Desire | 14 | 18 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 41 |
| Epistemology | 123 | 13 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 143 |
| Happiness | 25 | 23 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 59 |
| Human Nature | 33 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 46 |
| Human Rights | 36 | 0 | 8 | 15 | 1 | 0 | 60 |
| Idea of "Other" | 83 | 29 | 11 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 133 |
| Idea of Time | 31 | 9 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 43 |
| Language | 56 | 9 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 70 |
| Law-Government-Commerce | 68 | 5 | 19 | 11 | 2 | 3 | 108 |
| Morality | 136 | 25 | 37 | 20 | 4 | 1 | 223 |
| Science | 66 | 4 | 2 | 13 | 5 | 1 | 91 |
| Senses | 63 | 16 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 82 |
| Soul, Self, Consciousness | 112 | 21 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 139 |
| Teleology | 26 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 37 |
| War | 21 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 35 |
| Total | 1046 | 253 | 153 | 108 | 17 | 9 | 1586 |
These categories are not a systematic logical review nor a polemic but an impression of life lived. I remain confused about the "Big Questions" of why life?, why death?, why God or gods? why morality? why humanity? The left column provides links to my often conflicting detailed thoughts and feelings for each of the categories. Arrows on the links give a synopsis of my thoughts across categories. To summarize my take on life in general:
Thank the fates (random chance) for life rather than curse them for death or failure to make the world "right". The spirit world does not exist; it's a product of the human imagination. We are the center of the universe confirmed by the expanding universe and special relativity. We are the whole conscious universe; you are, I am, everybody is and never the twain shall meet. We communicate about the spirit world and "get at" reality by language, including math, which attempts to bridge the gap between understanding in your universe, mine or another's: the twain that shall never meet. Right NOW, this instant is eternity to humans. Everlasting life is awareness that the universe has a beginning and an end, i.e. consciousness of time longer than life. Awareness of suffering and impending death underlie much of the spirit world, including math and morality.
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