Section Groups Of Living Things Interact Within Ecosystems: Fill & Download for Free

The ability to follow a map that defines our existence is a great concept. When one looks at planet earth, we are forced to deal with the idea that we are a perhaps such an incredible story is a unique one. We don’t want to be alone in the universe, but it might indeed be the reality we face.The Map of LifeSo how is it that life is so incredibly different and yet so closely tied to one another? The answer is in diffusion. We all began as single-celled organisms that went through chemical changes and caused the rise of certain gasses in our atmosphere. Imagine a step-ladder that suddenly loses a small series of steps and is replaced by a slightly different set of steps. That’s how organic biology explains our differences.DNA gets damaged and the missing section is patched up with a perfect copy - but sometimes a different group of nucleotides fills in, giving us such diversity. Of all the mutations of DNA, the most important is the most simple. You have to be multi-cellular. Perhaps the biggest change was in the ability to make and sustain energy.Two-Billion years ago photosynthesis happened. It was actually a mutation. The first bug was called Psiano-Bacteria, which turns green. It is vital in recycling nutrients such as the fixation of nitrogen and putrefaction. In the hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, bacteria provide the nutrients needed to sustain life by converting dissolved compounds – such as hydrogen-sulphide and methane, to energy. It seems almost improbable - but indeed everything happened in a precise manner.Once bacteria could replicate and recreate copies of itself – and copies of its mutations, bacteria was able to break free. When copies are made, it releases a bi-product we know today as oxygen. This happens to be a poison to most life. The creatures that survived were able to make the most of the oxygen and they could burn and evolve more rapidly. Single-celled organisms clustered together and different cells grew to be specialized and organs were being developed. Meanwhile, the chemistry of the planet was changing.Even the trees tell us how close we are genetically. The method in which we break down sugars is identical. That is because the instructions for breaking down sugars is so basic, it is universal in ALL living things. For three and half billion years, changes in the molecular structures of living things have changed and evolved. Our genetic differences provides the mechanism for our ongoing creation, evolution. With millions of living things on this earth, many of which haven’t even been identified! Evolution created clever ways to survive. Camouflage, changes in physical shape, vision, hearing, etc…But it is the rise of the mammals that bring humanity into existence. Somewhere around 250-Million years ago, small mammal like animals were burrowing into the ground and nocturnally hunting while their number one competition for food, the reptiles saved energy in the cool of the night. Their sight was poor given the fact they didn't need to see great distances, but their olafactory senses were very sharp. We know this because we have seen the sinus cavities of the early mammals and they represented a huge break from their previous ancestors- the fish.After a period of several dozen million years, the dinosaurs began to really outnumber everything and the mammals looked like they would be reduced to second existence. That would all change one day in the Yucatan when a meteor struck the penisula 65-million years ago.650-Million Years ago single celled organisms lived just beneath the waters surface. Exposed to gamma-ray bursts the cellular organisms mutated and organisms went from one cell to multiple cells, and the more cells led to greater specilization. Soon the cell for breathing stood on its own. This followed by an appatus with which to digest food more effeciently and derive more nutrients out of them. This specialization continued for 150-Million more years.And then - 500 Million years ago a tiny worm-like creature split from the rapidly changing multi-cellular organisms and provided an indo-skeletal build. This was the beginning of the humanity. A backbone and jaw came from early fish; Lungs came from amphibians; reptiles gave water-tight skin, and early mammals donated a bigger brain, sharper senses and the manner in which they are born. The hands and color vision came from fruit eating primates and larger brain and greater intelligence came from the first humans.The force of that specific detruction killed off almost every living beast, with the exception of smaller animals and a few reptiles that managed to survive below the surfact.Many people aren’t exactly comfortable with the acutely intricate manner in which evolution works. We naturally want to assign a being greater than ourselves to help explain the mysteries of biological and genetic creation. But it needn’t be this way. It’s perfectly acceptable to look at creation and evolution as something so complex and vast that only God could do it! Both beliefs can be simultaneous.What Determines Life?Look around you....Everything you see around you has a common origin. Everywhere we look in the universe we see the same things following the same rules. The entire universe is made up of chemicals that appear in different proportions. These chemicals become living organisms and it is a biological miracle that we are connected to everything in the universe.How can life be so seemingly random? Are there other worlds like our own just waiting to be discovered? When we peer out into the skies, we see trillions of stars and one profound question --- Is there life out there, somewhere? We have already discovered more than 700 planets in the heavens. But of all these exo-planets, none are like ours. We are the rarity amongst the heavens. While there could be millions of these exo-planets in the universe, none has the proper distance and rotation to sustain life. andAfter the Big-Bang, the universe is little more than a vast cloud of hydrogen gas. Soon, the stuff of the universe gets compacted into stars. Deep inside the cores of these early stars hydrogen is compressed and fused into other elements. So powerful were these fusions that helium was created and a burst of energy was the result. Even the atoms in each of us come from these fusions of chemically rich star-dust matters that make us the product from multiple interstellar explosions.Blasted through space, these now complex atoms pepper the galaxies with all of the things within each of us, and in each and every living thing that has ever existed on the planet. One particular cloud compressed into its own ball of gas, and that would become our sun.One can imagine that the earth in this state of existence would be a formidable place. While everything was beginning to have a more uniform look to it, there was a unique event occurring just beneath us.Life is separated from rocks in three distinct ways. The first is in the metabolizing of energy. A system of chemical reactions that create energy are essential. The second is in its protective nature or outer shell and the third is in the genetic blueprint to recreate. The plans to make more power sources are the key instructions of our living beings.DNA is the metabolizing plan. It is our unique blueprint, made of extremely diverse traits. The DNA creates what we know as a Lipids, a protective shell around the DNA. It is a long molecule built up from smaller units called nucleotides. And within this is the creative ability to reproduce. And there you have it – the very fist basic form of life is created in the first cell. It is an amazingly simple chemical reaction. There are twenty amino acids, a few nucleotides for making DNA and RNA, and a few lipids.Until the 1950s, the belief was that all living things came from a biological reaction. After all, this was life. But chemist Stanley Miller produced an experiment that showed that these reactions were not just biological in nature. He took water and volcanic gasses and other organic materials and added an electrical spark- lightening. The result was a foul-smelling liquid that had the chemicals needed for life. The lighting caused a chemical reaction that produced ‘Amino Acids.’’ This was a major breakthrough that began to separate Theology from Science.If the theory was correct, the question arose as to whether these molecules might still exist in space, before the earth was created. Then, in the 1960s, a meteorite landed in Australia. It was a stunning event. The rock had that distinctive smell that the creation in the lab had produced. But a careful examination showed that the building blocks of life were very much a part of this ancient reaction. There were amino acids, fatty molecules, and incredibly, there were the basics of DNA. And – these building blocks were found everywhere.While having these building blocks is important, they still need to be put together.Over 4-billion years ago the young earth was not a good place to live. Utterly inhospitable for life, the planet was a chemical soup of poisonous materials. It did have its land and oceans. The newly formed moon loomed much larger in the sky than it does now, causing huge tides. With volcanic gasses and extreme temperature swings, and rock-pools of steamy water. Each time the waters receded it heated and evaporated. The concentrated form of molecules were forced to interact wit one another.In these rock-pools, Lipid molecules were floating free. But compressed in a rock-pool these fatty molecules stuck to one another to form membranes which would become a proto-cell. As the pools evaporated, the fatty molecules formed a protective barrier around the other building blocks for life, proteins necessary for life. The environment concentrated the molecules but they didn’t account for Ultraviolet rays form the sun.This intense radiation would have destroyed any DNA that evolved form these rock pools. It seems like they needed to form in a place where UV rays couldn’t break down the protective walls that the single-cellular organisms had built. There was just no way in which these things could survive in these circumstances. And yet, it was a unique manner in which evolution defined energy. The way we use energy is what drives complexity in human life.Deep under the sea are these hydrothermal vents. When we examined them in the 1990s, we were shocked to see that there was ecosystems of life – far beneath the sea and more bizarre than anything we had ever seen. Here is a world of non-stop volcanism that is a reminder of how inhospitable our planet once was.The moon was much larger in the skies than it is today. In fact, almost 1/5th of the evening skies were covered by the lunar satellite. The moon is in-fact moving away form the earth even today. The tides were radical and the temperature was much hotter due to the vast amount of radiation still on the planet. If we take into account the development of life on the earth, we must take into account how desperately void of life the planet actually had.PanspermiaPanspermia is the idea that life began somewhere else and was delivered here via space rocks. It is a hypothesis that seems to offer a plausible answer for many things. Are the origins of life as universal throughout the universe as it might seem? Do the laws of chemical reactions and physics apply everywhere in space?The theory states that a game of cosmic pinball 4.7B years ago and a hail of giant asteroids hit the planet. It was a cataclysmic event. But the earth wasn’t the only planet in the firing zone. With an evolutionary head-start, Mars could have been home to hearty bacteria inside the rocks. These organisms are pre-packaged and ready to fly.Bacteria is amazingly hearty in space. Spores are formed when there is a reaction. They seal themselves up to protect themselves and allows bacteria to stay dormant for an amazing amount of time. We have seen them from 250-million years ago. While this is a great theory, it doesn’t actually answer how life began. Whether we arrived from space or arose from the earth itself, it had to face almost total oblivion before it could become you and me.Today we have a dazzling array of life. Every living thing on earth can trace itself back to one cell. Although it can be hard to fathom, humans share 50% of our DNA with a Grapefruit. DNA is a huge amount of informational connections. DNA can change, and these mutations give us change. The ladder of DNA is the operating system of life and tells cells how to replicate.Far beneath the oceans, single-celled organisms became multi-cellular. Mountains of living bacteria, called stromatolites, began to use the power of sunlight to turn the energy into glucose. Called photosynthesis, the stromotalites slowly fill the water with oxygen. This mix forms rust which falls to the ocean floor and becomes rich iron and iron ore. Transforming Carbon Dioxide and water would release a bi-product poisonous to the planet. Interestingly, we know it today as oxygen, and it makes up 21% of our current atmosphere.Over the next two billion years, the newly formed water and the laws of physics began to slow down the earths rotation. Oxygen levels began to rise. The day was now sixteen hours long. 1.5 Billion years ago, there still was no complex life. The earth was broken into vast plates that push and pull the plates around he globe. The earth was slowly changing, a vast quiet in the middle of space.Heat from the core of our earth rose through the mantle and disrupted the continents. Volcanoes erupted throughout the earth. The crust of the earth was ripping from its ocean floor. There was as many as three thousand volcanoes throughout the planet, all of them erupting at the same time. Spewing gasses and smoke throughout the earths atmosphere, the skies soon became dark.Carbon Dioxide and water mixed to form acid rain, which was deposited in the rocks of earth. The cooling of the earth only took two thousand ears, but it soon dropped to -50F. The water turned into walls of ice, spreading away from the poles but then to the equator. The more ice that was made, the greater the reflection of the sunlight back into space, and the colder the earth had become. It was a cyclical journey that was smothered with ice.With billions of tons of carbon dioxide there was nothing to absorb the gas, so its excess was belched into the atmosphere. After fifteen-million years the ice began melt and released heat. Then a series of chemical reactions occurred, trapping the oxygen within the ice. This chemical would be known as hydrogen peroxide.Oxygen removed methane from the atmosphere - but the result was a rapid cool-down of the earth. The cooling was so rapid that ice began to develop o the surface. It spread quickly and soon the planet was covered in a huge layer of ice and permafrost It eventually become a huge snowball that would last 200-Million years. Then, in our next step on the critical journey of life, volcanoes began to spew greenhouse gasses which slowly warmed the earth, melted the snowballs, and rapidly exploded life here on earth. We exist because we learned how to use oxygen and metabolize energy. Imagine the incredible odds that life faced in its early development.There are three basic processes of our present day existence. The first one is the creation of life, the second is the rise of complex life, and the third is the rise of intelligent life. The stage for simple life is abundant throughout the universe. But beyond this, the recipe calls for an oxygen-rich world. Mars is known to have manganese oxides – a fundamental block for human life. When it reacts with oxygen, it develops a ‘’rock-varnish’’ or a coating on the surface of the rock. They exist all over the earth, and now it seems as if we have found the same rock on Mars.Ultraviolet waves began to cook DNA with a force a thousand times stronger than it is today. This intense radiation would have destroyed life as it began to form. It seems as if the beginnings of life had to form in the shade. The cauldron of our early years as a planet would have prohibited the development of life as we would come to know it.Our closest planet has a similar chemical composition to our earth. It was stand to reason that if two planets in the same solar system have the ‘’star-stuff’’ and the building blocks so predictably beautiful, then the odds that we are alone might not be so far off. But the idea that there is intelligent life is another matter altogether.The earth, 450 million years ago, was an ocean paradise and a nursery for tens of thousands of strange living organisms. The planet was well on its way to becoming a full zoo of living animals. But throughout the earth's history, catastrophic events have challenged the life as we would come to know it. We are just beginning to understand what a vulnerable planet we have and how great the odds are against life on our earth is today. Mass extinctions are a part of our past and probably a part of our future. Who lives, and who dies, are all questions that demand answers.Robert Bluestein

Well for starters, Diffusion has a lot more provable aspects about it than Spontaneous Generation. Consider this, a chapter from my book, which explains the Big-Bang, the development of the elements, and the improbable set of circumstances that had to happen fro us to be here today. I hope you find this an easy to read expansion that has much supporting evidence and that it helps to answer your inquisitive and thoughtful question!!!!This is Chapter One from my book, ‘’The Undocumented Professor: A Perspective in Time”What Darwin Dreamed Of…..Charles Darwin wrote that the animals most likely to survive an ‘’Extinction Event will not be the strongest or the most intelligent, but the one most adaptive change.’’ His work, ‘’The Origin of Species’’ was truly a revolutionary book. It came at a time in history when the age of exploration and discovery was taking off. Colonial Europe was feeding the masses with stories of exotic terrains and curious animals. More and more evidence of early man began to appear. Darwin challenged the conventional idea that God made every species perfect in its creation. It was clear to him that species were and are still made, imperfectly. Darwin opened up a Pandora's box of questions. With his vastly imaginative mind, he was able to put life on earth into a perspective never even seen before. The improbable manner in which life appeared on this planet was just now being considered. We are here because we defied the odds, and an endless linear series of events that HAD to happen, and in the order it happened, all the way until this very day. The odds are completely insurmountable.Me With my First Edition of Darwin’s ‘’Origin of Species’’After touring the Galapagos Islands, Darwin noticed something about Finches that were curiosities to him. They all had different beaks and lived in different environments. Darwin wondered just how this could happen with one species of bird. And then he uncovered one of the great secrets that heretofore were unknown. If the only food source on an island were hard and tough ground nuts, the finches grew short, sturdy beaks. If the only food source on an island is in the nectar of flowers, the finches grew long and graceful beaks. Darwin noticed these changes and put together his idea of Natural Selection.The molecular machine called DNA ties all living things together. Think of it as our Biological Scripture or Bar-Code. And within each strand of DNA, is 100-Billion Atoms within. We are, each of us, a universe onto ourselves. The DNA is copied with extreme care. The birth of a new DNA molecule begins when an unwinding protein breaks apart the double helix. The rungs are broken apart and the molecular letters are separated. When a DNA strand breaks, the four basic building blocks, the letters of life are freed from their captivity, only to reproduce an identical new strand of DNA.The DNA is copied but it doesn’t always go as planned. Sometimes, mutations occur. With each mutation, we have to adaptive or we die. A small random change in genetic construction can sometimes mean the difference between color of skin and fur, wings to arms, arms to hands, life and death. The environment that Darwin presented was that Selection is natural (hence Natural Selection) and that species are both limited and freed by this.‘’ This theory is also strengthened by some few other facts in regards to in states; as by that comment case of closely allied, but distinct species when inhabiting distant parts of the world, and living under considerably different conditions of life while often retaining nearly the same instincts.For instance, we can understand, on the principle of inheritance, how it is that the thrush of tropical South America lines up its nest with mud, in the same peculiar manner as those are British thrush; how odd is that the hornbills of Africa and India have the same extraordinary instincts of plastering up and imprisoning the females in a hole in the tree with only a small hole left in the plaster through which the males feed them and the young one hatch: how it is the male Wrens of North America build cock-nests to roost in like the males of our kitty-wrens ---- a habit unlike that of any known bird. Finally it may not be a logical deduction, but not to my imagination it is far more satisfactory to look at such instances young cuckoo rejecting his foster brothers, ants making slaves of other ants and subsequently making them sterile, the larvae of ichneumonidae – feeding them with the live bodies of caterpilars--not as especially endowed are created insincts, but a small consequences of one general law leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely that they multiply, vary, and let the strongest live and let the weakest die.’’Biology, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy and Cosmology are only a few of the sciences that we have to understand in order to get to the very topic of life itself. Darwin did so much with so little science that had he known now what he did not know then, it is hard to imagine what he could have accomplished.Darwin Answers His Critics on Natural Selection‘’The Origin of Species’’So how is it that life is so incredibly different and yet so closely tied to one another? The answer is in diffusion. We all began as single-celled organisms that went through chemical changes and caused the rise of certain gasses in our atmosphere. Imagine a step-ladder that suddenly loses a small series of steps and is replaced by a slightly different set of steps. That’s how organic biology explains our differences.DNA gets damaged and the missing section is patched up with a perfect copy- but sometimes a different group of nucleotides fills in, giving us such diversity. Of all the mutations of DNA, the most important is the most simple. You have to be multi-cellular. Perhaps the biggest change was in the ability to make and sustain energy.Two-Billion years ago photosynthesis happened. It was actually a mutation. The first bug was called Psiano-Bacteria, which turns green. It is vital in recycling nutrients such as the fixation of nitrogen and putrefaction. In the hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, bacteria provide the nutrients needed to sustain life by converting dissolved compounds – such as hydrogen-sulphide and methane, to energy. It seems almost improbable - but indeed everything happened in a precise manner.Once bacteria could replicate and recreate copies of itself – and copies of its mutations, bacteria was able to break free. When copies are made, it releases a bi-product we know today as oxygen. This happens to be a poison to most life. The creatures that survived were able to make the most of the oxygen and they could burn and evolve more rapidly. Single-celled organisms clustered together and different cells grew to be specialized and organs were being developed. Meanwhile, the chemistry of the planet was changing.Even the trees tell us how close we are genetically. The method in which we break down sugars is identical. That is because the instructions for breaking down sugars is so basic, it is universal in ALL living things. For three and half billion years, changes in the molecular structures of living things have changed and evolved. Our genetic differences provides the mechanism for our ongoing creation, evolution. With millions of living things on this earth, many of which haven’t even been identified! Evolution created clever ways to survive. Camouflage, changes in physical shape, vision, hearing, etc…But it is the rise of the mammals that bring humanity into existence. Somewhere around 250-Million years ago, small mammal like animals were burrowing into the ground and nocturnally hunting while their number one competition for food, the reptiles saved energy in the cool of the night. Their sight was poor given the fact they didn't need to see great distances, but their olafactory senses were very sharp. We know this because we have seen the sinus cavities of the early mammals and they represented a huge break from their previous ancestors- the fish.After a period of several dozen million years, the dinosaurs began to really outnumber everything and the mammals looked like they would be reduced to second existence. That would all change one day in the Yucatan when a meteor struck the penisula 65-million years ago.650-Million Years ago single celled organisms lived just beneath the waters surface. Exposed to gamma-ray bursts the cellular organisms mutated and organisms went from one cell to multiple cells, and the more cells led to greater specilization. Soon the cell for breathing stood on its own. This followed by an appatus with which to digest food more effeciently and derive more nutrients out of them. This specialization continued for 150-Million more years.And then - 500 Million years ago a tiny worm-like creature split from the rapidly changing multi-cellular organisms and provided an indo-skeletal build. This was the beginning of the humanity. A backbone and jaw came from early fish; Lungs came from amphibians; reptiles gave water-tight skin, and early mammals donated a bigger brain, sharper senses and the manner in which they are born. The hands and color vision came from fruit eating primates and larger brain and greater intelligence came from the first humans.The force of that detruction killed off almost every living beast, with the exception of smaller animals and a few reptiles that managed to survive below the surfact.Many people aren’t exactly comfortable with the acutely intricate manner in which evolution works. We naturally want to assign a being greater than ourselves to help explain the mysteries of biological and genetic creation. But it needn’t be this way. It’s perfectly acceptable to look at creation and evolution as something so complex and vast that only God could do it! Both beliefs can be simultaneous!Our Life Giving Star - Are We Alone?Everything we know of on this planet was created by the sun. It generated everything that we are made of. Even the atoms in our sun is made up of other star-dust. We live in an age of stars but it will come to an end one day. Hydrogen fusion and gravity are at war with one another. Inside the sun, fusion wants to rip the star apart, and gravity holds it together. It is a delicate power struggle in a dynamic stand-off. Hydrogen atoms naturally repel one another.But when they are smashed into one another at great forces, the hydrogen atoms fuse, and then release a huge amount of energy. Although fusion itself last a fraction of a second, when it is complete, a new atom is created....helium. It will continue for billions of years until finally the element Iron is made. Once iron is made, it signals the death of the star. Iron does not fuse and so all of that energy used to fuse hydrogen is wasted. All of the Hydrogen is burned out and there is nothing left to fuse together.The sun has transformed even during the lifespan of our planet. Born in violence and dying in epic explosions, the building blocks of everything around us begins, and ends with our own sun.In 2004, NASA launched the Spitzer-Space Telescope. It was sent on a journey to look at the inside of the Nebulae through infrared images. Swirling hydrogen gas combined with gravity and then time are the recipe for new stars. Gravity compressed matter and heated it up. It then compresses the hydrogen gas and makes it so dense that the sphere is now accelerating and spinning faster. Hydrogen begins to spew out of the poles. The temperature of the core reach fifteen-million degrees, causing atoms of gas to fuse together, releasing massive amounts of energy. And just like that - a star is born. For the next hundred-million years, the star will shine over the orbital rocks that have been pulled close to it due to gravity.Spitzer sees in infrared. When we see the universe in infrared we pick up heat and temperature. It allows us to see a weather map of extra-terrestial planets. This unique space telescope sees things that we cannot see. The internal heat of the planet allows us to measure the temperature and measure winds on these exoplanets. A small shift in the way the light appears indicates windspeed, and in the case of one of our nearest neighbors, we see that wind speeds can often be in excess of 6000-mph. Spitzer has shown us that in one planet in-particular, our closet neighbor appears to be a nightmarishly hot and windy hell.Almost five billion years ago a newborn star was surrounded by debris and space dust. Gravity caused the smaller rocks to collide with the bigger rocks. Over and over again this cycle was repeated until we had a planet, lifelessly spinning around the sun. 4.54 Billion years ago our planet was an incredible 3000-degrees Fahrenheit. There was carbon dioxide and ammonia in the air. The newborn planet is an incredible boiling ball of burning lava. A young planet called Thea – traveling twenty times faster than a bullet, is heading straight for the earth. The gravity distorted and pulled the earths surface and then, with a glancing blow, completely changed our planet.The sun has an estimated seven billion years of Hydrogen left. As soon as it runs out, the star will expand and its core becomes dangerously unstable. With no hydrogen left to fuse, it now fuses Helium into Carbon and the suns outer layer begins to collapse.The most violent explosion in the unverse takes place. Almost instantly, new elements are born. Gold, Silver, Oxygen, Iron and many others are born and they in turn, give birth to us. Dying stars have given us the amazing gift of life.At the heart of a White Dwarf is a huge core of carbon - densely packed. It is, in effect, the largest diamond, forged due to incredible pressure, high heat and an incredible factory of energy.A blast wave trillions of tons in the works raced into space. The earth was reeling from the impact. But in the incredibly short time of just a thousand years, gravity spun the debris into a ring, and ultimately into our moon. The impact shielded the earth from more heat and it sent the earth spinning so fast that the day was just six hours long and the moon looked four times the size it does now as it began to spin away. It must have been a spectacular sight.The earth is beginning to cool and rock forms are beginning to develop. The geologic timescale is very hard to understand. We live our lives in a measurement called years, or the length of time determined by the amount of times the earth orbits the sun. We are broken down into weeks, days, even minutes and seconds. But in geologic timescale, the years are millions, and even billions.On a clear night, if you are lucky, you can see 3000 stars. With a pair of binoculars you can see another 3000. With even a remedial telescope, you can see tens of thousands of them. Our humble sun is a powerful ball of superheated gas that has dominated the visible skies. Compared to other stars our sun is small. They burn in different colors too. And sometimes they orbit in pairs, around one another.What are the odds? One planet in a tiny corner of space is all that there is for us. We continue to find other planets, but none with our unique atmospheric chemistry. One planet has a huge glowing fire ball of heat coming from within.Just to give you an idea of how improbable our existence is, take into account a planet called WOS-12B. This is a huge planet that has an orbit inside of Mercury. This planet roasts inside such an orbit and it is so hot that it absorbs light. The temperature of this planet is scorching. Deep inside, a mixture of Titanium Oxide erupts form its core. It is so seemingly close to its parent star that it is 40% more massive than Jupiter and gravity keeps it close to the parent star. Planets of this size are almost never inside such a tight orbit.This is one of the most violent environments we have encountered, and yet it is ripping apart. Here we stand, on the cosmic shores of a huge ocean, and we are left with an inhospitable landscape unfit for life. But we are left with questions....These planetary roller coasters, orphans, and travelers through the lonesome emptiness of space only serve to isolate ourselves.WOS-12B is not alone. Many planets this size, battered by supersonic winds and hotter than anything we have ever seen, are prolific in the universe. Other gas giants will ride the vast sea of darkness. These rogue planets are all gas giants thus far. Very few like us have been discovered as of yet.Another alien world, a small rock-like planet called Quoro-7B, are potential homes for life. But instead, we find more weird and nightmarish planets. Disappointed, we continue to search for life. This planet is two-hell's in one. Its surface is a liquid furnace at 4700 degrees. Lava vaporizes the atmosphere and when cooler air comes in, it began to rain fire from the side. The locked planet has one side facing the sun and one side facing the darkness all the time. This planet is the remains of a gas giant.The heavens were nothing more than Hydrogen gas, spinning and turning until they became stars. Half-a-Billion years after the Big Bang, Hydrogen atoms were moving so rapidly that they collided. And when they collided, they became Helium Atoms. The collisions were rapidly changing the molecular structure of atoms until they became Argon. And Argon’s atoms began to collide so much and with such great speed that the next element was born, Krypton.Bursts of energy ultimately created Carbon, Nitrogen and Calcium. But these stars pay an enormous price – they explode and spew star-dust blasting through space. Sometimes the star dust swirls around another body that has a strong gravitational pull. Over hundreds of millions of years, the swirling matter and debris is sucked into the spinning sphere. If you can imagine this, then you have just imagined the creation of the earth. Whether by design or luck, or a combination thereof, the earth faced insurmountable odds in the vacuum of space.Once earth is created, it is a lifeless, spinning rock. It’s pretty much the way you imagined the moon may years ago. But over time, volcanoes began to erupt as continents crashed into one another. Spewing toxins into the atmosphere, these volcanoes changed temperatures and drenched the planet with the chemicals of life.Megastorms were common. With the moon so close to the earth, huge tidal waves would the norm. But through the lightening and thunder, water is created. Life-giving liquid would form in small pools. But the earth was still blazing hot and the atmosphere was toxic.The planet then entered a new and violent phase, 3.8 Billion Years ago. Meteors began to rain down on the planet. Carrying minerals and amino acids, they exploded into our atmosphere and mixed with the chemicals already here and formed a chemical soup. This chemical soup is the basis for all life on this planet.We live in the Interstellar Golden Age. At no other time in the geologic timescale is so good for human life. We live in an age when the beautiful stars illuminate the night sky. Long dead stars created the planets. What are the odds? Everything that is created comes from the belly of a dying star. This is a brief blink of an eye that we happen to live in. Life everywhere is a reminder that this is the ideal time to be alive. The seasons of interstellar evolution are changing and we are in the middle part of summer now. Soon, fall will be upon us, and then, winter.All of these things are the premise of the great question - What are the odds that the impossible would not only be possible, but that we would floursih too? What are the odds?Human Beings and TimeAnd then we come up against the issue of time. Darwin didn't have the influence of an Einstein to help him, but if he did, he would have realized one of the key things that separate man from the animals. This is the ability to define time. Our brains are able to take snapshots of events, but time is a dimension that really has no limitation. All of time already exists up to now. In Einstein's description of time - all of the events are already laid out. We experience life's events uniquely from one another based on our own observation. Our own experiences are angled specifically for you.Space and time are snapshots of our individual experiences. Time never stops, but our brains can only determine the present. If all of time were to happen at once, couldn't we manipulate time and change our past? Past, Present and Future are the result of what our brains process as NOW. The present is the most recent information and the past is what we have experienced. Historians use trends in history to determine the present.In the natural world, the challenges are more severe. Natural selection is the computation of the present in order to survive. Even the most intelligent animals have a rudimentary idea of time. But in order to evolve, our brains had to gain the perception of the Present and the Future in order to organize time so that we could plan, predict, and execute the act of hunting. And this is a key for survival.The possibilities of time and destiny are astounding. Let's suppose that you want to have a cup of tea before you go to sleep. Nothing you can do during the moment can change what you have done in the past. Certain events earlier in the day cannot have happened any differently, or you wouldn't be having your tea. You may think you have a choice, but you don't. Even though you don't realize it in the present, it is just that it is impossible to do anything that could prevent you from having your cup of tea. The past has to be consistent with the sequences of events that have already taken place. Everything that happens today is a result of the exact sequence of events form our pasts.Consider cooking a fine meal. Good cooks know what spices are needed to make the finished product. If you are going to make a Pumpkin Soup, you KNOW the ingredients you need. You know you need pumpkin, nutmeg, allspice, salt, pepper, chicken broth and cream of wheat. If you put anything else into the soup, you get a bad Pumpkin Soup. In fact, you don't get anything that could be actually called a Pumpkin Soup. The finished product has been made before you even begin, because you KNOW what it will take, and you even understand the processes of preparation. The ability to think in abstracts such as time is unique to the human species, So, can knowing the future change the past?The direction of time itself is a mystery. But everything we observe points to time only having one direction - forward. The past is but a moment which has become a snapshot in our memory. But if time IS a dimension like Einstein says, then the past still exists - somewhere. It remain out of reach for us now, but perhaps our brains will evolve into something that allows us to see in three and perhaps four dimensions. Perhaps there are more species of humans still yet to appear. Imagine if they will have much higher capabilities of understanding time.The next species will do what it can to survive, unlike modern humans, who seem to want to do what it takes to destroy itself. What takes place in our past becomes imprinted somewhere, and one day we may learn to weave the past and present and future together and actually positively change for the better. This is to indicate that all of life is still evolving, still adapting, still growing.What Determines Life?Look around you....Everything you see around you has a common origin. Everywhere we look in the universe we see the same things following the same rules. The entire universe is made up of chemicals that appear in different proportions. These chemicals become living organisms and it is a biological miracle that we are connected to everything in the universe.How can life be so seemingly random? Are there other worlds like our own just waiting to be discovered? When we peer out into the skies, we see trillions of stars and one profound question --- Is there life out there, somewhere? We have already discovered more than 700 planets in the heavens. But of all these exo-planets, none are like ours. We are the rarity amongst the heavens. While there could be millions of these exo-planets in the universe, none has the proper distance and rotation to sustain life. andAfter the Big-Bang, the universe is little more than a vast cloud of hydrogen gas. Soon, the stuff of the universe gets compacted into stars. Deep inside the cores of these early stars hydrogen is compressed and fused into other elements. So powerful were these fusions that helium was created and a burst of energy was the result. Even the atoms in each of us come from these fusions of chemically rich star-dust matters that make us the product from multiple interstellar explosions.Blasted through space, these now complex atoms pepper the galaxies with all of the things within each of us, and in each and every living thing that has ever existed on the planet. One particular cloud compressed into its own ball of gas, and that would become our sun.One can imagine that the earth in this state of existence would be a formidable place. While everything was beginning to have a more uniform look to it, there was a unique event occurring just beneath us.Life is separated from rocks in three distinct ways. The first is in the metabolizing of energy. A system of chemical reactions that create energy are essential. The second is in its protective nature or outer shell and the third is in the genetic blueprint to recreate. The plans to make more power sources are the key instructions of our living beings.DNA is the metabolizing plan. It is our unique blueprint, made of extremely diverse traits. The DNA creates what we know as a Lipids, a protective shell around the DNA. It is a long molecule built up from smaller units called nucleotides. And within this is the creative ability to reproduce. And there you have it – the very fist basic form of life is created in the first cell. It is an amazingly simple chemical reaction. There are twenty amino acids, a few nucleotides for making DNA and RNA, and a few lipids.Until the 1950s, the belief was that all living things came from a biological reaction. After all, this was life. But chemist Stanley Miller produced an experiment that showed that these reactions were not just biological in nature. He took water and volcanic gasses and other organic materials and added an electrical spark- lightening. The result was a foul-smelling liquid that had the chemicals needed for life. The lighting caused a chemical reaction that produced ‘Amino Acids.’’ This was a major breakthrough that began to separate Theology from Science.If the theory was correct, the question arose as to whether these molecules might still exist in space, before the earth was created. Then, in the 1960s, a meteorite landed in Australia. It was a stunning event. The rock had that distinctive smell that the creation in the lab had produced. But a careful examination showed that the building blocks of life were very much a part of this ancient reaction. There were amino acids, fatty molecules, and incredibly, there were the basics of DNA. And – these building blocks were found everywhere.While having these building blocks is important, they still need to be put together.Over 4-billion years ago the young earth was not a good place to live. Utterly inhospitable for life, the planet was a chemical soup of poisonous materials. It did have its land and oceans. The newly formed moon loomed much larger in the sky than it does now, causing huge tides. With volcanic gasses and extreme temperature swings, and rock-pools of steamy water. Each time the waters receded it heated and evaporated. The concentrated form of molecules were forced to interact wit one another.In these rock-pools, Lipid molecules were floating free. But compressed in a rock-pool these fatty molecules stuck to one another to form membranes which would become a proto-cell. As the pools evaporated, the fatty molecules formed a protective barrier around the other building blocks for life, proteins necessary for life. The environment concentrated the molecules but they didn’t account for Ultraviolet rays form the sun.This intense radiation would have destroyed any DNA that evolved form these rock pools. It seems like they needed to form in a place where UV rays couldn’t break down the protective walls that the single-cellular organisms had built. There was just no way in which these things could survive in these circumstances. And yet, it was a unique manner in which evolution defined energy. The way we use energy is what drives complexity in human life.Deep under the sea are these hydrothermal vents. When we examined them in the 1990s, we were shocked to see that there was ecosystems of life – far beneath the sea and more bizarre than anything we had ever seen. Here is a world of non-stop volcanism that is a reminder of how inhospitable our planet once was.The moon was much larger in the skies than it is today. In fact, almost 1/5th of the evening skies were covered by the lunar satellite. The moon is in-fact moving away form the earth even today. The tides were radical and the temperature was much hotter due to the vast amount of radiation still on the planet. If we take into account the development of life on the earth, we must take into account how desperately void of life the planet actually had.Panspermia is the idea that life began somewhere else and was delivered here via space rocks. It is a hypothesis that seems to offer a plausible answer for many things. Are the origins of life as universal throughout the universe as it might seem? Do the laws of chemical reactions and physics apply everywhere in space?The theory states that a game of cosmic pinball 4.7B years ago and a hail of giant asteroids hit the planet. It was a cataclysmic event. But the earth wasn’t the only planet in the firing zone. With an evolutionary head-start, Mars could have been home to hearty bacteria inside the rocks. These organisms are pre-packaged and ready to fly.Bacteria is amazingly hearty in space. Spores are formed when there is a reaction. They seal themselves up to protect themselves and allows bacteria to stay dormant for an amazing amount of time. We have seen them from 250-million years ago. While this is a great theory, it doesn’t actually answer how life began. Whether we arrived from space or arose from the earth itself, it had to face almost total oblivion before it could become you and me.Today we have a dazzling array of life. Every living thing on earth can trace itself back to one cell. Although it can be hard to fathom, humans share 50% of our DNA with a Grapefruit. DNA is a huge amount of informational connections. DNA can change, and these mutations give us change. The ladder of DNA is the operating system of life and tells cells how to replicate.Far beneath the oceans, single-celled organisms became multi-cellular. Mountains of living bacteria, called stromatolites, began to use the power of sunlight to turn the energy into glucose. Called photosynthesis, the stromotalites slowly fill the water into oxygen. This mix forms rust which falls to the ocean floor and becomes rich iron and iron ore. Transforming Carbon Dioxide and water would release a bi-product poisonous to the planet. Interestingly, we know it today as oxygen.Over the next two billion years, the newly formed water and the laws of physics began to slow down the earths rotation. Oxygen levels began to rise. The day was now sixteen hours long. 1.5 Billion years ago, there still was no complex life. The earth was broken into vast plates that push and pull the plates around he globe. The earth was slowly changing, a vast quiet in the middle of space.Heat from the core of our earth rose through the mantle and disrupted the continents. Volcanoes erupted throughout the earth. The crust of the earth was ripping from its ocean floor. There was as many as three thousand volcanoes throughout the planet, all of them erupting at the same time. Spewing gasses and smoke throughout the earths atmosphere, the skies soon became dark.Carbon Dioxide and water mixed to form acid rain, which was deposited in the rocks of earth. The cooling of the earth only took two thousand ears, but it soon dropped to -50F. The water turned into walls of ice, spreading away from the poles but then to the equator. The more ice that was made, the greater the reflection of the sunlight back into space, and the colder the earth had become. It was a cyclical journey that was smothered with ice.With billions of tons of carbon dioxide there was nothing to absorb the gas, so its excess was belched into the atmosphere. After fifteen-million years the ice began melt and released heat. Then a series of chemical reactions occurred, trapping the oxygen within the ice. This chemical would be known as hydrogen peroxide.Oxygen removed methane from the atmosphere - but the result was a rapid cool-down of the earth. The cooling was so rapid that ice began to develop o the surface. It spread quickly and soon the planet was covered in a huge layer of ice and permafrost It eventually become a huge snowball that would last 200-Million years. Then, in our next step on the critical journey of life, volcanoes began to spew greenhouse gasses which slowly warmed the earth, melted the snowballs, and rapidly exploded life here on earth. We exist because we learned how to use oxygen and metabolize energy. Imagine the incredible odds that life faced in its early development.There are three basic processes of our present day existence. The first one is the creation of life, the second is the rise of complex life, and the third is the rise of intelligent life. The stage for simple life is abundant throughout the universe. But beyond this, the recipe calls for an oxygen-rich world. Mars is known to have manganese oxides – a fundamental block for human life. When it reacts with oxygen, it develops a ‘’rock-varnish’’ or a coating on the surface of the rock. They exist all over the earth, and now it seems as if we have found the same rock on Mars.Ultraviolet waves began to cook DNA with a force a thousand times stronger than it is today. This intense radiation would have destroyed life as it began to form. It seems as if the beginnings of life had to form in the shade. The cauldron of our early years as a planet would have prohibited the development of life as we would come to know it.Our closest planet has a similar chemical composition to our earth. It was stand to reason that if two planets in the same solar system have the ‘’star-stuff’’ and the building blocks so predictably beautiful, then the odds that we are alone might not be so far off. But the idea that there is intelligent life is another matter altogether.The earth, 450 million years ago, was an ocean paradise and a nursery for tens of thousands of strange living organisms. The planet was well on its way to becoming a full zoo of living animals. But throughout the earth's history, catastrophic events have challenged the life as we would come to know it. We are just beginning to understand what a vulnerable planet we have and how great the odds are against life on our earth is today. Mass extinctions are a part of our past and probably a part of our future. Who lives, and who dies, are all questions that demand answers.So….if you made it this far, then you now have a thorough explanation that hopefully answers your questions!!!!!

We Swedes are paradoxical, and in ways not even our dear brothers and sisters and unspecified in Norway, Denmark, Finland or Iceland can fathom.And of course all this is true only in the same sense as the earth is blue as seen from the moon.Paradox no 1. (Extremely individualistic for the common good)Swedes act for the common good and try to minimize collateral damage to a unique extent. So it might be hard to notice that Swedes are actually extremely individualistic. Like americans, but you would never guess it. This is because where americans are competitive-minded, swedes are cooperative-minded. This is why swedish companies often outperform similar companies from other countries - individual brilliance worked into the cooperative mesh to a common good. (If only we were as astute businessmen as the danish!) See also paradox 10 for another angle into this cooperation thing!One reason swedes want to be alone so much is to get back some of what you give up when cooperating and forming consensuses all day long; to exercise that individuality.Paradox no 2. (To break rules or not to break rules - that’s the question)One trait that not even all swedes understand about themselves and a point where the danish sorely misunderstands us (and jokes about us) is this: We have lots of rules and regulations, yes (but the danes actually have more), and we follow them slavishly (yes) but only as long as we in a mix of individuality and unspoken consensus deem that they make sense, are for the common good or common efficiency, and they are fair. Else we ignore or circumvent them - in silence and when we can get away with it. This is often misunderstood by foreigners as we seem to respect rules and laws in general only as long as we are watched (twofaced bastards!). The truth is that it is only the bad rules that get broken or the rules that don’t fit circumstances: a stop sign where there is no traffic will not be respected. Where there is traffic it will be respected - for the common good. Well knowing this , the traffic authorities will not place stop signs where they are not needed, and so people assume they are there for a reason and almost always respect them(!) A foreigner (or swede) breaking rules for selfish reasons will be frowned upon. Authorities implementing bad or useless rules will also be frowned upon. Thus: a high level of efficiency, and very little corruption - one of many differences to germans whom I have heard are sticklers for rules no matter the circumstances(?)The reason is that we think “why” instead of “whom” all the time. And facts instead of social position. It is ingrained since childhood. When a child splashes around in a puddle of water it doesn’t get an authoritarian “stop that, come here!” as I have witnessed in other countries, but instead gets a reasoned argument: “Stop doing that: If you do that your clothes will get wet and dirty, you will get cold and you will not look your best on the birthday party we are heading for and we have no extra clothing with us. But on the way home you can jump as much as you want and even sit in the puddle!”. Thus we also pay attention to facts and logic more than other nations.Paradox no 3 (Spineless but always bouncing back).As a consequence Swedes abroad being met with a “come here, do that!” or “Stop, don’t do that!” from the boss, the military or some official, is likely to ask “Why?” and start arguing if he or she doesn’t get an answer or thinks it is a stupid answer. I have done it myself. We might at first get intimidated by an authoritarian display (or any really strong display really - be it emotional or contrarian or whatever), especially if it is the first one we ever saw in our grown up life. The swede is likely to back off (“show no spine”), but equally likely to regroup and try to get his or her way anyway; after all - truth and practicality must prevail and there must be some way to reason with them or circumvent them.Swedes can be perceived as a bit missionary in those circumstances; trying to improve “How Things Are Done” since this foreigner or even entire foreign country is obviously a little retarded and need to be reformed.Occupation of a country changes a people fundamentally, is what I have heard from someone whose opinion I sometimes trust. Sweden has been invaded but never conquered. Our mindset reflects this, and reflects over 200 years of peace since our last war. Sometimes we just don’t know how or when to give up and assume victory is a given. At other times we value peace too highly.Paradox no 4 (Hitlers not welcome in this town!)Actually authoritarian people (thinking “whom” instead of “why”) are viewed as more or less insane in sweden, and prone to weird illogical actions to the detriment of all and therefore to be treated with caution and gotten rid of if possible. (No wonder the dynamic duo Don T and Vladdy P scares us.) The swede is likely to vote with his boots and disappear from environments where such insanity prevails. When we do conform to authoritarian or patriarchal structures we do it with a humorous and ironic twist (“do you really take this stuff seriously”). Just watch swedish airplane stewardesses! Not even our king always gets addressed “your majesty” any more. The swedish monarchy can survive only by playing dumb and cute (and useful).The strong personality doesn’t work in Sweden either, even if the press nowadays tries to dumb organizations and parties down to individual leaders (Do young swedes of today really fall for that moronic personality-cult reporting? I think not.). Charismatic leadership doesn’t impress Swedes for similar reasons authoritarian ways does not: we ask “what” instead of “whom”. And if the “what”, is wrong, the “whom” does not matter. Another reason might be the language. Almost anything in english, french or spanish sounds cool, beautiful or well spoken. But translate it into Swedish and it is like puncturing a balloon. Only the real substance remains - and it often does not look impressive. Politicians (and now some Swedish youtubers as well) trying to copy american ways and rhetoric formulas in Swedish are actually quite funny to watch. (The same quality makes Swedish ideal for lyrical and poetic descriptions of nature, by the way - calling forth the true substance of things as it does.)Authority and charisma does exist in Sweden and in swedish companies. Power and money, and to some extent personality can’t be denied of course, but you have to be nice and humble about it and try to reach consensus and explain yourself - explain the “why” and “what” of it - or you won’t get anywhere near the level of cooperation you want. People will quit on you as a last resort unless (and often in spite of if) you pay them really, really well to stand your borish ways.The best company I ever worked for did not have the usual “adult → child” relation between boss and employee that is common even in Sweden, but instead used the “adult→ adult” interaction taught by Tuff | Leadership training. (Actually all of us employees had to go their 2-day course, so I am not affiliated. “Tuff” in swedish means “Tough” and is pronounced similarly.) This probably means I am spoiled for life ;-)Paradox no 5 (The major role of religion in a non-religious country).Swedes are very friendly but hard to get to really know. True, and it is partly the lutheran church’s fault. Not many Swedes will agree with me there because there are many Swedes today that have not even thought about whether there might exist one or more gods or or a life after death, and get embarrassed if someone starts to talk about it- so little place is there for illogical and antiquated religious beliefs nowadays. We die happier because of it: no angst over whether we make it to heaven or not (been there, witnessed that). But cultural traits will survive hundreds of years (even after being transplanted to another continent as have been proven (see Malcolm Gladwell’s books). So fact remains: Luther stole our confidence in ourselves in a storm of fault-finding. This insecurity in combination with long distances between people in this sparsely populated country also led to a greater habit of privacy and a deplorable lack of skill in small talk. The combination breeds distance: insecurity in ourselves as persons (what will he/she think of me instead of what do I think of him/her), lack of conversational skill, and being afraid that the foreigner will either expose our uncertainty or force him- or herself into our company at inopportune times regardless of all the small clues we put out that we don’t want that right now. Thus prolonged contact with other people exhaust many of us.This all might explain the weekend alcoholic intake among young people. Courage and grace in a bottle.Show humility, pretend not to notice awkwardness, don’t push, watch the signs and have patience and you just might get friends in Sweden too!Paradox no 6 (The ice-cold and sensitive people of the far north).Cold, emotionless? No. As part of our lutheran/viking/far between neighbors heritage of self-reliance and work-ethics, we usually don’t put out obvious clues as to how we feel inside. But learn to read the subtle signs and we are as open books. They called tennis pro Björn Borg for ice-Borg in his time, but Swedes watching his games saw the passion and emotion in every line in his face and stance. Google “micro-expressions” and “subtle body-language”! (Besides, we are basically gregarious compared to the Finns.)Paradox no 7. (Rational, and completely illogical)“We swedes have no culture as you do”. Yes, we are truly blind to our uniqueness in the world since we believe it is rationality and common sense, not culture, and that sooner or later all countries will want to progress to our level. We also have as many steps in the cultural dance as the Japanese but so ingrained and sometimes subtle that we are mostly not aware of them. (Like e.g. the 2–4 hour rule of rarely recurring visits to people who are not close friends or close relatives: Don’t overstay in case the hosts get tired (of you), and don’t leave too early since that implies you did not enjoy the visit.)Exactly how unique can be seen in this chart (more on that in the 10th paradox).(Inglehart Welzel graph at www.worldvaluessurvey.org)The cultural dance and our blindness to our culture makes us even more unique and paradoxical. Subconsciously patriotic but not overtly flag waving.Paradox no 8. (Free as a bird - lonely as hell)Since the state (edit: rather the county, since most of our tax payments goes to the local community, in contrast to e.g. the USA) is rather efficient and trustworthy, gives monetary help if absolutely needed to not get poor and homeless, and even takes care of our old and sick relatives (a good thing since research shows that family taking care of the oldest and sickest works to the dissatisfaction of both parties when the old and sick relatives get too old and sick), we don’t have as many dependencies, or need to keep in touch with relatives we don’t have much in common with, don’t have the energy for, or even don’t much like. Individual freedom is maximized. The dark side of the coin is more and more broken social networks over time and loneliness. Many Swedes are lonely.Paradox no 9. (Boring but with a great sense of humour).Directly inspired by a commentConversations and interaction may be a bit guarded (boring) until you get to know and trust each other quite a bit, then magic might happen. Humor might sometimes be used as an icebreaker. The Swedish humor (at its best - let’s not talk about the worst, please) is reminiscent of the best British humor but maybe a bit less infantile and a bit more considerate, since many Swedes are somehow unconsciously sensitive to the risk of collective laughter turning nasty and leading to ostracism or abandonment.Can you joke about anything? Be cautious around people answering “yes”.Late additions (paradoxes 10 to 12 - an even dozen)The paradoxes were valid a couple of decades ago and are still more or less valid. The social democratic party got half of all votes then (53% their best result), since they stood for the most reforms for the common good of all political parties. Since the 80′s, an america-influenced (or perhaps just international upper-class) neo-liberal wave of unimaginable size and duration in combination with conservative cultural influences from abroad has tried to take the Swedish traits out of the Swede and make him or her into an egoistical self serving bastard, with a marked increase in both confusion (e.g. some people pushing their way into buses and subways while others wait their turn) and corruption as a result (although corruption is still relatively low).For those believing Sweden is even marginally socialist, watch “Sweden: lessons for America” on amazon prime (primevideo,com in Sweden) by a seeminly neo-liberal journalist.The last three (more critical in tone) paradoxes, were written 2019 and 2020, and rewritten multiple times which implies they are not as good. Most comments and up-votes until late 2020 pertain to the above material. The last part I should probably mostly kill off (but they are my darlings, so they get to live a little longer!).Paradox no. 10. (Easily embarrassed, but not by a long silence).A gem that I missed, never having lived abroad, so never noticed. It is from a post by mr, Chris Ebbert anwering a question of “weird aura” that Swedes apparently have in some eyes. So:Because we are a society where to be introverted is the norm, and extroverts are the exception. That might be why we e.g. walk away from a restaurant with bad food or service, never to come back, instead of complaining loudly. We might write a bad review on the internet though, if we are thoroughly pissed off! On buses and trains we sit as far apart as possible - a perfect natural defense against the Covid19 virus, except in rush hour!But lately we seem to have imported the extroverted ideal from USA and seen the rise of the Extroverts and of Team/Group work (which Swedes don’t need at all if you have read this far - cooperation is a whole other and voluntary thing than team work). Especially in Sweden there are inherent dangers in this trend: Individualism is threatened.Real productivity, deep learning, intense focus and profound norm breaking creativity and innovation craves a good dose of solitude and freedom to follow your nose! We risk loosing the individuality that sparks profound reform and innovation if we are locked into “teams” and do enforced “group” work while following average practices (sometimes inaccurately called “best practices”) from the cradle to the grave.Group work: Extroverts do the “group” part, introverts do the “work” part, leaders do the “stay conventional” part.The introverted culture is a big reason Sweden has stayed ahead I would say. Extroverts now earn more than introverts, and school is increasingly adapted to the stimulation cravings of extroverts to the point extreme introverts sometimes must take medicine to secure good grades. Herein lies a slippery slope since our innovators and deep thinkers are mostly introverts. Earlier generations premiered intense focus and solitary competitive achievement (which the extroverted benefited from as well, even if somewhat reluctantly at times). To keep up the statistics we have, like many other counties, had to lower criteria for grading.N.B. both extroverted and introverted are of course needed, even attracted to each other, and their strengths complementary and needed. Most species of animals are subdivided into introverted and extroverted individuals, even fruit flies, so it must be important for species survival.For a dose of introversion facts: see Susan Cains TED talk or even better: read the book.Paradox no. 11 (Ultra-conservative ultra-progressives)The next to last paradox - and one of the most puzzling mysteries of Sweden - hereby solved!In Talebs “Skin in the game” we learn that according to renormalization theory (or “most intolerant wins”) roughly a 2–5% evenly spread, vocal and intolerant few will eventually convert everyone else to their intolerance. This is because the majority is more willing to adapt and less willing to fight people in their close vicinity. Thus it is the same in other countries (e.g. compare USA and abortion, Islam and the rise of intolerant sects) only intolerance has another and progressive face in Sweden.Re-normalization works in stages: intolerant individuals convert small groups; intolerant small groups convert larger groups; intolerant larger groups convert individuals, small and large groups etc.The usual consensus in Sweden is based not on tradition and common sense but on modern facts and science put forward by special interest groups and a commission of experts, and often publicly debated. We can appear obsessive (ultra conservative) about always taking an ultra-progressive stance, since why not use the best and most modern, progressive and rational sounding of what the experts put forward (and whom we trust - for the common good, remember). We put our trust in logic, not feelings. Therefore Sweden is often among the first countries to introduce new social concepts and technological ideas on a societal level - to a point where it amounts to obsessive self experimentation on the entire nation. This has been vastly beneficial historically but is dangerous if the experts and politicians are ivory tower theoreticians with no appreciation of systemic effects and tail risks, and no skin in the game - i.e. risk of loosing anything personally (again Taleb - his other books are now on my reading list). Our unconscious nationalism and individualist mindset furthermore makes us look too little outwards and too much inwards. An example:The Covid19 crisis where Sweden went its own arrogant way without caring much about what others do. Remains to be seen if our experts are better than the whole world, which we of course believe.(It also demonstrates the increased neo-liberalism/economism that made the inhabitants of homes for the elderly die first in the pandemic. Probably due to reduced workforces; employees that could not afford to stay at home when sick; and privatized homes of the elderly, having no economic margin or incentive to procure face masks or react quickly.)So Sweden is a cult of the logical, modern, progressive This means in some cases highly vocal, intolerant, special interest groups get to inform our decisions in spite of not being backed up by either tradition, experience, wisdom, common sense or good independent science, and so the pressure of reaching group consensus goes wrong. (I wonder if not the intolerance that drives re-normalization is exacerbated by social media? It certainly seems that the subjects you dare discuss without being cut off at the knees get fewer and fewer! If you are a sensitive and easily aggrieved Swede, maybe you should stop reading here?)This obsessive progressive trait (did I just coin a new psychological disorder - OPD?) whether for good or for bad helps explain our extreme position in the Inglehart-Welzel graph in paradox seven.I think maybe the next such intolerant, on the surface progressive, moral and scientifically backed up, group on the move to gain influence could be the vegans/animal rightist league, supported by a few international fake documentaries, cherry picked vegan produced science and the (vegetable growing) food industry. You may laugh but if there are 4% of them we may be in trouble! If we are not careful we will all be paying a punishing meat tax, munch spinach and soy and feel our health deteriorate (since our species is predominately adapted to meat eating) in a couple of years! Am I overreacting? Here is just one of many examples (the largest group consisted of Swedes):Majority of EAT-Lancet Authors (>80%) Favored Vegan/Vegetarian Diets | Nina TeicholzVast majority (>80%) of EAT-Lancet authors found to favor vegan/vegetarian diets before joining EAT group. Result: a one-sided report cannot be considered balanced science.https://ninateicholz.com/majority-of-eat-authors-vegan-vegetarian/#more-5180Some examples of progressive changes of the bad OPD kind:The complete acceptance, and inclusion in the highest circles of power, of the bullshit “gender theory” as unassailable science (while in reality it has been proven totally wrong and completely unscientific to boot, with academic support retracted e.g. in Norway. (Gender journals accepting as articles excerpts from Hi**er’s M**n K**pf” with the word j*ws exchanged to “men” does not inspire confidence.), has resulted in a matriarchal society where men loose out. Swedes: if you doubt, read the book “Det stora könsexperimentet” (The big gender experiment) by David Eberhard. Simply feeling strongly that we live in a male dominated society does not make it so. A multitude of statistical facts must be looked at, and matched to various normal distribution curve differences that may explain them! (More of extremely stress tolerant men could maybe explain fewer female CEO:s for instance.) And look at the distribution of school grades! Boys loose out nowadays since schools are ultra-adapted to girls (and extroverts …) who cannot uphold grades all by themselves, so of course school results plummet (until criteria is lowered at least).To make it clear: I am absolutely for an equal society - or rather an equal value society since men and women are not alike in the shape and mean of the normal distribution curves (many times independently proven). but their value or importance, and right to fair treatment are.immigration and racism. It was so extremely politically correct and ultra progressive that it gave rise to a new and still growing anti-immigration right-wing party “Sverigedemokraterna” (Sweden democrats). I do not think Sweden is alone in this, but maybe more extreme. You get policed and attacked as if you were in the other camp as soon as you try to question dogma or discuss opinion as if they were not unassailable, with either side! In average Sweden is less hostile to immigrants yet than most Europeans.Here is a decades old humorous (well some of us think so) act in English that would be impossible to do today. Some Swedish comments denounced this as racist when it was put on youtube. What do you think?(I used google translate on his fake Japanese and he hit real words sometimes, and it became even funnier! And with some cultural knowledge you can start to wonder which culture is actually made fun of, deliberate or not.)New extreme neo-liberal economic theories first introduced by Thatcher and Reagan in the 80:s got tried out in Sweden even by the left wing social democratic party. These changes targeted the trust- and duty-driven, and damage-minimizing culture of Sweden. Just take privatization, one of the pillars of neo-liberal economy: massive privatization of common property to bargain prices. Such a move of course has the obvious effect of corrupting the politicians and experts we depend upon: They know they can get their share of the bounty if they manage to push through the deal. That these changes did not devastate Sweden is a testament to the residue of honesty, duty and cooperative spirit remaining in our culture.I believe I read somewhere that such “neo-economic experts”, maybe one was even Swedish, got similarly involved in the then (from the Soviet union) newly liberated Russia, with catastrophic results regarding wealth distribution and corruption, as we know from news and movies.Paradox no 12. (Nature loving rapists of forests)I left this for last since city-damaged citizens of the world may not think much about nature at all. But Swedes do - still!Sweden was a land covered in forests (mountains and arctic tundra not discussed here). Now it is a land covered in desert-like clear-cuts and lifeless wood plantations with ditches leading off all surface water, that the latest generations mistakenly believe are forests., while in reality we rate number 99 after Brazil and Malaysia in how we take care of our real forests. This in spite of closing in on the limit where there is not enough natural forest left to support the original rich ecosystem. Here our consensus-driven culture works to our disadvantage since nobody dares step roughshod over shortsighted economical interests whether a little local forest owner, or a big national company.All this may come as a shock to many a nature loving Swede that believe the propaganda the big forest companies feed the schools and papers in the guise of education, “science” backed “objective” discourse and children’s books. These companies have had a few hundred years to hone their skill in lobbying and swaying peoples minds, in the same way e.g. fishing or whaling industries have in other countries. Deep roots.I have been and remain completely and utterly baffled by the perverse use of clear-cutting. Why not at least consequently take only the oldest trees until you have taken what grows back in a year? In that way you get the best quality wood, the plantation renews itself and keeps a more “foresty” character with different generations of trees at the same time, keeping more micro and macro fauna and flora relatively intact. Robotics and quad-copters will make such selective forestry more feasible in the future but will also make it feasible to rape hitherto unreachable forests on e.g. mountainsides: I know where I will put my bet, on which of the two scenarios will be implemented.Most Swedes enjoy walking in the forest, picking berries and mushrooms, fishing, and maybe sitting by an open fire in the evening once or twice a year. Most families have farming ancestors at least in living memory. And close to the cities and suburbs where most kids play, the nature is usually woody and varied. But very few has visited an actual real forest with lots of fallen trees, marshes, woods and lakes echoing with the drumming of woodpeckers and birdsong, and filled with life and vitality.Another cultural explanation for this state of affairs is that we revere the logical. So we do not acknowledge the illogical need for, or effects of, wilderness and outdoor beauty on our bodily health, souls, minds and development (the scientific proof or its importance is not old and not widely known in Sweden, e.g. that visible nature outside a hospital window increases recuperation significantly or that hugging a tree strengthens our immune defense). We do not acknowledge the peace of mind gained from just the knowledge - the simple knowledge - that pristine wilderness still exists, even if nobody should ever visit. Few visits indeed becomes an excellent logical reason to cut down a forest (been there - heard exactly that argument).Unfortunately we grow more and more distant from nature by each generation. This is acerbated by the increasing risk aversion in raising children, and computers sucking kids indoors. Being outdoors, more and more equals aimless activities on boring asphalt or organized activities on or close to boring asphalt. More and more people unknowingly suffer from Nature Deficit Disorder (Nature deficit disorder - Wikipedia), and would not defend the Swedish forests even if they knew about the state they are in.Many living in big cities around the world have it worse. They are almost as deprived of natural beauty as a drug junkie living in a concrete tunnel, and do not realize what they miss, or the effects on e.g health or brain or character development. They become soulless and sub-human in a sense. Taking an animal away from its natural environment induces stress behavior, development problems and sickness (and humans are just another kind of animal). Everybody should spend 10 days and 10 nights outdoors (living in a tent) in the wilderness (need I say without smart devices?), which is the time period required for body and mind to adapt; to overcome revulsion and reluctance and discomfort, and regain a visceral sense of nature as our true home, and of how unadulterated wilderness subtly but profoundly abates the civilized uniformity of stimulation of our senses. To experience the developing roots that transform “nature” to “home”.Tourist wilderness guides in Sweden sometimes has to explicitly point out stones and tree limbs for European city-bred tourists or the tourists will hurt themselves. European guests taken into the woods think it is boring unless old houses or cultural relics are found and their history and cultural significance explained, Sweden luckily still has a long way to go until we reach such a poor state of nature awareness and lack of appreciation.Hope this view from a lay-person - albeit a widely read one - has been of some interest. Would love comments!Why the Swedish “lagom” is best, for Swedes at leastNeo-liberalism is so antagonistic and toxic to Swedish cultural traits that it deserves it’s own section.Unlike communism in the east, the influence damaging the west is not widely known by name: neo-liberalism.Neo-liberal forces have since Thatcher and Reagan in the 80.s tried to convince us that our 1st cultural trait (individuality while cooperating for the common good and limiting collateral damage) is not culture but a suspect, probably socialist, maybe even communist, undesirable choice that must be consciously set aside, and rooted out of our institutions like tax financed independent media. Now we have many 2nd, 3d and 4th generation Swedes indoctrinated up to their eyebrows, and drowning, in this way of thinking since birth.Maybe this cooperative cultural trait is really why “right-wingers” in the USA misunderstand and despise Sweden so? Even while implementing an extreme right wing ideology we seem half communist.Neo-liberal theory is beneficial only to the rich (and not even to them long term), but has fooled everyone to such a degree that even swedes suffering its consequences (including the egocentric wannabees) parrot its mantras, just like communists did about communism. Luckily it is easy to refute neo-liberalism, by some simple down to earth reasoning. You don’t need a degree in economy to do that (it is mostly just sub college level math, rules of thumb, and lots and lots of abbreviations anyway).The cornerstones of neo-liberalism are these (loosely from a recent Medium article by a Glen Hendrix):1) Raising wages kills jobs. Finishing the sentence: “… is the lie I tell you to further my bank account.”Independently conducted studies, and live examples, in contrast to industry financed studies curiously enough, find that increased wages have little to no effect on jobs.2) Raising taxes kills economic growth. Finishing the sentence: “… of the wealthy’s Swiss bank accounts.”The best decades financially - especially for low and middle class - were those when marginal income tax was the highest (in America. Assume it it similar for Sweden.)!See the book “Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There” by Rutger Bregman to see (among lots of interesting, heartening facts and theories) that everyone is happier in a more equal society - including the top 1% richest! See also Ray Dalio’s writings about how civilizations that get too unequal always die in violence. USA, you are testing the waters now!3) Government regulations reduce business efficiency. Finishing the sentence: “… in sucking the wealth out of people and the planet as cheaply as possible.”This one is obvious: Who protects the little guy (or little company), and the fragile earth we are polluting to death? Not companies (even though they may pay a pittance to charitable causes). Neo-liberal economic theory and law-making is based on a sociopath called homo economicus, and 21% of corporate CEO.s are sociopaths.I would add a fourth cornerstone:4) “Privatize, since the state sucks at doing anything efficiently and threatens freedom of choice!” Do you spot the two self inconsistencies in that statement?If private companies really are more efficient they should not fear being out-competed by a state driven alternative. We had such an alternative in house mortgage loaning once, without private banks suffering. The neo-liberals privatized it later, of course, costing us citizens untold millions in raised interest.The second inconsistency - did you spot it? “Freedom of choice”, actually increases if you have a state driven alternative as well.I believe the key word here is balance: state only or private only sucks equally much. And a “lagom” amount of regulations to keep the balance.As we Swedes would say: “Lagom är bäst! I.e. “An optimal balance is best” (interpreted within the context of our first cultural trait of individuals cooperating for the common good). Needless to say: neo-liberals despise the word lagom. Look up the law of Jante - a caricature used to discredit “lagom” throughout the Nordic countries. Try to take the opposite of the Jante laws and imagine someone fitting the description (horrible right?) - and then imagine a balance in between. Then you get lagom.).The word “competition” itself is maybe the greatest neo-liberal newspeak of all. Given half an opportunity corporations will of course instead “cooperate” if in that way they can influence lawmakers, destroy smaller competition and increase the suction on the money stream. Why else do we have laws against it? A state alternative may actually increase true competition, by using the right state regulations; supporting fledgling startups for instance, until they have flown out of the nest.And since we (7th trait) don’t even recognize that we have a culture of our own, we are left open to neo-liberal as well as other damaging influences. Differences in income between those having the least and those having the most is on the rise in Sweden. But cultural inertia being what it is, I am convinced that the true Swedish traits will survive a couple of decades more at least!This is still a view from far, far off - and by a non-expert (I read a book about Swedish culture long, long ago which influenced me somewhat in trying to see Sweden from other points of view).