Ultimate Purpose, Meaning and Destiny: Part Two

If there is a common theme within religions and associated philosophies, it’s one of trying to position oneself in the broad context of life, the universe and everything as something special. You have somehow been tapped on the shoulder with a special and unique mission or destiny, or a special purpose or meaning that you have to carry during the time of your existence, something that places you uniquely above the rest of life, the universe and everything. Hogwash!

Author’s note: for the sake of brevity, I intend to use the acronym for self-awareness or consciousness as SAC; for the overlapping concepts of destiny, fate, function, meaning, purpose or reason as DFMPR. That should save a bit of space!

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

If something is created, and that something has a DFMPR for being created in the first place, that implies an act of intelligence, though that level of intelligence doesn’t have to be very high. Ants create an anthill out of dirt or sand for a purpose (shelter); some birds will gather up pretty baubles and lay them out to be admired by a prospective mate, an artistic work that has a purpose (sex and reproduction); some primates fashion sticks out of leafy twigs to probe for termites, again for a purpose (food).

Back to you: were you created for a DFMPR – are you a tool as it were, designed with an ultimate DFMPR in mind, and if so who or what created that DFMPR? There are two possibilities, not mutually exclusive.

* You are your own tool. You create your own DFMPR.

* You are someone else’s tool. Parents, teachers, other authority figures help give your life DFMPR, like do the dishes; mow the lawn; do your homework; voting is compulsory (this being written in the rather undemocratic country of Australia); pay your taxes; don’t drink and drive; don’t be late for work; spend, spend, spend; be fruitful and multiply; thou shall have no other gods before me, etc. Of course it doesn’t have to be an authority figure. Maybe a close friend suggests your DFMPR lies in being a musician. Decades later, you’re a rock & roll superstar!

Your mind is perfectly free to accept or reject the demands or your externally imposed DFMPR, like wash the dishes or practice, practice, practice your music, as long as you are willing to accept the consequences if you exert your free will in the negative. Ultimately, you, or your mind is in control and that’s where the buck stops.

In the case of the anthill, the artistic pattern of the baubles, the termite gathering stick, these are someone else’s tools (ants, birds, primates), obviously, since they didn’t create themselves. They are creations from within the mind of their ant, bird, primate creators, but via a hardwired form of intelligence – instinct.

What humans tend to create is more a soft-wired flexible sort of intelligence; true intelligence as it was – creating outside of the instinct box. You don’t fashion atomic bombs, or financial markets, or shoes, or a theory of evolution by hardwired instinct.

But the line between animal hardwired and human soft-wired ‘intelligence/instinct’ isn’t all that neat and tidy. Apart from housing/shelter, many an animal ‘society’ has by definition a social structure, a political system (leaders), a division of labour, and has ‘invented’ agriculture and harvesting and animal husbandry, even slavery, warfare and genocide. I’m thinking primarily, but not exclusively, of the ant or bee/wasp kingdoms.

However, there is a bottom line here. Things with DFMPR, by instinct or by pure intelligent design, stem ultimately from the brain, mind, or wetware, whatever you wish to call it. There is no nebulous other factor behind an anthill or wasps nest; creating a new dance step or meal recipe.

The human mind does differ I suspect in at least one highly significant way – humans, via their minds, envelop themselves in a wider worldview, both in time and in space, vis-à-vis the animals, and ponder the meaning of ‘why’.

Animals, my cats for example, have a sense of who (friend or foe; prey or predator); what (I know what that is, it’s my chair); where (I know where my food dish or litter box or the door is); even when (their biological clocks are damn accurate, but their sense of when doesn’t extend much past ‘right now’), but lack the intellectual ability to ponder why or how. Animals live day-to-day, even moment-to-moment, without a sense of mystery (they have no concept of whodunits), which isn’t to say they don’t have a concept of the unknown – they do have curiosity and like to explore (is there food just over that hill), but DFMPR are foreign ideas to them. Things just are and don’t need to be explained. There is no need to frame questions, far less seek answers.

Humans however have evolved the concepts of how or why. And the human mind can come to terms with concepts like DFMPR; good and evil; mystery and awe; yin and yang; a sense of yesterday and tomorrow; of death and immortality which are all foreign in the animal kingdoms.

Unfortunately, though how and why questions come easily to the human mind, answers do not and being an rather impatient sort of life form, well, what do we want, answers; when do we want them, now!

Any gaps in our minds ability to figure things out, the natural order of things (like life, the universe and everything), could be instantaneously filled in by one very simple invention – storytelling. If you have trouble explaining the natural via the natural, then invent explanatory stories of the supernatural, or mythology, or its synonym religion, since every mythology has both supernatural elements and deities. Easy! Every culture has done it. As author Karen Armstrong says “We created religions because we are meaning-seeking creatures”. A local pastor of a friend of mine wrote that “religion is for making a disparate and confusing world coherent”. Substitute the word ‘science’ for ‘religion’ and I’d agree. That’s what science tries to do – make sense of life, the universe and everything. Later on down the track, people decided the best way to explain the natural was to investigate, experiment and get their hands dirty, and slowly but surely,  supernatural or religious philosophies morphed into natural philosophy, or what we call today science, and science has indeed filled in many gaps where previously only deities feared to tread.

Not all mythology need be 100% tall tales invented from scratch out of whole cloth to explain life, the universe and everything. There could be, and probably are, natural events influencing the authors of these tall tales. One can easily substitute a natural, albeit extraterrestrial Captain Yahweh of the Starship Heaven for the supernatural Almighty for example. 

Religion may have once covered that role but since the Age of Enlightenment religion has become irrelevant in that role. We created science to ultimately explain that who, what, where, when, why and how. Science answers the question ‘what is my DFMPR in life’ by pointing out there isn’t any DFMPR (given to us by a nebulous other or religious deity), any more than what is the DFMPR of a rock’s existence. It just is. There is nothing ultimately different between you and a rock, just the arrangement of the fundamental bits and pieces that make up both you and the rock.

But science hasn’t yet come to terms with everything life, the universe and everything has thrown up. An obvious example is explaining that eternal question of what is my DFMPR in existing and being present and accounted for in the first place, apart from my asking “how high” when someone says “jump”! “How high” might be your DFMPR for being present and accounted for in the here and now. 

But then you too could jump all on your own accord because you have decided that your DFMPR in life is to jump, or at least one of your DFMPR (there’s probably no such thing as just a singular DFMPR to your life). Now that’s not all that frivolous since there are athletes whose profession is the high jump or the broad jump or race track hurdles, or who ride and jump horses over obstacles – the steeplechase I think that’s called.

So again we see that your DFMPR can be both influenced by others (say your drill sergeant) and by yourself – you volunteered to enlist in the army and serve your country thus giving you DFMPR to your otherwise miserable existence.

The Concept of the Nebulous Other:

Now a question arises, does any DFMPR stem also from a third party, from a sort of nebulous supernatural sort of other drill sergeant type? Only if you believe in the existence of such a deity or the various mythological texts that supposedly endorse such a being. However, I’ve already pointed out that these religious mythologies were the products of the human mind to give instant satisfaction to un-answered and unanswerable (at the time) questions. Therefore there is no competing nebulous supernatural other directing your life, even if you believe otherwise. Any nebulous supernatural other stems from your own mind.

There is one other last option. People who feel that they are being directed or otherwise have a sense of higher calling or DFMPR in their life might be virtual beings in a simulated universe. Software is the string; you (in fact all simulated life, the simulated universe and the simulated everything) is the puppet of some unknown nebulous, but not a supernatural nebulous other, is the puppeteer. In such a simulated universe you’d have a DFMPR, but no free will. In this case the puppeteer wouldn’t be just a mental creation.

Conclusion: All DFMPR; good and evil; mystery and awe; yin and yang; a sense of yesterday and tomorrow; of death and immortality stems 100% from within your own mind, albeit influenced at times by others – like your drill sergeant – natural others, not nebulous supernatural others. If you feel you have an ultimate DFMPR to your existence then that ultimately stems from or is consolidated from within your own mind (brain chemistry rules the roost) even if influenced by the input of others. I have various self-assigned DFMPR, but they all stem from within my own mind – an example of free will? When my mind eventually goes, so too will go the DFMPR. Once you’re brain dead any DFMPR you had can’t be continued or added too, though that doesn’t mean you can’t still serve a DFMPR, like being an inspiration after-the-fact. Still, the bottom line is that all DFMPR ultimately comes from within, probably after much internal mulling things over, and ever evolving as you get older (and wiser). Apart from the simulated universe scenario, your mind is your own. You have, apparently, free will to pick and choose your own DFMPR.

Ultimate Purpose, Meaning and Destiny: Part One

If there is a common theme within religions and associated philosophies, it’s one of trying to position oneself in the broad context of life, the universe and everything as something special. You have somehow been tapped on the shoulder with a special and unique mission or destiny, or a special purpose or meaning that you have to carry during the time of your existence, something that places you uniquely above the rest of life, the universe and everything. Hogwash!

Author’s note: for the sake of brevity, I intend to use the acronym for self-awareness or consciousness as SAC; for the overlapping concepts of destiny, fate, function, meaning, purpose or reason as DFMPR. That should save a bit of space!

A Few Ultimate Questions:

Is there a DFMPR to life, the universe and everything?

What is the DFMPR to life, the universe and everything?

What is my DFMPR within life, the universe and everything?

Does the universe have a SAC?

A SAC universe, well that’s the only way it could assign you a, or influence your, DFMPR. But, looking up at the night sky, do you really think the universe gives a damn about your alleged DFMPR in life? That would indeed imply that the universe has some sort of SAC. But, IMHO, the universe did not assign you a DFMP at birth and does not acknowledge any DFMPR to your existence. You can contemplate the universe; the universe can not contemplate you. Alas, that’s because the universe is not alive, it doesn’t have a mind; it does not have any SAC. To argue otherwise is to invite trouble.

Some readers might recall the controversy of James Lovelock’s Gaia theory which seemed to imply that Earth (Gaia) had a SAC and the planet could somehow intellectually manipulate the various geo-chemical cycles (feedback mechanisms) to optimise the environmental balance between extremes that could otherwise result without those mechanisms. Gaia’s DFMPR was to produce and ensure an optimum Earth; a Goldilocks Earth, an Earth that’s just right for life. Of course those feedback mechanisms were just the result of natural unconscious physical laws, and too many New Agers read too much into Lovelock’s ideas. Planet Earth exhibits no SAC and neither does the universe.

By extension, there is no nebulous supernatural other within the universe that serves as a substitute for a SAC universe. As a jumping off premise, there is no such thing as either a SAC universe, or a supernatural realm that contains any deity or family of deities within that universe.

Speaking of the universe, I should mention here the Anthropic Cosmological Principle which comes in two basic formats, weak and strong. The weak version basically states the bleeding obvious, and that is the universe is bio-friendly. If the universe wasn’t bio-friendly, we wouldn’t be here to make note of that fact. The strong version however implies a DFMPR to the universe. The universe has a DFMPR to be bio-friendly and to produce life forms, like us, that can appreciate the DFMPR of the universe. Of course for the universe to have a DFMPR, it either has to be SAC of have a supernatural creator that is, unless of course the universe and its DFMPR is a simulated universe. See below.  

I guess I should also mention astrology here if for no other reason than readers would expect to find it mentioned. OK, I’ve mentioned it, now it’s time to move forward. Astrology is a 100% human invention and has no cosmic or personal significance in any shape, manner or form. Of course you are perfectly free to adopt astrology as your answer to your DFMPR, but that suggests you are happy to negate any free will others might think you have.

Let’s start at the most elementary basics and work the way upwards, starting with the four forces and associated particles plus the elementary particles (electron and quarks).

There are four fundamental forces in the universe, with associated particles that form the entire bedrock for all of life, the universe and everything. They are gravity, the weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. You know all about gravity; electromagnetism is also a pretty familiar concept from the light that you read by, to the compass that guides you from Point A to Point B. Now do you associate any intelligence or SAC with these four forces? - Probably not.

There are also a few fundamental particles that you have probably heard about, namely electrons and quarks. Quark combinations make up protons and neutrons, and they in turn, in association with electrons make up atoms. Are electrons and quarks SAC? Do they have intellect? Do they have free will? – Probably not.

Atoms combine to form molecules, and molecules can combine to form really complex molecules, and combinations of really complex molecules can form life within all those other non-life bits that comprise the rest of the universe and everything. But if the fundamental building blocks have no SAC, how can combinations of them have SAC? It’s like building a house of red bricks only to have the finished house appear blue!

Still, somewhere along the line, un-SAC bricks can form a SAC house – you, for example. Therefore, the eternal question – the bits and pieces what makes me up has no SAC, yet I have, a SAC that is. Therefore, I’m more than the sum of my parts and I am somehow special (relative to the universe) and no doubt endowed therefore with some special DFMPR, if I can only figure out what.

Conversely, one could take the point of view and argue that gravity has a DFMPR to its existence, ditto a quark and therefore they have a SAC in order to carry out their DFMPR (like keeping Earth in its orbit, or making those neutrons) and therefore a rock has SAC (being made up of bits and pieces of SAC bits and pieces) and therefore you aren’t unique in your SAC vis-à-vis the inanimate world. But you still have to figure it out – either way you have to figure it out what your special DFMPR is. However, I have a hard time thinking that most living things would accept that all non-living things have a SAC, so let’s scratch that option.

Okay, the universe isn’t SAC and has no DFMPR, it just is; you on the other hand are SAC and therefore assume you have a unique DFMPR, whatever. But is that by your choice and alterable (free will) or by the design of the universe and unalterable?

From the moment of the Big Bang, all the laws, principles and relationships of physics became hardwired into the fabric of the universe, fixed and forever unalterable. That implies total causality and that outcomes are fixed. Plug in the numbers into the equation, crunch the numbers, and out will come the answer, fixed and immovable. Everything that happens in the universe is predetermined even unto billions of years into the future, including you and your DFMPR. Your life may have DFMPR except you have no choice, no free will, in what that DFMPR is. Absolute cause-and-effect rules out free will. Let’s move on from there.

Let’s forge ahead instead with the standard model and see where that leads us. The standard model, scientific model, being that the universe has no SAC or DFMPR, causality is iffy (due to quantum physics); you have SAC so there’s a transition between no SAC and SAC as complexity increases. There is no nebulous other (something supernatural) pulling your strings; you have free will.

You exist. You have not always existed and you will not always exist.

You did not create yourself.  Is there a reason you exist apart from the sex act that created you and perhaps the wishes of your parents to have a child (you) – though that may be a good enough reason in itself.

A more interesting question though is, is there really a DFMPR to your existence, and by extension to all that came before you, leading up to you, since if you have a DFMPR your parents had at least one DFMPR – creating you – and so on back on down the line.

Working backwards, if there was a reason for you, therefore there was a reason for your parent’s existence, your parent’s parents, back to the rise of Homo sapiens, the primates, the mammals, life itself, stuff (planets, stars, and galaxies), the creation of matter/energy and the time and space to ultimately produce you. If you exist for a reason, then everything that went before had a reason to exist as well.

To be continued…

Origins and Ultimate Questions: Part Two

Who are we; where did we come from; what is my purpose in life; why is there something rather than nothing, etc. has probably been pondered by most of us at one time or another. One universal blanket answer is God (or in earlier times, the gods). A rival answer is that the abstract concept of Mother Nature can equally explain all, even if sometimes in the negative – the Universe and you have no ultimate purpose. It, you and I just are.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The Origin of Humans: Did God Create Man (and Woman)?

To religious fundamentalists, it’s a no-brainer that God created man – in His image. Now if there were no fossils of manlike hominoid beings; if there were not any current living beings that shared our basic body plan (such as many of the primates do – apes, monkeys, chimpanzees, etc.); if humans were so unique that they stood out like a lone red sports car in a field of black & white model-T’s, or like a lone pineapple in a basketful of tomatoes, then ascribing a very unique origin to humankind would be a plausible hypothesis, of which God or gods might have appealing logic (albeit not proven). 

Alas, that’s not the case whether in terms of the fossil evidence or of body plans and fundamental biochemistry similarities between us and the other primates. We’re just another model-T or tomato (and some would argue rotten tomato at that).

Creation myths trying to explain human origins are, across the board, pretty wild and absurd in light of modern understandings that deal with life, our Universe, and everything. The fictional origin of Frankenstein’s monster (Frankenstein was the name of the scientist, not the name of the creation) makes more sense than breathing some sort of vital essence into dust (and does your basic pile of dust contain all the necessary chemical ingredients to make up and sustain a living human? If so, put some dust on your menu). And that bit about Adam’s rib – well, let me say that the Loch Ness Monster has way more credibility.

Darwin and those following him, those evolutionary biologists and physical anthropologists, have easily accounted for the broad-brush origin and rise of our modern human species.

The Origins of Faith & Belief vs. Blind Faith & Belief:

Do we have faith and belief in a God or gods because there really are gods or God, or maybe we’re hard-wired to believe in some sort of larger-than-life supreme being(s) regardless of evidence and the reality of such beings?

Many children have invisible, make-believe friends and have no trouble accepting Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. Of course, kids have usually Mom and Dad, or an adult family of some sort to look after them, so they already have a sort of larger-than-life supreme being(s) in their life.

But when they grow up to adulthood, well, as adults, wouldn’t it be nice if someone or something more adult than ourselves, larger-than-life, were looking after us the way Mom and Dad did when we had our childhood? Someone who would pat us on the back with eternal life (we don’t really want to die) if we’re good men and women (as opposed to when we were boys and girls).  And so it’s easy and desirable to believe that and have faith.

I have no issue with those who have a belief or a faith in a God or gods or this or that religion – god knows there’s enough of them on the market to pick and choose from.  However, what I do have issues with are those who have an absolute blind faith or blind belief in, whatever, like kids have a blind faith in the existence of Santa, and for a similar reason. Kids are trusting of adults, their parents and family and will swallow the story – at least until old enough to think through the logic for themselves. Adults too, starting as children, are trusting of authority figures or people they trust – priests, their parents (again), teachers, friends, books, etc. authored by those apparently in the know – who told you it (a God or gods or brand of religion) was so, and so you swallow their version without any critical thought, hook, line and sinker, because unlike Santa, the logic doesn’t reveal itself quite so easily to be as absurd. It’s easier to be told what to think, than to actually think for yourself.

So, for those who still have faith and belief after they have thought for themselves through the issues, well again, I have no difficulty with that. For those of you who believe and have faith because it was rammed down your throat, and because it satisfies that hard-wired area of your brain that wants a larger-than-life figure to be their invisible, make-believe guardian, well, maybe that’s why religious figures refer to their subjects as their flock – sheep one and all.  

The Ultimate Questions (and Answers):

Is there one? I know that it (‘life, the universe and everything’) was asked in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and that the answer was ‘42’, but I don’t think we’ll count that as philosophically meaningful. I also think we need to exclude personal reflections or personal ultimate questions like ‘who am I’ or ‘where am I going’ or ‘what is my purpose in life’, etc. Ultimately, when it comes to personal reflections, only you can ask and answer such questions yourself using whatever tools you have at your disposal.

Is there any preordained point or preconceived purpose to the Universe? That is do we have any implication that the ever evolving and expanding Universe has a goal or seeks to achieve something? Does the Universe possess some sort of special (undefined but natural) force or quality such that its origin and evolution has an ultimate unique meaning? Or does it just exist with no more purpose than say a cosmic ray has? This question is probably somewhat outside the realm of physics and cosmology, but that sure hasn’t stopped physicists and cosmologists from putting in their two cents worth! Anyway, here’s my two cents.

Well I think we can all agree that the fundamental particles (electrons, quarks, etc.) that make up all the matter and transmit all the forces, and the atoms they in turn make up, and the molecules that atoms form by linking up and bonding with other atoms, even the most complex of them, merely obey various natural physical and chemical ‘laws’ (they are very law abiding), having no choice in the matter given that they have no independent free will or decision making abilities or the ways and means of emitting emotions. They have no intellect, cannot comprehend themselves, far less anything else.

We’d all probably agree that all the macro non-organic things that particles and forces, atoms and molecules make up, like stars (and groups of stars like galaxies) and planets and associated debris likewise obey natural ‘laws’ and also have no intellect or ability to emote. In other words, the Sun and the Moon don’t know you, have no means of knowing you, they can’t deduce you exist and therefore can hardly care that you exist (or don’t exist or cease to exist for that matter). Since there was an era in the history of the Universe when only that sort of stuff existed, the sort of stuff we agree was never intellectual and emotive, one can hardly imagine the Universe then, all this collection of stuff, in a pre-life era, having any purpose or objective or goal, or agenda (or whatever other synonymous word you have in mind).

At this point, one question raises its head and requires an answer, and that is where did all the natural ‘laws’ that rule the Universe (and all that it contains) come from? Well, the way I see it, there are X number of fundamental particles – the ultimate building blocks from which all else flows – like quarks and electrons. Each type of fundamental particle has an intrinsic value to a number of properties, values unique to it and it alone. These properties are mass, and spin and charge, and the like. All of these fundamental particles, the bits and pieces of the Universe, interact with other bits and pieces. Anytime bit A interacts with piece B, you’ll get a result, AB. You’ll always get AB. If bit A interacts with particle C, you’ll get result AC and not, say, AB. And so on and so on. We interpret AB and AC, etc. as ‘laws’ because specific results occur in a consistent manner whenever specific bits and pieces interact. And so on up the scale it goes. Two atoms of hydrogen interact with one atom of oxygen, giving water – not, say table salt now and then. If the reverse were true, if two atoms of hydrogen plus one atom of oxygen sometimes yielded table salt, or if A + B sometimes gave AC, or BC or XYZ, then the stuff of the Universe would be unstable at best and hence we’d have a Universe not exactly conducive to life, and so we wouldn’t be around to ask the question in the first place.

At some stage however, by the laws of probability, sheer chance, by accident (no preconceived purpose or goal involved) a small part of our stuff, under the general natural ‘laws’ inherent in physics and chemistry, became organized enough, complex enough, to qualify as something we’d all agree on as ‘life’. Say a proto-cell, even a microbe. The question now is, does a microbe emote or have an intellect. No. It has however achieved purpose – survival and reproduction and things of that ilk. So, now a tiny part of the Universe has a purpose, but the microbe certainly didn’t absorb or learn this concept of purpose from the wider outside Universe since the wider outside Universe doesn’t have this concept as part of it’s makeup in the first place. 

Ultimately microbes evolve and life got even more complex, complex enough that traits such as intellect and emotion took on some form of reality. But again, it was inherited from what came before. So, does the Universe have a purpose? No. Do some parts of the Universe express a purpose, or intellect or ability to emote? Yes. But it’s not a universal one as different bits have (to a greater or lesser degree) somewhat different purposes, intellects and emotions. An electron is an electron is an electron, but an octopus (having a purpose, intellect and ability to emote) isn’t a cockatoo which isn’t a human both of which also have purposes, intellects and emotions. Even one human obviously differs from another human with respect to these traits. Question: does the fact that terrestrial life in general or humans in particular, exist, impart some sort of higher meaning or purpose to the Universe at large? Not on your Nellie!

Let’s take a simple case and assume that life is confined to Planet Earth (although the argument holds even if extraterrestrial life exists). Let’s further assume that an uncaring, un-intellectual,  asteroid, with no goal or purpose to its existence apart from the fact that it just is, slams into our planet and all life goes kaput! Or perhaps our uncaring Sun goes nova, achieving the same result. Then the Universe is totally back to square one – an assorted collection of primitive stuff with no laudable purpose, no intellect, no ability to emote – no agenda, hidden or otherwise. My conclusion is that life (high or low) is an unplanned for occurrence in a Universe that has no purpose – the Universe just is, in all its uncaring glory.

Thusly I will say again however that there is no purpose to the Universe – it just is, a given, totally inanimate like it or lump it. You are an irrelevancy as far as the Universe is concerned – not that it has a consciousness where the concept of concerned could even arise. So, the Universe, as far as we all are concerned, is impartial, uncaring, has no mercy for those foolish enough to put themselves in harms way, and ultimately doesn’t give a stuff about you, your existence, your suffering. In fact, if Planet Earth and all it contained were to disappear down a Black Hole this instant, the Universe would go on its merry way, no more noticing the loss than you notice the flaking off of a dead skin cell.  

Apart from that, I’d wager if you asked 1000 ordinary people, even 1000 philosophers, religious leaders, scientists, etc. about an ultimate question, you’d probably get 500 different answers! Therefore, I doubt that there is any such thing as an ultimate question (and therefore no ultimate answer), certainly nothing that’s going to enlighten us about ‘just who is this God person anyway?’ – And no, I don’t consider that to be an ultimate question. But we need a place to start with some sort of ultimate question, like, where did our Universe (including us) come from?  And so I refer back to the beginning of this little exercise!