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The Improbability of Place - Thoughts from the San Juans

2011-09-23 · Hank · watch on YouTube · Philosophy & meaning · reflection essay

Lower-confidence wave

2011 videos did not pass the QA gate (17 %); their analysis is shown but less reliable.

After describing waking from a lucid dream into sleep paralysis, Hank argues that the San Juan Islands, like each of us, are improbable, but what makes a place or a person miraculous is our relationship with it and love, not improbability.

What is said

00:00:00 — Waking at 3 a.m. unable to move: lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, proprioception; the teenage lucid dream; ask for diseases in comments; off to Friday Harbor

  • ★★ Hank says he woke at about 3 a.m. unable to move, after making himself realize during a silly nightmare about ghosts that he was dreaming. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank explains that lucid dreaming is being in a dream while lucid, which he can sometimes do in nightmares. — 00:00:22
  • ★★ Hank says waking from a lucid dream can leave the body still in the dream state for a few seconds: he cannot move and loses proprioception, then moves weakly; he does not know why. (hedged) — 00:00:22
  • ★★ Hank says no amount of sleep paralysis has made him want to stop lucid dreaming. — 00:00:22
  • ★ Hank recalls that at 13, in his first lucid dream, he spent the rest of the dream grabbing girls' breasts. (playful) — 00:00:51
  • ★ Hank jokingly asks viewers to say in the comments what devastating diseases he should worry about because of this. (playful) — 00:00:51
  • ★★ Hank says they went to Friday Harbor and San Juan Island, and that Katherine, asked for a video topic, instantly suggested 'the improbability of place'. — 00:00:51 · Katherine Green

00:01:29 — The improbability of place: the San Juan Islands' chain of causes, Dr. Manhattan and Laurie; the miracle is our relationship with the world and love; sign-off

  • ★★ Hank says it is very strange that this place exists, as one could say of all places, likening it to Dr. Manhattan realizing the improbable miracle of Laurie. — 00:01:29
  • ★★ Hank lists the contingencies behind the San Juan Islands: a volcano, glaciers, mineral deposits, rising water, diplomatic squabbles splitting Canada and America, salmon runs drawing resident orcas, and a fishing village turned tourist destination. — 00:01:29 · Canada, United States
  • ★★ Hank says salmon runs draw resident orca pods that feed on salmon, 25 per day, and that the oldest orca, over 100 years old, has eaten 800,000 salmon in her life. — 00:01:59
  • ★★★ Hank says the world did not conspire to make this place; likewise Laurie is not objectively a miracle, what is miraculous is the love between her and what remains of Jon Osterman in Dr. Manhattan. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ Hank argues creation is miraculous only through how we fit into it: what makes a place, and each of us, wonderful is our relationships with the world, land, animals, each other and ourselves, not improbability. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Hank says Dr. Manhattan could imagine every other probability but no Laurie he would love more than the one he had, and that is what love is. — 00:03:25

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