Previous posts (this is meant to be continuous): Rebooting the Notes at the End of the Deconstructed Universe - Breaking Probability Waves - Within the Paradox of Time - Heretic Papers II- Beyond the End of the Universe - Blackouts and Multidimensionalism: Lenses, Interruptions and Shadows - Measure all things together - Spaces in time: Contentedness and Cataclysmic Changes
"Take these roses off of me
Let me live, let me be
for a little while
Let my eyes
see everything and nothing in their time
I do not mind"
Excerpt from lyrics of "Forever" by Vertical Horizon
So it would be from such a tilted perspective looking at what would have to be 4D objects differently than we see them, our seeing only the 3D aspects of them, but not in any sense would it be 'seeing through' matter. It was all so simple at that moment and the 'paradox' just vanished. This does not get into all of the details, though that chapter you can see by clicking here. But it occurred to me then thinking over the problem again and again while sitting at my “thinking spot,” on Maui that I suddenly realized this, or sort of, without exactly thinking of it in these terms yet.
Here I sit writing this in a spot of great meaning for me, my favorite beach, where I watched the beach-plant in Deconstructing the Universe form, struggle to survive, and then perish, where I first came to understand the misinterpretations of 4D sight (3D plus away) of being able to "see through" 3-D objects, and where I could close my eyes as the sun went down and see clearly cities I had never been to before, yet did go to later. I know of this spot's significance to me in things that did not actually happen. It was here in this spot I would have written RCP3 if things had gone differently in the external environment.
Recently on the beach I noticed a tiny beach plant growing far from any others. It was this standing out from its surroundings which made it noticeable. Were it to have been among others like itself, it would have been indistinguishable and barely seen, yet because it stood so far apart from where one might have expected it to be, it suddenly appeared or registered as interesting. That it had the misfortune to be on a frequented path made its existence even more unlikely. For awhile it withstood these great odds but then suddenly but predictably was simply gone. Given the number of things that are required for life, existence at all is far more unlikely than even the most isolated or unlikely individual lifeform. For any species to continue living over time, it is beating the odds and one day will vanish without a trace, just like that tiny beach plant in the sand. It is this seeming ability to be beating the odds or overcoming obstacles which makes living interesting. ...
Life is like water through indoor plumbing. It flows through something unseen and into something which appears as useful to us. The tap may be turned on and off but that is just one instance. It is not any more there than it is potentially anywhere else the pipes run. Turn off one and it just increases the potential for coming out somewhere else. No matter how you judge it, if you can conceive of the length of time or of eternity, you know that the faucet will not be open for long for anyone or any one species. Yet how far one makes it relative to how many or how great the odds appear against it is all that make its existence the least bit interesting over any others which only might have been. ...
So in this sense, the "lens" I was trying to define or imagine was the source of life or consciousness, and trying to play around with that concept more than just the "shadows", and trying to understand life "flowing into" each person from a higher dimensional viewpoint, or outside of the 3 dimensions we perceive point of view. ...
As I have written before about things like this, I can see how the same concepts and ideas have crossed my mind and criss-crossed my experiences at different times in my life, and this idea of curved space has come up at various times and various ways in drawings and other things. I did not see it clearly at the time, but they connect together, different aspects of the same elephant so to speak. Eventually forced to deal with or meet these concepts head on, I have a bigger experience pallet to see how they fit together over time and the perspectives I was being moved towards, sometimes quite unwelcome, but in a logical progression. ...
You can't run away from something that is a part of you. Wherever you go, there it is. It is in a sense inside of you, and integral part of what you are. Everything that you have experienced, could have experienced, what you are experiencing now or might have been experiencing now, and all that you will experience or could possibly, all of this is a part of you. You can focus on some parts and forget others. Indeed, you cannot see all points from any one point anyway, but all and everything else you can and sometimes do affect by your existence, all this or these "other" things in your realities are all a part of you. Moreover, without them, you are not or nothing. How they all must fit together, the organizational structure you define them by, and they you by, is what connects which points to any others, or which "theres" you can get to or see, from which "heres".
I did not go back to adding onto Deconstructing the Universe for a few months, probably the longest gap, after the high water point of "Measure all things together." Seeing everything I was thinking suddenly clearer or from a different perspective, having all the pieces seemingly magically falling into place in front of me, gave way to a very difficult period.
February and March of 2003 were very, very difficult, and hard on me. Doubt, fear, anger, sorrow, many things all at once. A very dark cloud over the future seemed assured. The War in Iraq and all the horrors it would unleash were becoming inevitable, and with it, seemingly any good future was unlikely. Many things were grinding my hope for the future down, harder and lower than almost ever before.
My "thinking spot" beach as I would later refer to it was my oasis. My routine became to ride by bike along the beaches, sit in a spot leaning back on the concrete slabs and watch the sun go down over the water in front of me every day. When no one was around, just me and the sun and the sea, I could pour out all my hopes, doubts, fears, joys and sorrows before me. No impending war, no fall out or blowbacks to come, no past or future history at all, just me and a big yellow ball going down over the water. I could smile or cry or both at the same time, and just for awhile enjoy a private slice of timelessness outside of what was before or what was to come.
There with my quiet contemplations, any number of things seemed simple. Nothing seemed too complex that a little thought and effort could not make clear. All futures I had hoped for were wiped out, yet I still was. The future was becoming increasingly improbable, yet the world still was. It was a long time, it seemed, before I would again acknowledge hope, however seemingly misplaced or unlikely.
This daily ritual which was not all bad, suddenly became more interesting. Most of the time I would sit there, throw pebbles at the sand dune in front of me, trying to hit the same spot twice, and search for some way forward, through what might be coming down the pike. The beach plant I just noticed one day looking down right in front of where I was sitting in the sand.
As I said in writing about it, it was the probability of its existence that made an impression upon me. There was nothing growing around it, just feet of barren sand, and that it was where people walked made it interesting. It was certainly doomed where it was, yet that is why I began to focus on it, looking forward to seeing it each day to see if it survived. Some days I would have to dig around to find it, prop it up a little bit after it had been stepped on, but began to not be detached from it. It was hopelessly screwed, yet it was still there, day after day.
I was so focused on what was being lost of the future, the narrowing of choices, of ways forward, I was confronted, even surprised by, new life, improbable, unlikely, yet though fragile in each instance, indomitable on the whole. It was something not to be denied.
That tiny plant became a focus of hope for me, like someone in a prison cell would make a pet out of a cockroach. In addition to making me think about probability and how life pushes through into wherever it can find a way to, it gave me hope again for other things. If that small speck of life could defy the odds each day, was the future more unlikely than the present? Do any methods of probability really have actuality if we cannot see the frame around which the universe exists within? The lengths of time or the number of possible universes?
The entire life of that plant probably did not last more than a few weeks. Yet it was. And though there were no other ones like it nearby, even if no other ones came there again, by existing it redefined what was possible. Before that and for a few more months, my health was all over the place. My situation would become just as unstable and erratic and even improbable, yet watching and rooting for a tiny sliver of life on a barren beach made me focus again on the fact that new life was forever appearing around me which I was choosing not to see, new avenues were opening up I hoped would not be chosen or if so, long followed, and that new life was within me as well. The improbable would have its day, and I would accept that it would be beyond estimation on what was probable or improbable without knowing the frames. But regardless, my focus now was not on life, but fully on what makes life, that unknowable (seemingly) frame that makes life undeniable and unstoppable, and therefore rejoins even the unlikeliest circumstances to pop up and jolt us from our "odds" and expectations about or for it.
Probability Undefined
What is can only be seen, known, and
understood in relation to how much
and how often it is not.
There are two ways to believe that probability is irrelevant or does not exist. One way is to believe only one future can or will exist as real, and all others will not. Though as I said before, some do not believe that this necessarily invalidates the notion of probability; that just because something will happen only one way, the way that it does or will, it still might have occurred some other way though that can never be proven because by that viewpoint, no alternate endings or versions exist anywhere else in the Universe to prove that they might have occurred any other way. Such an outlook, though not requiring it, that only one definite future will be real, compliments the idea of predeterminism. If only one future will be real, if there is in the future only one way things will go, then one only needs enough info on the variables to determine how it would go. Probability depends only on having inadequate information for accurate prediction, for with enough information, though some would still cling to the fact it could happen some other way, if those who believe in one single future universal reality were correct, if enough information existed about that future reality by knowledge of all potential variables, it is conceivable it could be deduced.
Many leaders of nations as well as individuals use the idea that the future is preordained to justify doing something in the present they know otherwise they ought not to be doing, that such a future state of being is inevitable and they are merely doing what they must to make that state occur. Believing that only one outcome will occur makes every decision become that much more critical as if the world will exist or not exist, become a utopia or a hellish slave state, depending on the outcome of every action those in a position to make or prevent such states of being occur by how they act or fail to act when it becomes required of them. Even if multiple realities exist, it does not necessarily diminish the responsibility to get it right this time, for in a sense this time may be all we see or get, by our own individual points of view existing in or shaped by this somewhat unique run through or common reality. But those who dare entertain the notion that only one reality or version exists in the future can think themselves to be guided by a state of being or planned existence no more real or definite than any other, and the sacrifices for that one future, not being the only possible future, might outweigh those required by an alternate alternative future they would never consider as possible.
This limiting to thinking some versions of the future or future events to be inevitable or more probable limits one in acting other than in accordance to the realities built from and required within those very expectations. The more one believes one knows or understands the future, the more one limits oneself to acting within a way that would make or create such an intended state. When this is done consciously, it is called planning and acting in accordance with such plans. When it is done subconsciously or in accordance with religious or paranormal beliefs that one future or possible state is inevitable, it is to become a pawn or slave to those ideas. For thinking one can know or experience the one, and the only one, future is to absolve one from fearing the consequences of what they must do in order to make that one future, and indeed any one future over any other, to have to occur for they think it can happen no other way. Nothing is written in stone if there is more than one way the future can go, not even the present or the past.
The other of the two ways for thinking probability is irrelevant or non-existent is to go completely in the other direction and say that if any possible future event or reality or outcome can occur because it does occur in some or any possible realities, it must have always either a probability of one (or 100%) in those realities in which it did actually occur and a zero percent chance in those realities in which it did not occur. Because it both does and does not occur, its probability exists in an indeterminate state because it itself is in an indeterminate or multiple states. This can be adjusted by saying that because it can or would happen more in one way than others, or in some realities more than others, probability can be preserved by saying in one in six possible realities after a roll of the dice, only one reality exists for each possible outcome, and if one intended or required a particular number, in five of those realities one would be disappointed and in only one would one be satisfied. Yet if there are six realities in which you made that one choice at that one moment, there would be countless others where you never were in the position to roll that dice at that one moment. Any different decision anywhere along the line would have opened up a whole new reality where you were anywhere else doing anything else than making that one choice at that one time.
If there is no limit to how many times a given reality could occur, how could one ascribe probability to any one event? Existence or non-existence from the individual's point of view either occurred or did not occur. If it does occur in any reality there would then be countless subsequent realities where one lives and no longer lives, where one took one path and another version of oneself took another path, and if the present run through is not the only one, potentially many infinitely more probable realities which did not or will not even lead to ones existence at all. In the face of such innumerable alternate realities, the chance of anything happening in any way at any one time becomes impossible to measure without knowing how often such a set of circumstances can or will occur which would make such subsequent chances even possible. If one were to repeat something of random chance an infinite number of times, it would happen an infinite number of ways. If the odds of a dice coming up a certain number are always one in six, there is nothing to say that after a billion rolls, there might not be periods where it came up the same number or never came up one number after thousands of tries. The larger the number of potential run throughs, the more skewed any observable results can be, even over thousands of observations when the number of attempts is without limit or uncountable, no odds are provable or concrete.
In this reality what draws our attention is what stands out from or apart from anything else. We seem to be different or apart from our environments, with some autonomy in our movements and in our choices. Our planet seems to stand out from or apart from the empty space surrounding it. We define things in opposition to or apart from that which we think they are not. Once in existence we have no relation to that time or state of existence in which we are not. (Once past occurring it must seemingly always occur that way or it becomes what is not, a dead branch with no life which is ultimately unreal. Once admitting any other possible alternate reality or outcome diminishes the realness of the currently experienced one). Without knowing how many times or ways we can occur, we cannot affix any probability to it. We simply and suddenly are. It seems given the age of the Universe, and the countless ways we or Humanity or Earth might happened differently, any one of us most likely as an individual might never had existed. Your parents or theirs might never have met, and so on. You can think this reality you are living in was meant to be and predetermined because it is the only one you know and in no small measure, the only one YOU as you exist now, could ever know, or you can see it as an infinitely small branch of a branch of a branch of trillions time trillions nearing infinity of other ways the Universe not only could have gone but does go in the overwhelming majority of other instances where you never exist within it, ever.
Yet it is this very improbability, or if you prefer, fragility of existence which makes it seem to us in the way that it does. Countless mistakes we might make today could lead to our ruin tomorrow. We run the gauntlet of chance just by existing and if you believe that multiple versions of reality exist, we are far from always successful or even always still alive at this point in time. Yet the more predictable our lives become, whether through sensing of other more common potential futures over others from endless run throughs of similar realities or by our choices and methods of choosing becoming more narrow and predefined, we often instead of following those same known paths endlessly through infinite time, we seek out the new and completely unknown ones, if at all possible that any can stay unknown indefinitely since time itself can almost be infinitely occurring in any of an almost infinite number of ways, even if its birth date and end date were to be predetermined or prescribed.
Recently on the beach I noticed a tiny beach plant growing far from any others. It was this standing out from its surroundings which made it noticeable. Were it to have been among others like itself, it would have been indistinguishable and barely seen, yet because it stood so far apart from where one might have expected it to be, it suddenly appeared or registered as interesting. That it had the misfortune to be on a frequented path made its existence even more unlikely. For awhile it withstood these great odds but then suddenly but predictably was simply gone. Given the number of things that are required for life, existence at all is far more unlikely than even the most isolated or unlikely individual lifeform. For any species to continue living over time, it is beating the odds and one day will vanish without a trace, just like that tiny beach plant in the sand. It is this seeming ability to be beating the odds or overcoming obstacles which makes living interesting. Were every potential run through equally real and experienced at whim, there would be no death, no failure not desired, and no odds to be beaten. We cannot get that feeling of triumph without having those all too frequent failures or the entire experience of living becomes a farce. Without the real possibility of failure or death, success becomes reduced to merely the continuation of monotonous existence.
Life is like water through indoor plumbing. It flows through something unseen and into something which appears as useful to us. The tap may be turned on and off but that is just one instance. It is not any more there than it is potentially anywhere else the pipes run. Turn off one and it just increases the potential for coming out somewhere else. No matter how you judge it, if you can conceive of the length of time or of eternity, you know that the faucet will not be open for long for anyone or any one species. Yet how far one makes it relative to how many or how great the odds appear against it is all that make its existence the least bit interesting over any others which only might have been. Take away improbability and impermanence, and you lose the most important defining aspects of what it means to exist. One simply cannot always win or one tires of the need and the desire to play the game. We ask the Universe two things by existing, to always surprise us and to never let our existence or success be assured. If we think we have the need or potential to do, be, have, or create something which its existence or state of being is far from assured, we can experience that movement, dance, or flow we call living.
Previous posts (this is meant to be continuous): - Rebooting the Notes at the End of the Deconstructed Universe - Breaking Probability Waves - Within the Paradox of Time - Heretic Papers II- Beyond the End of the Universe - Blackouts and Multidimensionalism: Lenses, Interruptions and Shadows - Measure all things together
I should have known
at your age, in a string of days the year is gone
but in that space of time it takes so long
because we can't make up
for the time that we've lost
I must let those memories provide
no little girl can stop her world to wait for me
every time we say goodbye
you're frozen in my mind
as the child that you never will be
you never will be again
Coming to terms with your life and your inevitable demise is widely considered healthy and wise. There is still much to be said for going out as one came in, kicking and screaming having to be dragged out. Contentedness and acceptance lead to feeling that things are as they must be, and that things should be (as they are). Life is the shaping, the building, (and) death is letting things be. Contentedness says this was so good, it is ok if this is the last thing I do, make, say, etc. I can live with that (no pun intended)[<- was there]. Such auto-eulogizing or self containment perspectivizing comes along with those whose circumstances and/or predilections and personality gives one reason and time enough to contemplate that end not so far forthcoming. It gets to the point, if one is accepting of it enough, where one is more comfortable in planning for death than they are in planning for what remains of their lives. So many think that because death is certain, one ought to at least try to see it coming and not to be caught unawares, but in searching or straining to be ready for whenever that time comes upon oneself, one can lose a little from every moment between now and then. I am not warning against fear of death, dread, or depression. Many enough will speak to and know enough about that. I am counseling against contentment, acceptance, and peace. They are all well and fine in moderate doses, but being too much at peace is to be dead while one lives. Hold fast to the yearning, the restlessness, the drives that drove you to be here. They cannot take you beyond the end of the road, but each moment you cling to them just a little bit harder they give you back that need to be, that state of perpetual wanting, hunger, and needing of what it means to truly live. Know contentment, treasure it, but keep it in a box for when you need it most, and dive headfirst into the cataclysm of unmet needs and almost unending problems requiring attention and help. That is the stuff life is made of.(Note: Time is approximate to the chronology of the order of these posts. Estimated to have been written in / around February of 2003.)
Previous posts (this is meant to be continuous): - Rebooting the Notes at the End of the Deconstructed Universe - Breaking Probability Waves - Within the Paradox of Time - Heretic Papers II- Beyond the End of the Universe - Blackouts and Multidimensionalism: Lenses, Interruptions and Shadows
"My life really began again at the time of "Measure All Things Together" and it is to that chapter 2 years back now I look to compass where I have come from and how I got here. Though my memories run back much further and around many corners, as I said at the end of the notes, "2 years in the twilight zone," in a sense I see myself in how I am now as 2 years old, and rapidly growing. I hate the term born again, but much of the lyrics of "Rocky Mountain High" by John Denver I can relate to, as well as near death experiences. I don't see that time, 2 years ago, as any more crucial than any other, and don't believe in making any breaks with the past, but my perceptions and identity continue to evolve, and some points seem to have lead to newer tracks or jumps of greater distance more than others.
Why add on now to this? I found a note made in the margins of "Measure All Things Together" I thought was worth adding, since like I said, everything all goes back to that point in time to me somehow anyway, and the Notes Part II also ended with a reference to that chapter. The note was made on 4/24/04 at the end of the paragraph which ended with "No definitive line of sight or organizational factor is any more true or definite than any other."
NOTE 3 It added, "Every cork ALWAYS at some surface from some point of view. Spinning frame of reference around."
Measure All Things Together
No one is ahead of anyone and
no one is behind. No one is leading and
no one is following. We are all pulling
each other along. What's behind, beneath,
or coming up supports us. What is ahead,
above, or past us is a way to go forward.
Beyond those and that around us, the
Universe might not as well exist at all.
I have written on this before but still find need to further clarify the concept. Our capacity to exist or to have existed always exists even if we do not, nor never have, nor necessarily in any one given timeline, ever will. The potential for ones existence or creation must be present in every single moment prior to ones actual existence for it to occur. In that sense, all that has yet to be has a reality or state I refer to as pre-existent. Likewise any given reality beyond and during your actual existence must include your having existed if they spring from or run concurrent with that given timeline or reality in which you did occur or exist within.
What is actually occurring at any given time in any given reality is but a small plane of existence. To attempt to further define this plane I will liken it to corks floating on the ocean. The ocean, so large in relation to a small cork, though finite in size appears to reach infinity to our little cork both in breath and in depth.
Out of this ocean of potentiality our corks form and attempt to rise to the surface. (multiple surfaces?). (This is limited in seemingly stating that corks know or care about what we believe to be THE surface.) Most corks never do. Some get nearer to the surface than others and sink back down. Compared to the surfaces order, beneath the surface there are corks everywhere with the added dimension of depth, at least, in this case, one dimension more than appears on the surface where our given corks of actuality at any one moment in time float. Beneath the surface there are corks everywhere. Pick any line of sight, 360 degrees times 360 degrees and any one cork is just one in a possible chain with others beneath it and above it in no particular order. Beside it from one view might be another that won't reach the surface for millions of years, or had millions of years ago, or never will. No one definitive line of sight or organizational factor is more true or definite than any other.
At the surface it is quite a different story. Less dimensions, not more. At least with one less dimension, the surface shows an order, a reality. With the added dimension of depth, compared to the surface, corks can occupy the same space, one directly below or above each other in relation to the surface plane. This added depth is unfamiliar to the surface plane. With the addition of the surface plane and that empty space above it, so necessary for defining that plane of existence, the empty space, one cork floating cannot share its place with another. The act of floating on the surface means that point in space and time is occupied by that one cork. It now has actual existence which precludes other existences in that spot, at least at that given time while it is floating on the surface.
Across the surface there are now many patterns to be found. This new dimension, actually as I said, a lacking of dimension, breeds a new way of seeing the ocean across one common plane between the sea and the sky, between seemingly infinite potential of existence and between non-existence of potential, that thin line or crust or crest between the two where the water touches the air. For the corks floating on the surface, this limited lack of dimension creates a new reality, or a new way of seeing things. Other corks exist around you floating too. They define with you this new plane or way of seeing things with you concurrently. Some around you will sink back down. Others will pop up around you, coming and going from the surface, from what the surface defines as actuality. I don't mean by this analogy to imply that the cork is still the same beneath the surface as above, only that it has the same capacity or potential when it is in actual existence, as it had before or can be thought to have had after it sinks below again. The surface corks as I said because of the more limited dimensions of the surface, have a dimension of actuality, taking up that one given space at that surface at a time elbowing out itself a place at the table so to speak which other corks for the moments of its existence cannot share without pushing it aside, save for existing beside it.
Though all the corks currently bobbing along the surface of the ocean exist in a sense side by side, each defining and confirming its little place upon its surface, they share a common top down perspective, if you will. Though their actual vision is limited to the other corks and miscellaneous floating debris around them, they are capable of imagining a common top down perspective (from within or from the point of view or perspective of the potential of non-existence), how silly or beautiful they must all look floating beside each other on the ocean where seemingly infinite potential (the water) meets seemingly infinite non-existence (the air). Along with this imagined or deduced perspective they watch the patterns where these two meet, of corks and other things reaching the surface, touching the definition plane where existence or potential brushes against non- existence or a severe limiting of potential down to narrower surface actualities. (You need that negative space perspective of what is not anything or cannot happen, or what is not happening to define something to be actual or actually happening.) The non-existence plane where no corks can go nonetheless makes the corks, in this case, be corks. It provides a definition standing out beside or in relation to non-existence, or between infinite potential and total non-existence, and each cork occupies for its time on the surface, at least at one point, the defining line between the two. Without that added definition or lack of dimension we call non-existence, or all that is not, you cannot envision that view or plane so dear to us surface corks, that of where the two meet, infinite existence and infinite non-existence into that view or experience we call limited existence.
All of the corks which happen to be floating together at any one given moment in time share a limited reality in a very intimate way. They are what is that reality at that given point in time, defining and sustaining it together as one. They are also sharing in its history, both the past and the future. They have one common history or timeline of the entire Universe up to that point which they share between them all, such a small room of a seemingly infinite sized mansion of what could be or could have been to co-exist within. They also have the ability to interact with each other with a level of reality more real, in a sense, than any other within that reality and at that point in time, at least to them at that time. What they choose to do with that potential to make these interactions, these shared experiences, to become more real than any others that might have been at that time, that is the question each must and will decide for themselves.
When you know and understand it, you can't help but want these experiences to be positive, pleasurable, and fun. If not for others, the highest ideal or goal, then at least for yourself. When you can achieve both, any other reality you might envision, call it Heaven, Nirvana, or whatever, cannot compare as being better than this unless there too you are making the experiences, the lives, the realities, better for others as well as for yourself. That is the power we have in this reality, to shape it not only for ourselves but for others however we choose, to cause them pleasure or give them joy, or to cause pain, to experience these for ourselves too, and to decide which should be inflicted and which withheld, savage justice or higher compassion, and which makes the most sense for whom and to which others.
(It originally ended there. Shortly after combined with this written at same time on, seemingly at first, sort of a different train of thought.)
But the worst possible timelines potential by any given individual's point of view occurs I believe as often as the best regardless of what occurs in any given timeline. You can't change or eliminate one over the other and neither becomes more real simply because it was experienced again, or if possible, more often. Indeed the worst possible outcomes need to be and will be experienced, and everything else in-between, equally necessary to have been lived through. As pointless indulgences go, existence is merely the most elaborate, not the most true. Truth is best read between the lines, or in existence's case, between the timelines, not your own, everyone's.
The patterns between them endlessly repeat but even they are not truth, just more and more convoluted interpretations hidden to be found by beings with every more complex and complicated intelligences capable of seeing what isn't necessarily there and creating ever more complex situations and problems to solve. The desire to be lurks behind every turn, in every shadow. To be what, to be when, to be how, that is all.
To understand it is to add yet another layer away from knowing it. To experience it fully is to know it and know it for the only truth it possesses, the experience or effect of the desire to be in yet another of endless variations it will manifest itself as, and yet another of endless ways to superimpose that upon whatever else, in any and all manners and contexts, through any and all possible circumstances and realities. One is always equally the master of this circus of frivolity and the slave of its never-ending wish to set everything in motion to see how they collide.
Get a view of it all from every possible angle, every possible perspective, and still you are left with nothing. Be what you have to be as often as you have to be it and take from it as much joy as you can while you can. It may be pointless, never-ending, and never any more real at any one time or life or way more than any other, but it need not be dull, for that if anything, is pretty much the driving point above all else.
Grab the moment, any moment, and hold onto it forever and you will see in that moment is every other and everyone. Pick the best circumstances that will make you the most happy or contented or at peace the most times if you can but know that you will only know them as such for and by the sense of having experienced and known the worst. Everything cannot help but be judged by and in relation to everything else. Everything else is the only true measure of what it means to be anything. Without either there is no set scale to measure anything by, never mind a true one. What everything else is though, is as indefinite and as changeable as what you are, and any change in one is reflected instantaneously in the other.
Also I thought I would add something which I think is nearly as good as the Introduction in defining how the 1.8 (In Wonder) version began to grow alongside the original, and what sets it apart. The following was written immediately after "Measure All Things Together", and that Introduction and is about maintaining that same sense of wonder.
"It is foolish to think that we know significantly more about the world or ourselves at 30 or 60 or 90 than we did at 3 or 6 or 9 for what we are and what it is, is always changed and always new. Socrates claimed wisdom only for the fact that he knew how little he knew. Most of what we learn as we age is far more misconceptions than universal truths."
"To think that we are or become more as we age or evolve by having greater influence over or greater power to destroy, break, subjegate, and oppress others, than those who have not nor care not for such "power" shows the limitations of our current cultures' (most all peoples' cultures) "wisdom". To believe you know absolutely nothing for sure, to wonder at the wonder of it all, is to begin to cast the potential for anything, understanding, happiness, contentment, peace, wide open again for the concrete worlds in which we build and concrete mindsets depend upon believing this has already been done to satisfaction and further input or inquiry is neither necessary nor tolerated. It keeps the future pre-determined, as nothing more than a continuation of the past set in stone."
"Such questioning may not be necessary for existence but it is necessary to live. Remember in comparison to the age of the rest of the Universe and any potentially older species, everyone you meet is but a babe in the woods, kind and aware of that fact or self-righteous and eager to have everyone else think and do as they say, namely a brat (brat means a spoiled, mean, or obstinate child)."
That about winds up this retro. Back in 2005 now, things seem pretty undefined and pretty bleak when looking at them only from the present. Yet hope springs eternal and travels out from behind and beyond whatever you can see or know. I think I said it best in the notes after the Introduction, the last time I ended it, so I will repeat that here.
"To see simultaneously and equally both with and without expectations at once is the only way to experience the Universe beyond your expectations or limits of just being yourself, or outside that bubble of reality you create around yourself to move into and inhabit. More simply put, never give up the wonder for what you will soon enough find you only thought you knew or understood. It is never a wise trade."
Previous posts (this is meant to be continuous): - Rebooting the Notes at the End of the Deconstructed Universe - Breaking Probability Waves - Within the Paradox of Time - Heretic Papers II- Beyond the End of the Universe
... GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.
If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."
The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.
The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. ...
This next post starts off covering the year 2003 and was written in the first week of January. It was thought of due to a power outage in my neighborhood which happened in the evening and left me in the dark for a few hours. After using my laptop for light for awhile, I decided to switch to traditional candles.
Then I did what many have done since time immemorial. I put my hand in front of the candle and observed a shadow of it on the wall. I had been thinking about the concept of multiple levels of dimensions but perceiving only 3 and the candle got me thinking about 3 dimensional "shadows" of higher realities, or our perceptions being only that of a more dimensional Universe "flatted down" to a few which we could understand. After observing, thinking, pondering, and playing around with shadow puppets for awhile, the lights came back on.
The candle however was still lit, and therefore the shadows I was or had been making were still just as potentially there. It was just with the added brighter lights, there was no way to make out a shadow from a single light source as weak as a candle anymore. Yet it was still there, however faint. I moved my hand in front of the still burning candle a few times to make the point to myself, yes, the shadow must still be there, only I can't make it out anymore.
The 'single star' analogy which I used for the essay/example "Breaking Probability Waves" several days earlier (which I would use again in the Yashoe/Yashomee story) to 'filter down' an explanation of existence to the most minimal levels, one existence vs. all else, I thought of now again in terms of the candle and the lights, suddenly on again. Thinking in terms of lots of people being separate lives, separate lights, was complex, but thinking that there might be a single source of life, or single beam which makes matter or life exist, like a single candle, then there could be a metaphorical lens or prism which would break that single light into different colors, different existences, different "shadows" of existence, of which we were one of, dancing around on a 3 dimensional Universe equivalent of my 2 dimensional wall I had been making shadow puppets on.
This was not the first time I used that example (in what I was about to write at that point) of a "prism" creating "a multitude of individualizations." The poem "Prismic" from my collection, Quadranine from 1989 (20 years ago around now) made similar observations / suppositions. I am putting it here below as an example or reference.
An indomitable ray of hope and fulfillment
passes through the prism of time
spreading wide a multitude of individualizations
painting the mural of life in its prime
Colors which are pleasing to the heart
stand contrasting and complementing those that unnerve
for each part's beauty never seeks to overpower
the incomprehensibly vast mosaic they serve
Images of all that we know of or dream
float fancifully reflected in a panorama of space
playing nightly to a captive audience unseen
trying their best to savor a feast they cannot taste
The brilliance of the light cannot be known
as it far surpasses that which can be seen
and the mysterious refractor defies definitions,
not to diminish the wondrous pictures that gleam
While there are many similarities to that poem, with what I was thinking about then when the lights came back on, it was more like the thought of life itself as a beam animating and creating not only matter but each person's life as well. Again, also referencing the recently written essay at that time, "Breaking Probability Waves", in the sense of how it began, in that first few sentences...
"...Life consumes and expends energy. We, living beings, consume far more energy than can be quantified than merely from the foods we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Life draws energy to itself. It draws upon it and builds itself up from it. Food, matter, they are required only as a catalyst. Once the process is begun it is almost self-perpetuating.
So in this sense, the "lens" I was trying to define or imagine was the source of life or consciousness, and trying to play around with that concept more than just the "shadows", and trying to understand life "flowing into" each person from a higher dimensional viewpoint, or outside of the 3 dimensions we perceive point of view. Probably before the rest, then I wrote the poem's lines that summed it up at what ended up at the beginning, then most likely began the rest. I may have written it the other way around, but its not really that important which came first.
Multidimensionalism: Lenses, Interruptions and Shadows
One light can cast a single shadow on the wall
with many lights one hardly sees any shadow at all
but ever more lights breed ever more shadows to see
more shapes, more perspectives fleshing out what can be
Using the star analogy to potential, one can perceive of existence as taking place on another level. As the star spreads its light ever outwards into space until it hits something which absorbs that light into itself, it also creates an absence of that light in the direction beyond itself, a shadow. If one substitutes light for potential, or energy, or life spreading out into the Universe in all directions beyond three dimensions and time, but like light creating breaks or stoppages as it hits “things” which catch some of that potential or energy into itself causing interruptions in the design or pattern which would otherwise occur, a shadow of events in time. One could speculate such a disruption’s effect could be envisioned as a world, a universe, or an entity. For this example I will choose a particular entity or single being.
If one follows the analogy of life emanating from a single source such as energy or light emanates from a star, and that life or potential of events can take a myriad of forms, just being potential, none more definite or definitive than any other, such as light containing all colors. When we think of this world as being where life hits something or is actualized from potential into existence, striking some “thing” to break down the multiple potential colored “light” or energy into individual existences, one is looking at the effects and not necessarily the cause. If you in turn step beyond that to conceptualize that just as life flows into us and our Universe from an indistinguishable unchartable point from our current existence's points of view, the actual diffusing of potential into actual, from all that can be into what is, is taking place between us, our world, and the light / life source, whatever it is that creates or sustains what it is that we are and use to build up some concepts of ourselves. Imagine your body or your world as a three-dimensional shadow created by the interruption of infinite time and infinite space emanating outwards from some central point. Though that point would not be in actuality, from our points of view, in any one place and time, using a star as an analogy one can conceive of it as such.
So using that limited analogy of life or potential coming from a definitive pin-pointable place in space and time such as a star, though this whole analogy is not accurate limiting it in space and time, imagine you or consciousness as something in-between the source of existence and the physical Universe able to absorb some of that essence of potential into itself, causing a disruption, a shadow of what could occur, and from that shadow creates what will occur, at least from that line of sight (timeline) between the source, and the effect, existence. Moving your hand in front of a light, if there is another source for the light to hit beyond your hand, and the light source sufficiently bright or all other sources of light are sufficiently dim, you will see a shadow of your hand upon another surface. You can see how the rest of the light would hit and the disruption you can move or control, and how this reacts with that area. If life emanates into ourselves from an outside source and we are capable of capturing or transmuting that energy, life, or potential into ourselves creating effects or events across time which we choose, it is possible to imagine that we stand in-between the source of this potential, and the effects which play out upon the background, in our case not a two-dimensional wall, merely a three-dimensional universe plus time.
Since I have stressed this analogy is flawed, to imagine the source of all life or potential as existing in one single point of space and time, I will try to expand upon it a little. Even if one does believe in one god as the source of all life, it is still quite a stretch to envision it as existing in a single point in space and time. This is just an analogy to illustrate a point, a lens, an obstruction in potential and time, and the effects that would appear across a static world, a shadow of events with that potential, from a single viewpoint or line of sight.
As difficult as this can be to imagine, I will now make it even more so. Imagine not a single source of life or potential emanating from a single direction but instead a multitude of different lights or potential sources around the inside of a giant ball and the obstruction or refractor absorbing that energy into itself casting many shadows simultaneously upon many surfaces at the same time. It shows one shape on one surface, a different one upon another surface from a different angle. Likewise any movement or intended effects upon one surface shows as different, backward, or opposite on another surface. This example is at the heart of understanding both multidimensionalism and different realities of time. For time, imagine all the lights around the inside of the ball firing in a particular order, one at a time. What creates the shadow or effect would control to some degree its shape or movements but so too would the differing lights firing create a movement to and across differing backgrounds opposite that source.
To imagine multidimensionalism, imagine all the lights on at once, all shadows would always be present all at the same time, though not visible since each would be obscuring its visibility coming from so many different light sources, but each shadow would still be there. Each movement, each action taking place against one background is simultaneously taking place, having a seemingly different effect as it is being seen from a different angle or plane upon all other lines of sight. Use the ball to represent time and imagine one light seemingly stronger at one point in time, at each moment in time. Though there would be visual or conceptual movement through time, a shadow appearing to be moving across different frames, yet at that same moment differing versions of other shadows not as bright would be telling different perspectives upon other lines of sight. And since as I said for this example, each line of sight represents a different time, not a different dimension per se, each event or moment happening at any time would also be casting a different shadow back upon itself at every other time.
Now change the inside of the ball casting shadows of potential, not to represent time, but instead three-dimensional space. Each breakage or disruption within the potential can be occurring or disrupting multiple points in space at the same time, appearing as one form from one perspective, having one type of intended effect upon one reality, and having a quite different impression by that motion or disruptive patterns simultaneously occurring in other points in space at the same time.
Now imagine the inside of the ball to represent consciousness. Each idea, each thought, each notion would be occurring in a different way, affecting multiple shadow consciousnesses simultaneously. The intended effect upon one thinking that one at that moment is the current or real one, as if one moment was more real in the time analogy because one light seemed brighter or the others appeared dimmer, that same idea, notion, or abstraction can appear quite differently to another consciousness simultaneously as a direct consequence of that intended action upon another line of sight, with each thought being seen by all shadow consciousnesses differently all at once all the time.
Now imagine the inside of the ball to represent all of these, time, consciousness, and three-dimensional space, all lights on all the time, every action or intention affecting every other event, time, and place, in every consciousness' potential perception in every possible dimension and timeline. Everything done at every time by anyone ever anywhere any when casting a faint shadow upon everything else also always occurring. The key to understanding it may not be in the source from where or how existence originates but in-between that primal primordial cause and every possible effect, every shadow, every stoppage of all possibilities into single occurrences of single realities. Most think time is this fulcrum, that something in time, in each moments present, regulates each occurrence from what did not occur but time is not thought to be a consciousness, merely a regulator of what appears as actuality to one given perspective, one line of sight, one given timeline. And if from a different perspective time itself can be thought to be multiply occurring in different ways at once, what may exist in the center appearing simultaneously yet differently across every moment in time to every possible consciousness in every possible reality may be even more elusive to understanding time or life itself.
Before getting to the third 'revising addition' to Deconstructing the Universe, and believing I had finally finished it, the previous two posts here, "Breaking Probability Waves" and "Shattering Time" were added at the end of it. Looking back on it, and mentioning more fully why I call them revising additions, was because after I wrote each one and then reread the previous 8, each time the previous ones seemed to be about something different. I was seeing what I had written before in a new light or from a new perspective, so to speak. That reverb was to compound itself exponentially and is mentioned, parts of it anyway, many times in the full 5D notes, parts 1 through 6, and even in things between this written below here, Christmas 2002, and the full notes which began in October of 2003. This is an excerpt from the full text which will follow it, but as in the first post here, it also explains a bit how writing it was changing me as a person. As I put in the final introduction to Deconstructing the Universe, "The future is uncertain, but isn't it always? That should never surprise us, but it always does. You may not learn anything from reading it, or you might, but I could more than fill all of the books in all of the libraries in the world if I tried to explain how much and in how many ways I have grown as a person in getting to its end."
After Deconstructing the Universe was completed, three separate times counting the postscripts (this I can tell would have been written in just after or on Christmas 2002, right after "Shattering Time". As a sequel, I would like to write, "How to glue time back together again". That would not be as easy ), again I am left with hanging thoughts of a mind that fails to recognize an off switch. At least two (paragraphs) of which will be placed at the beginning of Deconstructing the Universe, something which is best reread after each end, for both postscripts redefine all which came before them. (Eventually there were 8 postscript sections added. At the time, each of the first two postscripts added seemed to cast the previous sections in a different light. I am far beyond that now. I can say that the 1.8 version and the original, though still there, seem different in purpose. I was different too.) In a way each life is a redefinition of all which came before them. Upon each revision, or each redefinition, there are those which are not contradicted and new ideas hinted at which begin to emerge when trying to synthesize them into a coherent whole.
Life is equally complex and real truths are best written between the lines, either that or we just see and apply new meaning to what is not really there which we wish was, some deeper meaning or purpose or logic (which we did not see the first time around) which we wish to impose upon it. That life itself exists as interactions between individuals lives, that time lies in-between individual moments, and that truth lies between (different) individuals' conception of it, is hinted at upon the rereads (to me anyway, at that time, and is said ad nausea since then in the Notes) after the postscripts of Deconstructing the Universe, but to say that openly, plainly, without having to work at it to understand it in your own way or coming to realize it all on your own, it is just words, smug words, portending to some higher realization in the end just another construct no more real than any other, some more over simplified nonsense in a world as infinitely complex as you wish to make it (by imagining it to be).
(Note: Before putting the full text, when I put it on the web previously, I wrote this as an Introduction page to it in 2005.)
I found some older stuff recently and decided to put them here. The first one was written just after Deconstructing the Universe was finished for the first time before the current 1.8 version. It talks about why I wrote it. I learned something from reading it and was kind of curious why I wrote it. It seems I might have had a reason after all. It does a good job at explaining how the 3 books (Deconstructing the Universe, Towards Tomorrow, and Morality: Individual and Social) were connected, at least how I thought they were at the time. For me that was all long ago and far away, so I will have to take my own word for it that they are connected at all. At least once I know now that I thought so. The other I was typing up recently at the same time and it may have been written around the same time (I can place the first one below around Christmas 2002 or on Christmas day). ...
Heretic Papers II- Beyond the End of the Universe (retitled Tying the Books Together in 2005)
After finishing "Morality: Individual and Social," the idea got stuck in my head at its end that what people will think in the future is not beyond us now, it is just the things we are not ready to accept. None of the things we call improvements to our societies socially now were unheard of 50 or 100 years ago, they were just unsettling the majority of people then. The aim of "Towards Tomorrow" was to move beyond the present and kick over a few sacred stones of beliefs to see what might lurk beneath them, or see if their foundations were really that sound. It was meant to be disruptive, controversial, but in the end lost its edge, shifted into a different mode, and became something else; understanding how we can define time and where we are possibly heading, and what we might be able to do about that, about the future and the time definition of ourselves.
After Towards Tomorrow was done, many different ideas kept popping into my head, paragraphs self-contained about various things Towards Tomorrow did not address, and where it failed in its original intent to think outside the box of what is acceptable in this time, to go beyond the current mindsets of this time and society more completely in search of truth regardless of what is conventional, accepted, or safe. Something which I call gloves-off or bare-knuckled philosophy, not being held back by anything, afraid of offending no one, letting only the abstract notion of truth matter.
This is impossible to do on so many levels, to be able to truly think beyond the bounds, conventions, and biases of ones own time, people, and civilizations. We can gleam a few perspectives from the past, (what we are allowed to know or think about it by current governments), postulate about how other more advanced species might perceive things, or extrapolate on how those in the future might see things as humanity matures, and more of its denizens have greater and unrestricted access to its histories, all of them, not just which versions their present societies wish to stress for their own political purposes which are nothing more than caricatures of the past constructed to validate or support the current beliefs into "instant traditions" more often than not at odds with the past they claim to be upholding.
The results of those paragraphs were assembled into a slightly more coherent collection by placing them together and giving it a title called "The Heretic Papers", taken after its best paragraph which fully realized the intent of wanting to go beyond what people now think, hold sacred, unquestioning, and treads on it mercilessly yet reverently, not out of spite nor animosity, but in the simple and pure pursuit of truth. Of that one small paragraph, the pious of many faiths would find both much that is provoking, (heretical), yet also something which is true and beautiful. That such truth and beauty are seemingly at the expense of cherished beliefs, many would undoubtedly see as disturbing and unnecessarily harsh, distorting, and that is for those who could see past that at all.
Of The Heretic Papers, or those few dozen paragraphs I refer to as The Heretic Papers, they really do go beyond what some devoutly religious people might want to withstand or be exposed to. Generally I am respectful to all persons' beliefs, their various levels of tolerance and intolerance, and therefore decided they are not really for general consumption, though writing them was a bit of a catharsis. Yet as Morality: Individual and Social led directly to Towards Tomorrow, chasing those truths or insights we are really not ready for quite yet, but we are capable of perceiving and how that was not really addressed (enough) by Towards Tomorrow, the collection of ideas in those original Heretic Papers, born out of the same original motivation for (writing) Towards Tomorrow, were assembled in a more coherent, more structured, less controversial form into Deconstructing the Universe.
Many varied factors contributed to Deconstructing the Universe. What I termed bare-knuckled philosophy, truly trying to think outside the bounds of ones own time, conventions, and social beliefs, and the results of that were a key part. My father's illness was another key factor. The Heretic Papers was probably the last thing I ever wrote which he would have been able to comprehend. He always talked of writing a book that would reveal more to humanity than they were ready for or expecting. Whether he could have done that, it is impossible to say, for now it is not likely he even will have such a chance.
That I am not capable doing such, now any number of people are now qualified to say, for I have attempted just that, to go beyond what people now are capable of understanding which may make sense or more sense to people a dozen or a hundred years from now, to do it for him to show him that even the things we are not able to do that we wished to do, that somehow everything gets done eventually, however indirectly. I doubt anyone can know (with certainty) what people will find relevant a hundred years from now, but to set our sights that high; to attempt to look beyond our world today, our present beliefs of our own time or place in history to see beyond our own horizons to what is or may be true beyond them, such attempts are good and valuable even if the results of which are worthless in and of themselves.
Philosophy when it works best is done in layers. Take what has come before and add to it, build upon it. What people believe now, that which has worth and will withstand the test of time if it is left unsheltered enough to meet all challenges, will at best provide ONLY a foundation for new outlooks we might only catch glimpses of today. The past and previous outlooks need to be incorporated into future ones, and not dominate them, nor restrain them, nor seek to prevent them from arising. Religions are great bearers of the past to the future, and many ideas and ideals would not have survived without being encapsulated into them, yet it is a sad thing when many great ideas of different faiths are not taught or stressed in others because they are perceived as being foreign, outside of ones own religion, and to even think of such thing would be to be unfaithful to ones own religion or people. Religions have kept many great ideas and viewpoints intact for thousands of years, but it is that very rigidity of walls between faiths which keeps good ideas and outlooks from being shared by all.
If someone were to take a notion like honesty and build a religion around it which became dominant, that notion would get entangled with that religion, and to people of other religions, honesty would have connotations to a particular (foreign) religion. I am not saying other religions necessarily would become less honest, just that it should not deserve by being stressed so highly by one group, as to become identified with one group over the other. But that would probably happen. Thus if someone seems overtly honest, you could call that person disparagingly as the term for that group, one of those honesty nuts from that other religion.
Many good notions have been incorporated and identifiable as being stressed by some religions yet it is those very religious connotations which helped them survive which may keep them from spreading, as if by buying into one notion or belief you must ascribe to an entire belief system, or that you are unfaithful to your own faith by considering views which are parts of religions outside of your own faith. The pursuit of truth ought not to be hindered by who had which beliefs first or which group stresses which values more. The free flow of ideas ought to include all views, not just economic, governmental, and scientific. Those systems are evolving by and large by what works best regardless of how or where it originated, yet with some philosophical and religious ideas, changes seem destined only to create new fractures and vying versions and sects because there are few ways or means to incorporate outside ideas into them to grow or evolve.
I do not necessarily believe what we believe philosophically or religiously will or ought to be believed ten thousand years from now just as no religions from ten thousand years ago are dominant today. Whatever new belief systems emerge will have a part of our beliefs in them or will in some way have grown out of them (and away from them), just as they who will hold and believe them will have grown out of us and our lives. I do not claim to know what those beliefs systems will be like, nor would I necessarily hold them to be more true, but I hope they are tried and true battle tested through rigorous comparisons against contentious contenders without appearing to corner the market or have a trademark on any particular value or belief over any others, and that they will be what we all are, stronger for coming from many different sources into one being.
After Deconstructing the Universe was completed, three separate times counting the postscripts, again I am left with hanging thoughts of a mind that fails to recognize an off switch. At least two (paragraphs) of which will be placed at the beginning of Deconstructing the Universe, something which is best reread after each end, for both postscripts redefine all which came before them. In a way each life is a redefinition of all which came before them. Upon each revision, or each redefinition, there are those which are not contradicted and new ideas hinted at which begin to emerge when trying to synthesize them into a coherent whole.
Life is equally complex and real truths are best written between the lines, either that or we just see and apply new meaning to what is not really there which we wish was, some deeper meaning or purpose or logic (which we did not see the first time around) which we wish to impose upon it. That life itself exists as interactions between individual's lives, that time lies in-between individual moments, and that truth lies between (different) individuals' conception of it, is hinted at upon the rereads after the postscripts of Deconstructing the Universe, but to say that openly, plainly, without having to work at it to understand it in your own way or coming to realize it all on your own, it is just words, smug words, portending to some higher realization in the end just another construct no more real than any other, some more over simplified nonsense in a world as infinitely complex as you wish to make it (by imagining it to be).
Again I have decided to group together these self-contained hanging paragraphs and try to sort out some order of them. From the first Heretic Papers, Deconstructing the Universe emerged, and again these paragraphs, written without regard to present sensibilities are probably best kept under wraps but they seem less likely to be misunderstood, and hopefully this has attested to why one ought to step outside what one ought to think once in awhile, challenge everything that is known or believed on occasion, to attempt to glimpse the Universe beyond our own minds, beliefs, and mindsets. It is ALWAYS heretical, and depending on your society, sometimes (such questioning is) illegal, but always can lead to something more, something valuable, something which now only exists as potential, good or bad, which like us will be judged for its value only once it has been attained, realized, and known. And in the end, not realizing it, not conceiving of it as an option, letting some truths go unknown until the end of time, it is not even a possible viable option. Truth will seek us out to become known, even and most often when, we spurn it.
(Note: Not much to add here because there were no notes at the end of it like with the previous other two. But I did use a quote from the above paragraph to kick off my first full new (at least the intended one) post on TruthRevival.org in over a year. The much alluded to 'Higher ground' one. It was finalized as "Newer more uncertain ground and a wider variety of pasts" which was posted April 15th, 2009. The following essay below really is not connected to the notes at all but was written the same day or within a day or two of the above, so I figured since there was nothing to add, why not put that here too.)
Man vs. Animals: Trading Freedom for Cooperation
Choice is one of the most important aspects of intellectual life, and control must be included as a consequence or contributor to choice. Without possessing choice, freewill or some degree of control over our own lives, we may live, but intellectually we are dead. This may seem strange to some, separating intellectual life from biological life. After all, in this world we each have only one life, or at least only one at a one time for those who wish to think they will or have had more than one. I do not by making this distinguishment between intellectual life and biological life mean to imply there are two lives, nor two different aims or goals; one for the body and one for the mind. Certainly such distinctions are there to be made, though not relevant I think to the simple assertion that life as we define it, that which we possess some degree of responsibility for because we are conscious of ourselves and our lives, and to some degree our potentials and the consequences for what we do or fail to do, depends upon possessing both the choice among different courses of action, and the control, power, or freedom to pursue those differing avenues of events and possibilities.
Such differing notions of life and responsibility for ones actions is best typified by how we view the distinction between human actions and those species we identify as animals. Animals are not burdened by us to be thought of generally as good or evil, as they behave as they do primarily on instinct rather than what we call learned behavior. They react as they do in situations as their genetics up until their existence best prepared them to behave, so goes the belief anyway. What animals do is supposedly what is in their nature to do, and is generally not viewed in moral terms. Because we possess seemingly more awareness of our actions, their contexts and consequences for others, we are viewed quite differently as a species of individuals very much in moral terms. We are not free to behave as animals would nor would most wish to live in a society where others behaved as such toward ourselves. We put up walls of what is acceptable behavior, those who always keep their actions within the strictest of these confines we term to be moral people and with moral terms; good, decent, righteous. Those whose actions stray from those confines we term either the individuals or the actions in moral terms as well, bad, evil, or unholy.
The degree of freedom of an animal and the degree of freedom of a man or woman too, are not on the same playing field. Animals excepting those who live in herds or groups generally have unlimited freedom of action depending only on their perceived choices and their natural abilities. But beyond their own abilities, their survival is limited only to what they themselves can do to keep themselves alive. I exclude those who live in herds and groups from this analogy because they too may have special rules to adhere to, can be shunned from the aid of the group, and can benefit from others aid should they be hurt, hungry, or otherwise in need.
The freedom of Man in comparison to that of an animal is on the surface far lessened. The bounds of behavior are as complex and as confining as ones intelligence can imagine or allow, and the bounds of behavior allowed or condoned fluctuates literally on a daily basis with too many rules for one to be able to name. Between every law and every custom and every tradition, much of our consciousnesses are very much preoccupied with making sure we are doing whatever we are doing correctly and within the confines of acceptable behavior for remaining within our given or perceived group. The trade-off for this, as in all species which live in groups, is that we never so to speak, walk alone.
Should an animal or outsider attack us, another of our species or group will come to our aid. Should we grow sick, another would care for us and bring us food until we are well. This is of course relative, and varies with different groups. Most often threats to ourselves come not from other species, but other members of our own species, and depending upon whom, or to what group they belong, others coming to our aid if attacked is far from assured. Other factors enter into it as well. Maybe that person deserved to be beaten or killed. Maybe he or she was a bad person who did bad things. Maybe, some speculate due to such reasonings, maybe the good person is the aggressor protecting us from the other person who would do bad things otherwise. Without such knowledge (or explanations which may or may not be valid) or context to place events within conceptually, all policemen would be just people who chase, beat up, and shoot others, and all executions would just be more murders. Not always knowing the context of something prevents us from knowing within our own minds and desires to stay within the bounds of acceptable behavior can keep us from helping another. Maybe he is bad and did something to deserve it, or maybe the attackers are part of a group or gang one dares not provoke or anger.
Variable too are the chances for aid one would receive were one to become ill or weak and unable to work, the modern equivalent of finding food in the animal analogy, which would of course be stealing if one were to do simply that, finding food. If one becomes too weak to do something which ones society finds worthy of giving one food for, or is unable to find something to do which would result in having food, how much help one would receive would depend upon ones culture, government, and circumstances. Primarily family groups used to care for members sick or infirm until they were well and could acquire food or the means to obtain food themselves. Now in many societies, social changes have led to the local or national governments taking over a supporting role in caring for the weak, sick, and those unable to work, and this has allowed family members to recede from this role. Governments, national and local, around the world vary greatly in how much help and for how long, and who qualifies for such help.
Because it is often not clear who ultimately who in a government or society is responsible for such people, many societies have the majority of people willing to simply bypass or overlook these people as if they do not exist until they simply die of malnutrition or starvation. If large pockets of people dying of starvation elsewhere exists, governments will sometimes send food to those regions for awhile, but generally societies slowly will weed out the people they do no wish to have simply by overlooking them until they die in a gutter somewhere if they cannot find someone to give them food, if they cannot find a way to obtain it for themselves. They do not have to even prohibit people from aiding them anymore. Most have been conditioned not to think or care about it much, and are more than willing to look away.
Posts
