To discuss my personal beliefs is incredibly difficult.
It is so much easier to review and criticize external stimuli, than it is to describe the meanderings of the internal stimuli.
That said, I think I am a (quasi-)liberal (meta-)secular (post-)humanist, of sorts.
I believe that there are many, infinitely many, universes, and that because of this there are infinitely many possibilities. Therefore, I shyly believe that my own mind is a wee holographic chunk of the whole, reflecting it, and therefore, I also believe my mind is pretty.
Since there are infinite possibilities, it becomes clear that I will probably live forever. Not possibly, but probably. This sounds very strange but is backed up somewhat concretely by recent thinking and research into quantum physics and chaos theory mathematics. New advances in medicine make it more likely that my stay on this particular small pinpoint we call earth will be long and exhausting.Now, before any burning-man hippy types begin to think they are more exhaustively well-read than I am on generally trippy concepts, I am indeed already aware that anyone who has read even a few chapters of "food of the gods", "timewave zero", or any other light or heavy work by terence and Dennis Mckenna has some arguments waiting for me at the end of this paragraph.
Allow my rebuttal.
While quantum mechanics and higher math are,indeed, simply another faith-based cosmology, they do have a high level of verifiability in reality. Two apples added to two apples is, indeed, four apples. (or four apples worth of apple sauce, if you are some kind of topography geek.) Mathematics, even in its highest and most impenetrable forms, can be proven step at a time in tangible sense. Physics also has a high level of credibility, even though on a molecular and particular level it becomes difficult to observe real effects. Therefore, even though math and science are simply a new 21st century religion, they are also more credible than this...or even this. Until evidence changes the results of current research(change...yet another reason science is more credible than older religions) I will take these conclusions in part or whole and warp them to suit myself, all I like. Remember, we're talking about my internal stimuli.
Although I welcome conclusion-shattering arguments, too. They're actually how I ended up where I am now.
Granted all of these things boiling in my head, and you can see how the next logical question becomes;"what to do to keep from getting bored?"
With infinite eons stretching out ahead, and the limited antics and amusements legally available to me here, the only downfall it that for at least the foreseeable several ceturies will see me contained in this somewhat defective body, which unfortunately came equipped with substandard strength, height, and flexibility, and has acquired over time a somewhat cluttered paint job, along with hairy moles and aching joints. I am in favor of any technology, of any sort, which will make it possible for me to ;
wear giant biomechanical grasshopper legs and leap into the stratosphere,
change my fullbody tattoo daily, even make it invisible if I want... (actually, I'm working on that one with some help from a secret science-type friend right now)
talk to my friends through a cochlear ear implant that picks up sound osteoslogically and transmits it via bluetooth to the implants in their teeth,
have sex for days at a time without tiring or drying out,
and trip face. totally. trip face.
Thinking about all of this makes me feel a whole lot better about the fact that change is constant and somewhat terrifying. That aging, death, disease, illness, loneliness, physical and intellectual pain....that all of that is here too.
I'm not a luddite, I also really have no respect for most belief systems that logically (or irrationally) progress to thinking that life is suffering, (byebye buddha and st paul), that some people are more entitled to opportunity than others because of irrelevancies like age, sex, faith,or color,-entitled toopportunity,I say, not the ability to take it-(bye bye st peter, hitler, jesus, mohammed, ghandi, MLK, malcolm x, GWB,YHWH,Dworkin,etc....well, all of them, really.),nor do I much appreciate the notion that humankind is here to work and must do so or be damned, or that life is agony, or any of that crap.
I've had some very hard times in my life. They are not what I'm here for. They are merely the bit of shadow that makes the light seem brighter. That is their only purpose.
And so we come full circle to my lifelong vice of pronoia. I indulge in this constantly. Even at the darkest part of my mind, glimmers this notion that somehow the universe will pull me through.It is truly a vice, too. In the classical sense. It tastes like candy, it smells like fucking, it sounds like punk rock and it looks like a fat glass of whiskey with no hangover attached.
It feels good.
It makes sense.
I mean, why would I want fun, if that's not the whole point? I can hardly wrap my mind around the extent of divine cruelty if there was some sort of deity making us all want pleasure, but requiring us to experience pain...and then punishing us for the wanting. It makes no sense at all unless you truly belive your god is pretty much the devil. And that's ridiculous. (sorry,guys.)
So...it's just that infinity exists in a vaccuum. and that makes everything possible, pleasant and not-so-pleasant. There are ways to avoid the unpleasantnesses of this world, and I know of a few reliable ones I can share...
1.Get born in the First world, preferably northern Europe;
2.Be white,
3.Get or find or inherit material wealth,without caring too much about it;
4.Eat,drink,taste,try,fuck,and dance to every single thing you possibly can.
I am not trying to say that everything is sweetness and light allthe time, or that grief and fear have no place...just that I indulge myself in thinking there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that the tunnel itself is long, windy, fascinating, and full of hilarity in its own right.
Human evolution has not stopped. Our bodies and minds have continued to evolve to respond to new environments...The increase in rate of autism is a prime example.If you have Asperger's syndrome, you may (it is now thought) be the next step in human physical and mental evolution. Apparently the future is rife with non-social interactions, making emotional interference in life's more meaningful concerns a recidivist throwback to the apes, or something like that. Robots are our friends!
We are more and more spending our time as a species(in more tech-savvy nations, anyway...Swaziland is probably not spawning a lot of autistics) dealing with tehcnology, remote communications, and intellectually stimulating culture. Despite some pop-culture trends, sentimentality is only prevalent in some backwards areas of the developed world. Low emotional affect has become more prevalent with each generation. It's another mental vice for me-thinking that the human mind of the future is more like my own.
For everyone else, it may help to realize that if we seize the reins of evolution firmly, we can shape ourselves into anything we want.Nanotech and stem cells and the human genome project and cloning...the 21st century lives up to every mad scientist's fondest dreams. Evolution is not some force, like a deity, that will get angry or jealous if we overcome it and steer it.Evolution is simply a rule which can be countered and understood. Unlike a deity it should not be anthropomorphized. It has no vengeance.
I'm not saying that bird flu isn't scary. Just that it's not mother nature" "having a snit". It's just another organism flowing down the morphological hill into the future, like we still are. As soon as we control our physical destiny, we will be different from other life forms. Sentience, by itself, does not make us any different. We're simply a higher degree on a continuum.(I am an omnivore, by the way.Life feeds on death.And all that malarkey.)
Altering our biology the way we are soon going to able to-that, that is another story.
Maybe this alteration, this tinkering, is the singularity many scientists think we are approaching. Maybe it will be some kind of change in consciousness, instead. Or maybe we will all just die out from some mega-plague or monster asteroid or alien invasion...zombies, tidal waves, what-have-you. But maybe it will be that we change so fundamentally the way we are in the universe, that we become unrecognizable...
I think that's enough disjointed rambling for one day. I leave you with some corroborating witnesses.
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy. Groucho Marx
How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. Kurt Vonnegut,
To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe. Marilyn vos Savant
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead. James Thurber
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. Bertrand Russell
Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. Laurence J. Peter
Engineering is not merely knowing and being knowledgeable, like a walking encyclopedia; engineering is not merely analysis; engineering is not merely the possession of the capacity to get elegant solutions to non-existent engineering problems; engineering is practicing the art of the organized forcing of technological change... Engineers operate at the interface between science and society... Dean Gordon Brown
The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. Frank Herbert
"We shouldn't fear a world that is more interacted." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 27, 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment