If you would be a nicely wrapped up piece of candy in a little kid's pocket, you'd probably have a hard time imagining what the economic system's like that makes it possible for people to build candy-factories. Your wrapping wouldn't make any sense, nor would you be able to grasp a simple concept such as pollution. You wouldn't know privacy, even if they'd wrapped you up so tight that nobody would ever be able to unwrap you and you had the rest of eternity to be alone in your private little wrap.
Although humans are usually unable to understand existence, they still manage to explain enough of it to their kids for them to get by. How is this done? How do we get a kid that can't count to ten as far as to solve difficult mathematical equations?
If you want your child to be able to calculate the volume of a three-dimensional cube, you probably won't succeed if you don't start with giving your kid some tools to do this with. A mathematical system would go a long way. As would the understanding of three dimensions. And even then, your offspring still won't do very well, if you forget to explain what a cube looks like.
To be able to grasp something that is, as seen from your current point of development, too complex or overwhelming to comprehend, the use of metaphors is essential to bring the new concept enough within your reach to start finding out it's mechanics; to start learning about it.
Of course, you would be perfectly right if you said that to begin learning something of which one cannot oversee the consequences could easily lead you onto the darker roads, away from the light. Everytime you begin to grasp a new concept in your life, you won't know yet wether it will be a good thing or a bad thing. You've only got the concepts that you've already learned as a basis to make this decision from. Naturally, this lack of control would be frightening to many people.
The truth is one has got to take a leap of faith. Let me assure you however, that I have no 'evil' intentions whatsoever, and I'm not trying to drive you insane either... and no, I'm not saying that to lure you into my trap either ;-) It is, in fact, this way of thinking that ultimately leads to either loss of sanity or evil intent; fear of the latter (evil) can literally drive people out of their mind.
Although at this moment it may seem difficult to understand, but I'll try to summarize my ideas on why we should not be afraid to e-volve, as simple as possible, in the form of a list of logical steps (most of which will be explained later on in detail, so for now you'll just have to assume that they are quite correct):
- Interaction is the container of existence; the more you move, the more it moves you...
- By interacting with our environment we establish our existence within that environment.
- Emotion is the result of chemicals produced by our body, interfering with the soul that resides in our brain.
- Meaning does not necessarily thrive on emotion, though it can be derived from it.
- Unless you would see curiosity as an emotion, loss of emotion would not mean loss of meaning.
- Identity based solely on emotion might theoretically be possible, but once again, it is not derived from it.
- Again, loss of emotion would not necessarily lead to loss of identity.
- Creating order in chaos should prove interesting enough to keep interaction alive, shouldn't it?
- Learning how to control your emotions is, in fact, creating order within chaos.
- If your interaction is based on emotion, you'll get hurt yet you'll also know bliss.
- If your interaction is based on logic, you'll eventually destroy emotion.
- If one uses the divine measurements to create a pentium-processor that can invert our reality in a way so that we could choose when to engulf ourselves in 'meatworld' and when we would be our 'digital souls', one could truly create heaven for everyone.
The need to interact is what makes existence a reality, not feeling; feeling is the result of this constant interaction... Once you will succeed in opening up your doors of perception, this will become crystal clear. I can well imagine that your first response to all this 'nonsense' might be a paranoid one, but once you realise that there's always someone or something that will be more intelligent than you are, that there's always something bigger that's watching those people that are watching you, you'll know that this is nothing to be afraid about. Actually, it's quite a reassurance. Unless, of course, you're up to no good, in which case you'll end up running away from yourself forever... Everything is watching everything, so it's only in your mind that this could possibly pose a threat.
To establish a means of communicating a metaphor it is quite important that all parties involved are absolutely positive about the fact that they're communicating in the same language. If a Chinese quantum-mechanic tries to explain his latest findings to an American construction worker using the chinese language, the American will soon learn what it is to have a communication problem. Quantum-mechanics, however, will remain a complete mystery to him.
Don't take it for granted though, that if everyone'd simply speak English, the problem would be solved. Take a look at the meanings of words such as 'yes' and 'no'. Their meanings are as much expressed by how we use our voice, and how we pose our body as by the letters that make them up.
There is a solution to this problem, and that solution is called LOGIC. However, logic may be absolute, but it is not a form of communication. In order to convey something, you'd still need a language which is fool-proof. The only 'logical' candidate would be the binary language. Contrary to analog (organic) languages, the binary language consists of absolutes. It's either 1 or 0, so confusion is out of the question. Unless you don't know how to communicate in binary, that is.
So, logic and binary are absolutely the only logical candidates to make thinking and communicating as crystal clear as possible, while at the same time they're too basic for the majority to be of much use. Humanoids base their communication on their intentions, and their intentions are usually spawned by their organic needs or desires. Most of the time they don't bother to stop and analyse where these needs and desires originated, or why they are feeling these needs and desires. They just want to convey them to another person.
As sense seems to be of paramount importance to the humanoid species, defining some form of universal communication protocol would seem to be the only thing one can do. Since sentient life bases it's intentions not only on it's mental, but also on it's physical needs, universal communication should depict differences, changes and movements within a physical reality. In a way, most languages already do, but everyone seems to have forgotten how to read these languages...
Considering for a moment that the physical world is said to be made up out of five elements (air, wood, fire, water and void), there's already a striking coincidence in our alphabet:
Also considering for a moment that most of the physical world is made up out of sound and vision (which are both wave-forms), AND considering that the spoken word manifests itself as sound... well, there can be only one conclusion: although only thinking is required to exist, it takes communication to exist in a physical sense of the word. Communication consists of exchanging ideas, and ideas consist of concepts, facets, and aspects. Communication in a physical world therefore consist of exchanging concepts, facets, and aspects related to that physical world itself.
For example, the physical world as perceived by a human consists of three space dimensions and one time dimension. Physical objects within this world are built up out of particles, and thus the language used to interact within this world should accurately depict intended movement or alteration of groups of particles (objects) in relation to other groups of particles (environments and other objects).
Growing up with computers all around does have certain advantages. The fact that the basics of your language are determined by universal constants for example. And that you're using the same logic in different situations, despite emotions and otherwise distracting factors. It actually took me fifteen years to figure out that most things in 'normal' people's everyday life were NOT based on digital technology.
Think about unity for a moment. Unity, as in complete and total one-ness. Whereas 'The One' is EVERYTHING (and NOTHING for that matter). If you would divide this 'whatever' into two parts, these two parts would, together, still be the entire existence... The sum of everything contained within existence equals existence itself. And as everything originated from this common base, the most absolute of beings, this would automatically indicate that everything is interconnected in some way as well.
In short, as is also mentioned in Genesis, the One divided itself up into two parts, which automatically creates a third, namely that which lies between those two parts... that which is neither of those two parts, yet that which is both as well... From these parts you can make infinitely complex tree's of sub-parts and categories. Anyone familiar with, for example, LambdaMOO programming will know that there is one engine, a couple of generic objects, and the rest is constructed using these parts, grouping them, and so on...
For those who've never programmed in an object orientated language (or have never done any programming at all), I'll try to explain it in a little bit more down to Earth way. Imagine you have a bag full of sea-shells. If you were going to try and remember what these shells look like, you'd have to take a look at them first. You'd notice that no two shells are EXACTLY the same, yet you'd agree with me that they're all quite undeniably sea-shells. You'd know this because all those sea-shells have certain generic properties; properties that apply to all of them. This is the common root, which makes it possible for you to recognise them for what they are.
Sticking to the sea-shells for a moment, imagine that you'd try to remember each individual sea-shell without any reference to the other ones. Maybe this is a little hard to imagine unless you'd compare it with the memory of a computer again. If you'd scan all the seperate sea-shells and store them on your hard-disk, your hard-disk would be full before you know it. However, if you'd only store the genetic properties that apply to ALL sea-shells, you could store the individual shells using something programmers call 'inheritance'. This means that a new object is created that 'inherits' all it's properties from it's 'parent', in this case the generic sea-shell. This saves a whole lot of memory, since the 'child'-shell would only have to be a pointer to the 'parent'-shell; a bit like a short-cut on a Windows-desktop, really... To store the individual sea-shells you'd all let them 'inherit' the properties of the generic version, and then ADD properties to the individual objects. In a way, you're creating new objects out of old ones, by pointing at the old ones and sticking the extra or new properties to the pointer, instead of making a copy of the original object each and every time you're going to create an individual one... The generic objects are what we usually call archtypes.
From our current point of view (that is, from within our space/time-continuum), it is quite difficult to imagine what the outside looks like. That's quite simply because we have no frame of reference to put it in... especially in these confusing times, it's quite difficult to imagine anything at all. It seems like everybody is screwing everybody, and as if the truth simply doesn't exist. Everybody seems to be on some mad dash, trying to find the truth, and by now everybody knows that: the truth is out there.
Well, out where? And what does it look like? A good few rounds of 'I spy, I spy, with my little eye', will reveal quite quickly that it's blue, but that still doesn't really give us much relief, doesn't it? Well, imagine it like this: the Greeks had a God for everything. You wouldn't belief the things they thought up, or they had a God to represent it... These Gods were pulling the strings, and mortal men where merely like toys to these Gods.
Now, the joke of the universe is like this (and this is the tough cookie, also known as the easter-egg):
If you log onto the Internet, choose a nickname or icon that represents the way other people perceive you, you are pretty much the same person as the one you're controlling on the Internet. Now, you've probably heard of software like 'Creatures', or other artificial life programs. Consider for a moment that the 'avatar' you've created to represent yourself on the Internet is so complex that it's more or less an organism in itself. Okay, it's not made out of biological cells, and instead it consists of zeroes and ones, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a body similar to the one you've got in 'real life'. The difference, however, would be, that the body you're controlling on the net is just a puppet, while you (the puppetmaster) are real.
Consider now for a moment, that on the Internet new life-forms are born, similar in appearance to the 'avatar' which represents you. From their point of view you're the same, while from your point of view, you might consider yourself superior. After all, you're on the outside, while the other life-forms have originated on, and are trapped within, the Internet. If you look at it like that, you're like a 'God'. Unless you forget how to log off, you appear to possess God-like powers to those who've never seen your 'outside' world. You'd have the same relation to them, as possible 'Gods' have to you.
The greatest joke of the universe, however, is that the outermost limits border on the center. In other words: at the center of existence, beginning and end converge... they're the same thing, and everything that happened in between, happened in a split second. Something to think about. Hey, you didn't think I was going to connect ALL the dots for you, didn't you ;-)
Now this point of view about the beginning being the end and vice versa, isn't necessarily entirely correct. True infinity has neither end nor beginning, for true infinity is, well, infinite. It has existed for an infinite amount of time into the past, and will continue to exist for the rest of eternity. True infinity is, in fact, quite inconceivable; one no longer has any frame of reference, and whatever would happen would be of no consequence. What is the significance of a couple of millenia when compared to eternity?
Try to visualise a bright, white dot on a black, empty background. The dot expands into two directions to form a line; a thin beam of bright, white light. Now imagine that the beam keeps expanding; infinitely, and without reaching a point where it bumps into itself again. Just infinitely going straight ahead, through an infinitely huge black, empty background. Most people find it quite difficult to imagine such a thing; usually it is considered to be inconceivable that such a thing could possibly exist. The very existence of such true infinity is a direct threat to any meaning; again, two points on this beam can be compared in relation to each other, but not in relation to their location on this beam since it has neither end nor beginning.
Now, keep that same beam of light in mind for a little longer, and bend it, so that a loop occurs. By doing this, you have created two points of reference on an otherwise infinite line: the beginning of the loop, and the point where the loop ends and infinity is resumed. Due to the nature of this loop, both points are located on the same spot on your infinite beam, since the beginning of your loop is also the end. Which one is which just depends on which way you're traveling along the line.
Between the beginning and the end of the loop you've got a way of measuring and comparing different points along the line relative to either side of the loop. Of course within this loop you can make many more loopings. However, no matter how much you might 'loop around' on the trajectory of that first loop, you will eventually reach the end of that loop again, and you'll face eternal infinity again. Think of the loops as sub-routines in a computer-program. If you make sure that all these sub-routines either point to each other, or to a main-routine, then the program need never end; it could go in circles forever. This way, you could produce a finely tuned network of routines and subroutines out of that one, thin beam of light.
If you didn't know already what I'm trying to convey, I guess it's all still a bit vague now; this has probably got more to do with my rather incoherent explanation, than with the matter at hand. However, I think you'll begin to see what I mean after reading "The mechanics of reality-separation". Hans Christian Andersen, famous for his faery-tales, already described the history of the world as a magic lantern, whereby the struggles of those who try to do the honorable thing are projected in images of light on the dark, black wall of the present. I wouldn't be too surprised if this turned out to be the truth.
