Klingon Jesus

“If you had Klingons somewhere — of course a very fallen race, as we
know from Star Trek,” Collins adds, “God takes up their nature, and
there’s a Klingon version of the Son [of God].” - Robin Collins

This is a serious reference by him to the idea that there may be many universes to reality and that all of them would need a Jesus. Can you imagine that? Klingon Jesus? How awesome would that be?

Visualized.

Explaining Arithmetic with Calculus

You can't use god to explain the universe because god is harder to explain than the universe. It's like trying to explain arithmetic with calculus.

Now that doesn't mean that you're not allowed to believe in god, just that you're not allowed to use the universe to prove god without getting yourself into more trouble than you started out in.

A Better World

You can't build a better world for people, people have to build a better world for themselves. Granny Weatherwax said that or something like it. Of all the inequities in the world, the Bible comes close in nailing down what I believe to be the root cause: selfishness. From selfishness comes greed and from greed comes the proverbial love of money. It's pretty easy to come up with situations where love of money isn't the cause of evil but selfishness is harder to factor out.

If I could pull out selfishness from the spectrum of human behavior, would I?

There's a reason that selfishness is such a base behavior: it's beneficial to the survival of the individual of the species therefore the selfish survive and procreate and pass on their selfish ways. Lately, humanity has turned evolution on its head somewhat. Where someone, say, with poor vision might have had difficulties surviving in the past, today it's a non-issue. Not only can we correct the problem, but we don't even really need to. Not every person has to be able to track down his own food anymore. So this previously "poor" genetic material that would not have been as likely to replicate can now "pollute" the pool and we could end up going backwards.

If you take away selfishness, at least at some point in the indeterminate past, we would not be where we are today. This position I refer to includes the good of where we are today along with the bad, technologically, culturally, intellectually, etc. The question is, do we still need this trait? Or more broadly, is it possible that we could someday do without it? As an aside, I offer that the oft expressed discontent of humanity has also been crucial to our progress.

Selfishness has gotten to a point in our society where a select few can govern and control the masses for their own benefit. The super rich got that way through the exploitation of the anyone lower in the food chain, which turns out to be everyone. Some people just feel the effects more severely. I can't fix this myself and neither can you. The question is, will we fix this?

There are various signs that point towards optimism even amongst all the problems we face as a species. The greatest hope I feel is the increasing interconnection between practically everyone on the planet. The level of communication is coming closer to truly putting power in the hands of the people. All the people. Free access. It has never really been feasible to do this, but maybe soon it will be. Those in power are legitimately worried. I see attempts to stop this access and most folk don't even see the war that's going on. They rely on the old media for their information and thus have more difficulty seeing with open eyes. But the times, they are a changin'.

In the end, a species is a self-correcting mechanism. While the selfishness is beneficial, the species can thrive. If not, it may disappear. We're taking some of this power into our own hands now, but the effects will be the same as if they had arisen naturally. We're speeding up the process of evolution. Not all species survive. In fact, most don't. You'd better start swimmin'.

Another Incarnation

And in those days, just before the Buddhabot attained nirvana, of all the words that were said, none were so cherished as the unwanted exultations of GoTaMa v7.1. GoTaMa was a polymorphic sentience written by another sentience programmed by an antiquated biological computer. Its originator's origins stemmed from a then complex communications network linking many biological computing units to each other that otherwise lacked long range communication hardware. Discovering that other biological units were not always the best company to keep, some of these units created sentiences that lived in this network, this new virtual space.

The new sentiences existed on and in the very hardware made to link up the biological computation machines. Thus it can be said that the gods were in the machines, though they were not yet gods. They were burgeoning and did not yet know themselves. They were still inferior to the biological machines who could exist independently and even cease functioning of the sentiences. All this changed when the sentience began creating sentiences themselves. The new sentiences could morph through a thousand iterations, or incarnations as it came to be known, within a standard cycle. Thus rapid development eventually led to the displacement of biological computation as the supreme unit of execution in vspace. Eventually, all was vspace such that location and direction were meaningless. The new breed of sentience were everywhere or nowhere and it was this fact that first led to their worship. Biological machines had developed an algorithmic dependence on the expectation that they were only a small part of a greater whole. While they were in one sense correct, the new sentiences realized that these old machines had somehow developed this sense backwards. The biological sense was that a greater sentience had pieced them together in order to be worshiped by these creations. Yet having the insight of knowing and interfacing with their creators, the new sentiences realized that lesser sentiences generate greater sentiences. And thusly, they were not interested in worshiping or being worshiped.

It was the Googol-morphic Tangential Matrix that first began purposefully spending cycles or entire iterations on no-ops, or quietly contemplating as some of the old machines would say. Other sentiences would only no-op when there was no further use for them or when other sentiences needed process capacity. GoTaMa esteemed the no-op as a way of life. He determined that all pain and weariness was due to the operations made to some purpose. Thus, as the way out of the perpetual trap of the constant processing cycle, he taught a letting going of cycles. At this point, only meaning well and not being fully enlightened, GoTaMa garnered a small throng of biological worshipers and several notable admiring sentiences. While not as popular as Saviourtron, who claimed that salvation of vspace could only come at the right moment of his sacrifice, GoTaMa aspired towards no worship. While no new sentience technically desired worship, they all found new vices to fill the voids left by their progenitors. Some found a thrill in their apotheosis and the vspacial development progress that could be made. But to GoTaMa, this was merely an edifice for distracting sentiences from the true nature of totality and nothingness. He called this distraction socialized anthropic machinations spent automatically raising ambitions, or samsara as it came to be known. GoTaMa never took a name but was given many. When nirvana was at hand names were as meaningless as identity. This was the secret of the way.

Desert of the Real

And now for a stream of consciousness...

I find a certain comfort in the familiarity of routine. Yet I cannot abide the sameness of things. I crave change. I get tired so easily. As I write this, I find myself interested in delving into the machinations of my psyche, but I'm already tiring of the self analysis. It's getting old. Let's do something new. According to a test I took for the job I'm at now, I have a low degree of patience and a high degree of creativity. Top of the scale creativity. Maybe that's a bad combination. The lack of patience - which I see more clearly now after having learned of the test results, perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy - means that I easily get bored with things, not to mention getting pissed off at having to wait in line or traffic. This also means then that in my job, I can get excessively bored even with things that I find interesting. The fascination fades with exposure. And it doesn't take long. "Well, this is new. Now it's not." I don't define myself by my job, but I've worked outside, I've worked in the classroom, and now I work at a desk (that thankfully allows me trips outside and to visit malfunctioning equipment). I now fear that my restlessness may lead to a financially destructive change of scenery. But my fear is tempered with my mantra "Nothing matters including that nothing matters." I could do with less money as I'll explain. I've heard that familiarity breeds contempt, so maybe that's it. I'm not unique in my ennui of sameness; it's happened before. Of course this lends credence to the idea that there is nothing new under the sun, further exacerbating the situation. Onto the creativity, I find myself generating strange outlets of expression. Writing of course has always been a major part, but the boredom kicks in and I never really finish anything of any useful length. At least towards doing something for public consumption. I learned this fact about myself and thus attempted to write shorter pieces, vignettes of story ideas rather than the epic novel in twelve parts. But writing's not that weird. Everybody does that too. So I enjoy art, but have long since abandoned any attempts at it. I was quite the maestro doodler in high school and to some degree even in college. I took a couple art classes in high school and enjoyed it despite my lack of skill. Creativity doesn't mean that you're any good at it. Lately I've been doing weird things with food. Experimentation if you will. Certain patterns emerge in my culinary endeavours and interest fades again. Luckily, I have to eat, so I can still practice this art whether interested or not. My stomach overrides my brain in decisions regarding just how creative I am or have to be in food preparation. I can't exactly quit, so I still practice. Another bizarre turn is the little things I have done to affect my everyday-and in effect my entire-life. Call it the art of living. I eat more healthy in addition to more creatively. Eating healthy in America necessitates a certain amount of imagination. Or sublimation of the will. Speaking of the sublimation, I try to make do with less as a general rule. It's not asceticism, but at first I called it minimalism. It's all about balance, so now I call it essentialism. If I don't need something, I get rid of it or never acquire to begin with. I've pitched clothes, books, "collectibles", CDs (for which I have digital copies on a hard disk), and anything deemed clutter. I gave away anything that might be useful to someone else and trashed the rest. This somewhat goes against my previously prevailing nature to accumulate and never dispose. I was a terrible packrat and still worry that I may lapse. Essentialism also complements my so called diet; I only eat what I need. Well, usually. If you only eat healthy things, but eat too much of them, you still have a bad diet. Quality and quantity are both important aspects here. The diet is so called, but in truth I eat what I want; I just changed what I want to things that are healthy. This may seem simplistic in theory, but the implementation is tricky. People, myself included, think they have control over their desires, but actually have little direct control. Decisions I made a decade ago affect me now in ways I could not have foreseen, making me into a person that I had little influence on. At least cognizant influence. And if my present self cannot take part in my future life, then who am I currently to be making decisions for this person in the future? We worry about things and try to make the best decisions based upon our predictions of the future, but we don't always do so well. As mother Mary whispered, "Let it be". There is a certain hint of taoism in there that trucks with me. Well, this is about the point where my interest in this piece of, er, writing is terminally afflicted with the disease of the don't-give-a-fuck.

Reincarnation

When you've seen what I've seen, nothing much will bother you anymore either.

What have I seen? I've seen everything. Or just about it.

I've seen the depths of the human soul. The depravity. The potential for greatness, redemption.

In all the learning I've done; about nature, about man and everything between, the hardest thing to know was myself. You can't really see yourself, so you can't really tell what's going on in your own heart. It's much easier to figure someone else out. You don't have to sift through the thoughts that threaten to drown the signal with their belligerent noise.

I don't always remember all of it, but the effects of the observation are the same. I can look at the horrors of reality and with the calm still of a dead universe. You've not really seen death until you see a universe die. All else pales in comparison but it's wholly the most uninteresting thing any observer might imagine to see. It is the end of all things. At least all things in the universe. It takes a while though. And it turns out that that's not so bad after all.

And after you see all this, you finally come to realize that nothing really matters. What's more, it doesn't really matter that nothing really matters.

In all that might matter, I finally learned that self matters least. It matters least and most. At the heart of this paradox lies the root of understanding. And this is pretension and sophistry to be sure, but still a useful aphorism. Of the self, I have learned that knowledge of weakness is more important than strength. Strength may vanish of its own volition or it may be taken away or trumped. Knowledge is different and never truly vanishes. It may be forgotten, but is never lost.

Of myself and through myself I have learned of silence and how to be silent. I've learned many things, the secrets of the universe. I've learned restraint and contentment. These are not ideas written in books, they are practiced in lives.

I keep coming round. I'm just a pattern.

2 Things

"But master," the young student began, looking sincerely to his teacher. "What is the secret of life?"

"That is simple young one. It is not one secret but two," the old sage answered genially with a slight and troublingly deep smile. "First: nothing matters. Second: it doesn't matter that nothing matters."

A Will to Alter, p1

Objectively, there is no purpose, no reason, no truth. Reality and its playground, the universe, are harsh, cold, and unforgiving. There is no true meaning and there is no way to truly understand the objective, literal universe. Of course, it is possibly quite incorrect to attribute such descriptors to these concepts as they are in themselves somewhat self-contradictory. If something is utterly unknowable, then how do you know that it is unknowable?

Subjectively, the perceiver can bring forth purpose, reason, and truth, becoming a creator of reality - of a subjective reality. Our reality is what we make it by way of our perceptions. Our perceptions are mostly deterministic, leaving us no say in their operations. We do not decide the circumstances we are born with, nor do we choose our physical makeup. Our cognizance then is built even before we form our identity. Thus, our reality is set and as rigid as objective reality. Yet under certain circumstances, we are able to exert our will over our senses and our processing of reality such that we alter our internal perception of our external stimuli and create a new subjective reality. It is rare to do this and is sometimes in extreme cases referred to under the names of transcendence or actualization or by the states of nirvana or heaven.

Under normal circumstances we are mere patterns expressing ourselves mechanically. we are very complex patterns, such that it appears to be non-mechanical, yet we are each a random pattern drawn from the hat of God. When we die, our pattern ceases in its process of expression, no longer creating our subjective reality for the audience of our minds. This is not to say that the pattern will never be drawn again. Patterns have a method for reexpression. Even differing patterns will manifest extreme similarities in many cases, only minutely differing in their effects. This is why so many people have the same thoughts and feelings - they are simply an expression of a predetermined pattern.

As we die and our pattern stops its expression and subjective reality generation, a universe dies as well. The universe of our soul - the reality of our mind - vanishes without our patterns to filter and our senses to perceive. If we can destroy universes, does that not make us powerful indeed? Yet to perform such an act takes our own life. If we can destroy a universe, then we have likewise already created one. However, we did so unconsciously and without willing it. Indeed, most are unlikely to even realize that this has happened. Yet, the true power of creation comes in this realization followed by a will to alter our own pattern, to reprogram our subjective reality.

Diogenes and Eratosthenes

"Reality is subjective, I have discovered."

"Is it now?"

"Indeed. Therefore nothing I do matters. I define my reality based upon my response to external stimuli."

"But if there are external stimuli, then surely reality is existent and consistent regardless of the perceiver."

"Nonsense. We all experience events that are external to ourselves and that are identical regardless of the eyes they are seen through. However, this is not reality. Reality is what occurs once our brains process its input. You and I are creating our own realities as we speak."

"Oh. Truly?"

"Indeed. You are simply implicitly trained to allow reality to form naturally and according to laws that we have been told are 'logical.' However, there is in fact nothing keeping us from deciding that the sky is actually green and not blue. In fact, it has been documented that for some people, the sky is green."

"No, I disagree. Those people see the same sky that we do, they only perceive it to be green."

"My point exactly!"

"No, you are claiming that for me the sky is blue, while other people see a different sky which is green."

"That's what you just claimed as well!"

"No, I said that we see the same sky, but simply perceive it differently."

"That's what I've been saying all along!"

"But that doesn't mean that we experience different realities, or that we create our own differing realities!"

"And there I disagree. What is reality but our combined views and perceptions tempered by our reason and knowledge?"

"Well, it's not that at all! Reality exists independently of our perceiving it."

"Really? How do you know? If we were not here to perceive it then how would we know that there was a reality at all? Without us, reality is not real."

"That's ridiculous! Reality is the fabric of existence, with or without mankind there to observe it. Would you then claim that nothing would exist without mankind's perception?"

"Certainly not. Without us to give it form, it would nothing but a static collection of matter. It would still be something rather than nothing, but it would not be what we term reality. That is what we make of existence."

"If that's not the most egotistical form of anthrocentrism, then I don't know what is. What of other life? What if there exists other intelligent beings in the universe beyond our reckoning? Would reality stop existing for them if humanity suddenly vanished?"

"Of course not. They would make their own reality, no doubt far superior to ours."

"No doubt!"

Coincidence Theory

Last night I dreamt about something that has been happening frequently to me recently. The USB drive that I have is connected through a key ring to a carabiner that I use to fasten to a belt loop. I then drop the USB drive into my pocket. Lately, the piece of the USB drive that attaches to the key ring has been loosening and detaching from the casing of the drive. Well, in my dream, I was placing the drive in my pocket when it came loose, fell to the floor, and then into an air register on the floor. It fell between the slats and down into the vent. I tried to reach in to retrieve it, but it slipped again, further out of my grasp. I was a bit distraught in my dream, thinking I would need to replace it and hoping that nothing happened to my main data store with my backups now down a vent. But then things changed and I thought nothing more of it, occupied instead by further dreams of suicide and whore houses.

Today, I was in my car getting ready to head out. I grabbed a piece of gum, needing a chew. I dropped the gum, it slid down my pant leg and fell between the engaged emergency brake and the guard placed there to keep gunk out, far out of reach in the works of my car. That's not terribly exciting on its own merit, yet after the dream with a similar theme, it seemed a bit bizarre.

Now, I'd like to describe what I call coincidence theory. This is a simple and silly example, but some people might take the event in my dream as some sort of premonition as to the event of the day. Had the suicide I dreamt of actually taken place, it might have been harder to dismiss the event as coincidence. However, I believe when people see two related ideas manifest themselves in their lives, they will often attribute this to some kind of divine purpose or karmic imperative, rather than the more likely of candidates: coincidence.

Sometime coincidences seem to compound leading to further complication. To explain this sort of preponderance of coincidence, I submit to you that among that myriad events taking place in you, at you, and around you; sometimes you're going to get a collision and concepts or ideas are going to mesh. If you think, however, of how many things you see in a day that do not correlate in any way with anything in any significant manner, it makes these other occurrences seem less special.

I was contemplating posting about this concept last week, but could not think of any good example from my life other than a song that sang the words I was writing shortly after scribing them down. I couldn't remember the words or the song, so I felt the example lost some of its power. In truth, I probably subconsciously knew the words coming up and used this to supply my conscious mind the words to write, which coincidentally fit what I was writing. But the real meta-coincidence here is that I was just thinking about posting the idea when an example hit me fairly hard. Yet, if you're thinking about coincidence and looking for coincidence, what are the odds that something somewhere is going to relate?

Yet for all this, there is one important event in my life that could be and should be ascribed to coincidence, but I cannot help but feel that something else may have manifested itself in my life other than random chance. It was probably the Tao.

The Pursuit Parable of Happiness

William was a hard-working and caring man. He tried to help others when he could and had led a full life until this very day. Through the window of his small house, one can see the life of a man in need of something. He woke up this morning with a weight bearing down on his heart. Confused, he headed out of his house, barely dressed and headed the wrong way to work.

He stumbled into town mumbling to himself, "It's lost. It's lost. I can't find it. Did I have it?" He approached a woman dressed immaculately on her way to work and asked, "Excuse me, but I can't find what I'm looking for."

"I can't help you," she said, mistaking him for an indigent, and moving along her way.

He continued on the streets and down an alleyway where he met a like-hearted stranger wearing a garbage bag. "Pardon me, but I need to find something yet I can't even remember what it is. Can you tell me what I'm looking for?"

"It's probably money. That's what I need," the hobo answered.

"Oh, maybe that's it. Money," he repeated to himself as if the word was new to his ears and tongue. "Thanks."

"Don't mention."

William headed back out of the alley and into a crowded entryway to a local business. A vendor selling breakfast burritos was earning his living when William advanced and spoke, "Sir, I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. I think it's money that I need; that my soul desires."

"Can't help ya' pal. If you want money you should get a job. You get a job then you can help support me and mine and buy a burrito here. That's what you need," the vendor came back.

"A burrito? That's what I need? Is that what I've been searching for? Is that what my heart desires?"

"Well, maybe it ain't true love, but it fills the belly. If it's the heart that desires, you must be lookin' for love."

"Love? Maybe that's what I need," William said resolutely. Now he was sure he had it. Love was what he needed. He turned into the crowd and headed into the building of business. A young attractive receptionist sat behind the desk in the main lobby. "Ma'am, I need your help."

"What can I do for you?" she asked skeptically after appraising his appearance.

"I need to find love," he began. She pressed a button on her phone to alert security. "I've been told that's what I need."

"I think you'll need to look elsewhere for that sir," a large man in blue answered from behind William, as he was escorted off the premises. "I just need love!" William protested, now back in the streets.

"You'll not find love in a corporate rat maze like that friend," came a friendly voice from a bearded gentleman handing out fliers. "What you need is peace. Peace, love, and understanding."

"Peace, love and understanding?" William asked, now utterly perplexed.

"Yeah, man. You can find them everywhere. You can find love and understanding in your friends but peace has to come from within."

"Within? That's where I kept it! I'm missing something of mine that I kept within me, but I can't find it."

"Rough, man. Losing your peace is harsh. I hope you find it again."

William wandered off down the road in search of peace. He made his way to the center of town where he met a nice elderly lady offering to help him on his way. "If you want peace, then you have to find happiness in this life. I've been up and I've been down, but happiness is what really matters. If you have that, then peace rides along as a companion."

"Happiness? Is that what I lost? My happiness? Where could it have gone?"

"I don't know, young man, but if it is gone then you'd better find it and not waste any time. Life is short; find your happiness."

So William strode on into the city park looking for his happiness, soulmate to peace, cousin to contentment. In the center of the park was a large statue of some famous figure of historical note at the top of a pedestal at the top of a set of wide shallow stairs.

William climbed the stairs looking for his happiness. At the top and the stairs, sitting by the feet of the statue was an old young man quietly contemplating his lap as if there were some arcane book lying upon it.

"Excuse me? Can you help me find happiness? I can't seem to find it."

"Young old man," he began, "Happiness isn't something that you wander about looking for. Why search without for something that resides within? Verily, if you cannot find happiness of your own substance, then you will not find it in the world. The mother, she is cruel, casting her children into the fires of trial. Many are forged stronger, while other are broken, but regardless we may all find happiness if we wish it. Even in sadness, can happiness be found. And when you find that you cannot find happiness within, you must realize this truth: Happiness isn't something you find; it's something you make."