Let me ask the faceless mass a question.
If you think about your existential status, and provided you are not concious for any sort of afterlife, a hypothetical-at-best scenario for even the most devout religious person, and you have imagined what it is like NOT to exist, have you ever found yourself on the cusp of revelation, yet scared of the reality of such an existence? Have you thought about the experience of no experience? The existence of null? The being of not being? The Thing of Nothing?
I do.
I do and I feel like it is a place that will kill me.
I try to imagine not existing and a remarkable thing occurs. It is almost like a gate appears before me. My mind, acting as a regulator, advises my wandering imagination to avoid this gate, but my curiosity pushes me closer. The latch swings open and gives me a taste of oblivion.
I dictate to my imagination the scenario of oblivion. "Blackness, no, not even, no eyes, no senses, no body, just infinite emptiness. " Then I think of the inevitability of such an experience, how we are in a constant state of decay, and realize that I will one day experience this emptiness, and that at a certain time in this existence, I will not. I will experience non-experience. After death, my body will no longer receive electrical impulses, no longer be able to interpret stimuli, and cut off forever my consciousness from the rest of the world. The gate swings open, and I am given a profound sense of dissonance, and worse, angst of crossing, as though I found the self destruct button to myself and I am coyly brushing the dust from it's red cylindrical surface, flirting with the idea of just mashing the button.
This is when the experience begins to disturb my psyche. I try to think of Heaven. I try to think of becoming a cow, or a fly, or a beetle. I try to think a great spirit will take my soul to join those who have gone before me. I try to think of existing beyond the universe. I imagine I become the pieces of a tree, as my body fertilizes the roots, embodies the bark, and reaches out from the branches. Then, the escapism of the impending null is broken by my own inquisitive imagination, recreating the prescribed scenario of empty nothing. It is almost like an alter-ego forcing me to look beyond at a possible reality of having no future beyond this "Mortal Coil". It is my Tyler holding my hand in the lye, reminding me of existence now and the void to come. "Don't look away. Don't block this out. We are learning something here. We are becoming enlightened"
I feel my life slip away. My finger outlines the Self-Destruct button. I take a breath. I put my index finger pad on the button and push until the resistance begins to give, and the button flexes. It feels like the emptiness is pulling my senses away, and for a second, I really do not exist. I never push the button until activation, mind you, but something sadistic and malicious inside me likes having that power, to tempt fate, to push only so far.
It's the same angst one feels looking over a high drop. Even with the arm rail there, a primal fear kicks in that directs your body to fear this height, to walk away. However, the charge and the rush of knowing that impending doom is only a misstep away also has its intriguing elements.
It is an interesting concept, the terror I feel imagining death without a conscious afterlife. It just causes so much dissonance that I can't sleep some nights. I start crunching fuzzy numbers in the waning light about the odds that even if I get into heaven, my spirit will be conscious for it. No one really knows if your consciousness is involved in the afterlife. Something not a lot of people have considered: your spirit mignt indeed go to Heaven, but there is no guarantee that you will experience it. What if even if there IS an afterlife, your consciousness only exists with the sensory array of the biological machine? Your spirit gets a "well done" and your body no longer experiences the world. Your spirit sees pearly gates, your body no longer functions. Your spirit gets a mansion, the body has no idea, and by this I truly mean NO Ideas.
What if what we call "consciousness" is really just your brains UI and when the system shuts down, the user gets up and leaves through the gate, we are left in this virtual OS of molecules and energy? What if the button powers off the system and leaves us in consolation, a pass up for a new model and our hard drives won't reformat or become an external drive to a new machine?
In the end, I sometimes lose myself in this concept and find myself later horrified. It ruins my sleep and traps my brains when I am tired and left to my own devices. I simply have the compulsion to explain this to the empty faces, until the feeling goes away, ignorance sets in, the lye is neutralized with vinegar, and I walk away from the gate to forget about its existence, and more importantly, my inevitable nonexistence. Life goes on, and I can continue with my cyclical, fractalized existence in this world. I can continue to punch my card and spend my time, go home to rest for the next day... until its facade is ruined again by my own imagination's wandering.
Why can't I just go on pretending I will live forever like all the other deaf-mutes?
Monday, October 17, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Entropy and biology: the birth of the conflict of philosophy
As a future english teacher, I figure I need to write more. So as I find time waiting for the bus in the SUB, I figure I should flex my rhetorical muscles and do some reflecting, or something along that line of activity.
Well, I believe that I have rounded the spheres of philosophy into two schools. One of entropy and the other of biology. Entropy understands that everything is in a delayed state of decay. The world began as nothing and so it will return. Null and Void birthed light, matter, substance, structure, system, and it is within that understanding that we operate, understanding that life is slowly returning to the null and void. our right eye understands this world, as it is the eye that is connected to our left brain, that understands black and white, light and dark, and binary logic. Our words and language are a product of our understanding of the fact that all will die, and it is in the increase of decay that man excells over all other creatures. We created tools to speed up entropy and breakdown. We make sticks and swords and bows to hunt animals. When tribes rise up against tribes, it is the entropy that is being sped up to consume the other. Even in the binary understanding of "the other" we see that light and dark are a matter of being able to understand how the world decays.
The other philosophy, one of biology, emerges through the understanding of process. From the void comes order and purpose. From light comes mass, mass is organized into states, states create the composition of planets, stars, chemicals, and amino acids, amino acids are the building blocks of life, and on the top of that life is man. Our other eye, the left eye, the other eye sees the composition and is literate in the image, the big picture. We are all dying, that is true, and war increases the entropy, but we can also nurture, dress wounds, and make medicine. It is through our understanding that biology is forever fighting the null and void by making process and structure.
A balance between these philosophies are an ideology, a culture, a society. How far one establishes the ideas of either sphere demonstrates what kind of culture you belong to. A guilt culture understands that it is individual guilt that motivates the actions of a human being. A personal failure to dominate among others as an individual ultimately demonstrates the proness to entropy, and therefore it is the dominance over others that indicates status. Entropy is the bear that consumes the slowest camper, as the old joke goes. I don't have to outrun entropy, just be faster than the other people around me. Shame culture however, acknowledges that the system of community can combat the effects of entropy, and therefore the tennants of community and hospitality reign over all else. To fight against a force in the face of entropy is to be revered. People do not die; they return to the earth to continue the progression of the system. Entropy becomes nothing more than an inevidability, not the enemy. In fact, enemies are only those who practice these expediant methods of increased entropy. The image, the big pictuer is important. One dies for the many and the network of bards and oral teachers immortalize you in the system. The culture then picks and chooses its tennets of faith through the understanding of how entropy and biology play out. Every culture has a mix of all of the spheres of philosophy.
Hmm... The bus will be here soon. I'll refine this in subsequent posts.
Well, I believe that I have rounded the spheres of philosophy into two schools. One of entropy and the other of biology. Entropy understands that everything is in a delayed state of decay. The world began as nothing and so it will return. Null and Void birthed light, matter, substance, structure, system, and it is within that understanding that we operate, understanding that life is slowly returning to the null and void. our right eye understands this world, as it is the eye that is connected to our left brain, that understands black and white, light and dark, and binary logic. Our words and language are a product of our understanding of the fact that all will die, and it is in the increase of decay that man excells over all other creatures. We created tools to speed up entropy and breakdown. We make sticks and swords and bows to hunt animals. When tribes rise up against tribes, it is the entropy that is being sped up to consume the other. Even in the binary understanding of "the other" we see that light and dark are a matter of being able to understand how the world decays.
The other philosophy, one of biology, emerges through the understanding of process. From the void comes order and purpose. From light comes mass, mass is organized into states, states create the composition of planets, stars, chemicals, and amino acids, amino acids are the building blocks of life, and on the top of that life is man. Our other eye, the left eye, the other eye sees the composition and is literate in the image, the big picture. We are all dying, that is true, and war increases the entropy, but we can also nurture, dress wounds, and make medicine. It is through our understanding that biology is forever fighting the null and void by making process and structure.
A balance between these philosophies are an ideology, a culture, a society. How far one establishes the ideas of either sphere demonstrates what kind of culture you belong to. A guilt culture understands that it is individual guilt that motivates the actions of a human being. A personal failure to dominate among others as an individual ultimately demonstrates the proness to entropy, and therefore it is the dominance over others that indicates status. Entropy is the bear that consumes the slowest camper, as the old joke goes. I don't have to outrun entropy, just be faster than the other people around me. Shame culture however, acknowledges that the system of community can combat the effects of entropy, and therefore the tennants of community and hospitality reign over all else. To fight against a force in the face of entropy is to be revered. People do not die; they return to the earth to continue the progression of the system. Entropy becomes nothing more than an inevidability, not the enemy. In fact, enemies are only those who practice these expediant methods of increased entropy. The image, the big pictuer is important. One dies for the many and the network of bards and oral teachers immortalize you in the system. The culture then picks and chooses its tennets of faith through the understanding of how entropy and biology play out. Every culture has a mix of all of the spheres of philosophy.
Hmm... The bus will be here soon. I'll refine this in subsequent posts.
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