To me, original sin doesn’t make sense. Neither does the notion of a vengeful and jealous god. But it does make sense that everything could be predestined. Those atoms that they told us about at school ought to keep a-rolling in whichever direction they are pushed.
And yet, how was it that I was able to do as I pleased? Though their direction was determined, I seemed to be able to boss my own atoms around. I could only conclude that this was due to some sort of paradox. It probably had to do with ‘levels’. Free will probably existed on one level and not on another—something like that. Whatever, I was happy to bide my time until I could see more of the total picture, so I went away to work on my X-ray vision.
Would you believe that I once called myself a Selective-apathy-active-fatalist-ego-theist? The atoms rolling slash being rolled represented the ‘active-fatalist’ component, which I’ve already outlined.
The ‘selective-apathy part comes from my conviction that you can’t do or be everything. That’s important to who I am and how I live. If you want to do something really well and devote yourself to it, then you won’t have time for much else. Therefore, if you want to make the best use of your life, then it behooves you to choose wisely. You are going to have to practice discrimination—or apathy—so as not to become embroiled in unnecessary and diversionary activity.
You see, the more options you have, the more difficult life is. It is actually easy to live as a fanatic and be devoted to one goal. Contrast that to juggling a balance of interests, activities and pursuits. Perhaps I appear indecisive, but that’s so that I can keep my options open. I drop one thing for another only when the time is ripe.
As for the ‘ego-theist’ component, the idea of being one’s own god was an act-as-if decision. All that I could be sure of was that I existed; I wasn’t sure about anyone else, and as for God . . . well, He certainly hadn’t fronted up when challenged. And when that occurred (or didn’t) then I thought I might as well act as if I was in charge. I’d do the honors and play emcee. If and when a higher power came along, I’d gladly yield my superior the floor. Can’t say fairer than that.
When I close my eyes, I can get into a state that I’m all that there is (I’d been initiated into Transcendental Meditation as a teenager). Everything 'outside' is then a figment of my imagination. Oh sure, I knew full well that at the same time that I was also hopelessly limited as an individual being—the second of that trio of childhood thought experiments. But the bottom line is that I’ve never felt the need to install any god figure at the head of a personal ideology.
As I said at the outset, I shy away from—in fact I shun—any system of thinking that claims to be superior to the rest: Philosophy, Scientific Method, Religion and the like. Yes, I will use them, but not exclusively. I’d rather to go for the grok. An idea has got to sit right, feel right, and heft nicely in a way that I can accept totally. It’s like when you test an unknown plant to see if it is edible; you rub it on your skin or hold it in your mouth to see if it provokes an allergic reaction. If it doesn’t, then you proceed a little further.
The scientific way, they say, to verify or disprove a hypothesis is by carrying out replicable work. Instead, I choose to perform thought experiments. They are cheap, quick, and they work. What I’d like to do is to walk you through a few that I’ve conducted. We’ve already looked at three, from which I concluded:
1. I am immortal
2. I am very, very special . . . yet utterly limited
3. I am not confined to my body
Quite a heady philosophical brew for a boy not yet in his teens, wouldn’t you agree?
I’ll now dig out a few more, re-examine their results, and build from there. We’ll see what the consequences and corollaries are. Finally, I’ll describe what I deduce as their implications, and maybe close off with a question and answer session. How does that sound?
Though this seems like a logical and sensible plan, it’ll be messy. I can’t lead you along a well-thought out progression. Along my path there are no easy, clear-cut steps. There isn’t a wheelchair-accessible slope that leads you to a coherent and comprehensive (and comprehensible) overview. My history isn’t like that. It is still being written, in fact, as I write.
The order of these thought experiments will be roughly chronological, but they do not work seamlessly. I don’t have a firm, fixed destination, and I don’t have much of a game plan. I engage in this exercise for myself as much as for others, so I share your curiosity about what will develop. A machete? Yes, we might need one. Bring it along.
I must tell you about another science fiction story. Naturally, an alien race was involved, humanoid (writers should always keep in mind the possibility of a film adaptation). In fact, the aliens were virtually identical to human beings—two sexes and all. The major difference was that they were about a thousand times larger, and their inclination was to swat us like midges.
Before colonizing the earth, the giants sent out an exploration party. Some sort of fracas resulted from which the aliens came off second best. One or two survived, but they were brain-dead and no use for interrogation.
As an aside, consider the concept of ‘alien’. According to Ism ideology, there is no such thing of course. We’re all just appendages on the same tree. We’re simply differently shaped limbs on the one jabberwocky. Aliens, plants, or whatever—we’re all just talons, tentacles, trunks and wings. How daft it would be, for instance, if your legs stood in mortal fear of your arms. Still, in such a situation what are you going to do when an alien appears? Philosophize? No way, you pull out your blaster.
Getting back to the story, these aliens were so gigantic that after their prefrontal lobes were removed—their head injuries required major surgery—there was enough space for a lunar module-style office to be built inside the giant’s head. Living quarters were duly installed, along with a contraption that an astronaut-operator used to control the hulk of the giant’s body. Wired up to the remnants of the giant’s brain, he monitored the environment through the giant’s own eyes.
After about six months of training the operator learned the alien’s language and so forth. I don’t know how that went. Maybe it was possible to access the alien’s memory banks. And eventually the human-operated alien was sent back to its home planet in the original spaceship on another fact-gathering mission, this time for 'our' side.
I’m not sure how things turned out after that. For me, the best part of the story was how it portrayed consciousness. The idea that it is the controlling force that sits behind your eyes. Seen in that light, every life form is just a vehicle. Inside every head there sits an operator (begging the question of what homunculus sits behind the operator’s eyes).
And that’s the preamble to the ramblings over also. The first book is done. I’ve brought Theo up to the headiest of heights, but I won’t be so irresponsible as to leave you up there high and dry. The second part of my mission is to bring you down safe and secure.
In the book that follows, we’re going to have to process the journey. There’s a lot to unpack and internalize before we’re fit to be released into society and the world the world at large. Let’s debrief.
The pages we’ve passed through you may think of as a greatest hits package. I grant that in style it’s a bit of a rock opera. What follows now will be the loose jamming that happens backstage after the concert is over: the gradual unwinding.
Or, to use another analogy—one that we’ve made a lot of use of—we’ve just sat through the main feature and have now selected another option from the menu. This book is unique in that you get to rerun the entire movie alongside a running commentary. We’ll ask for input from the producer, the director and an actor or two.
I suggest that you make yourself comfortable—maybe get yourself a refill of popcorn (just go easy on the coke). You see, our next job is to work out how the theory translates into practice. It’ll be a Talmud of sorts. I want to follow up some of the consequences of our new home-spun philosophy. I bet that, where the rock and a hard place meet, and where The Theory of Everythink evolves into the ideology of Ism, it will lead us to a veritable bizarro world of conclusions.
Be seeing you.
