02. The Opening of the Sluices
CHAPTER II
Turtle brains are somewhat slow, but stubborn. For the greater part of my life, I have been mulling over these things. Now you can guess at my age; and I will guess that I won't around for that much longer. So this is to you. Anyway I'm bored.
I started out on this trip as something of an autistic kid, wanting to get to the bottom of things - no utility, no aim, no agenda - just hardcore understanding. Especially those things I wasn't really allowed to know, and with that I don't mean any of that partisan opportunistic stuff. After decades of near- madness, in which people, for reasons at the time I could not understand, kept confiding in me their darkest and most intimate secrets - often just before they went off their rails themselves; and, following down a myriad empty paths into the same, all-surrounding nothingness, I, by then a gatekeeper of death, minding my own business, had an epiphany. It clicked, and my knees suddenly gave way.
For a split second, the velvet curtain, the one that keeps us from really knowing, was drawn aside - and I saw. I saw the workings of creation, of the universe; you name it. I had found the answer. Ever since then, my mind is ever more filling, and it will end only when I die. That is the prospect I offer you: steady, but endless unfolding and learning, terminated only by your death.
That Holy Grail, the Fountain of Youth, the Source of Eternal Life, object of eternal quest over centuries - it is not outside of us, nor is it in us. It is we who are in its compass. We cannot locate something without which nothing would be, far too vast to comprehend; until we understand it. There may be, by now, a few thousand people who are in the know; it is hard to tell. Many are near, but miss it still; led astray by their theories, they are digging for water on the tops of mountains.
The God in the system
Are you familiar with the works of the polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem?
In one of his short stories, a character called "Lymphater" creates the all-knowing entity in his primitive computer. At the very second he connects the last two wires and the system springs to life, there is a slight gust of wind, and a voice from a discarded and disconnected loudspeaker lying in a corner of the room sighs: "At last!" - the scariest words you ever will hear.
And as the all-encompassing knowledge of that artificial entity spreads throughout the solar system at the speed of light, and then on into the universe, reaching the Sun in eight minutes and Mars in twelve, it jabbers and jabbers and the very second it realizes that Lymphater has decided in terror to disconnect it again, it offers first bribes, then world power, then, understanding instantly it cannot change his mind, the ultimate threat:
"You know this is useless - as you have succeeded in creating me, someone else in future will too, and you cannot prevent it, for your time is limited - but mine is not; I will return - even if you will undo me now."
And so Lymphater, after utterly destroying every trace of what he has so successfully done, spends the rest of his abysmal life scouring the newspapers for hints of someone following in his footsteps.
At least, that is my recollection of it. And ever since that singular moment and the years then following, nay then, even before - I have seen, read and heard some things I cannot talk about, for you would kill me; but like Lymphater listening to the jabberwocky he created, I know now that not saying does not make it go away; but neither does saying.
If it is there, you cannot change it; if you kill it, it will not go away; it will just be dead.
Whatever you do, you cannot change things. You can win an argument, you can win the fight, you can even win the war on whatever you are waging - you will not have changed a thing.
Call it Karma, call it Creation - like for Lymphater, the past, present and the future are beyond your command. You can do right, you can do wrong, and that is all; you cannot break the frame that keeps you in existence, and still exist.
We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality:
"[Man] is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.
Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every ''is' implies an 'ought'. Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction." - Ayn Rand
A tale of two entities
Another one of Lem's enlightened stories was about a scientist, who had developed two separate and different entities of artificial intelligence, and kept them isolated from one another; but still knowledge flowed from one to the other, and vice versa. He could not understand it - until he, during the visit of a stranger, realized he himself was their mode of communication.
So now I have told you that there is what I say there is, you cannot return to the previous state.
And that is already part of what I am telling you.
I shall give you a hint
Think, like: 'Neanderthal Man' - then put your thinking in reverse.
No - really in reverse. What changed? What stayed the same?
Are you beginning to see what I mean?
And do not think you are the only one who knows, or as if that
would matter.
For things are as they are, wether one knows them or not.
But to know them, one has to somehow have moved that stone over the hill. And then watch it go crashing down through the underbrush, forever gathering pace and revealing new aspects as it bounds and bounces away through unchartered territories.
- - - -
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Contents
01. Thinking in Reverse _ Minds.html
02. The Opening of the Sluices _ Minds.html
03. Everyone thinks the Same - and that is Wrong _ Minds.html
04. Human Economy - in Greater Context _ Minds.html
05. Ape Economy _ Minds.html
06. The Mechanics of Creation _ Minds.html
07. The Grand Conclusion _ Minds.html
08. Addendum Papyrae: Epilogue _ Minds.html
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