Man is an animal, suspended in a web of significance he
himself has spun. – Clifford Geertz
* * * * *
In the year 2016,
during the Age of Pisces in the Anthropocene Chron and the Subtlantic Stage of
the Holocene Epoch in the Quartenary Period of the Cenozoic Era during
Phanerozoic Eon of the Current Supereon in Galactic Year (GY) 20, on Planet
Terra (Earth) of the Solar Planetary System in Orion’s Spur of the Milky Way
Galaxy in the Local Galaxy Group of the Virgo Cluster in the Laniakea
Supercluster, Jews believe that Yahuweh speaks Hebrew, Muslims that Allah
speaks Arabic, American evangelical Christians that Almighty God speaks
Elizabethan English, Roman Catholics that Dominus Dei speaks Latin, Eastern
Orthodox that Kyrios speaks Greek, Hindus that Brahman speaks Sanskrit,
Zoroastrians that Ormazd speaks Avestan, Buddhists that Adibuddha speaks Pali,
Shintoists that Amaterasu speaks Japanese, and religious Daoists that Tai Di
speaks Mandarin Chinese. Each of these groups, and each subgroup and
splinter and cult and sect within each of them, believes they are the Chosen
People from which will come the Anointed One to assert their rightful dominion
over all Creation for all Eternity.
That belief is
absurd.
In fact, belief itself is absurd. Belief is blasphemy.
* * * * *
No philosophical or theological view vis-à-vis themselves alone,
including the hypothesis that nothing exists beyond observable reality, is any
more or less valid than any other, except when those propositions state they
are the only ones that are correct.
To believe is to define. To
define is to limit. To limit is to
control. To control is to corrupt.
Belief is not humble; it is aggressive.
Belief is not an sign of submission; it is an assertion of
domination. Belief makes itself superior
to that in which it believes by controlling it through the very act of belief,
and thus is blasphemy. Belief is
vanity. Belief is futility. Belief is the very antithesis of faith.
To have faith, one must surrender control. To surrender control, one must abandon
limitation. To abandon limitation, one
must give up definition. To give up
definition, one must let go of belief.
To have faith, one must neither believe nor disbelieve; one must unbelieve.
* * * * *
The Homo sapiens sapiens, the only surviving race, or
subspecies, of the H. sapiens species, is the dominant race on
Terra. The others races of H. sapiens
are H. sapiens idaltu, H. sapiens neanderthalensis, H.
sapiens denisova. Previous species
of Human includes Homo naledi, H. habilis, H. erectus (of which
there were nine different races/subspecies), H. rudolfensis, H.
heidelbergensis, and H. floresiensis, this last being a completely
isolated species which survived to 13,000 years ago.
Given that most of these have been composed of only one species without
any subspecies (as far as we know), making that one species in effect the sole
“race” of that species, there have been, as far as we know, eighteen races of
Human that have lived on Terra. Since H.
sapiens sapiens is the only remaining subspecies of Human left on Terra,
it’s merely accurate to state that there is only one race: the Human race.
* * * * *
A single member of the race H. sapiens sapiens is, on average, 664 billionths (0.000000000664
or 6.64 x 10-11) km3 in volume, with an average lifespan
of 67.2 years. There are currently 7.3
billion (109) individuals
of that race on Terra.
Terra is 1.12
trillion (1012) km3 by 4.54 billion years. It rotates on its axis at a speed of 1674.4
km/h while hurtling through space revolving around Sol at 108 thousand (103)
km/h.
Sol, our star, is
1.4 quintillion (1018) km3 by 4.56 billion years. The Solar Planetary System is 1.7
duodecillion (1039) km3 by the same 4.56 billion years.
The Milky Way
Galaxy is 8 sedecillion (1051) km3 by 13.2 billion
years. Of its 200 billion stars, 40
billion support Class-M planets, with 8-10 billion of these hosting life-forms
analogous to Humans, making some 61.6 quintillion (1018) sapient
beings in our galaxy.
There are 500
billion galaxies hosting 30.8 nonillion (1030) sapient beings across
the Universe.
The Universe is 213
duovigintillion (1069) km3 by 13.8 billion years. It is expanding outward at a rate increased
by the like-polarity of the electromagnetic fields of different galaxy groups.
Our Universe is
just one of innumerable such cosmic bodies making up the Omniverse (aka
Multiverse), and is currently the only one we can measure.
* * * * *
The Universe is
formed of a single matrix called spacetime.
Everything in the
Universe not of the matrix of spacetime is composed of energy. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed
but only change forms. All matter that
exists is but alternate forms of energy.
Spacetime and
energy are thus the fundamental building blocks of the Universe and everything
in it, the emanations from which all that is evolves.
There are four
basic dimensions—height, length, width, time—which define the point in the
spacetime matrix at which we are at any given moment. Energy flows to and from that single point in
spacetime—forward and backward, up and down, left and right, past and
future—along each of these dimensions.
The force of
gravity provides the cohesion for the Universe in a relationship with the
dimension of time that is correlative if not causal. Without gravity, there would be no time;
without time, there would be no gravity.
From our
perspective, time is linear. But from a
cosmic perspective, time is a sphere, like the Universe; time, after all, is
but one dimension of the spacetime fabric from which the Universe is made. To a cosmic observer, the future has already
happened, and the past is yet to be, and the moment where we are now is the
beginning, and the end, and every moment in between.
* * * * *
Life is a function
of energy, of thermodynamics. Given
appropriate conditions, life is inevitable, because energy in the form of
matter will spontaneously self-organize through abiogenesis.
Once manifest, life
evolves into more complex forms which themselves evolve further, with those
most adaptable being the best able to survive, reproduce, and flourish.
Life has existed on
Terra for 4.1 billion years, and in the Universe since 10-17 million years
after the Big Bang.
The essence of life,
of all existence, is change and evolution, growth and decay. Nothing that is static is living. In fact, nothing of the Universe is static,
for of it stasis is impossible. Stasis
is a nonexistence beyond even death.
Stasis is only possible in the void beyond.
For individual
organisms, birth and death define the boundaries of life. Without death, life has no meaning. Whether or not there is another form of
existence once the organic shell has been shed in death and life on this plane
ends does not matter; Humans debating those questions are like fetuses
discussing questions on life after birth.
* * * * *
The H. sapiens sapiens
race is currently 30 thousand (103)
years old. The H. sapiens species has been
around 200 thousand years. The Homo genus has existed 2.8
million (106) years.
The three other known races of the species H. sapiens and the six other known species of the genus Homo are extinct, leaving just the One
Human Race.
By 5 million years,
the H. sapiens sapiens race, and along with it the H.
sapiens species and the Homo genus, will be extinct
due to degradation of the Y-chromosome, if we have not already destroyed ourselves
and/or our biosphere or suffered a mass extinction.
By 800 million
years, multi-cellular lifeforms will have vanished from Terra.
By 1.3 billion
years, eukaryotes will be extinct and life on Terra reduced to prokaryotes due
to CO2 starvation caused by chemical disruption from Sol’s
increasing luminescence.
In 2.4 billion
years, the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy will collide and merge
into one Milkomeda Galaxy, altering the structure of everything in them, though
most stars and planetary systems will remain intact.
In 5.4 billion
years, Sol will enter its red giant phase, incinerating Mercury, Venus, and
possibly Terra, destroying any remaining life on Terra if not. The habitable zone will move out to Mars, and
Saturn’s moon Titan may become habitable.
In 8 billion years,
Sol will collapse into a white dwarf, expelling half its mass into the
interstellar medium, making elements available for nucleosynthesis and forming
an emission nebula. Any remaining
planetary bodies will be stolen by passing stars, leaving the Solar Nebula.
In 14.4 billion
years, Sol will be a totally dead black dwarf star.
The Universe will
eventually end in the next Big Bounce (a Big Crunch facilitating another
Big Bang) in about 60 trillion years, dying so another can be born anew as it
was formed before.
All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen
again, and again, and again.
* * * * *
Even in the very
rare instances in which Humans have perceived the Ultimate Reality as something
genuinely Other, they have then proceeded to append to that insight
intermediary realities to connect it to our own in order to believe, define,
limit, and control, sometimes reducing fairly advanced concepts to mere
ideological dogma.
Every form of
Ultimate Reality conceived and believed by religion or philosophy, all of which
are geocentric and anthropomorphic, is too small for our Universe. There is no Divine Creator, no One True God,
no Ruler of the Universe, no Supreme Being created by Humans or members of any
other sapient species in their own image; all these are nothing but a
myth.
And if there is
Something that was before all Time, is now, and will be even after the end of
Time, with Time being defined as the lifespan of the current Universe—and to
hypothesize such a thing exists is not unreasonable—Something that is the
origin of the Universe and all that is in it, of spacetime and energy and life,
that Something is beyond personhood, beyond being, even beyond effability. It has no name and no need of one, for there
is nothing else Other from which to distinguish itself, but for the sake of this
hypothesis, let’s call it The Way.
The Way was before
Time, is now, and will remain after the end of Time. Time begins and ends along with the Universe
and its other three dimensions.
The Way is a
paradox; perpetual yet ever-changing, transcendent yet immanent, metacosmic yet
omnipresent, eternal yet omnitemporal, everything yet nothing.
The Way permeates
the Universe. It is the Source emanating
all that is, the Course shaping its procession, and the Force
energizing its manifestation. From our perspective, these are different
things, but in reality they are One.
The Way is One; it
is neither male nor female, and from it emanate light and dark, good and evil,
order and chaos, yin and yang, life and death, bounty and dearth, integrity and
entropy, creation and destruction.
The Way favors
none; there is no Anointed One, no Chosen People, no Exceptional Nation, no
Elect Species; not on Terra, not in the Milky Way, not in the entire Universe.
The Way neither
rewards good deeds nor punishes ill, nor does it exact karmic retribution for
imagined imperfection.
The Way animates without claiming possession; bolsters without
requiring gratitude; stewards without exercising authority.
The Way does not
demand our submission, obedience, penitence, worship, adoration, praise,
prayer, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, benediction, love, respect, or
even belief.
The Way does not
need us nor want anything from us; individual beings are too infinitesimal and
ephemeral within the Universe for it to take much note.
* * * * *
So what is the meaning of life, the reason for our existence? To quote the great philosopher Procul Harum, “There is no reason, and the truth is plain to see”.
There is no payback
for good deeds or ill. Do not worry
about the future, for the future will take care of itself. The only moment that matters is the now. The only beings that matter are those that
are here in the now.
The only thing for
an individual to do is try to be a good person.
The way to be a good person is to love every other person as you love
yourself, both on Earth and across the vast expanse of extraterrestrial spacetime,
and do not do to any other person, any other being, what you would not want
them to do to you.
Make a better life
not just for yourself but for those around you, and, better yet, all those in
your nation, and in the world, and in worlds around you when that time
comes.
Remember that
Humans will be around for thousands and even millions of years, and that they
and members of others species and lifeforms will need the planet too.
All
lifeforms—floral and faunal—are sentient and deserve to be respected. Do not take the life of any form except out
of necessity.
Synthetic
lifeforms, whether of organic or artificial make, deserve the same inherent
rights as lifeforms that naturally occur, for the energy which animates them is
the same, and if sapient, they deserve all the rights of natural sapient
beings.
All lifeforms,
floral, faunal, synthetic, exist in the same Universe that, no matter how vast,
is ultimately as finite as they.
Love each other
person as yourself, both on Terra and across the vast expanse of
extraterrestrial spacetime, and do not do to another what you would not done to
you. Try to be happy. That is all you need.
Belief…any and all
belief…in anything…by anyone anywhere…is an illusion.
The only way to
really love, the only way to actually know, the only way to truly live, the
only way to keep the faith, is to give up belief completely. To unbelieve.
* * * * *
I am a Terran, a
child of the Universe and a citizen of Earth.
The whole world is my home, and all its people my brothers, sisters, and
cousins, whether of the One Human Race or of other sapient races across the
Galaxy and throughout the Universe, regardless of organic or synthetic origin. We are all equally children of the Cosmos.
May I serve the Cosmos with all my
will; may I love each other person as myself; and may I not do to any other
what I would not want done to me.
Let me bring love where there is hatred; pardon
where there is injury; union where there is discord; trust where there is doubt;
hope where there is despair; light where there is darkness; joy where there is
sadness.
May I seek to console more than to be consoled; to understand more than to be understood;
to love more than to be loved.
May I have what is sufficient for my needs;
may I be forgiven my debts, as I forgive those indebted to me; and may I not
do what I shouldn’t and do what I should.
May the sick find ease; the weary rest;
the dying closure; the suffering relief; the afflicted pity; the vulnerable
safety; the hungry sustenance; the homeless shelter; the captive freedom; the
distressed rescue; the wavering encouragement; the poor a hand up; the refugee safety; the alien welcome.
In the name of the
Way which is the Source, and the Course, and the Force of all that is.
* * * * *
(Most of the above has
been posted in previous blog entries, and this is but the latest fine-tuned
version. It will probably not be the
last.)
