"Our loyalty was never to humanity but rather to the revolutionary force of cosmic evolution and to all those, of all species, who also align themselves with it"
- Jason Reza Jorjani, Promethean Pirate
.. humanity is more than a word or a picture in one's head, or at least it should be ..
.. to get to what it reaLLy means to be human calls for a deep & thorough examination; to be bold enough to ask challenging questions & prepared to receive uncomfortable answers ..
.. to not take prepackaged answers as given .. to be ready to be surprised by what one might discover in such an undertaking ..
"The one thing I know is that we're con stantly being born"
- from Ripley's Game
Humanity
is something akin to a large language model, certainly at least as far
as individuals are considered. As children we have each learned a few
starting words, which then balloon out into the larger cultural context,
first of a single particular language and then potentially expanding to
the worlds of discourse encompassed by each of the world's languages.
Approaching
the world through the lens of language, we are constantly labelling
what we see, computing visual and other sensory phenomena and attempting
to reduce them to the static structures embodied in words and sequences
of words, fitting them into existing conceptual arrangements that are
codified according to previously ingested media and those labelings
provided from out of the past.
The
individual tokens we use to communicate may be atomic and capable of
being placed in sound or on page in finite time and space, but the
concepts themselves are not so well defined. They are nebulous and
fuzzy, each calling up separate associations according to an
individual's experience and not fully capable of finality as the context
in which their meaning lies is itself a part of any attempt at
definition. Of course, we can get the gist of a phrase or saying, and
that is enough for practical purposes.
When
people communicate, and are confronted with diverse utterances, when
the language is understood and considering them apart from tone, body
language, etc., the words are sequentially parsed and processed by the
mind and fit into the internal model which was formed over time, as
stated, by the ingestion of various cultural productions. The incoming
bits of information must be fit into those existing structures, or form
part of an external surface of meaning that is rejected. Assuming that
modern science is correct in its conclusion that the essence of our
conscious existence is confined to the brain and its operations, then
the incoming information must literally be fit, in a dynamic geometric
sense, into the three dimensional structures already active in that
organ.
The
brain is in a constant motion of cycles and fluxes which are to some
degree stable, but which are constantly being perturbed by incoming
sensory information and must variously accommodate these impulses. In
conversation, when the semantic data is not outright rejected and is
also not immediately taken as "understood", we respond with our own
selection of words either to elucidate further understanding or to
comment upon and reform the others' understanding. Think of something
like tentacles reaching out and probing a space, or an organism confined
to the plane of agar in a petri dish, extending and retracting as they
come into contact with external forms that are also expanding and
contracting.
It
may be worthwhile to consider that in their surface geometric
structures, or forms taken at face value, sentences (and words) are
sequences, or lines, very much like an "actual" tentacle that enters
into our being and is somehow dealt with, or managed. And, once inside,
they take on another life of their own - just think of a time when
something someone has said has continued to reverberate and take hold of
conscious attention, how sometimes you respond with words internally to
what you have just heard. This is certainly noticeable when there is an
associated emotional reaction, but there is no reason to think that it
is not also true for all cases, only that the reaction is likely to be
subconscious.
Additionally,
it may be worth suggesting that these "tentacles", threads of active
meaning within the mind / brain complex actually take hold of the
physical organisms in which they reside, swaying them and sometimes
moving (literal) mountains. One only needs to think, in particular, of
the religious habits and the required behaviors, to outsiders often
seeming bizarre, to see just to how strong a degree these complexes
affect real, gross physical movements.
Setting
aside standard notions of "adversary", and thinking in the technical
sense of modern artificial intelligence, individuals, and the groups
composed of them, are each acting somewhat in the same capacity as GANs,
or generalized adversarial networks. We are set up "against" each other
and in our exchanges modulate each other's internal neural networks in
response, learning as we go. For some reason, however, and the answer
likely lies partially tied in with the nature of language itself, this
situation of being set up "against" one another turns into real,
physical adversarial activities - fights, wars, etc - with some
frequency between different language groups.
Don't be a machine that can't program itself.
"Except for stable eras, all times are chaotic eras"
- from 3 Body Problem
..
scientists recently met to discuss whether the changes that humanity
has wrought upon the earth warrant the dubious honour of designating a
new geological epoch in our name, which, following the con vention for
naming geological eras, would be the "anthropocene", from Anthropos, the
Greek word for "human" ..
..
the experts decided that this wasn't necessary, mostly for technical
reasons; geological epochs typically last for millions of years, &
by that measure, it's far too early to determine that our effects on the
earth are so drastic as to call for such a technical term ..
.. they didn't con sider the possibility that, at the rate we're going, we may not be around another million years ..
..
in any case, the real heart of the issue isn't a technical geological
term, which surely should be left to the experts in that field, but
rather a question with which everyone should be con cerned, namely, what is it to be human ..?
..
today we face more challenges than ever before, & it's no longer
enough simply to leave questions like this to the experts .. it's our
response ability as members of humanity, as individuals, to determine
our own Way, & where we stand on issues that really do affect all of
us ..
..
admittedly, there are things we can't do much about even if we've
thought them through, but this in itself shouldn't hinder an examination
of where humanity is at present .. as members of the coLLective
Anthropos, we have an energetic vote, one that can sway decisions on the
quantum level ..
..
the increasingly problematic nature of arguably outdated scientific
theories & "big pictures", such as the standard model of particle
physics that otherwise accounts for so much that occurs in reality,
might well necessitate a re con sideration of their viability in the
long term .. indeed, scientists are wondering whether there is in fact a
force hitherto unaccounted for, the inclusion of which would result in a
more accurate & widely applicable model ..
..
what if this hitherto hidden force is none other than con sciousness,
will, intention ..? .. & what if this is the very essence of
humanity itself, rather than how one dresses or how they do their hair
..? .. what if the problem isn't that we've focused too much on
inserting humanity into the scene, but rather that we have focused too
much on details, & not yet even seen what the nature of humanity is
in the first place ..?
"These questions are as dark as the stormy seas that lie ahead of us. They are liable to produce what Kafka called a “seasickness on dry land.” But now, there’s no turning back. Like Atlas, we bear the burden of holding up the heavens at the end of the world. As Promethean pirates wielding the trident of Poseidon, we forge on ahead. So be it if we are chased by the lightning and the thunder. Stay under. Our story is not over. Our Leviathan sails on through the dark night of time."
- Jason Reza Jorjani, Promethean Pirate
.. to succeed is to program the un con scious; it's not a vanity or a game ..
.. repeating incantations, mantras, words of power, is precision Work that pays off outsized dividends ..
.. everywhere & now here ..
.. nowhere cuz it's everywhere ..
