Macrodrivel

[Z³]

Barriers that exist between human beings are the barriers of perception, where one person begins and another person end can be ambigious outside the immediate perception of the self. To fall back on solipsism is to insist that nothing outside of the immediate existence of the self can be proven, Cogito Ergo Sum, words immediately excorsized by the reality of personal violence, pain, and inhumanity. In other words, if only the self exists, the self must be a nihilist, otherwise it might not work so hard to provide itself with the means of its own self destruction. In other words, it can be assumed that there is a reality to the existence of others, as demonstrated by their influence on us in our every day lives, either intentionally or by simple circumstance.

" That which is above is like that which is below and that which is below is like that which is above" - Some Asshole

The human species now widely populates nearly the entire earth, with the exception of antartica, we find a way to support ourselves and survive in one form or another on every single continent of the planet. We consume resources on a massive scale, and expand essentially at an exponential rate, we are continuing to grow larger as a species. Communication also draws us closer. Consider for a moment the impact of power, electricity, mass transit systems, sattelites orbiting the earth bouncing radio and microwave frequencies from one spot to another virtually instantaneously. Consider the importance of something like the internet, not to mention the fact that our communications systems grow more complex and more intermingled with every moment that we continue to grow and expand as a species, the basic idea here is that the next form of evolution is not a physical evolution. Not strange to imagine, considering that human beings havent really evolved physically ever since we first began to function as hunters/gatherers, but rather every form of human evolution has been abstract (the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the technological evolution.) These basic ideas have been floating around for a long time. The entire cyberpunk literary movement has been packaged and sealed for pop-culture consumption, these things are now safe for us to think about. Lets move on.

In the prior paragraph, I began to touch on ideas that were first introduced to me by An Ecology of Man by SPR Charter. The book itself is a series of essays, each of which touches on a facet of a broader concept. Some of the major points I want to bring up here are as follows: the human species is expanding exponentially similar to a bacteria or a virus largely due to our ability to rapidly adapt to new environments and our lack of natural predators; like bacteria we have needs and consume resources in order to survive and to support ourselves; anything that expands exponentially such as a bacteria will continue to do so until it eventually exhausts one of its natural resources at which point it suffers cataclysm and is either completely eradicated, or else its reduced to a state where it essentially has to start over (thusly giving those resources time to replenish, if possible.) Charter does a much better job of breaking all of this down, our natural resources, their approximate availability, and pretty much every aspect of this topic one by one. Regurgitation of old ideas that not everybody is necessarily aware of. Next!

To rip on another idea. Schr??dingers Cat by Robert Anton Wilson (save your jeers, I take the guy probably about as serious as any hardened skeptic.) Well, simply put, the biggest thing that I got out of this book was one thing... as the technology curve continues to advance, and human population does the same, it is entirely within the grasp of small groups of people or even an individual to gain access to technology (if technology continues to advance, we can infer that the possibility of weapons or tools of warfare become more accessable and more devastating) it becomes a simple matter of time before the ability to cause global cataclysm is easily accessible to just some asshole. Nikolas Tesla claimed that he could probably destroy the world if he wanted to, and somehow he probably wasnt lying. Scary thought. This is what I see as being one possible outcome of our chosen path, being mechanization, communication, and education.

All of a sudden, I can understand the motivation behind seemingly idiotic policies like 'No Child Left Behind', although I dont agree with the spirit of dumbing down the public out of fear. To me, these sort of things stink of classism, and there are a lot of things in current events that lead me to think in this direction. Taxation, obviously, means a hell of a lot more to the poor than it does to the wealthy (even when you figure that percentage wise, the rich may pay greater taxes than the poor) based on the fact that the money gap is staggeringly huge. To have millions of dollars in liquid assets at your command would mean that to you, a few hundred thousand, can be sacrificed easily in order to achieve your aims. A good example of that are the cases where large corporations can commit various types of violations, environmental ones being the first that come to mind, simply because the massive fines still manage to fit within the profit margins. Immediately consider what those hundreds of thousands of dollars would mean to an entire community in the ghetto. When you are willing to look at the world honestly, you will come to realize, that it is naturally predatory. Even if somebody who is born poor can crawl tooth and nail up the sliding scale of this system, the simple fact is that they will probably never be in a position to help anybody but themselves, because acquiring those means is staggeringly difficult. Even if they could, they probably wouldnt, that kind of ascension requires one to begin thinking critically of every decision, and the world has a way of making people cut-throat and dishonest. Have you ever answered honestly on a personality test set in place by a corporation for some miserable job you wanted to get? Did you get the job?

Out of politics again for a second. Human conciousness is evolving. Think of the human brain as being a large collection of individual cells held together by synapses communicating back and forth to each other across synapses via electrochemical signals. Think of each individual human being, from all walks of life, living and communicating to each other daily. Think of the internet, one cell from halfway across the world can send an impulse that is recieved by another cell millions of miles away. Think of the rise of computerization and communication, billions of human beings forming a network of communication that is globablly accessible by different types of cells. Think of television, literature, and music, one single message communicated to a mass group of cells. Sure, there might not be a self-aware macro-concsiousness yet, but the way things going I think there is good money that there eventually will be (assuming, of course, that certain factors are met.) This is my agenda, I am pro-evolution. (incidentally, I'm listening to Bobby Digital right now, and I think its very cool that the Rza just sampled Portishead. )

Ok. So I've established my vision of a human macro-consciousness, again not a very new idea, I'm not very well read on my C.G. Jung but I'm pretty sure I'm beginning to approach his vision of collective consciousness. This too is also a huge part of Meme-Theory. Words and ideas as viruses, the path of fads as they spread from place to place, human beings can easily be seen as individual cells of a larger organism from this standpoint. Blood cells deliver oxygen from place to place, brain cells generate electro chemical signals that perform and control a large variety of functions, etc etc. I dont want to get too heavy into human biology, its not exactly my thing, but the metaphor can be stretched out a lot more. To put it simple, it is my belief that the human species is essentially in a foetal state, and whatever organism it is that we happen to be is a little to large and abstract for a human being to easily fathom.

So from here, I find myself wanting to get back into 'conspiracy theory' a little bit. I realize that from a political standpoint, my ideas might seem radical, but the truth of it is I only have a passing interest in politics. In other words, I care enough about politics only in terms of how it begins to approach my general interest in the proliferation and evolution of the human species. In other words, I dont want us die. As we expand exponentially, we consume resources more rapidly and these resources are subject to an increased demand, and as it happens to stand right now natural gasses, fossil fuels, and crude oil form the backbone of a lot of our military, industrial, and technological systems. This is something that causes global tension, in terms of those resources, and we see world superpowers competing openly over control of these things. This of course, is not the end all be-all, it just happens to be a place and time where we are right now. New world superpowers are forming (the E.U. is a good example, and I've heard rumors of a South American Union not being too far off, but we'll just have to wait and see how that one plays out.) Also, the cold war never really ended. If you think about it, the cold war was a term we invented for the tension between the United States and the former USSR, but that type of tension is not something thats merely limited to two countries and its been ever present in our history, and becomes even more so as the world becomes smaller.

To put that whole section of the rant simple, as the world gets smaller and the technological curve continues to rise, we witness a general rise in global tension.

The next couple centuries are going to be rough, but I dont think we can unlearn anything that we have learned, and we are going to go through some hard times. Global warming is the next issue on my itinerary. Given the current pace, scientists expact that within a hundred years the polar ice caps will be at a point where they will completely melt during the summer months. As to how this will effect the world, and our ecology, on a global scale... we can only conjecture. I have enough faith in the human species that we will be able to survive that particular environmental change, but the earth is something that doesnt stay the same. This is playing havoc on a lot of things, tsunamis and hurricanes are becoming more and more common, and of course the water level of the worlds oceans is probably going to rise substantially. We can pack tight in together, and live in smaller spaces, because humans are pretty good at that sort of thing. We have megalopolises already, but a lot of coastal cities are in for some major stress over the next fifty years or so. The other thing is that this is already playing havoc with the Gulf Stream, so England and Europe are probably going to get a lot colder (more representitive of their location in relation to the earths equator.)

I guess you could say that we still have natural predators. There is the earths climate itself, there is disease, poverty, and famine, and there is also the human factor. Our own technology holds the possibility to undo us, and if that happens, we'll never be able to evolve.

You might be able to tell that I'm starting to wind down a bit, I'm approaching a point where I'm not even sure whats best for us as a whole species. I think its necessary for us as a whole to begin to think globally in order to survive, and I think its necessary that we provide education and high quality of living in order to expand (first within our own individual societies, and then globally, evolution is contagious.) The sad part about this, is that there enough ignorant people in the world to screw up any and all efforts we have of being progressive, especially when a large majority of people within our own society screw it up even more by villifying progressive thought. Warmongering and rabid nationalism are the trends of the day, and there is little that can be done on an individual level to change any of that.

When you get right down to it, there is nothing that I can do physically to have a substantially positive change on the world as a whole, all I can do is reach out to the people close to me and try and do some good there. And all this do-gooding is kind of difficult to do, especially when we live in a predatory society where even taking care of yourself and making sure you dont get completely fucked over is a full time job. Add to those factors the fact that I am inherantly human, and therefore probably just as stupid and ignorant as a lot of other fools in this world, all of this self righteous rambling doesnt do a god damned thing to change the fact that I make, and have made, some seriously stupid mistakes in my lifetime.

Oh well. We'll just wait and see how everything turns out. Personally, all I want to really do is sit on the sidelines in a lawn-chair with a beer in my hand. If everything turns out well, I'll be happy, and if not... I wont be surprised, but at least I will be entertained.

Good luck, and good night.

[LHX]

i agree with a lot of this
but
if you think that you can sit 'on the sidelines' undisturbed
you might be setting yourself up for some bad shit


your lawnchair is liable to fall apart or get vandalized
and
the lengths that you may be required to go to get that beer in your hand
may soon become unreasonable




yes - this seems to be the game show where ALL the audience members MUST get involved ('by choice')

or
THEY WILL INVOLVE YOU




(the only way out is thru)

[Z³]

Well. I do have the bloodhammer. We think its posessed by one of Goetic demons, not sure which one, but it wants to smash.

[LHX]

Well. I do have the bloodhammer. We think its posessed by one of Goetic demons, not sure which one, but it wants to smash.

let me know if i can tee anything up for you

LHX - loves to see a good smash