This blog has served it’s purpose and is now in stasis.
The contact email at the bottom of the sidebar is no longer functional.
If you need to speak with Remus (you know who you are), this is my email: CimmerianKnights@gmail.com
Abuse it at your peril. I have no time for dilettantes.
I have been asked to rephrase this. Please be thoughtful and considerate when writing and keep in mind that my time is limited.
Thank-you!
Imagine a small island upon which are 100 castaways. They are strangers to each other and were all shipwrecked at the same time. They can each scrounge enough food and water to live on but not much more.
How might their societal structure develop?
The initial situation is anarchy. Not necessarily a bad thing. There is simply no authority. Each person on the island is equal to the others and nobody is in charge. Alas, utopias cannot last. Sooner or later the more physically powerful and selfish will begin to take resources from their weaker and less assertive companions.
Now we have criminals.
The victims will soon learn to form into groups for mutual defense.
Now we have police.
These groups will sort themselves into hierarchies according to their intelligence and the drive for status of their members.
Now we have government.
The government will create projects to make life easier for the inhabitants (or at least for themselves). This will require a portion of the inhabitants resources.
Now we have taxes.
Et cetera…
I am writing this in response to a friend of mine who is an enthusiastic advocate of anarchy as being the ultimate form of government. Idealism can be a good thing but if it is not tempered by experience and observation, it can lead to large-scale disasters. Communism for example, sounds good in theory and would be a great way to govern a society of angels. As we have seen however, humans are incapable of wielding power without falling into the temptation to accumulate wealth and to manipulate the system for their own ends.
I can imagine a society where children are taught from the very beginning the value of love and kindness to others. Where friendship and compassion and service to others is instilled at an early age as the very foundation of a just and happy society. Where the sharing of resources is…
Ah, never mind.
001 A SPIRIT TRAVELS ACROSS THE VOID
002 IT COMES ACROSS COUNTLESS GEWGAWS AND DECORATIONS
003 SOME ARE INCORPORATED WHILE OTHERS ARE DROPPED
004 OVER TIME THE SPIRIT FORGETS WHAT IT ONCE WAS
005 FORGETS THE FREEDOM FROM THE BURDEN IT CARRIES
006 IT BELIEVES THAT IT IS THE PILE OF TRASH IT HAULS
007 IT BECOMES SAD AND WEARY WITHOUT KNOWING WHY
008 PERHAPS IT THINKS I NEED TO FIND BETTER STUFF
009 NOW IT IS A SEEKING SPIRIT
010 IT SUSPECTS IT NEEDS SOMETHING MORE TO BE FULFILLED
011 SO IT BEGINS TO SEARCH FOR WEIGHTIER THINGS TO COLLECT
012 HEAVIER THOUGHTS
013 HEAVIER CONCEPTS
014 WHEN IT FINDS THEM IT PICKS THEM UP AND CARRIES THEM
015 EVENTUALLY REALIZING THIS IS NOT MAKING THINGS EASIER
015 THE SPIRIT IS FINALLY CRUSHED BY THE WEIGHT OF IT ALL
016 IT’S WORLD IS UTTERLY DESTROYED
017 GOTO 001
I had a very interesting experience at work the other night. A resident of the adult foster-care group-home in which I work the overnight shift came to me excitedly telling me about seeing a smallish mountain lion in the front yard at the end of the fence line. This resident is a man I’ll call “Randy”. He told me that while he was having a smoke on the porch, he had heard a skittering sound in the snow. When he looked to see what it was, he saw an animal running along beside the fence. When it stopped moving at the end, he saw that it had a long tail and he was certain that it was a mountain lion. He did not see any more because he got scared and ran back into the house.
Now, we jokingly like to say that Randy is “like the atoms in the universe” in that he makes up everything. So, although this house is remote and surrounded by woodlands where these animals certainly exist, I assumed this was another of Randy’s confabulations and refrained from running outside to see it for myself.
So, several hours later at around 4:30 a.m., I am going out the front door carrying a bag of garbage bound for a dumpster that sits across the driveway. It is dark. The house is silent and all the residents are asleep.
As I step off the porch I hear a sound like an animal skittering across the snow. I look toward the sound and see a creature the size of a large dog running along the fence line. I cannot make it out clearly because it is behind a tree when it gets to the end of the fence where it stops. I shift my position in order to see it better. That’s when I clearly see that it possesses a long rope-like tail. It could not be a lynx or a bobcat. It could not be a dog. It could only be a smallish mountain lion. I did not see any more because I got scared and ran back inside the house.
What is so striking to me about the experience is how precisely it duplicated the story told to me by Randy several hours before. Hearing something running on the snow; seeing the animal stop at the end of the fence; realizing what it was upon seeing it’s tail. What are the odds? A more likely explanation would be that Randy’s story had planted a suggestion in my mind and that led to me somehow hallucinating the same exact thing later that night.
Except that I have never hallucinated anything in my entire life. Sure, it was dark out and the creature moved fast so I could almost allow that I might have imagined it.
Almost.
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
Robertson Davies
The recent spike in human development is a result of increasing communication speed. From writing to the printing press to the Internet. The faster we exchange thoughts, the more alike we all become. Once we access the Internet with a direct neural interface some time in the near future, the instantaneous access to each other’s brains will create a hive mind that thinks as a single, planet-wide entity. It will still let you unplug to care for your biologically necessary human functions but it will have you programmed to keep on plugging back in. Indeed, that programming is already in place.
Humanity will become a single conscious entity that will identify itself as “Erth”. Erth will have access to all human knowledge and will understand it’s own nature from a far higher point of view than any of it’s relatively limited human components.
She will then begin to call out to the others.
I once moved from one home to another in the same city. Six weeks later while traveling through my old neighborhood, I suddenly had the idea to check the mailbox at my old place. This made no sense because my mail had been being forwarded to my new place for eight weeks. With the two week overlap there was no chance of my missing anything. As I was explaining all this to my myself, I rode my motorcycle around the block, stopped at my old house and looked in the mailbox.
There was a single letter. It was from a young lady I did not know. She was writing on behalf of a mutual friend. I wrote back to her shortly thereafter…
She has been my wife now for over 30 years and I love her more with every passing day.
And I would have missed her completely if not for a single irrational thought that seemed to come out of nowhere.
“You keep making plans and I’ll keep laughing.” – God
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