Once upon a time, before there were clocks, there was Something.
All we can really, truly know about that Something is that without that Something having been, we could not be. For how else could there be anything, if not for a Thing Before Things?1
Doubtless there is far more to the Something than that. To this end, people have had, or have been said to have had, revelations given unto them, many times throughout history.
Indeed, there is a rather famous story of how one Arab man took a traditional Hebraic theistic monad and made an Arabic representation universally applicable, at least by his own lights.
But that is not a story I am qualified to tell. And assuming that a man alone in a cave has the experience he says he had, only he himself can remember having spoken with Gabriel, Icculus, or being abducted by aliens, as the case may be.
In any case, the success of certain men of both the 6-7th century and the 19th century cannot be denied. One of the former united millions of Arabs and later also many non-Arabs in his name (formally as the final canonically enumerated foreteller working on behalf of Big Alpha2). One of the latter is the reason Utah exists.
And let’s not forget about a Galilean man who some Greekified (Hellenistic) Jews got behind, who figures in the testimonies of both of these men.
If you think I’m being a little flippant in the face of the sacrosanct sagacity of these figures, I won’t say you’re wrong. But even though the theistic details differ, all of these traditions of dictated truth have one thing in common:
They’re all ossified social control systems which inhibit the living word, placing themselves beyond innovation (including judicious responses to new experiences), for better and for worse.
Certainly the Something without which we could not be has mysterious properties. Maybe just for the sake of that mystery alone, I think it’s alright to question whether any one person should ever be given the final word on it, even if (or especially if!) they say that theirs is the final word. While it’s impressive to get thousands of millions of people to put up (with) a giant Philosophy Ends Here sign, it of course, by design, stops the march of epistemic progress in its tracks. (Not that you can’t get up to other things, I suppose.)
If I had my druthers, I’d build a sociological system on love and wisdom instead of fear and dogma. (Of course I use the latter word pejoratively – I’m not a Roman Catholic!)
My overwhelming desire is therefore to get away from the Systems That Are and the Powers That Be. For myself at a minimum, though copacetic company would be congenial!
I also feel like the systems that ensure the continuity of central social control are very much antihumanal. Examples abound: The transformation of clan chiefs into landlords, the denigration and prohibition of consanguineous marriage – heck, even marriage itself. Not to mention the ideology that everyone’s actually the same regardless of blood or genre. I’m sure you, dear reader, have a long laundry list of things you could add on.3
On the positive side, longevity had been trending upwards until recently. And there’s arguably a lot that’s right in terms of our material prosperity – or is there? There is no “away” to which to throw things – everything is “the environment”, and externalities are only “external” inasmuch as they don’t appear on an accountant’s ledger, but they’re no less real. So I’ll tell myself for the seventeenth time that this is the last box of K-Cups I’m buying.
And whatever you think of our technological wonderland, what about our psyche? How’s that doing? A roiling turmoil of red baseball caps, donkeys, various Levantine and/or Shahada flags, not to mention tricolours not just of Newfoundland and bicolours not just of Indonesia. How is anyone supposed to make any sense out of all this? (And yes, it is “all this” – it’s a small world, after all!) And even if they could, could they even voice it?
Following on from the above quote, here’s one from the start of a formerly somnolent sage’s logos: “Memes rule the world. How they interact with each other defines what happens to us collectively.
“I care about this because right now most large-scale human thought and effort is subject to, rather than orienting to, this fact. Which means we aren’t collectively steering our own future.”
Thoughts, given expression, are ruling us, rather than us ruling the thoughts. This is problematic and we should work together somehow to fix this. It’s even worth naming someone King of the Universe for five minutes if you find that this is something you absolutely have to do. At least, speaking of the Universality, English has no borders, so it would be no surprise if he/him were an English speaker, and incidentally I for one can speak English, and I can also communicate in French and order beer in Japanese. (If there’s ever a selection process for such a king, you want to have your bona fides out there!)
We do need values. Family values, clan values, values of a people, values of a polity. And “Love Thy Neighbour”, to crib from the annals of the aforementioned Hellenistic Jews, is a pretty good starting point. I’d say some of our close relatives, such as bonobo chimpanzees, are exceptionally good at it.
And even if you don’t want to get corporeally entwined with your neighbour(s), you can “just” be friends. And you may or may not partake in the “as Yourself” for that matter. Up to you.
Another good one is “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” – well, it’s assuming you’re not a sadomasochist, I suppose. But even then it’s probably fine as long as you’re among other sadomasochists. A man who designed dimmable fluorescent lights for the Space Shuttle calls the underlying natural truth The Symmetry Principle. What goes around comes around: Critters of all kinds can’t expect to be treated differently than they treat other critters of all kinds.
Getting back to Something, there’s a lot more room for the ineffable than a lot of people think. While a stage magician is properly an illusionist, isn’t it interesting how our theories of teensy-scale particleoid whatsits whizzing and of gargantuan-scale matterenergy mutually attracting don’t quite line up? Will they ever do so, or is it just a fundamental discontinuity of irreconcilability from an in-Matrix point of view?
And even if we did deduce a new Theory of Everything, how could you apply it to everything? You might simulate a little toy universe, but it is neither a completely faithful representation of the part, nor is it connected to the whole, excepting perhaps an abstracting, translating interface. I don’t mean to say it wouldn’t help make predictions – it’s why we can have decent guesses about the next few days of weather or have fun modelling orbital mechanics – just that there are limits on what we can know.
And contra Terence McKenna, I wouldn’t characterise science as silly myths. There’s a lot of stuff that works (even in psychology!), and it even works across disciplines, which is something you only get for free if each discipline is fairly warm on the underlying truth.
If you’ve got time, I’d recommend McKenna’s early 90s Alien Dreamtime performance with Spacetime Continuum. He identifies three “enemies of the people”: hegemony, monogamy, and monotony. (Below I’ll be expressing my own opinions rather than summarising his.)
We can make the millennium an occasion for establishing an authentic human civilization, overcoming the dominator paradigm, dissolving boundaries through psychedelics, recreating a sexuality not based on monotheism, monogamy and monotony.
Terence McKenna, “Timewave Zero”, Alien Dreamtime
Monotheism is kind of like giving just one squad of the priestly class a monopoly on your brainbox. Also, it makes people’s worldviews weird because they have to warp them around one all-powerful whozit running the whole dang show. A multifarious pantheon lets you not have to worry about having to explain everything as a single deity’s super-blueprint. There’s a goddess for luck and a goddess of love, and lamentably they don’t always get to work together.
And that’s just speaking of distinct incorporeal idealised figures you might go to a temple to pay offerings to. That isn’t the only modality: there’s also animism and ancestor worship. Probably also entire classes of ceremonialised human behaviour I’m not even thinking of or have even heard of.
McKenna also specifically called out hegemony, so there’s kind of four enemies if you count monotheism separately. Well, monotheism is like crack for hegemony. It’s easier to say you are divinely appointed by one deity than it is to say the you have the blessing of all twenty-seven (or whatever). Indeed, monotheism is almost guaranteeing a priestly hegemony, unless you fall to schisms.
Monogamy: Well, one can be infinitely better than none, and one can be a clear favourite. (Love is definitely a thing.) Those of you out there who are “happily married”, accept my congratulations, and know that I do not deem you to be so for nothing. But the compulsion to be so tied together, excluding all others, comes from the Church having it be the only approved way to get with the goings on. It’s good to keep in mind that if some level of goings on weren’t necessary to furthering our kinds’ presences along the arrow of time, they wouldn’t even approve that. Heck, some crazy Russian sects insisted you remove your ability to so further!
It might also be of interest to learn that some cultures practice partible paternity, and that physiologically we’re remarkably well suited for polyandric activities, e.g., group percussion. Check out the book Sex at Dawn if this kind of thing interests you.
Monotony: I don’t actually have a lot to say on this one. I think the problem isn’t so much sameness or routine simpliciter, but rather things like workplaces that keep you metaphorically chained to your desk even when there’s nothing going on. You’re getting paid by the hour, so you’d better put in those hours! I’d of course like it if the hours of work occurred 1) when I felt like working and 2) that the remuneration of 1) would be enough to cover my material needs, but society just isn’t structured that way. And, well, it sucks. Work sucks! Even just toeing the line, not rocking the boat, and pleasing those who have authority over you, all those things suck! And the way they think they own what you can say and do even when you’re not at work! The sooner we can achieve a 100% unemployment rate, the better.
A while back I talked about my worldview, including as regards eligibility for copacetic liaisons, but one other thing that concerns me greatly is the increasing inability for there to be genuine leadership. The “wise person that everyone listens to” simply doesn’t scale.
Then again, people ostensibly representing the Something (or other) have become some of the most heeded people in history. Hard for it to be a career move, though. There’s no such thing as How to Start a Religion For Dummies, although some might argue that they all are, but you might not want to be on a Riyadh street corner if you do.
Still, I wonder if the solution for giant systems that have escaped human recourse is to spin up small systems, and keep them illegible to the giant systems. Eventually people will ignore the giant systems and they’ll simply go away.
And as long as I’m dreaming, I’d like a seastead!
- This actually doesn’t leave the problem of there needing to be a Thing Before the Thing Before Things. At some point there must have been a Thing Before Things, so it doesn’t really matter how many layers there could be. ↩︎
- It is probably not rendered exactly this way in Arabic – for one thing, it would go in the opposite direction. ↩︎
- Shout outs to the bearer of the sign “Animals don’t care who else you love,” but for my own part I would like to avoid zoonoses. ↩︎