Sitaram
kickbox
Camus said that, perhaps, the greatest sin of all is to hanker after some future life and ignore the implacable grandure of the life we already possess.
Some hanker for an afterlife. Others conjure a baby universe and then slip into it through a black hole. Yet others escape into a world of fiction and imagination.
Who might our savior aliens be? What might they be like? Why would they come to assist us and what would they expect in return?
Let us not be hasty. You are not yet ready to hear of the Uberachnid. You must first attend this pre-Uberachnid introductory seminar.
Were the Achaeans attacking Troy or rescuing Helen? And if they were rescuing Helen, well, what were they rescuing her from? Love? Compare and contrast Helen in Troy and Sita in Lanka.
Perhaps we need only be rescued from ourselves.
"The mind is its own beautiful prisoner," as e.e. cummings said. "We has found the enemy, and they is US" as Pogo would say.
Sometimes saviors come in the guise of an enemy. Sometimes they come as missionaries. At other times they are messengers. They are sent as apostles or descend as avatars or rise up as rebels and revolutionaries. Salvation is always an action-packed adventure, with more than a few chase scenes. Even atheism is spiritual in its tones. We may escape God, but we can never escape religion.
Why shouldn't I be totally free to write what I please in the way I please? Why should what I do become a genre. Styles enslave. Anti-style liberates, but is always in danger of stylelessness becoming a style all it's own. Rebellion in itself is stylish apart from its cause. Ask any rebel without a cause.
You see, the body of my anti-novel has a special geometry and each sentence has a mathematical property. I shall leave it to future generations to discover how the body of my writing exhibits all Euclidean solids inscribed within a sphere. If you count the total letters of this work, find the mid-most word, and apply the correct formula, then each sentence will yield the next successive number in a series of prime and perfect numbers. Only I have the gift to write in this fashion. It is by means of these mathematical and geometrical demonstrations that you will know that what I am telling you is the Gospel truth, and anyone other than my genuine self, this author, is a liar and blasphemer, and someone whose company you should avoid.
You have done quite well in the seminar. Well done, good and faithful servants!
I see the vanished races of north American Indians, who dwelt for millennia in that continent, as having been very hardy because of natural selection, and kept hardy as a race by the rigors of survival. Modern man, by contrast, becomes a progressively weaker and less robust species because of high tech and increasing dependence on things like antibiotics, surgical procedures, insulin, etc., which in the short run greatly benefit individuals, but in the long run weaken the species.
I have no real definite notion as to why, but it is interesting that the heart is emphasized more in scriptures, but that the kidneys are also mentioned, that there was some awareness of such anatomy in ancient times.
Note that our word "renal" comes from the same root word as "reins." And should the day come that our heart and kidneys are mechanical, then what shall we say of our soul?
Amoral nature, with its natural selection and survival of the fittest, seems to have a very different agenda which favors groups and species over individuals. Our society now seems to place the well-being and interest of the individual above the well-being and interests of the group as a whole. In the short run this emphasis on the individual is quite benevolent. But what is long-term benovelence? Does long-term benevolence sometimes wear the mask of cruelty and indifference?
Nature makes it difficult for the weak and defective to pass their genes on to another generation, but medicine and modern technology makes it easy for even the infertile to pass on their genetic traits to future generations. For me, the problem is so patently obvious. Physis and Nomos, Nature and Law, mortal enemies for eternity!
Of course, we may ocassionally discover some temporary cure for a particular disease, but then all those little pathogens turn around and produce thousands of generations in a short time, and evolve a resistant strain, so then we develop a different antibiotic, and so it goes, on and on, in a vicious cycle, a Catch-22. Those pathogens desire immortality just as much as we. Their oeuvres are plagues.
As individuals, certainly we benefit from this medicine and technology, but as a species we were obviously better off under the amoral natural scheme of survival of the fittest. Now, as a species, we are gradually becoming weakened and dependent upon that medicine and technology. "Better Living Through Chemistry."
Mind you, I am not saying whether this increased dependence upon medicine and technology and genetic engineering and this progressive weakening of our species is bad or good in the long run. I am merely pointing it out as an observable phenomenon.
I realize that what I am about to say is a far-fetched scenario, but it is not totally outside the realm of possibility and technology. Imagine that genetic engineering is able to make enormous strides during the coming century and develops the technology to totally re-engineer and redesign essential human nature.
Suppose, further, that the technology of artificial intelligence made tremendous strides of advance, and is able to create true intelligence, equaling or exceeding human intelligence. Furthermore, suppose that humanity as a whole is one day able to unite, and sees "the handwriting on the wall" with regard to our solar system's eventual destruction several billion years from now, through the demise of our sun (or much earlier through some enormous asteroid striking the earth.)
Humanity, seeing the eventual destruction of our solar system through some catastrophe, creates vehicles for deep space, interstellar search for another earth-like planet, piloted by the artificial intelligence robots which have a consciousness equal to or exceeding humans, with human re-engineered genetic material on board, as well as a Noah's ark of all plant and animal genetic material, to be deployed if and when another planet is found. One small step for man. One giant step for superman. This is how we shall play galactic Simon Says. If you forget to say "May I" then you must take many umbrella steps backwards into oblivion.
IF such a far-fetched eventuality were to take place, then the temporary weakening and dependence of mankind upon antibiotics and medical technology would be but a temporary phase, as technology matured, and ultimately that future technology would be the savior not only of human life, but also the preserver of all culture, art, science, philosophy.
On the other hand, if we cannot unite as one world nation, with such a common goal, if we squander time and resources in endless guerilla wars and acts of terrorism, then we shall never be able to accomplish such a goal, and when the earth is destroyed by whatever cataclysm (as it ultimately will), then that is the end of our human history, and in some way, all will have been for nothing. We shall be suitors who never know Penelope and that white dwarf, Odysseus, shall consume us all.
I have considered the issue of the evil malevolence of some race beings who posses advanced powerful technology, and it occurred to me that such a race would of necessity have destroyed itself long ago with its own technology had it not addressed its shortcoming of greed, anger, vengeance, hatred. Therefore, I see a powerful advanced race of beings as of necessity benevolent (as a prerequisite for surviving their own super power.)
If I might become Andy Rooney for a minute, I would point how odd it is that we always speak of ourselves as some race. A race is people in a hurry to get somewhere. Where is it that we are trying to get? I forget! St. Paul speaks of winning the good race. Bread and circus races of a crumbling empire go in circles. Circles are perfect but they never lead anywhere.
Some hanker for an afterlife. Others conjure a baby universe and then slip into it through a black hole. Yet others escape into a world of fiction and imagination.
Who might our savior aliens be? What might they be like? Why would they come to assist us and what would they expect in return?
Let us not be hasty. You are not yet ready to hear of the Uberachnid. You must first attend this pre-Uberachnid introductory seminar.
Were the Achaeans attacking Troy or rescuing Helen? And if they were rescuing Helen, well, what were they rescuing her from? Love? Compare and contrast Helen in Troy and Sita in Lanka.
Perhaps we need only be rescued from ourselves.
"The mind is its own beautiful prisoner," as e.e. cummings said. "We has found the enemy, and they is US" as Pogo would say.
Sometimes saviors come in the guise of an enemy. Sometimes they come as missionaries. At other times they are messengers. They are sent as apostles or descend as avatars or rise up as rebels and revolutionaries. Salvation is always an action-packed adventure, with more than a few chase scenes. Even atheism is spiritual in its tones. We may escape God, but we can never escape religion.
Why shouldn't I be totally free to write what I please in the way I please? Why should what I do become a genre. Styles enslave. Anti-style liberates, but is always in danger of stylelessness becoming a style all it's own. Rebellion in itself is stylish apart from its cause. Ask any rebel without a cause.
You see, the body of my anti-novel has a special geometry and each sentence has a mathematical property. I shall leave it to future generations to discover how the body of my writing exhibits all Euclidean solids inscribed within a sphere. If you count the total letters of this work, find the mid-most word, and apply the correct formula, then each sentence will yield the next successive number in a series of prime and perfect numbers. Only I have the gift to write in this fashion. It is by means of these mathematical and geometrical demonstrations that you will know that what I am telling you is the Gospel truth, and anyone other than my genuine self, this author, is a liar and blasphemer, and someone whose company you should avoid.
You have done quite well in the seminar. Well done, good and faithful servants!
I see the vanished races of north American Indians, who dwelt for millennia in that continent, as having been very hardy because of natural selection, and kept hardy as a race by the rigors of survival. Modern man, by contrast, becomes a progressively weaker and less robust species because of high tech and increasing dependence on things like antibiotics, surgical procedures, insulin, etc., which in the short run greatly benefit individuals, but in the long run weaken the species.
I have no real definite notion as to why, but it is interesting that the heart is emphasized more in scriptures, but that the kidneys are also mentioned, that there was some awareness of such anatomy in ancient times.
Note that our word "renal" comes from the same root word as "reins." And should the day come that our heart and kidneys are mechanical, then what shall we say of our soul?
Amoral nature, with its natural selection and survival of the fittest, seems to have a very different agenda which favors groups and species over individuals. Our society now seems to place the well-being and interest of the individual above the well-being and interests of the group as a whole. In the short run this emphasis on the individual is quite benevolent. But what is long-term benovelence? Does long-term benevolence sometimes wear the mask of cruelty and indifference?
Nature makes it difficult for the weak and defective to pass their genes on to another generation, but medicine and modern technology makes it easy for even the infertile to pass on their genetic traits to future generations. For me, the problem is so patently obvious. Physis and Nomos, Nature and Law, mortal enemies for eternity!
Of course, we may ocassionally discover some temporary cure for a particular disease, but then all those little pathogens turn around and produce thousands of generations in a short time, and evolve a resistant strain, so then we develop a different antibiotic, and so it goes, on and on, in a vicious cycle, a Catch-22. Those pathogens desire immortality just as much as we. Their oeuvres are plagues.
As individuals, certainly we benefit from this medicine and technology, but as a species we were obviously better off under the amoral natural scheme of survival of the fittest. Now, as a species, we are gradually becoming weakened and dependent upon that medicine and technology. "Better Living Through Chemistry."
Mind you, I am not saying whether this increased dependence upon medicine and technology and genetic engineering and this progressive weakening of our species is bad or good in the long run. I am merely pointing it out as an observable phenomenon.
I realize that what I am about to say is a far-fetched scenario, but it is not totally outside the realm of possibility and technology. Imagine that genetic engineering is able to make enormous strides during the coming century and develops the technology to totally re-engineer and redesign essential human nature.
Suppose, further, that the technology of artificial intelligence made tremendous strides of advance, and is able to create true intelligence, equaling or exceeding human intelligence. Furthermore, suppose that humanity as a whole is one day able to unite, and sees "the handwriting on the wall" with regard to our solar system's eventual destruction several billion years from now, through the demise of our sun (or much earlier through some enormous asteroid striking the earth.)
Humanity, seeing the eventual destruction of our solar system through some catastrophe, creates vehicles for deep space, interstellar search for another earth-like planet, piloted by the artificial intelligence robots which have a consciousness equal to or exceeding humans, with human re-engineered genetic material on board, as well as a Noah's ark of all plant and animal genetic material, to be deployed if and when another planet is found. One small step for man. One giant step for superman. This is how we shall play galactic Simon Says. If you forget to say "May I" then you must take many umbrella steps backwards into oblivion.
IF such a far-fetched eventuality were to take place, then the temporary weakening and dependence of mankind upon antibiotics and medical technology would be but a temporary phase, as technology matured, and ultimately that future technology would be the savior not only of human life, but also the preserver of all culture, art, science, philosophy.
On the other hand, if we cannot unite as one world nation, with such a common goal, if we squander time and resources in endless guerilla wars and acts of terrorism, then we shall never be able to accomplish such a goal, and when the earth is destroyed by whatever cataclysm (as it ultimately will), then that is the end of our human history, and in some way, all will have been for nothing. We shall be suitors who never know Penelope and that white dwarf, Odysseus, shall consume us all.
I have considered the issue of the evil malevolence of some race beings who posses advanced powerful technology, and it occurred to me that such a race would of necessity have destroyed itself long ago with its own technology had it not addressed its shortcoming of greed, anger, vengeance, hatred. Therefore, I see a powerful advanced race of beings as of necessity benevolent (as a prerequisite for surviving their own super power.)
If I might become Andy Rooney for a minute, I would point how odd it is that we always speak of ourselves as some race. A race is people in a hurry to get somewhere. Where is it that we are trying to get? I forget! St. Paul speaks of winning the good race. Bread and circus races of a crumbling empire go in circles. Circles are perfect but they never lead anywhere.