The Paradox of Nothing

The tricky thing with nothing is that it can’t be experienced. It seems simple enough. Most of my readers will agree that consciousness is emergent of neurochemistry, so when the brain dies, so too does conscious experience, and there is nothing left in its place. It’s not so hard to imagine. You need only think of how life was before you were conceived. Only, there is a problem.

The problem is best summarised thusly: there is no such thing as nothing. By definition. Whereas our worlds are made up precisely of what is experienced.

A ludicrous supposition? You are welcome to think so, but if you do, kindly drop a comment in the box below explaining why. This is a concept I’ve been struggling with, clumsily, in the two months I’ve been away from Viridian Circles, and I welcome any simple solution.

Before you do, though, consider the age-old paradox of Theseus. If you have never heard of it, sail on his hypothetical ship a while and ponder the folly of identity:

“The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.” – Plutarch

More pertinent: are you exactly the same person who existed ten years ago? Are you a different person altogether? At a cellular level, almost every component of your body has been replaced several times over throughout your lifetime. Down to the level of atoms, sub-atomic particles and quantum waves, the fluctuation is similar but more rapid. Being inextricably linked to the body, the mind has also changed. You don’t think the same way as when you were ten years old, or twenty, nor do you have the same emotional patterns, or desires, or aspirations. Your self-image is altered. Your beliefs have changed. Oh you may be similar to these past versions of you, linked as you are by memory on various level of awareness, but you are not the same person. If you were, you would be frozen in time, because motion implies change.

The change in body and mind over years is great, whereas the change over seconds is not noticeable, but the difference is only a matter of scale. In either case, you are changing. By every smallest increment of time, you are transforming into something related, but different. And every time this happens – and, I should add, it happens an infinite number of times, since the present moment is irreducible to any unit and is instead a constant meeting of past and future – you die.

That is, you cease to exist.

That ten-year-old version of you does not experience this reality any more than the twelve-year-old version, or the fourteen-year-old, sixteen, etc. The past is only an idea, a memory. It has no present existence. The only present existence is your own, right now. And if this non-existent vacuum applies to long-past versions of you, then it must also apply to more recent versions. Ten minutes ago, ten seconds, a nanosecond. Every time, ‘you’ have been replaced with a slightly different copy, subtly altered neurochemistry, different spacetime coordinates. And each time, ‘you’ have ceased to exist. Yet experience continues on.

This is because, as I said before, experience is an emergent process of the brain. In this instant, your brain processes memories that keep your experience here on Earth constant and consistent. Your identity complex, short-term tasks and temporal perceptions are all resultant processes of the brain and nervous system, and every quantum version of you is linked to every other version via these processes. This all adds up to the appearance of a consistent lifetime.

Now to validate the paradox.

When you die, when the brain shuts down for good, all these processes cease and in their place, there is nothing. Why, then, does the constant stream of non-existence behind and before you not dominate your current experience? That is: you cease to exist moment to moment, so why doesn’t it stay that way?

But didn’t I already explain why? Consciousness is an emergent process of the brain, and memory makes the experience consistent. Okay, then consider this.

Suppose a hyper-advanced being decides it wants to transmute all the brain functions that make you you, into mine. In an instant your memory and identity are gone, and in their place is mine. So you are dead. In your stead, I experience, pain and pleasure, emotions and thoughts; in short, my own qualia. For you there can be no more of those things. For you there is nothing left at all.

But I reiterate: this is exactly what’s happening in every single moment. It’s just that it’s less extreme. You are being replaced by slightly altered copies, and yet you go on experiencing. Why? Because there is no such thing as nothing.

Non-existence cannot be experienced. There will always be conscious experience in its place. It’s a matter of definition.

Ever been under anaesthetic? One moment you were on the operating table, the next you were waking up groggily hours later. To you, there was no in between. The thoughtless nothing of that time cannot be experienced, because there is nothing to experience.

Likewise, you cannot travel ‘outside’ the universe, because there is nothing outside of existence to traverse. As in physical outer space, so too in experiential inner space.

There will always be experience, because there is nothing else.

Death may entail non-existence. But every single moment is death. Yet there you are all the same, existing. Well done, your qualia just broke the universe.

How do we reconcile this paradox? I have several possible solutions, but first, I would hear yours. Leave a comment with your thoughts, and I’ll follow up with mine in the next entry.

I Know the Pieces Fit!

We are not disconnected from nature, and we’re not iconoclasts in the eyes of God or Gaia. We’re just complex organisms with a touch of every other creature’s survival strategy encoded into our DNA, plus a dash of sapience to make us truly unique. If we feel dissonant from the earth, it’s only because our preconceptions have taught us not to listen.

First, the World we’ve created operates macrocosmically like an intricate insect colony. Most humans on earth are no longer adapted to survive in small groups as we once were, because we have developed an alternate, equally legitimate system that accounts not only for staying alive, but for much more. We now support each other through a great interlocking web of infrastructure, comparable to the video above, and abstract enforcement, as with our jobs and laws. This enormous system now spans an entire planet, centring on conceptual gravity wells called cities. We maintain the structure, no single one of us deciding its course, but almost all of us with a role to contribute in holding the show together. We truly are the human superorganism. Our individual lives may tell a different tale, but from outer space, for all intents and purposes, we operate as an insect colony.

It’s a process most of us follow without ever thinking about it. From our first steps, to our formal and specialised education, to the payoff of career prospects and contribution in this Machine, to our final placement in the quarantine of a nursing home (a byproduct of the moralistic metaparadigm integral to a stable society, but holding no other practical purpose – think about that!) we simply play our parts. It’s natural for any cell in the grand scheme to think of the world from its own point of view, especially when that cell is a human being, born less rational than we like to think. So it’s hard to fathom just what the big picture looks like, when you’re stuck seeing it from the same angle both in thought and sight all the time. But pan out, and you won’t be able to tell yourself apart from the other ants building clay roadways, streaming with the other workers to uphold the economy or excavate new living space, or battling termites, or nursing the next generation. Life spans on and you’re only a speck.

But does that mean you should rebel? Wake up from the system that uses you (uses you!) and declare autonomy and go about your own way of life? Sure, if that works for you. But you’ll always be one of the few, because this is how we evolved. In a sense, it’s how we chose to evolve. For most of us, mammalian instinct takes over and we’re happy to live in the support of community, held warmly in the love of family, cooperating, belonging, holding up the abstract patterns that keep it all running. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. No pack of wolves ever questioned their bond to their cubs or their pecking order; no herd ever felt confined or frustrated by the safety of numbers. We’re biologically crafted to fit in, every act of it fills our brains with sweet dopamine, and natural selection dictates by common sense that it should be this way. Yet zoomed in to a smaller scale than the collective, we’re so much more complicated than ants, both psychologically and communally. That’s the result of seven billion emotive, instinctual mammals sharing the same clump of rock and water.

Every human being on earth is made of mental complexes we’d still be learning from if we studied them for a thousand lifetimes. The complexity is not binary, it’s as limitless as the number of possible neural connections multiplied by how many angles we can see the results from. And that’s for each single person. Magnify it to the scope of civilizations, and no algorithm we can fathom could ever hope to decipher it. Yet thats how it is. If reality is a computer simulation, the computer is infinitely advanced.

And every living thing is made of materials working with each other in their own equivalent megalopolis of micro-organisms and organ clusters, often for dozens or hundreds of years. It’s as though a pile of dust one day defied probability by forming into a walking breathing feeling eating excreting golem. Only the real process was, in its way, even more mystifying, because it was organic. Continues to be organic. Jigsaws falling into place. I call it energy. The same abstract energy that keeps ants in line, that necessitates law in a human society, that keeps the smelly gas bags and tissue composing you beating and breathing in self-sustaining equilibrium. Energy isn’t a meaningless word to explain away something beautiful, it’s the word I use to describe the phenomenon, hear its enigmatic perfection from the air that passes my lips. Witness to the flow, I can only watch breathtaken in awe.

Everything is in its right place. The systems spiral together in perfect cohesion. Your life is a shard of the infinite and nothing can ever fall out of line, and no single mind we can hope to imagine could ever conceive such a masterstroke. Life will know itself in the highest heaven and the deepest hell and from every other angle of the hypersphere in between, and never once will there be an anomaly that breaks the game. I offer no dogma, no prescriptive belief I’m trying to sell. Just an appreciation we can all share. Whatever perspective you’re looking at it from, the universe is whole, and you are part of it.

Childhood is a Psychedelic State

This is one of the longest-acting alternate states of consciousness possible, with a duration of around twelve years, give or take a few depending on the person and their circumstances. Effects hit very hard at the beginning, with participants universally unaware of their own name and unable to speak, and gradually wane from there, but often remain strong even into the ninth or tenth year. Most describe the experience as ‘life-changing’ and ‘essential.’ Subjects typically experience:

- Euphoria free of inhibitions, similar to LSD or magic mushrooms
- A highly impressionable state of mind
- A very sensitive mood in which ordinary events can blow out to disproportionate fear or sadness
- Irrationality and solipsistic self-concern, especially at the early peak
- A looser sense of self, especially at the peak where it is non-existent and similar to 5-MeO-DMT, salvia, or less powerful hallucinogens at high doses
- Patterns formed from mundane things e.g. faces on car bonnets, similar to most hallucinogens
- Fantastical delirium (street slang for this effect includes “make-believe” and “invisible friends”) and a tendency to anthropomorphise inanimate objects
- Distractibility and short attention span, especially during and following the peak
- Poor motor control and language ability
- Fixation and satisfaction with simple things such as colours, alike magic mushrooms
- Seemingly tireless energy comparable to stimulant psychedelics such as DOC
- A timeless sense of just ‘being’ without thought of the future
- Strong creativity and thought patterns unconfined by cultural limitations, alike LSD
- A sense of wonder and awe with the world
- Renowned capacity to enjoy and appreciate life
- Lasting effects on personality and worldview

The FDA is investigating this alarming phenomenon and is considering classifying it Schedule 1, issuing a nation-wide ban of childhood and the dangerous state of mind it causes. The U.S. government is following this move with public service announcements to make its citizens aware of the risks people who choose to be children are taking – these include chasing balls in front of traffic, or jumping off rooftops in the mistaken belief that they can fly. The PSAs also claim that childhood can remain in users’ spines for the rest of their lives, and that it is “ten times more potent and 80% more diluted than in the 60s.” These claims have yet to be substantiated by evidence, but the government nonetheless applies them to its Just Say No program for its rehabilitation centres known as ‘schools’, ironically made more effective by the impressionable state of mind the patients (colloquially known as ‘child-ren’, ala meth-heads) find themselves in.

The Republican echelons of several U.S. states have also moved to pass a bill mandating incarceration for anyone experiencing childhood, with a maximum sentence of twelve years to match a recent case of a 14-year-old boy in Indonesia caught with a small cache of cannabis. The boy in question is suspected to have also recently experienced childhood himself, making the charges all the more pertinent.

Parents are especially concerned in light of these findings, and the Republican party is expected to gain a significant portion of this demographic in the coming election.

Derealisation (Dis)order in High Definition

Another ten hours on the computer to top off two full days, and when the whirring motor finally dies, I look around the room feeling sick to the head. Everything’s far away and muted, from my senses to my emotions. A buzz clouds my thoughts. There’s one word on my mind: addiction. To computer use, of all things. Stupid.

At first, it seemed like a major problem. Computers are integral to our society; how would it be if the government issued mandatory amphetamines? Then I realised I was looking at it the wrong way. It’s more like junk food: highly accessible and constantly shoved in our faces, but resistable. I restricted myself to one day a week, the rest in one-hour windows at the library.

For the rest of that day, I was in a weird headspace. Reality did not feel real. I was detached from all my values and identity. Everything became dreamlike. It was like watching my life on a screen, and I thought, that’s an interesting way to describe it.

Real life had become part of the metacognitive interface.

Our engagement with reality exists through the nervous system and the command centre that is the brain. The result is that your conscious mind feels like the pilot of a vessel, namely, the physical body. Possibly this is the fundamental origin for the belief in a soul. When you play a computer game, all your focus centres on the screen and your interactions with it. What this does to the brain, I can only hypothesise, but here are my thoughts anyway.

That little window, and the pixellated character you control within it, become your whole world. You are now wired to the controller or keyboard to the point of barely noticing what your fingers are doing. You are far more aware of what’s happening onscreen. Snapping back to reality, especially after prolonged hours, can feel very dysphoric.

There’s a cliche about gamers being uncoordinated, and I wonder if that’s because they’ve spent so long plugged in to a virtual world and its controls, leaving them out of whack with the real world and its controls. This is all conjecture. But if I’m right, gaming will have a stronger dissociative effect than internet use, and FPS games more so than strategy games.

Another piece of conjecture I’ll put forward is that driving has a similar, if less powerful, effect. You are connected to a larger body than your own, your interactions with the world occur via pedals, clutch and steering wheel, with your limbs reduced to incidentary mediums.

Where I’m right or not, I spent the next two days in a heavily dissociated headspace. Was reality real, or just the imagination of a solipsistic entity beyond my fathoming? At first I resisted these thoughts, because they sounded crazy, and mental hospitals are boring places to spend a lifetime. Then, with an admirable streak of skepticism, I thought, “Hang on. How DO I know this world is real, and this feeling is what’s delusional? Every definition we have of ‘real’ is self-fulfilling and cyclical. I could learn from this state of mind.”

“Congratulations,” said my conservative side. “You have just handed your sanity over to derealisation on a silver platter.”

“Is this what insanity feels like?” answered my exploratory side. “It’s not as bad as I thought. Actually, I like it.”

And then the world came alive in high definition. Computer realms may be pretty, but they’re limited. The real world is infinitely deep, and it has the most convincing, remarkable graphics engine possible. I noticed every moody hallway and shiny car with newfound appreciation. It was raining, which helped – I’ve always loved rain. And I witnessed it all in detached wonder, as thought it was the best TV show of all time. Music became immersive like never before. I saw how headlights formed faces and how my pen looked like a boat as I let it sail with the rainwater. I wasn’t high. Just awake. Derealisation Order.

It was impossible to be depressed. It was clear how everyone who didn’t see the world as I did would be, at least a little. I recalled how, on leaving childhood, I’d noticed all the colours in the world seemed duller somehow, and what a dead character my surroundings took on. This hollow veil was being peeled back.

I’m over zealous messages of peace, joy and love. I come across as a blindly idealistic moron way too often. But it was a natural beauty. Matter of-fact. And that was enough. So throw away your television.

The real question is, if a bear shits in the woods and no one is around to smell it, does the shit stink? A deep conundrum indeed.

Passing Thoughts 5: In Vitro, Teenage, Medicate

In Vitro

Don’t do it.

Your ‘right’ to create a life is in itself an alien concept to me. An inherently self-serving decision that will affect someone’s entire life through and through, by conceiving it in the first place. This isn’t about the survival of the species anymore. There are almost seven billion of us now; we need less people, not more. Thank God for gays and asexuals?

If you really want a kid, and your uterus won’t let you have one, maybe you ought to take that as a sign from nature that you should adopt, for fuck’s sake. Am I being offensive? Politically incorrect? I make no apologies. There are millions of children out there without a real home and without parents, who are dying for love, shelter and affection. So why bring yet another of those lives into the world, when you can heal one that’s already there? It doesn’t make sense. It’s an irrational biological urge reinforced by a twisted cultural perception of an adult’s rights. Why are we continuing to entertain this ridiculous trend of artificial insemination?

If you’re both infertile and ineligible to adopt then actually, I am sorry, I was being an insensitive jerk. It doesn’t make much sense that a social worker can find out you smoked pot in high school and deem you an unfit adoptive parent, yet you’re still legally allowed to have as many kids as you want through biological means. I suppose it’s because the alternative is even worse: government monopoly over who gets to have children, and a lot more abused orphans. On to a less depressing topic…

Teenage

Slightly less depressing, anyway.

This is a simpler reflection. I’ve noticed that I’ve been experiencing a lot of ‘angst’ lately. It comes in episodes and I find it healing. Aside from my last blog entry ‘Reality Dream’, I usually express it to maybe two or three people, and otherwise keep it to myself. It isn’t hurting anybody in solitary, and I’ve found it therapeutic and revealing. In short, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.

Yet angst is considered self-indulgent, immature and annoying. We associate it with teenagers, in particular, contemporary teenagers. Admittedly, a lot of the time their problems and means of expression can be laughably ironic and predictable. But I wonder if it’s expressing more than just random hormonal chaos. I have to notice that adolescence is a characteristically introspective phase of life. Disillusionment, confusion and frustration abound. The Catcher in the Rye captures it perfectly. Isn’t it interesting that as we grow up, we look back on those years not with any sense of resolve, but with rolled eyes and exasperation?

I mean, what was your resolution to the conundrum “Life’s not fair”? Was it “Get over it”?

To me, that’s philosophical blasphemy. That’s total suppression of a valid concern. Maybe we’re so dismissive of teenagers and their petty problems because we buried our own troubles there. Maybe we’re afraid of what we’d find if we dug them up again. What do you suppose would have happened if you’d taken an honest, decisive approach to figuring the world out into your adulthood? Are you one of the few who did?

Medicate

We’re all roses today, aren’t we.

There are times when I’ve paused and thought, maybe it’s time to call it in and get some prescriptions. This perennial struggle with myself isn’t leading anywhere.

But I haven’t done that, because calling it in would be precisely what that amounts to: giving up. And while being doped up might be pleasant, I actually suspect it would mask an even deeper emptiness. I would be unable to use the pills as a tool. I would rely on them for the rest of my days, total and willful addiction.

That’s also why I never turned to narcotics or psychedelics to escape. Anyone who’s using them for those purposes is in serious trouble. What you really need is faith that there’s a way. A way to what, I don’t know, it depends on the person. It might take years to figure out. Be patient and resolute. If you lose hope, then make sure you don’t lose hope in hope, in one day being able to care and to change. One thing I’ve realised lately, despite atheistic leanings, is that irrational faith actually does have a use – not faith in a higher power, but faith in your own higher power. This isn’t a light-at-the-end speech. Maybe your life really is bleak and worthless, I don’t know, but wouldn’t you be relieved if, ten years from now, you hadn’t thrown yourself off a bridge when it looked like there was absolutely no way out? Think about it.

And what I say about medication, that’s only my personal reflections. I’m sure it works for some people. It’s just not a road I choose to take, whether by prescription or self-medication, both of which carry major risks. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t think true progress would have been possible if I had. But that’s me. Your life may be an entirely different story, and how you define progress might be too. In the end, I think you know what’s good for you, no matter what everyone else is telling you to think. So go with that.

And if you’re not depressed, fantastic! Get out there and enjoy your life.

Reality Dream

I hate parties. Didn’t even like them when I was six. Only then, at least I could leave the noise and crowds behind simply because I didn’t feel so good. Sure, my parents would be disappointed, but in the end, I was six. That’s what kids are like.

But parties change with age. And I never did come to spot the silver lining in those clouds of humans packed together. Now they’re a more stilted affair, dictated by strict etiquette. Socialise with friendly strangers as though you for some reason want to. Keep a smile on your face. And raise your glass to every special speech on this special occasion for this special person. It’s long ceased to be about playing and fun, and become another ritual that affirms the colony’s social matrix instead.

What have I done? I took a step I’ve been wavering over for way too long. And now it would be terrifyingly easy to backtrack. I have a hundred distractions, defense mechanisms ready to receive me back so warmly. Methodically did I erect them, never really expecting I’d do anything but stay safe behind them my whole life. Well now I’m scared. My chest is tight. I know what’s on the line. I’m terrified, fucking terrified.

What this is, is what my old friends the anthroposophists would call an ‘incarnating experience’, which is to say, something that draws one out of a dream world and into reality. This instance derived from something they actually consider an excarnating experience, a Luciferic temptation away from one’s earthly task, which is funny. I swore I wouldn’t go down that road to escape. Sure enough it launched me into the reality of my life, honest and straight, and now I have to choose whether I’m going to stop hiding, and engage the world again. What terrifies me is that I have the option not to.

“One day, Mike, there won’t be anyone to hold your hand.” How many times did my teachers and parents tell me that? I was scared then, too. I knew they wouldn’t understand how deep the problem was. I was sharp enough to know they weren’t really able to help me. They were always elements of the same system I was subconsciously running from. I knew that. An awareness and a fear of real life, even as a child, that comes from knowing well enough where this is leading, without knowing the ugly details, and without having a clue how to circumvent it.

Was it depression that ever stopped me from engaging? Emotional dissociation that kept me from being who I was supposed to be? Of course not. These things were only the results. Well now I actually care. Now the point has come where I can feel again. What the hell do I do? It’s such a long and weary road back and I really, really don’t know if I can do it this time, break the cycle; I certainly can’t do it alone, but who else would understand? Who could possibly help? And all I know is that if I don’t go, this time, the way on is even harder, and it will eventually, inevitably, lead to nothing at all.

The opportunity to leave the cycle never changes. There’s only ever one way out, and it’s the confidence, the belief in self, that can get anyone past any psychological barrier. It will be there in a year, or ten. It was there a year and even ten years ago. And I’d like to think I love myself enough to take it.

The tears I haven’t let myself cry in way too long smell like disinfectant and med clinics. I feel terrible. Not because I believe I’ll make the wrong choice, but precisely because I now recognise, in no uncertain terms, that the choice is there.

The party I went to yesterday night was for someone who used to be one of my closest friends, only for one reason or another, we haven’t kept in touch. The whole time I was there, I found myself observing this most curious thought that’s waited around in the background since I first met him: I wish I could be him. Or at least, someone like him. It isn’t jealousy. That’s pathetic. I’d be deeply ashamed if I had anything but pride and admiration for what my friend is and what he’s accomplished. It’s not jealousy, but maybe it’s longing, and melancholy that I’m not right there beside him, where it feels like I belong.

I mean, what an amazing person. He’s one of those guys who just has friends wherever he goes and whatever he does. He’s a musician at heart and he’s going to take that such a long way. He takes responsibility in stride and handles it masterfully. A caring, wise and thoughtful person, funny, eclectically skilled, a young uncle, a one-in-a-million boyfriend to the girl he loves, and for it all, one of those rare adults who actually enjoys life and enjoys what he’s capable of, instead of hiding from it. I wanted to tell him all that, then and there. Not a single hollow word spoken. Only, I knew how it would come out. “I wish I could be you. You’re everything I ever really wanted to be.” And then it’s not about him at all, anymore. And what kind of self-absorbed jerk drops that angst-bomb on his friend’s 21st?

So I was angsty and self-absorbed anyway by the time I left. I drove to another close friend’s house, to bury the feelings in some actual mindful, but distracting, fun. We went on well into the night. Then in the morning, after four hours’ sleep, I woke up to find those same anxieties were as strong as ever.

It’s not about blaming myself for my thousand failings and missed opportunities. There’s no point in self-reprisal. It’s not about blaming anyone else, either. I know exactly why I’m the way I am. I meticulously unearthed the long-past events that made me hide deeper and deeper in my dissociative fantasy world. That leaves me with the reality, which isn’t cold or bitter or savage, it’s only what it is. You win, or you die. That’s all it’s ever been. Only the choice between inertia and deterioration, or transformation and maybe prosperity. That’s just nature at its best.

And God, being able to feel again, there’s nothing scarier in the world than knowing I am the one who makes that call. I said “I will care if you only give me a reason to,” and that same day, I was granted one. But the cycle has always been there for me. Relapse is the easiest thing. I’ve been back there five hundred fucking times, and on each revolution back down, it chips away at my will, mounts the pressure. That’s how I got here to start with. So now I know, now enough pieces fit for me to get the gist of this jigsaw and I’m thinking, which way is it going to be? The world is outside, and it waits. Either choice seals the bargain in confidence realised or not. A decision to wake up or go back to sleep. And it’s all mine, as it has been from the very start.

Don’t Just Say No

Of course, if doing what you’re told without question or criticism makes you comfortable, then by all means, Just Say No. But this probably isn’t the blog for you. Perhaps you should pick up a magazine with the latest  on Britney’s camel-toe instead.

I’ve said before that our culture’s view on drugs is moronic. Another, more prevalent theme in Viridian Circles is the virtue of thinking for yourself, and how frustratingly uncommon it is. Case in point: Nancy Reagan’s depressingly successful anti-drug slogan: Just Say No. Want to hear three more words of wisdom from the same system? Diamonds Are Forever. And diamond sales skyrocketted. And so did the bloodthirsty African mining industry, but as it benefitted our capitalist mainframe, few paid much attention to that.

I’ll make one thing clear. I’m not saying we should all be out snorting coke or shooting smack or popping codeine. I would never encourage anyone to dabble in such addictive and destructive habits. But I also don’t believe in making criminals out of the people who do choose to. Why not? Because it makes no sense. Not only are we legislating what people do with their own bodies, we are also fueling ignorance, double standards and crime. That’s right, crime: the moment you make something illegal, you turn it into a black market commodity. You also deny it quality control and proper research, meaning the ones who don’t Just Say No (the best ‘education’ the government will afford you) are getting their crystal meth cut with who knows what. Chili powder, if they’re lucky.

A few things to elaborate on. Double standards? There are three legal substances, each advertised every day everywhere, whether overtly or through subliminal reinforcement, that kill more people than every illegal drug combined. These are, of course: caffeine, alcohol and tobacco. And drop a comment if you’ve seen these things advertised in the same set of ad breaks as “this-is-your-brain-on-drugs” propaganda.

Oh yes, we will listen. Yes, we will comply. Buy beer, got it. Drugs are bad. Get my kids a Happy Meal. Labour Party is good. Those dirty liberals. Drugs are bad. Yep.

Throw away your television / It’s a repeat / And it’s getting old.

Research? I bet there are those of you who want to show me all sorts of proven facts about how marijuana makes you paranoid schizophrenic. You’ll probably find it fitting, then, when I tell you the government funds those studies and expects very particular results. It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s implied in the very name of the organisation with a monopoly over this research: the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre. Similarly, in the United States, the FDA controls who studies the stuff. These are government agencies, and our beloved leaders have repeatedly made it clear that they don’t like pot, and they don’t care much for rational discussion. Because “Just Say No”.

Am I saying weed (or acid, or ecstasy etc.) is not dangerous? By no means. What I’m saying is that we can’t know what the real dangers actually are, because the studies are compromised. We are getting information as pure as MDMA cut with laundry detergent. This is not real science, it’s just another disgrace against freedom of thought.

I also find it curious that so many substances are shown to have profoundly beneficial effects in some users, yet these are precisely the ones that tend to remain Schedule 9 (called Schedule I in the U.S.) which is to say, restricted from sale, manufacture or consumption on potential pain of jail time. Even attaining and maintaining a research permit is incredibly difficult. Many such substances are psychedelic and scarcely fuel the black market, for example, psilocybin mushrooms and san pedro cacti, which users typically harvest from nature. Psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, mescaline, salvia divinorum and especially ibogaine have all demonstrated their profound effects on people suffering addiction, depression, cluster headaches and so on, yet by definition of law, these are all substances with “a high potential for abuse, no acceptable medical use, and a lack of acceptable safety for use under medical supervision.”

I’ll mention that no one has ever died from the pharmacological effects of mescaline and I challenge readers to find even one case of it triggering a long-term psychotic episode.

I’ll mention too that where ibogaine is legal, such as in Canada and Mexico, it has worked repeatedly as a miracle cure for opiate addiction and other serious dependencies.

I’d go on, but don’t you feel like a drink at the pub right now?

So before, I said I’d discourage anyone from trying crack and so on. The same does not apply for psychedelics (though by the same token, I’m not egging you on either; it is illegal). Just putting this out there: they are an entirely different class of drugs, mostly non-addictive, often with low to zero toxicity, and they can have a positive impact on many people’s lives. Why are they illegal? After all, they contribute negligibly to the social problems more harmful drugs cause (which in turn get used as a misled and ironic justification for keeping them criminal). The real reasons are political. LSD represents a threat to politicians. Disobedience and rebellion. Oh, am I being a conspiracy theorist again? Then I suppose it’s a coincidence that this stuff ended up slandered and illegal, in the midst of the counter-culture movement of the Vietnam War era. My mistake.

You might well ask what my solution is. I don’t necessarily believe in selling substances over the counter, whether they’re mushrooms or cocaine, simply because it will be a sadder day again when the TV bombards us with “Take Kellogg’s acid – you’ll trip balls!”I just think they should all be decriminalised, many outright legalised, and given space and money for real research. I would like the taboo discarded. Some of my friends – intelligent, introspective people – still get uncomfortable when I talk about this. I would like to see quality control, psychiatric evaluation for those who wish to try certain things, and real education in the matter. Basically, I would like freedom. That governments decide what we can and can’t do with out own minds is one step away from thought control, and it’s scarier when you clue in to why they’re doing it.

So my advice is: don’t take hard drugs, but also don’t Just Say No. Actually look into why you shouldn’t. Free yourself from primary school indoctrination and exercise your independent thought. And if you want to try hallucinogens, be careful, there are dangers. Do your research, make sure you know why you’re doing it, and approach with caution. Quite a while ago, I advocated DXM use as it is technically legal, but I now believe (and there is debate over this) that it is actually quite unsafe and toxic. At any rate, the last thing you want to do is take something without knowing anything about it.

In a future entry, I will talk about psychedelics as a legitimate alternate to traditional spirituality. I’ve referred to this discipline before as ‘psychonautics’. It is far from a historical first; before invading institutions freaked out and banned them, entheogens such as san pedro, iboga root, psilocybin mushrooms and even datura found use in American and African shamanic tribes. Today, the game has changed, and I posit that hallucingoens are, far from mere party drugs, the ideal tool of self-development for many westerners. We’ll never see this to its full potential, though, while our governments and society continue to censor and criminalise the substances. Again, a call to arms: free your minds from cultural conditioning, and see the issue without preconceptions. Best of luck.

A Song of Fire Above, Ice Below

Music is essential to the human experience. Even an otherwise torturous life is worth living if there’s music. If there’s nothing in the universe but music and someone to hear it, all is well with creation. And now to pay my respects to this most brilliant of things, here are a few music videos I’ve put together based on films. A synaesthesic experience of sorts, watching something synchronised with a song, as the images and sounds become symbionic. Most of the tension in a dramatic scene comes from the music; take it away and your action scene has less punch, your horror scene is easier to detach from, your heartbreak scene is less emotional. Okay, there are exceptions where the silence actually makes for an even more effective soundscape, but shut up, I’m trying to make a point. Go write your own blog. Where was I.

The first music video is a gloomy and violent show based on Game of Thrones. I call it ‘A Song of Fire Above, Ice Below’, because the series is based on A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, and the song is Fire Above, Ice Below by Agallcoh. So you see, it had to be done. And here it is.

I’m not completely satisfied with it, but it’s a nice slow-paced piece and the song and the series were made for each other. I wanted to capture the series’ bleakness and pace, and that seems to have worked. Please enjoy, and make sure not to watch it until you’ve seen Game of Thrones, because here be spoilers.

My next video, considerably less violent – in fact, based on a Disney film – is called ‘Wall-E: Vera and Eve’ and it’s played to two songs by Gazpacho, a criminally underappreciated progressive rock band. The songs are I Was Never Here and Vera, from their five-star album Missa Atropos, which I mentioned several entries ago in an admittedly bizarre Passing Thoughts post. The film is, of course, Wall-E, and it’s rather colourful and beautiful, so once again, I felt both song and video belonged together.

The inspiration to do this came from watching the film on mute and playing the album over it. I recommend this experience, in much the same way a hippy might recommend combining The Wizard of Oz, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and two tabs of lysergic acid diethylamide. It probably doesn’t go together quite that well, but I thought it was beautiful anyway. For those who prefer the condensed version, click play on that video above and have fun.

Finally, an older video I did, based on the anime series Gundam 00, and featuring Nascent by TesseracT. This one could be better, and I put it together in a few hours, but I still think it’s worth watching.

Gundam 00 is a surprisingly insightful little series. Normally I can’t stand anime, and I had a particularly intense hatred for it around the advent of Pokemon, mostly because I was the only kid on the playground who refused to buy into the transparent corporate brainwashing in the card-trading games and the mass-produced shoddy episodes. But I digress… A friend insisted that I give this series a shot, and certainly there are silly elements to it, but overall I thought it was fun, decently made, and in some ways original. Once again, I feel the music is fitting, though in this case it maybe could have done without the lyrics scrawled across the screen. But then, it is a cartoon, so what the hell.

Music is great, let us revere it. And I’ll see you all someday at the great gig in the sky, out there somewhere beyond the moon.

Alien Qualia

Something about science fiction bugged me when I was a kid. Here were these expansive universes, complete with other sapient species and their ways of life, their governance, their interaction with humans, their starships and their schools and their space battles. And their clothes and their humanoid figures and their eyeballs and ears, and their fingers or tentacles, their brains, their two or three hearts and seven lungs, their language and words. It’s all fantasy and it’s great fun, it makes for an excellent vacation from reality into books and movies and video games. But it just doesn’t ring true.

Why, across the fathomless gulfs of space between solar systems, would we be doomed to encounter lifeforms that look, think, talk and behave almost exactly like we do? It’s as though instead of traversing one spiral arm of the Milky Way to the next, we’ve merely crossed a river as prehistoric people did, to encounter other humans who despite their different practices and beliefs are also part of the human race. And fascinating as that experience is for us here on Earth, frankly on a galactic scale it’s… boring. So boring it’s bleak. It implies that all reality restricts itself to the human experience, as though this is the only experience there could possibly be for an intelligent creature.

Of course, I’m taking things too seriously. I enjoy Star Wars and Firefly just as well as anyone. Still though, I have to point out that these stories aren’t so much products of creative minds broaching the infinite for different ways life might manifest itself. Instead they’re very earthly dramas, set in what we’re familiar with as humans, projected onto a different backdrop. Namely, space. Still there are empires. Still there’s money, and the spoken word, and the five senses. Still there’s skyscrapers and guns and cars. An alien race in this fiction might live to be six hundred years old, or if the author is particularly ambitious, might be something considerably weirder, such as the hanar from Mass Effect. Levitating telepathic jellyfish who regard themselves as mere parts of the greater homogenous entity that is their race. Yet, even the descriptor ‘jellyfish’ is telling, as we’ve based this species off something we’re already familiar with on Earth. A species that could have conceivably evolved in place of humans, really. And this is the case all across science fiction, where it’s amazingly rare to encounter anything resembling a truly alien being.

Consider this. The genetic code for almost all life on Earth is based off deoxyribonucleic acid. It’s well known that we share 98% of our DNA code with chimpanzees and 50% with fruit flies, which seems astounding at first. But the 98% that’s identical to other primates – and wookies and rodians and asari – actually accounts for a hell of a lot. Consider that we all have two arms and legs, a head, a torso, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears… Consider we all have the same organs in the same places… Consider we all have muscles, skin, bones, blood, nerves – really, the difference between a human and a monkey is just a bit of physiological tweaking on the same template. Even the fruit fly has similar senses and organs in approximately similar positions over its body.

The issue goes beyond encountering other lifeforms with a totally different DNA base, which would be incredible enough in itself. In fact as far as we know, there’s no reason why alien life would evolve based on DNA at all. It may indeed derive from an entirely different system to the information carriers adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. And that’s where the results become very hard to imagine.

Basically, take everything you know about life and forget it. Forget civilization. Forget institutions. Forget language. Forget senescence. Forget organs. The only thing an alien lifeform would necessarily have in common with earthbound life is that it would be a self-sustaining system with some degree of awareness or autonomy.

It would probably be more different to a human than a human is to a blade of grass.

It might be made of gas or liquid. It might split itself into multiple entities and rejoin at will in different combinations, like globs in a lava lamp. It might be entirely beyond human perception. It might drift in the void between planets, or it might exist in the gravitational energy between them. It might be blind and deaf to our senses yet have a set of its own, unique to its environment. Say it didn’t evolve on the classic evolutionary principle “Eat or be eaten”? Say it experiences neither joy nor suffering, but something entirely different? Say it does not experience itself as an individual entity with a sense of self, but as something we can’t even fathom? And how, if it encountered life on Earth, would it react? Would it even be able to perceive us?

And this is why, when I passed time between recess and lunch chatting about this with friends (yeah, we were nerds who nonetheless paid no attention in class) I had to think the Fermi paradox was utter naive gerblewerble. “If they are out there, why can we not see their civilizations stretched across the stars?” Um, who’s to say they even have civilizations? Who’s to say we’d be able to see them at all? Human eyes evolved to fit a very particular purpose. Scanning the cosmos for other forms of life wasn’t actually on the agenda when we were competing with sabre-toothed tigers for antelope meat. It’s anthrocentricity again. The fallacy that comes from a primal mind only capable of seeing reality from its own perspective, by definition.

Yet there’s so much here on Earth to show us otherwise. Head out for a bushwalk, you’ll see what I mean. There are mushrooms growing on trees, moss on rocks. Entire ecologies of fungus spread out like an alien forest; I recommend a microscope, it will make your head spin. Zoomed in much closer, there are quadrillions of microscopic lifeforms everywhere. They all follow the basic universal principles for existence in their environment, but beyond that they’re limitlessly varied. And for it all, only humans stand around imagining that our way of life is an inevitable outcome of it all, no matter what galaxy you live in.

Since you’ve read this far, you have homework: leave a comment with your idea of a true alien species, and if there are any other comments, make sure not to read them first. Focus on what it’s like to be this creature, its inner experience, qualia. I’ll contribute my own once there are a few there already. I know at least one person will be up for the challenge. And then just think that, if we ever do encounter life on other planets (in other dimensions?) our wildest ideas probably won’t even come close to how mind-blowingly different they’ll be from what we’re familiar with.

The point of this post? Deprogramming the anthrocentric fallacy our biology and society have implanted in us. And not too many people take hypothetical aliens seriously so it’s a nice easy thought experiment. Enjoy – hope it helps.

Hugo Rune Proves the Average Workday is Impossible

For a complete change of tone, here’s an excerpt from a book I read some years ago that’s as bizarre as the title makes it sound. This is featured in pages 119 through 121 of ‘A Dog Called Demolition‘, by Robert Rankin.

*      *      *

ATAXOPHOBIA

It is the way of all man to seek order from chaos.

To impose order upon chaos.

To search for pattern and meaning and if none can be found, then to invent it.

Like time, for instance.

Man conceived time and sliced it into hours and minutes and seconds. And then man said, “Here is time, I have it upon my wrist, it is now under my control.”

Which, of course, it is not.

At one of his famous lectures delivered in the nineteen sixties, that great genius of our age, Sir Hugo Rune, was interrupted, while in full and magnificent flow, by his arch detractor, Rdolph Koeslar.

Rune had been expounding upon his theory of APATHY, when Koeslar had the temerity to declare that Rune was ‘a lazy scoundrel, who had never done an honest day’s work in his life’.

“Work?” asked Rune. “And what is work?”

“Work,” answered Koeslar, “is what honest folk do for eight hours a day, five days a week.”

“Impossible,” said Hugo Rune. And then went on to prove it.

WHY IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO WORK EIGHT HOURS A DAY, FIVE DAYS A WEEK

(From the calculations of Hugo Rune)

There are 365 days in a year. In a leap year 366. Let us be generous and begin with 366.

Eight hours of sleep each day equals a total of: 122 days. Leaving – 244 days.

Eight hours of rest each day equals a total of: 122 days. Leaving – 122 days.

You don’t work Saturdays or Sundays, so subtract: 104 days. Leaving – 18 days.

You do have an hour for lunch each working day: 10 days. Leaving – 8 days.

Out of these eight working days, you must surely have at least one week’s holiday a year.

Which leaves you with a single day to work on.

And that’s Christmas Day.

And nobody works on Christmas Day.

Suitably chastised, Koeslar slunk from the hall as the mangy dog he was. The audience set to counting upon its fingers, but none could disprove Rune’s calculations, because they were so demonstratably correct.

There will always be those who will quibble over details and seek to claw back a day here and there.

But to those we must say then, What about days off sick? Or time off being late, or leaving early?

No. It is proved.

No more can be said.

Order from chaos? Forget it.

*      *      *

There’s a chance I’ll get into trouble for posting copyrighted material on an unauthorized blog. But this is such a tiny corner of the Internet, there’s a good chance no lawyer will ever hear of it, except that one solicitor-in-training whose name is – Shane. (YES, I’M TALKING TO YOU, SHANE.) Anyway, perhaps Mr. Rankin won’t mind if this earns him a few more readers.

What I’m doing here is fishing for comments, since no one gives any feedback here anymore except Grimrukh, and he’ll solve this riddle in about four seconds. For everyone else, have fun! And no cheating.