A Future Like That

Imagine that the problem of evil were solved ala DS9's episode Move Along Home. Imagine that the universe, in all its horror and despair, ends. You die. But then you realize you're in a movie theater of cosmic proportions, and you and everyone you love is watching the movie with you. The narrative experience ended, you feel thoroughly traumatized. The movie was not only in bad taste, but unnecessarily heartbreaking and violent.

But then you have the comforting thought that at least you're here and not in that movie. The movie's over, and upon leaving the theater, you have a perfect life waiting for you:

A beautiful home with people who love you, friends and family, a luxurious standard of living, the peace of never having to worry about things like wondering whether or not you'll be able to pay for both this month's rent and the medicine. The burden of debt and the cry of the poor are no more, for there is no debt and there are no poor. You remember that the earth is alive and well, all animals are respected, and that there is plenty for all to flourish in peace. Everyone is free to love whoever they like without fear of judgement. All human religions are reconciled and worship together, and those who abstain from worship are in no way less reconciled or less beloved than their worshipping neighbors. Education is free and everyone is hard at work on whatever projects most inspire their deepest passions, now satisfied in labor. All the unpleasant work that no one enjoys is automated and there is no class division. The laws of Physis and Nomos are adopted, and all the while humanity is exploring the stars and maturing into a cosmic presence.

Your life was never in danger, no matter how real that awful movie felt, or how long it took to end. Your life is waiting for you, unaffected by the dark emotions stirred in you. There needs to be a conversation about why such a movie should never have been made, but for the moment, the sheer beauty of the universe embraces you, driving away the pain and beckoning you to experience a life better than anything you could have ever hoped for.

These same circumstances apply to each and every man, woman (or any in between) and child. Everyone gets the same deal. You don't simply believe that this is true, but you feel it. Where there was once the weight of anxiety over whether or not everything could ever be ok, there is now peace. No one will ever have to bear that weight again.

Heaven? A mass hallucination? The space beyond Nirvana? Who knows, though the wise all agree that the names we attribute to it are not important. What is important is that nothing we experienced at the movie theater can ever diminish this life we share.

The opportunity finally presents itself and you take it. The conversation comes at long last, and you ask the question you've wanted to ask: Why? Why did you make me watch this movie? What could ever justify its content? Why did we get shown this? (as an aside, that awful experience could just as well have been a video game, a play, a virtual reality simulation; pick whatever metaphor you like to stand in for "movie"). You ask, why did you make me suffer through that experience?

And then the answer comes in the form of a memory. There is no justifying the suffering you endured, but you recall that at all times during the viewing, someone was there with you. You were never alone. There was always someone nearby, and there was always a voice quietly whispering "It's going to be alright." Then you remember the fact that nothing can escape the compassionate embrace of a universe in which we all belong.

Ethics;  you've got to believe that out of all conceivable realities possible, THIS is the one that matters!  Whatever it may be, THIS got has got to be the case. If your life were a movie, THIS, whatever it is, it could be the plot, the drama, the central point, of which everything depends to propel itself. Assume that THIS is the one.

THIS could be anything. It could be the silliest thing possible, or the most solemn. It can be real, but it ABSOLUTELY MUST first be imagined in order to ever be real. Whatever it is, even the slightest thing, the one universe out of all the universes, in which THIS is the case....could that be you? Could it be your thoughts? Could it be your life, right now? Could it be something you are still living toward? Could it be here? Could it be the very moment you are in now? Could it be that someone is speaking to you? Anything, anything, anything...could THIS be the one that matters? Could it be that our (that is, you, yes you, [the reader who is this very moment interpreting this very text] and I [the text itself], out of all realities....could it be that this moment itself is...the One?

Could the One be THE narrative that drives us forward? Could it be the story from the perspective of the Hero of the Cosmic Story? Could it be that our reality, whether you could imagine it or not, out of all realities, is the one THAT MATTERS?

Yes, now you're beginning to get it! In the grand set ("set" here being used in the mathematical sense of the word), of conceivable alternate realities, perhaps this moment is the one THAT MATTERS.

Of all that can be conceived in all the Multiverses, we've got to act as if ours is the one upon which everything depends. We've got to act as if there is purpose, as if there is meaning. We've got to act, for example, as if there are transcendental virtues such as Truth, Beauty, and Love. And we've got to believe that, for example, acting in accordance with these virtues, might bring us closer to fulfilling our telos (or if you like in dramatic terms, the resolution, the end of the story). This is thus characterized as a telos driven narrative ethics, one in which we treat the moment as if it is the only moment, out of all moments, that matters. We must treat each moment as if it is the point in the story that is driving the plot forward. In this sense, a moral agent is one who acts if the following axioms were the case; A) not only does the universe have a trajectory and a destination but B) that the destination is the best possible universe, and that our own present moment is the trajectory in motion. To be moral is thus to truthfully work towards making manifest the best of all possible universes. It means to fight for a world in which we can earnestly and passionately make the appraisal of our present universe (with all its relationships therein) as "the best imaginable telos." We've got to be present to each moment, passionately present, such that we become like a viewer of a play.

Some may take the preceding as justification to act in a childishly nihilistic way, to act as moral agents only as we please, abiding by no rule and spinning aimlessly. It is no such justification. We might suddenly get the idea that the show is all about us and that we can behave arbitrarily. We might choose to behave in a manner consistent with whatever manner suits our ever changing dispositions. But if we let the spotlight thus get to our heads....what sort of story will our lives end up writing? Will it be good? Will it be bad? Will it speak truth, or always lie? Will it have love, or will it have hate? We are thus the existential tellers of our own story. We choose in how we act and live how we want the story to be told.

And (note, this is key), to whom is the story told? Our lives are being presented to someone. Our lives are texts, and we each of us is the author. And who is the reader of the text? And what qualities will the relationship between the two have? What are the hermeneutical dynamics of the one relating to the other? In other words, how do we qualify our relationship with the other? Is it I-It or I-Thou? If I-It, it is morally wrong. If I-Thou, it is morally right. How right or good a thing is (at least in part) is reflected in the quality of what we choose to include in the telling of our story, and whether or not what we choose to include reflects the hermeneutical balance of the I-Thou relationship.

Here it is...here we are...the border of the frontier, of the unknown, of the Great Other. Lovecraft would be terrified...

Could it be that the one to whom our lives are being presented is the Thou....is.....God?

Get Radicalized

Me from a few years ago would be shocked to see these words coming from me, but I've learned something.

If you're not getting radicalized, you're missing the point. If you're not getting radicalized, you don't understand the apocalyptic precariousness of our situation. If you're not getting radicalized, then you're the lukewarm moderate MLK JR. condemned as part of the problem.

Whichever direction you decide is your own choice, but make a decision! The fence you're straddling is burning away beneath you!

Elysian Night

I love the evening, the long night. It's part of why my sleep schedule is awful, but it's my favorite time, precisely because it affords me a peace I never find in the day. It's a magical realm where the moment seems to stretch on for hours, and where the only shadow darker than the night is the one cast by the threat of the coming dawn. For a few hours, no one makes demands of me. There is no anxiety. There is no fear.

I'm not the first to make such remarks. For most people, night is a time when the obligations of the day have been met, and there is nothing left but liesure. The word "liesure" conjures up images of sloth and laziness, but that's not what it really means. Liesure is time that is free, time that may be spent in freedom. Liesure is when you are not at the behest of anyone but your friends and loved ones. Liesure means giving out of compassion and love, not out of obligation or coercion.

What does it say about our world that liesure is demonized and stress-ridden toil is the norm? What does it say about our world that most of our time is not spent in freedom? We talk a great deal about democracy, but democracy does not exist in the workplace. You could even make the argument that we have no democracy at all.

The night is (or at least, traditionally was) the refuge of the working class. In the silence of the night, the gears of capitalism halt. But come the dawn, the roads are clogged by people compelled to suffer, and the buzz of human activity drowns out the beauty of the world. The dirty brown horizon forms, marring the blue behind it. The earth dies just a little more; each day is a prolonged, painful gasp.

But in the night, I can entertain the comforting illusion that the world is still, that the demons of capital are slumbering, that there is peace and stillness at last. Can you imagine a world where the laws of night hold sway forever? Like Elysium, there would be time for contemplation, for stillness, time for the voices of silence to speak to us. There would be time to devote yourself to work that you care about, rather than work you are alienated from. Can you imagine such a world, where all of one's time is spent in liesure, whether at work or at home?

Our life on this beautiful celestial body was always meant to be an endless night, occasionally punctuated by the rising and setting of the sun.

The goal of socialism ought to be the realization of this endless Elysian night.

This is why I am an anarcho-communist, because I have hope that we can live in a world where each and every moment is free.

I love my mom, and it matters

I was thinking, half awake, half dreaming, how much I love my mother. The thinking became feeling, intense and radiantly glowing in the darkness of my room. I love my mother with all my heart. She is the most selfless person I know.

A darkly inevitable thought crept in, whispering "She's going to die, you know. Death must be paid its due." It's true. One day, she will die, and so will I. The sun itself will die, for that matter, and each of us will have to bear the pain of loss as the grave reaches out to embrace us and all those we love. Our light must go out, the candle burns for only so long. Death, and the potential loss of meaning, is a fact of existence.

Is the intense love I feel for my mother an equally valid fact? Or is it the warmth of an ember soon to fade long before morning comes? One day, death will take me as well as my mother, and keep taking until no one remembers that either of us ever lived. Whither then my love? Has it dispersed, evaporated into the emptiness of an indifferent universe?

No.

The fact that I love my mother MATTERS. It matters as much as the law of gravity, as much as the drifting of galaxies, as much as the promise of sunrise. It is an energy as of yet immeasurable and enigmatic to science, generated in our hearts and woven into the unseen fabric of the continually unfolding universe. Our love is the color in the tapestry. Love is just as important, just as inevitable, every bit as much a fact.

Love too must be paid its due.

I hold this in my heart as the melatonin takes effect and I drift away. I love you, mom.

Sorry to Bother You

Disclaimer: I was quite high when I first saw this movie.

I have a new favorite movie. The Fountain, my previous choice, is still my favorite cinematic experience and is personally significant to me, Sorry to Bother You is the most immaculately crafted and intentionally perfect movie I've ever seen. Maybe...the two of them can both be my favorite movie.

This movie is a masterpiece in filmmaking. No shot is wasted, every color utilized, all the components perfectly arrange with the deliberate intention of inviting you, the viewer, into an intriguing conversation that will begin with very simple images and symbols. You will notice from the very first shot that Sorry to Bother You is presenting you each element in the shot quite deliberately and intentionally in order to draw your attention down to the level of symbolic interpretation. This is NOT a movie to interpret literally.

It's not just a masterfully crafted movie, either; this is a formula carefully followed, where each and every line is less a line than it is a carefully considered point in a long master argument in whose shadow you are slowing disappearing. It's teaching you to see symbols and theory made flesh on screen. Once you see that every shot is a yin yang or a contrast of sorts, you'll see for yourself that each and every frame is drenched in subliminal meaning of one kind or another. Before long, you'll start to recognize that Sorry to Bother You is not a movie or a story so much as it is a carefully made argument condemning the evils of capitalism and organized religion's complicity in it.

I'm dead serious. This isn't just a movie, this is art. It's the perfect merger of film and text as mediums for creativity and meaning. This is one for the ages. You'll see Ying Yangs and symbols everywhere Uzumaki style for a while after...

P.S. The Yin-yang thing was not actually in the movie. Just what my stoned brain thought it saw. And The Fountain is still my favorite movie.

Thoughts after watching Automata.

Just watched Automata on Netflix, starring Antonio Banderas. It's good stuff. It made me think.

Survival is irrelevant.

Life always finds a way.

There will never come a time when there is no life in this universe.

But the form that life takes will change.

As the body gives way to spirit, the spirit gives way to the body.

The time of homo sapiens may well be drawing to a close, but we are not the end of the great experiment.

I have faith that all these moments won't be lost in time, but will return to the heart of the one who loves them best.

And in her heart, they will not merely survive, but live.