Electronics, the Internet, and Us (a fable)

Once upon a time, there was a family consisting of a mother and father and some children.  The parents, in thinking they were being kind and loving, provided everything the children needed and wanted, even to the point of tending to their hygiene, dressing them, cutting their meat, feeding them their meals,  and keeping them indoors because they thought they would be safer inside.

The parents, unfortunately, were killed in a freak accident and the children were left on their own to fend for themselves.  It was catastrophic for them.

(Faced with the requirement to find the square root of 123456789 without a calculator, or die, most people would die.)

Enormous Truth

 

In the New Testament is the sentence, "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32) This is the same author that gave us: "In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God." 

Both of these set me off into a maelstrom of thought about what we think of as the truth.  Every civilization for more than 5000 years has had its version of "the truth" and even today there are many versions of the truth: Christian sects, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, the way of the monk, the priest, the yoga, and the Fourth Way, plus others.  And there is a trap in each.  

The trap is when the follower of a teaching takes it as the truth without question, without reservation.  We, individually, are like passengers on an ocean ship.  Everything is fine until the ship sinks, and we are afloat on the open ocean.

While the ship was sailing along, we were quite content.  The captain and crew seemed qualified, the accommodations were good, the food was good, and the company was likewise compatible.  The all of a sudden, poof, it was gone, and we were left to make it on our own.  We are lost because relied on what was told to us by others who thought they knew the truth.

There is a distinct possibility that they didn't know the truth, even though they sincerely thought they did.  Same for all of those before, and until now, who preach that what they think is the truth.

Oh, there is truth alright, we just don't know what it is yet.

The truth may be so enormous that we cannot comprehend it.  The Earth, a collective noun, is a good example.  There is so much to it that no one person really understands it.  There are many disciplines of science that deal with it, such as Geology, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc., yet no one person can comprehend the Earth in its entirety, and more is discovered about it every day.  It is the same for God, another collective noun.

What was thought to be the truth turns out to be not quite the truth.  The same can be said for religions.  All three of the Indian blind men were telling the truth as they felt the elephant.

Uncanny Signs

 

During our sojourn in France, my wife and I took a road trip from Chantilly, near Paris and Charles De Gaulle Airport, to the extreme west of France.  We saw the beaches and cemetery at Normandy, and Mont St. Michel.  It was a full day of driving and late when we started back.

My wife is the adventurous type when setting out but loses her confidence and tends to panic when things deteriorate.  So, when it got late and dark, and the roads were unfamiliar and not marked very well, she was getting nervous and concerned that we were lost.

Then the headlights picked up a small, roadside sign, concrete, shaped like an arrow pointing straight up, and crossed with a simple rectangle that said, "Chantilly."  This in the most out-of-the-way place in France.  It restored my confidence that we were going the right way, not necessarily hers, and we continued through the night back to our apartment in Chantilly.

To this day, I'm not sure that the sign even existed.  I saw it, but it was such a rudimentary sign, not official looking at all, weathered and faded, but it said, "Chantilly" and pointed ahead.  (This could be a Twilight Zone episode.)

Now, similar little things happen all the time, mostly with YouTube.  There will be a suggestion and it burrows into my psyche such that I'll try whatever and see how it goes.  

One of these was to take a combination of a drop of lemon juice and a tablespoon of olive oil before eating anything in the morning.  Another was to flatten my back against the wall and do a quarter squat to tone the muscles that control posture.

These are two that I now do routinely.  The olive oil for more than a year and the quarter squat for a few weeks.  They seem to have come onto my radar at the right time.  They' were both beneficial and the clips were not seen again after the one time.

Another, much earlier occasion of a resonant message, was when an engineering cohort said offhandedly, "Now you'll be wearing a suit every day."  This on the occasion of my transfer to a management position in the main office.  

I think I would have figured that out for myself anyway, but his remark hit home somehow, and the suits came off the rack, and home with me, one at a time over the next few months.  And that's all I wore to work for the next 30 years.

I'm not saying anything supernatural is going on.  I am, however, saying that there are, in the thousands of impressions we get every day, some that resonate with us.  Some few carry a message for which we are ready.

The Interface

 

Jeff Hawkins and Max Tegmark, two prominent authors in the field of artificial intelligence, examine the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence in their respective books.  Both of them suggest that the extant brain be somehow be uploaded to a digital artificial intelligence device.  Then the resultant intelligence would be immortal for as long as the device was maintained and workable.  It is their conception of immortality.

This scenario has so many holes in it, it could be used to strain the spaghetti from the boiling water.  While I don't argue the possibility of artificial intelligence becoming an integral part of our daily life, much the same as network devices that we hold in our hand are now, the idea that a manufactured device would replace the human psyche is a bit far-fetched.  There are emotions and dreams that are closely linked to a spiritual world.  A world that both of these fine thinkers don't recognize as even existing.

This is where I think they are wrong. 

There is, however, a middle-ground that very possibly could come to be.  A bio-digital interface between our brain and the assembled store of knowledge that exists on the computers of the world.  An interface that would enable those in whom it is installed to access that store and do all that we are now able to do using our thoughts instead of our voices, hearing, and fingers.  And possibly able to do much more.

Data and information could be added to "the store" as it evolves in the thoughts of the users.  "The store" would be updated by new information as it becomes available.  It is the Wikipedia concept using interfaced human brains as an input device. 

Tegmark, with his bottomless imagination, could write another book using this concept.  My imagination is somewhat limited by my lack of patience, but I can readily see the possibilities of such a scenario.

It also follows that the combined efforts of the sources of digital innovation are already hard at work to build such an interface.  We do it now with our voices and fingertips, we get the output into our minds using our eyes and ears.  Bypassing these would be a great leap forward.

The generation of people that are now pre-teen are imbued with screens and speakers, with phones and computers, with all the data and programs for its use, stored in "the cloud."  The generation following them may have a bio-digital interface implant that will exponentially increase their mental capacities.

Then there may be a great divide, those with the implant and those without.  A divide greater than any cultural, racial or religious divide that we now have.

The bio-digital interface is the next major step in our evolution.  History and our current mental capacity are reaching the point where there is just too much for an individual to have "in mind" so access to it all through a bio-digital interface is the answer.  With it, I could sit here and have philosophy, music, art, literature, history, any and all of the sciences, languages, and my family history come to mind with a proper query.  I could add to "the store" whenever I thought it was proper to do so.

It's big!

Now the thought occurs that we may already be equipped with such an interface.  Not with a digital network but a mental network of biological brains linked to a spiritual world.  The only difficulty is, we don't know how to access it or use it.

Sometimes, we accidentally do and one of those serendipitous events occurs but for the most part we don't understand, or know, how to intentionally do it.  It may be that we stumbled upon it with something we call prayer.

I know there is a spiritual world that influences us in a variety of ways an on a variety of levels.  How to interface and interact with that world is not something I know.

What Will Be Said?

 

The ancient Egyptian culture recognized a spiritual existence as demonstrated through mummification and sending along items for everyday comfort, even mummifying pets for the departed.  Well, from our vantage point 2000 years later we can see it all seems a bit ridiculous.  Yet this belief system was in vogue from 3100 BC to 30 BC; more than three thousand years.  What will be said of Christianity and Islam two thousand years from now? 

In 323 AD, a council of learned religious leaders met in Nicaea and codified Christianity, that was 300 years after the fact, after the principals lived.  It would be as though today, in 2022, a group of theologians got together and gathered texts from the Bible, the Koran, and maybe some from Buddhist and Hindu scripture and delivered a new set of religious doctrine as would have been expounded by the Great Enlightenment of 1700 (or so).  It isn't far-fetched, it happened then and it could again.  The results would be the same as that of the Egyptians, reasonable, logical, consoling but not at all the way it really is.

The truth is, we don't know the truth.  And perhaps we can't handle the truth.  John 8:32:  You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.  We don't and we're not.

Homogenization

 

Marketing uses media, be it television, radio, or print, to manipulate thinking and attempts to influence actions.  We are urged to try, buy, and favorably look upon things that they are promoting.  To wit: count the number of alcoholic drinks in a TV drama, watch old movies and notice the incessant smoking, purveyors pay a lot of money to have their product displayed and used in a movie or TV show.  All of these subtleties are there to influence our acceptance of the idea. 

Lately, there is a subtle, yet profound, influence being peddled, i.e., the homogenization of Americans.  There is a disproportionate representation of inter-racial coupling in the advertising and program content that we see.  One can only wonder what the source is of this initiative. There is a movement on to racially homogenize the American population.

None of this happens accidentally, none of these ads and programs inadvertently contain racially mixed couples, they are being paid to do so and show them as if they were the majority of couples out there.   Someone is behind this.  Someone, or group, is paying for it.  There is a movement on to racially homogenize the American population.

There are many examples of racially mixed couples but not to the extent of what is seen in media nowadays.  One could back this statement with statistics if the time was taken to do so but it would only verify what is being seen.  There is a movement on to racially homogenize the American population.

Who's behind this?  Who is the wizard behind the curtain?  

Daylight Savings Time et al

In the USA, we changed our clocks on Sunday, March 13 at 2AM, to one hour later; two o’clock became three o’clock.  It demonstrates that clocks are a tool that we use to guide our actions. We have harnessed the passing of the present to allow a reference.  It is only for us because everything else doesn’t really care.

Often, I have mused on this, so I won’t belabor the point here.  It does, however, bear notice.  And now I am into it.  Without the clock, we would never be on time.  Without it, the past would be forgotten.  We would live in the present and not be concerned with the future.    It is sad to think that we would not be aware of the rich and wonderful history that has been recorded.  Lifetimes would, in all probability, be shorter and, perhaps, a lot less productive.  Things would not get done unless there was a clear and imminent danger.

The clock has made a big difference for us and a close relative of it is the calendar, sort of a daily clock.  We humans finally figured it out and described it mathematically in terms of days, weeks, months, year and the quadrennial leap year.  What we use has been unchanged since 1582, a reference that couldn’t be made without it.

 Along that timeline there have been only a few proposed changes, e.g., the French, at the time of their revolution, proposed a different calendar but is was short-lived because the rest of the world said no.  So, perfect or not, it is what we use and in so doing we have consistency and this is important for now, then, and ever.

Going larger; the planet Earth is host to life.  As far as we know, from our vantage point on it, it is the only such place.  It may be unique in the universe.  The conditions required for life exist hereon in a band from the deepest trench in the ocean to the highest peak, a band of about 13 miles on a radius of about 4,000 miles.  The orbit around the sun is just the right distance to provide temperatures between -50 degrees Celsius to +50 degrees.  The axis is tilted to allow for large areas to experience life supporting seasonal changes. These conditions and the following  are essential for it to exist.   

The Earth and its moon, now thought to be the result of a planetary collision between two precursors, are locked in orbit.  The moon is in an almost north-south orbit around the Earth that causes oceanic tides, and to a minor extent land tides, that prevent stagnation.  Then there’s the atmosphere that is constantly in flux caused by thermal influences and barometrical fluctuation, which also cause a variety of conditions, always changing.

Going deeper, the planet has a fractured crust that floats on a core of molten material that ranges from a mixture of minerals to iron.  Because it is molten, i.e., plastic, the fractured pieces of crust are in continuous motion allowing their relative positions to change, even with some rising above and diving below each other.  All of this likewise adds to the ever changing, never stagnating, nature of the Earthly environment.  

Life continues in this everchanging habitat and just maybe because of it.  It changes according to a set of reproductive rules that cannot be broken. In this living band, there is enough latitude to allow for evolution and, therefore, changes to biological species. Evolving according to that set of reproductive rules.

And when things get too far out of kilter, a cataclysm occurs to “reset” the stage for the next “act.”  The question may be asked, have humans become such a danger to the planet that a reset might occur?  Don’t say no, it happened to much of life about 16 million years ago.

So, for all of this to happen accidentally is a bit of a stretch.  Ergo a guiding intelligence must be in play; eternal, omniscient, and not governed by mathematics or other physical relationships but at the same time respecting them and never violating them because he/it established these relationships to provide physical harmony.  He/it uses them to affect change and uses all that exists in the physical world to carry out his/its will.  So yes there is a spiritual realm that is intimately involved with life.