The Way that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not real.
The Way manifests all that happens and may happen;
The world represents all that exists and may exist.
To experience without abstraction is to sense the world;
To experience with abstraction is to know the world.
These two experiences are indistinguishable;
Their construction differs but their effect is the same.
Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.
“A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.” — MLK
KNIGHTS OF CYDONIA, by Muse
Come ride with me through the veins of history
I’ll show you a God who falls asleep on the job
How can we win when fools can be kings?
Don’t waste your time or time will waste you
No one’s going to take me alive
The time has come to make things right
You and I must fight for our rights
You and I must fight to survive
No one’s going to take me alive
The time has come to make things right
You and I must fight for our rights
You and I must fight to survive
No one’s going to take me alive
The time has come to make things right
You and I must fight for our rights
You and I must fight to survive
Without going out of your door, you can know the ways of the world. Without peeping through your window, you can see the Way of Heaven. The farther you go, the less you know. Thus, the Sage knows without traveling, sees without looking, and achieves without struggle. — Lao Tse
Mind, through the long course of biological evolution, has established itself as a moving force in our little corner of the universe. Here on this small planet, mind has infiltrated matter and has taken control. It appears to me that the tendency of mind to infiltrate and control matter is a law of nature.
— Freeman Dyson
We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.
— Vernor Vinge
Self-organization and extropy are themselves fundamental principles of the physical universe, to the extent that the laws of physics themselves may have developed through a process of self-organization.
— Lee Smolin
The explosive nature of exponential growth means it may only take a quarter of a millennium to go from sending messages on horseback to saturating the matter and energy in our solar system with sublimely intelligent processes. The ongoing expansion of our future superintelligence will then require moving out into the rest of the universe, where we may engineer new universes.
— Ray Kurzweil
Technology expands data by 66% per year, overwhelming the growth rates of any natural source. Compared to other planets in the neighborhood, or to the dumb material drifting in space beyond, a thick blanket of learning and self-organized information surround this orb.
— Kevin Kelly
The universe might end in intelligent life (rather than as either a ball of fire or as scattered ice). Not life as we know it, but life that has acquired the capacity to shape the cosmos as a whole, just as life on Earth has acquired the ability to shape the land, the sea, and the atmosphere.
— James N. Gardner
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. Recently, we’ve waded a little way out … and the water seems inviting.
— Carl Sagan
Knowledge of the truth I may perhaps have attained to; happiness, certainly not. What shall I do? Accomplish something in the world, men tell me. Shall I then publish my grief to the world, contribute one more proof for the wretchedness and misery of existence, perhaps discover a new flaw in human life, hitherto unnoticed? I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent.
Seemingly filled with anguish, this character actually expresses the dead end that is science and logical empiricism. While they open new pathways to innovation, technology, and more, the net gain for humanity in terms of enabling happiness is minimal, Author A finds. What joy comes to the individual is the short-lived pleasure of fame as a problem-solver and perhaps a kind of moral superiority. What I take from this passage is not that scientific pursuits are insolvent, but that we need to follow our hearts and intuition at times, let ourselves be animals at times, find joy in new and random adventures, spontaneity and silliness. There is a qualitative difference between discovering the truth of life and living it – although, some have argued that the good life is the examined life… I leave it open for debate as I present something entirely different:
The disproportion in my build is that my forelegs are too short. Like the kangaroo, I have very short forelegs, and tremendously long hind legs. Ordinarily I sit quite still; but if I move, the tremendous leap that follows strikes terror in all to whom I am bound by the tender ties of kinship and friendship.
Author A is an aesthetic type. He tends to enjoy chaos, ego-trips, and a dark, witty humor. At other times, however, a slapstick feel emerges, like in imagining a kangaroo jumping forward and simultaneously yanking all the many strings connected to himself, knocking over a whole gang of oblivious kangaroo buddies nearby. Basically, the author is creating chaos and displaying wit through the actions of this kangaroo written into your imagination. In the next quote, we see more of his propensity for existential depth.
One must be very naïve to believe that it will do any good to cry out and shout in the world, as if that would change one’s fate. Better take things as they come, and make no fuss. When I was young and went into a restaurant, I would say to the waiter, “A good cut, a very good cut, from the loin, and not too fat.” Perhaps the waiter did not even hear me, to say nothing of paying any attention to my request, and still less was it likely that my voice should reach the kitchen and influence the cook, and even if it did, there was perhaps not a good cut on the entire roast. Now I never shout any more.
More than futility, this statement seems to address the necessity of shouting, namely, that there is none; the author has no need to shout, nor does he find it helpful. Symbolically, we can take this as advocating a lassie-fare attitude towards life. Certainly not an option for all people in the world, for some find the majority of actions in life set by necessity, the need to survive, to support a family. While I would not intend to maintain the privileged minority at the expense of an impoverished majority (I prefer meritocracy ideally), nor would I push guilt on those with privileges like that of an almost-guaranteed survival. Merely I wish to convey to you, those capable of reading and ingesting this thrivenote, that you are fortunate – so fortunate that you can choose your way of relating to reality. Choose well and enjoy!
