Religion and the Sociological Paradox

It is impossible to declare anything definitive about "God," except that it either exists, or does not exist. These two propositions are absolute realities that are, paradoxically, contrivances of the human mind as we understand it. There are many philosophical problems, and linguistic difficulties when attempting to articulate anything regarding ultimate reality and "creation," which renders discussions between believers and non-believers both necessary and meaningless. Faith cancels out reason, and reason cancels out faith. There are no "voids." Yet, semantic renderings of absolute substances like "God" create voids.

This is the reason religions motivate people to do terrible things to each other, because of the logical and spiritual impasse naturally reasoning minds reach when trying to justify their belief systems to people who have different belief systems.

The only stance I can possibly take is a spiritually charged, rational skepticism; or if you will, a Socratic, principled discourse of knowing ignorance. The fact that religions inspire people to commit atrocities is a psycho-sociological and anthropological problem of finite beings in constant battle with their own existential angst in the face of death. The logic is clear; death is the antithesis to life; life is the synthesis with which we derive purpose and meaning, thus, when there is a clash between ideologies that quite literally provide the enabling conditions for actualized meaning and purpose, it is no surprise that so much blood is shed as a result.

As an aside, this argument can be applied aptly to many debates where a "cause" for such things as violence, war, etc. are concerned. People are desperate when the meaning of their existence, or the purpose of their being on the planet in the first place is questioned or threatened. Sociological phenomena such as economic struggles, for instance, or socioeconomic statuses that render upward mobility near impossible, or living conditions that include substantial lack of essential needs; it is not surprising that the most violent places on the planet are those places that turn out to be breeding grounds for desperate extremism. Purpose driven by desperation is possibly even what spawned the need for religions in the first instance.

the box

The Box.

Within which all things exist. To emphasize the scope of the idea, one could even place conceptions of the universe, infinity, absolutes, God (perhaps) inside The Box.

The pervasive medium through which thought is allowed to explore the totality that exists within it.

-----

Is the universe a dualistic manifold? If entropy is the necessary counteracting function to that of evolution's necessary promulgation of life, does entropy exist outside of evolution, or does it cohabit with evolution as a dependency?

It seems that repulsion is needed to hold the fabric of existence together, acting as an incentive creating, motivating force; that which evolution strives against.

If so, as evolution evolves toward greater complexity, as embodied in what seems to be it's apex evolutionary achievement (technology, or humanity... Obviously these things are interdependent as of now), in virtue of evolution's absolute stake in the proliferation of life, is it possible that entropy could be suspended, then utilized, harnessed for its own gain? Couldn't it be argued that entropy is a technology of evolution, a functioning system on the globe of the universe, like a river, with which its societies tap into discoverable irrigation and power generating technical systems? What agency the universe must possess, to extend it's immanence through to its constituent phenomena. Some will use this line of reasoning to posit God. In this discussion I am forced to concede to a Conception of God; to find it embodied in a single being however is manifestly underwhelming as a belief system.

What are we faced with in this paradigm that motivates us, specifically? It is difficult to avoid the moral domain, but we must maintain the metaphysical stance for as long as we can. The moral domain is merely another box.

Yet, there is this complexity, that in one sense feels intricate and designed, but in another, chaotic and random. Human reason seems to operate so as to bring the design, and perhaps the designer to the forefront of consciousness. What is consciousness but a free filter, with space and time as its axes, shaping perceived reality into very distinct fabrications that allow for meaning and propositions. As it slides its perceptual modalities from one axis to another, the design is altered, and through different patterns arises nuanced understanding of the universe. Through these intellectual localities we bring into existence ideas that span the disciplinary spectrum. The Free Filter moves and the output is thus sociological, or physical, or economic.... But what is it that describes the operating systems of that spectrum? Metaphysics becomes that domain of forcing the general into the domain of the specific. These manifold intuitions become processing tools with which consciousness shapes the chaos into designs. Meaning is made by extrapolation from the general to the specific and vice versa.

Nonetheless, we must contend with the entropic: in this discussion I will expand the meaning of entropy to mean more than its common physical definition, and for good reason. First, physics, by its own definitional nature is presupposed as a fundamental absolute domain. It provides for, in one sense, the grounds upon which the rest of the universe exists and operates. One could say physics is the set of algorithms that informs the operating system's behavior. The platform. Entropy thus, insofar as it counteracts what might as well proceed ad infinitum, the force of life, as it were, is an expanse of negative forces against the pervasive thriving for progress. For example, one could perceive Entropy expanded to include the limitations of reason, the unanswerable questions of reality, the paradoxes of rationality, the morally depraved, sociopathic, randomness of destruction, mortality itself.

---

If technology is driven, as it were, by the engine of evolution, that is, evolution could be cited as the entity that co-opted humanity, using its ability to reason, to implement the procedures which gave rise to technological development*, mustn't we consider the unintended consequences, as if evolution is a decider of things, of such a developmental paradigm; what of the impact of technology on humanity itself... There are abundant examples of the benefits of this growth, and there are many detriments... But what of the more insidious effects; what of those resulting phenomena that portray themselves to perception and society as positive, and in virtue of that illusion, humanity is driven toward more and more self deception, facilitating an ever expanding positive-seeming negative feedback loop;

and to feed into the previous discussion of entropy, perhaps it is merely a necessary application of reason (reason as evolution's tool, perhaps even primary tool to create "extentionary" technology) to create illusions and negative feedback loops, so as to ensure the thriving of the machine. After all, systems detest most those free radical elements perpetually intent on subverting the system. It would be interesting to posit the idea that humanity acts at the whim of evolution, that freedom of the will is merely a necessary function of consciousness, and conscious beings similar to our iteration act in ways that overall generate for evolution technologies to expand its reach. One could even venture into the intellectual frontier, and suggest that perhaps those malicious elements of society are necessary, perhaps to create a mirroring through which consciousness collectives can self correct.

The brain is an interesting machine; it operates in seemingly plausible schema in order to ensure that it's own limitations are not the focus of consciousness. If the brain had perception visual representations of all of gaps in perception, we'd see more incomprehensible images than coherent ones. But the brain is constituted in such a way as to fill in these gaps using patterned assumptions, givens, tautologies. Interesting that evolution would develop a fault eliminating technology to allow it's agents to proceed unthwarted toward it's technological destiny.

It is increasingly difficult to get beneath the driving forces of technology because those forces ride on the backs of hidden agendas and motivations.

But back to the main point; first, evolution seems to have a purposive drive, insofar as life is its goal... to establish stability enabling conditions for the propagation of life, so to continue perpetuating it's goal. Again, we have to make many very substantial assumptions regarding humanity's role; first, it is a result of evolution, because humanity is composed of living creatures, and of course humans have evolved to adapt to their environs using the intellect combined with brute force and the utilization of tools. It has to be at least tacitly assumed, to some degree, until further verification is realized, that evolution is making adaptive technologies of its own, and the resulting phenomena of the intellect are necessary extensions of that evolutionary creativity.

--

What of the sociopolitical/economic realm? First, it is naive to attempt a real disentangling of these three tripartite mechanisms, as it were... Culture can be removed to some extent as a generally held constant aspect which changes as kind of an outlier. Perhaps. But we mustn't err in thinking of these domains as independent from one another. The social paradigm is generated by, and at the same generates the political environment: this dynamic in turn generates an emergent economic paradigm. None of these elements are static. The multi-fold aspects of each adjusts to the varied aspects of each and thus the system operates as a kind of collective machine. The complexity becomes much more intense when one zooms into each domain to examine the phenomena that occurs on the level of the agent. There is a top down bottom up interchange that does not trade influential moves, but constantly influences the agents within the system while being influenced by those same agents. Hence the necessary interdependence between what a community buys, for example, and the agenda of the local political structure to both capitalize and respond to the activities of the community.

To assume that markets operate by some absolute order, as an entity in and of itself is to deny the necessary effects of socio-politics on the psychology of communities. Some effects may be difficult to measure in direct quantitative-qualitative domains of analysis, but it is naive to disassociate the effects of policy on consumer trends. It seems counter-intuitive to redirect the focus and try to understand markets as a strictly agent-market relationship. Society has staple productive attractors, food and entertainment, but even those are intertwined with the power mechanisms of policy, food and drug dogmas, movies and music derived from pro and anti nationalistic concerns. Thinkers might be a bit too narrowly oriented when they suggest of the paradigm that it is merely markets, and the reactionary pursuit of orienting policy around trends. Again, policy and politics are driven by agents with as much stake in the social order. Legislation itself cannot be like what markets are claimed to be, removed from and objectively gazed to engage society. They are driven by subjects with agendas; of course to assume this is to assume something fundamental about human nature, that minds cannot be absolutely objective, unless perhaps they can escape bias and engage in truly scientific rationalism. It's a tall order to be truly a scientist about society and the people in it and the people that govern it.

So we return to the grand idea, The Box within which we all exist and all things exist. It is moved and adjusted by the gaze alone, the gaze of the intellect, and refocuses on different landmarks of its infinite-like topography. Each landmark brings to the gaze a specificity that cannot be observed when looking at The Box as a whole. Indeed, we see what we want to see and make associations accordingly. We can control our analyses and create ever more refined boxes, and as a result our gaze discovers connections within that extrapolate naturally to connections outside of the box currently under examination. The Box is super-dimensional; within it we can posit infinite dimensions... But infinity itself can paradoxically fit within its own confined box through which the gaze can focus. It folds, it expands, it rotates. It is in gravity and in time, but it is also in the mind, and in concepts gravity and time can mutate, trans-morph.... We cannot allow ourselves as open minds to be captured by a specific position in The Box, a specific sub-box... We must entreaty our intellects to explore the confines of each box under the strict assumption that it connects, in virtue of it being in The Box, to anything else. Every sub-box is linked necessarily to any other. We entertain paradox and perfection, discord and harmony. We entangle and disentangle.

This is The Box.

---------------




 

"Wasteland"

They used to say people were honest with each other. I lived amongst them a skeptic. These days though, I've learned that trust is not merely a construct of the human relationship, but in large part it is an illusory aspect of human perception.

"What good is truth?

"George; my words are just words."

"But truth is a word."

"True."

That was five months ago; preceding the question of the value of truth, he asked if what we did here was worth doing. I thought I spoke to George like I spoke to all my students. But he was broken. I spent the entire semester trying to make it clear, and I thought abundantly so, that purpose is the only truth that exists. That language is inferior in its attempt to define purpose; that action as intention orients perception; that consciousness is arrived at vicariously through that which exists in the realm of the Other.

George's perspective was different though. Just months before he came to our class on Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols" with a suitcase, wearing tattered clothing, as if he'd just escaped the grip of demonic charge. I was preparing my lecture notes as he approached my lectern. It was odd; the room seemed desolate of sound. The only thing I noticed before he confronted me was that silence; indeed... accompanied by the stench of terror and tragedy. "Professor, my family is dead."

The page of Nietzsche I was on seemed to consolidate it's ink into an odd abyss. I could feel my gaze strengthen on the page. Nietzsche wasn't a philosopher, but a philologist; he was a geneticist of ideas. I couldn't see concepts in his pages then. I only saw... rather, I only felt a desolation that I still find difficult to realize in memory.

I raised my eyes to George. It was strange, the strength with which he told me that he lost his family. His family... gone. "George, what happened?"

"There was a fire."

"A fire..."

"Yes."

"Are you alright?"

This exchange haunts me to this day. I still teach that class on Nietzsche's book: "How to Philosophize with a Hammer." Nietzsche would have appreciated the absurdity in the question I posed to George. Are you alright? I fear that if I try to put into language the appropriateness of that question, the absurdity will dissipate. Camus reveled in the absurd; an absurdist's embrace of the void. And when one asks a... child... if he is alright, what does one expect to receive back in that exchange?

Irony: seeing a void, a creator of desolation come alive. George found truth; the rest of us only beckon toward it like vagrants. Truth wasn't lost to George. Just his family.

ISTL Season 1

ISTL Week 10 $50 Exhibition - "Respect"

The Future is Now! the Daily Times exclaimed.
The latest scientific journal headlined: Life... explained!
The year is unimportant, the calendar's been pulled for analysis,
with GenMod's assertion that mortality's been challenged.
This year is a new year, with its corporate fountain now spouting youth;
Advertisements were precisely contrived to confound the truth.
"We will choose the best candidate to become the first immortal being!
Applicants will have the medical establishment's support completely..."

Born with a life-limit, she chose to live accordingly.
At four she was awarded due to increased mental absorption speeds.
Memory exemplary:
language skills gave her peers and teachers the strangest feeling,
how a child could speak so forcefully...?
Eventually she sped ahead of her friends and authorities,
clearly an anomaly: but fearing not she wondered exhaustively
about everything from principled morality to government policy.
The times were changing, and she noticed she could play a role.
With the genetic clock ticking in her body she knew she had to take control.
She avoided faith and antiquated methods to save her soul,
and instead dedicated her existence to humanity's greatest goal.
The implications were immense, if she could be the first success,
the immortality ensued would clearly be worth the stress.
She wrote a brief letter to GenMod's president.
Careful not to deify the man with any exaggerated Pretend-God epithets.
She spoke in simple terms, with clear logic and argument.
She was the most brilliant in her region, and her problem was arduous.
What a waste it would be to see such genius extinguished,
by something as trivial as genetic predisposition...
She sealed the envelope with her tongue and smiled.
She sought immortality with a stubborn hunter's guile,
and wouldn't be denied, in fact, she couldn't be rejected.
A dead genius is no good to society, and... she wouldn't be respected.

Born in privilege: he chose to live recklessly.
Spent on a whim and treated no one respectfully.
He had the money to obtain anything material.
And spent to avoid his unadulterated fear of truth:
the fear of his own morality encountering society,
but still he chose to live selfishly with every ounce of his propriety.
His rivalry was poverty, to avoid struggle at all costs
and never wondered what would happen if he woke up with it all lost.
He'd assault transactions with greed and manipulation,
and didn't really care if moral structures disintegrated.
The implications of immortality had obvious appeal;
more reason to pursue wealth with obnoxiousness and zeal.
With the respect his money earned, his problems were concealed.
And he knew his vicious nature would be impossible to heal...
As soon as he heard that he could live forever,
he wrote a check for a substantial amount and placed it in a letter.
To GenMod's president he wrote of his intentions:
He pledged to engage the world with philanthropic aggression.
He assured him of the reward he would receive in publicity,
if such a powerful man were to be the first to live infinitely.
He knew he'd need incentive to carry on in his ways...
the thing about material existence is that it's gone with your days,
profits decay, lost in dismay: all that you've fought to obtain.
So he'd solve that problem regardless of the cost it would take.

The President of GenMod stood aloof on his office balcony.
The city moved beneath him, he thought of how it would feel falling down
as he pondered his options. How could he decide...
Either choice would require sacrifice.
Would he squander his profits in favor of the world's most ample mind?

Think of the implications of having to choose your first immortal soul.
As a president responsible for ensuring corporate growth,
would you deprive the world of genius for sufficient payment,
allowing Greed to encompass the first immortal in the nation?
He's known now as just another corporate head,
which decision would help garner more respect?
This technology is unprecedented, the control is his to decide,
he's slated to undergo the treatment as soon his approval's signed...
It becomes about respect: for the present day or future growth.
Then he decided... why shouldn't he just move for both?
It's both about longevity and the profit it generates,
let nature take its course with an honest respect for Fate...

A year passed, the first of humanity to surrender to longevity
emerged from their procedures.
The girl was now perfection genetically,
she was determined to free Earth from its deadliness.
But the public, failed respecting her as Heavenly,
didn't see salvation in her intentions, didn't perceive her respectfully.
They were threatened by her brain, not in awe of its utility.
There's a sense in which she realized as a mortal with a short life
despite her intellect she was more liked...
The first task He set about to do with his enhancement complete,
was to fund the most lavish retreat for the President of GenMod and
never did he feel so happy and complete.
He wrote a check to lift the ten bottom countries from madness and disease.
The last of the impoverished were shown posterity.
His deeds made the headlines, once again his respect climbed.
It's not terribly implausible to imagine this outcome.
How else could you truly gain respect and happiness without funds.

Philosophers in the academies recoiled at the developments.
Morality was turned upon its head with sacrificed intelligence.
Never before had humanity truly learned about respect.
A girl genius lives forever but was cast-aside: irrelevant.
Practicality without the ideals of a liberal society.
"Whatever works," said the pragmatists in interviews with sly decree.
The lesson is of true concern, our course presently depends
upon decisions that contribute to our longevity, but
if a life is just another means to a greedy end
then clearly life is not a concept that needs respect.

-----------------

ISTL Week 10 - "Captain's Ode"

"Captain's Ode"

Beloved:
I have little time for words, for we have a campaign to wage.
My dearest, I fear you must do away with the champagne we saved...

Prologue: Dawn of War
I'm writing now with the hopes to convey...;
today all I've witnessed has been the atrocious display
of defeat, all our focus on the goal has diminished.
Like a sinking vessel, a simple hole and were finished.

Ode to Command
Gazing into the horizon...with the sun setting we oblige:
alive yet amazed, what with the blood letting and the collecting of demon hides.
My machete's stains serve to constantly remind me
of that blitz into the abyss. The defiance of Divine myth.
In the midst of defeat, within an inch of retreat
decide quickly to divide us, or keep the advantage with precision.
Glinting steel: our battle standards advancing our position.
And lift the veil, but conceal intentions to attack.
Your decision is our mission: keep our legacy intact!
Contain the enemy: be aware of the perimeter.
Your control over the tides, you're our scribe, you're our God...
you're alive as our parish and parishioner!

Ode to Soldier
Muse wielding battlements, anticipating savageness.
Feeling passion rip the fabric of our reasoning capacities.
There's little logic in a Soldier's day.
He responds to what controls his fate.
He will not be dominated by these legions slinging tragedy!
In moments we shall confront the Depths.
For all that's holy we shall punish Death!
We will not be stopped by hatred, we'll free our kindred from their shackling.
Count the war drum's rhythm, feel the pure thud driven
by our lust for the thrust of our swords in their guts!
Listen to the hush before the last drum's signal
on the final eighth we shall invade.
Attack from the shore to the hill with grace and valiant Blades.

Ode to Understanding
Another day with Reason marching, thinking of freedom largely,
and what possibly a notion of God could teach us.
A mythical regress, cyclically blind to peace, just
needs, wants and linking the Mind to genius, hardly
feasible truths breaking the membrane
of paradise, just sterilized creations of End Game.
Let's say, we finally reach our tenth pace
and rather than getting struck with canonry, it just rains.
I've guessed Grace in the past was the way to the Path
but the dualistic nature of that made me change with the fact
that life is simply the exchange of a shameless attack with hatred attached.
They took the ethics of greater ancients and painted them black...

Epilogue: The Last Days
I'm writing now with the hopes to express proof,
that life is just the patching of the holes in your vessel.
The tides of war divide the pure from their lives of peace,
but war exists between more than these rifts in society.

----------------

ISTL Week 9 - "New Order"

April 20, 2412
United Federation of the Hegemony

Listen to my story, it is a tale of two paradigms.
I am but a fraction of the whole, beneath a veil of truth terrorized.
I am not destined to be static, but cursed to be paralyzed
until irony ensues and my worth can be verified...
---
Dystopian fictions fail to describe the situation at present;
Orwell was innovative and clever, Wells instigated in letters
fear of the unknown through swift invasions and intimidation.
Today is a different day, its, beyond any distant Matrix,
even the one written in cinema now is considered ancient.
These words are a simple preface: we live in a technocracy...
where robotic philosopher kings manipulate the Fed's policies.
They couldn't be wrong, they've accounted for all contingencies,
until one day a boy stumbled upon me as I drifted along the city's stream:

Through his eyes I had to seem like a hieroglyphic dream,
he, used to eye scanning as the instant means of transmitting "me,"
for currency is now accrued based on one's latent abilities...
You are the face of your "dollar bill," not some vagrant from history.
In the past I was the root of all the evil that surrounded humans.
Nothing more than a curse, simply a profound illusion
that forced people into enslavement to earn a fraction
only to turn around and contribute to their existentially coercive habits.

I'm being carried from my resting place across the platform toward a sentry.
The boy showed its "eyes" his embedded passport affording him entry.
I can see the domes above controlling the impact of solar flares,
until we entered his home, upstairs where he lived alone and scared.
The boy scanned me with some interesting device.
"What is this piece of paper with such intricate designs?
It seems to resemble what I learned in History that time,
about a species of humans who traded objects for paper,
which had such value as the society's progress would favor..."
He noticed inscribed upon my body a cryptic inscription:
Novos ordo seclorum, little did he envision,
that in 2412 I'd be the salvation of his kindred.
In an instant he turned and ran toward his pixel-screens,
on them a news anchor was in mid scream about rioting in the streets.
It appears the System of Exchange has been assaulted.
The means of scanning for purchase power once so exalted
has been irreversibly exhausted...

The boy turned and looked at me as I rested on his scanner...
In God We Trust..., judging by his face I guess he had the answer.
A bright light overcame me for an instant...
he stuffed me in his pocket as my first sibling was printed.

A new, new world order was born.

----------

 ISTL Week 8 [Contendership] - "Veil of Ignorance"

Theory of Mystic Justice
The Veil of Ignorance

"...no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like." - John Rawls

---

Breathing deeply exceeding sufficient focus conditions.
Spinning on either side of me, silently combining each
element invoking implicit occult traditions. Let us seek
wisdom from Opus to Opus: molecular message peaked;
Systems controlling my hopes to get us connected to Gnosis.
The Stone is just another drop away: osmosis. The clock's display
is frozen for Time is only a constraint for those within limits of
conventional physics. Only respect for the distance between
ignorance and enlightenment. Action crafted in silent rifts.
Rawlsean veils exposed by the mystic's decree.
Restrictions: thinking linearly.
I insist: to proceed and process most efficiently
let the mental stretch with exponential logarithmic speed.
Potential bleeds from the vial, more errors in this trial
than perfect successes.
But only one needs to work to make it worth the investment.

Breathing heavily connecting each section to the next,
mixing acoustic mastery.
The music blasting free into collections of obsessed
citizens moving frantically.
Spinning on either side of me, a veneration of control...
They say the art is religious regeneration of the Soul.
Crack the wishbone: carefully extract the marrow.
Ambitions dripping acutely into industrial cauldrons.
Relax your grip though, it's the subtlest science.
The mission is truth seeking: the lushest indulgence.
Pungent environs,
the praxis is beyond just syntax and semiotics.
It's actually applying exactness when combining
enough passion to create impactful steady progress.
Enough potency to render the power in Heaven modest...

Pray accordingly,
this much precision we should be worshiping.
Blending the micro-filaments with diligence in ordering.
Output various like instrumental chords from strings.
Break the plastic: fervently replace the needle.
Sufficient this mythic truth seeping love from the auspice
of ancient madness, it's a wondrous triumph.
Pythagorean spheres spinning with abundance exhausted.
Sacred neolithic scripting etched on the masks of pharaohs.
Cast the mended Arrow toward the frantic raving excitement:
Sound from the loudest of amplification devices.
Fluid from the Grand Elixir creating infinite Youth.
Drum, bass, rhythm
rhyme, flow, charisma
Coal, gold, platinum,
all that exists is the Truth.

----------

ISTL Week 7 - "Lift Off"

"Lift Off"

Meteorology is a strange science.
He packed his death-machine in anticipation of rain.
Triumph was only a couple train-trips away.
Silence conveyed as pockets of hate dripped disdain.
Capitulating dismay by proxy through perfect trajectory.
No allusions: just simple deeds working effectively.
Beyond the scope of life and death, his mind would bend
matter and temporal flux, as if purpose could end a dream.
No predictions or challenges, no statistics to shout amiss,
no retroactive out of practice conditioned analysis,
just a simple click to send a miniscule sound adrift
across a chasm of Mind. This grand gap in our lives is
redefined simply as a man caste by a lot
wreaks havoc to stop sagacity's climb up the hazardous ladder of Time.
No praxis, no syntactical signs.
No exactness of science could capture the Why.
Just a simple madness refined by the craftsmen of passion.
Humors contrasted because a man has to decide
whether or not our measurements stand the passage of...

Could it be the hive approaching? His eye just a fashioned design,
fastened precisely to deliver Fate in a hand basket divinely woven?
I suppose... but imagine when Time's exposed as the illusion it might be.
A decision to act could be revisited eliciting a union of likely
scenarios. Potential externalities and impregnated confusions.
If time weaves its baritone voice we could placate the movement
of mere matter, appease the Gods of disaster and make haste to induce trust.

Could it be robotics or nano? Or psychotics with ammo?
Or time robbing your ant-hole of any fine promises and hopes?
Time's locked in a damned trope, trivial, tautological.
A simple tick of the clock closing in on the often exhausted who
couldn't make a stand with defender's advantage.
We're just mere pretenders with language, Enders of Games.
No card carrying members, no extensions or breaks.
Just a carried out example of effortless rage.
They say a man with a shot is man on every stage
screaming out for any intelligence to mention his name.

These broken wings. These brittle bones of Kings.
Fossilized and bought for dimes.
We ask, how could the dark side of the moon even talk of shine.
And he answers, through the eye of the hawk drifting aloft with Time.
There are simply too many puzzles to sit and solve.
Unless there's nothing more than a single click involved...

And we've lifted off...

----------

ISTL Week 6 - "Nabatean Salve: 19xx"

Nabatean Salve: 19xx

The arid ruins reflected dawn like they manifested Heaven's balm,
lubricating perception.
Desolate but any angered spirit would instantly be rendered calm.
Upon approach his Mind would dance, his Muse exclaimed...
Forever lost are these ruined plains; as time advanced
the Nabateans witnessed legends brought to bear on Market Square
the rabble approached the Street Priest with awkward stares.
He'd scream "Peace! as prophesied since the Dawn of Time!"
Focused as if called by God though most agreed he'd lost his mind.
The truth is, through meditation he saw designs of ancient crypts,
and on an obelisk's spine displayed an escapist's script
with golden-glyphed messages comprising a salvation Myth.
His proud nation split thanks to religious rifts and civil war.
And he knew these visions writ of a simpler fix than glinting swords
slicing hordes of passionate zealots and revolutionaries.
Lies resounded confounding unconnected ideologies;
Until finally someone listened that wasn't a filthy pocket thief.
"The war's direction rarely seems to sway based on the executions."
Wary, the non-thief looked on, a "rebel" patch on his leather tunic:
"The Mages sent me to you, you claim to have been revealed an answer,
we are a smaller rebel order, the revolution feels in danger
for the last time we listened to a prophecy we were killed in anger."
The priest recoiled, never having been confronted by authentic doubt before.
He lived within his own truth, strife never having been accounted for.
So he set the rebel to task, to seek these mythic ruins.
To the Nabatean Petra. Assuming this isn't just some twit's delusion.
A single etching by an ancient sage to upset entire institutions?
But the non-thief believed in peace and swore he would live to prove it.

Within the Priest's chambers, a lazy shadow reflected stasis...
He sat lotus-like, controlled, precise in effortless meditation.
Visions flooded his cortex, at first numbers in an extended matrix
spilled out onto a canvas painting of a list of ten equations:
The first was a function of Time as it bends with space,
the last was an algorithm explaining genetic language.
Between were arguments for the existence of persistent life,
the priest: the vehicle for the computing system within his mind.
These combined created an image of the Mage's rebel,
a silhouette shifting from ether to flesh engraved in metal.
No aesthetic order, but the program seemed to sketch a border
within which man could act without fear of the gaze of devils.
A shadow on a cavern wall became blighted by the ridicule
of humanness, which only captures what is timely and predictable.
The priest imagined the non-thief deceased on the ruin halls,
then was struck out of his trance by rebel guards screaming "Move along!"
Truth is lost in the channels of sublimity,
"The river downward" could merely be the mind stuck in the annals of infinity.

---------

ISTL Week 5 - "Waiting"

Waiting

Patience is not a virtue.
At least that's what the boy had believed.
Despite being told the opposite he'd thought a bit,
understood reality moved regardless if he thought his choices were free.
The problem isn't cosmic drift, it's
the Grand Comic's bit about the universe expanding until apocalypse...
And he considers himself an optimist.
From a very young age he had questions regarding consciousness.
Waiting for answers weren't part of his parents' promises.
His father did not permit anything but an agnostic twist
to an age old argument: "No one can ever know, therefore, God exists."
Puzzled, the boy struggled, encroaching upon logic's limits,
consulted scholar after scholar, religious thinkers and scientists;
and concluded that even the world's foremost geniuses have extreme biases.
He wondered about Time's condition,
from atomic clocks that tick to Einstein's persistence,
that space conforms to Mind and perception is just petty acceptance of environment.
So the boy drafted a letter: "To the Children Who Wait..."
Entitled with a kind ellipse to capture the resilience of Fate.
In fact, that's the concept he started with:

"Fate is fascination with certain uncertainty. Not faith
just the acceptance that if we wait things will never work perfectly.
Purpose seems to buckle under the weight of philosophical urgency,
and conceptions of the End become brilliant obstacles and recurring themes.
Beauty and Goodness, Platonic forms and Promised War:
We wait regardless if they choose the pen and not the sword.
We wait for harvest, fruits of labor or Confucian favor,
or Buddhist wayward progression away from the abuse of flavor.
Pleasure without an epicenter where the youngest reside,
waiting like the Man who just turned one hundred to die.
Waiting like, for the bus, or a ride, to get plucked like a fly
and plunge from the sky... or the stubborn depressed
waiting for the comfort to cry.
Patience is not a virtue, I believe that's taught to hurt you
into thinking that if you wait for an answer it oughtn't curse you.
Patience is just another means to get caught in an awful circle
of thought we turn to only to struggle distraught:
there's enough love lost for one soul, not to mention an Earth full."

He dropped his pen to the floor, shaking as if in the purview of Proof
and still went about his life, in continued pursuit of the Truth.
Patience...

----------

ISTL Week 4 - "Divine Mirror"

Divine Mirror

Meritocracy hoisted and bolstered by divine will.
Shadows with voices. A controlled worth that time wields.
Valiant talents challenging choices. Prayers amounting to noises
-each rupturing the barrier between our doubts and their poignancy.
Skeptics are rounded up and caste by silence.
Acts of Mind nullified in favor of massive blindness.
The opiate of the collective disconnecting truth from the Praxis.
To see the ontological alive and breathing,
to feel the epistemic placed aside, vagrant lives completely
changed, their minds appeased for the Proof is in Madness.
That is, analogical to the problem of Who is this God we've accrued...
is the problem of Genius, from the Mind of belief,
is a Man of overwhelming power holding life at his breach.
That is, if you choose to let your Mind in his reach.
Picture a world of faith... governments controlled by religions and creeds.
Could an atheist exist in it free? Could he see the difference between
faith in the unknown and the prescriptive beliefs?
Or would he just become a shadow with a rhythmic speed?
Screaming out for freedom without a passage for delivery...
A message in perfect Time... where Time is actual infinity.
Could a nonbeliever truly exist in a universe of Divines?
I suppose the truth is certain for Minds without worldly concerns...
Or is truth just admiring the world as it turns?
Or is truth just retiring from the world as it burns?

or

Are the faithless just reflections of the faithful?
With no aesthetic or logical weapons to escape to...

Information

Could the universe simply be an aggregated system of information, both processing and processed in simultaneous fluctuations? It seems to me plausible, in light of the findings in disciplines such as mathematics, physics, genetics, among many others. Is it possible that all of reality can be reduced to information? If so, is information something a priori--before human perception... in the noumenal realm as Kant would call it, or is information merely a construction manifested by conscious perception itself? It doesn't seem to me very likely that, even though we have a word, and a concept for information, that information is merely a conscious contrivance. In fact, "mere" consciousness is a faulty reduction, for if indeed the universe is information, then it necessarily follows that consciousness itself is composed of information. Potentially fallacious, I suppose, is this determination, for it doesn't always follow that the because a part of the whole is composed of some property, that also the whole is composed of the same. However, the "universe" is an absolute of sorts -- and the Absolute, whether one conceives of it as God, or otherwise, must at least contain aspects of the varieties of substances contingent in its parts. Another way to say it is, even though the universe may not be only what we can conceive of as information, the reason we can even conceive of the universe is through the medium of information. Language is code. Code can be broken into simple bits. The simplest bits of any entity seems to me to be the building blocks that we call information. So at least what we perceive can be reduced to information. The question becomes then, and this is the million dollar inquiry, if we experience the universe through the medium of information, and everything in our consciousness can be reduced to information, does it follow that the universe is comprised of information at the most fundamental level? And if so, are we then potentially able to tap in to the very nature of reality, with our technologies -- or even just simply our consciousness--with enough effort--?

Failed State

Every year the legislature gets together to re-up the National Defense Authorization Act. Every year, under the auspices of this legislation, the Constitution that is supposed to protect the "inalienable human rights" bestowed upon us by our very nature as human beings, is being systematically destroyed. The entire system of government in the United States is working to undermine the basic freedoms we as citizenry ought to be able to take for granted.

Beyond any idealism, the systematic evisceration of the Constitution is not something that can be attributed to just one administration. Bush and Obama are no different in this respect. There is little reason to believe that during this election cycle, Obama will revert back to his campaign "promises." Rather, the current president should be known as the propagandist of the century, for his rhetoric during his election initially has been completely ignored. Government is no longer working to protect the citizenry; Government is a body of lawyers and lobbied special interests working to only protect those who have large sums of money invested in the policy making machine. Government is neither for the people, nor the State. Government is out for itself. People in power will fight to stay in power at all costs.

During wartime, these laws effectively give the President, as Commander and Chief, the power to do literally as he pleases, domestically and otherwise. It just so happens that we are engaged in an endless undeclared war on terrorism. Come to think of it, when is the last time our government actually followed the Constitution and declared war? There has never been any congressional discussion or debate as to whether or not the president, on the whims of his own decision making, has grounds to send the military to war. And yet, here we are. We are living in an age of unauthorized, unprecedented government seizure of power over the entire country; it could be argued as well that that very same power extends to everywhere the United States has presence. The idea that the world is now an authorized battleground is no longer fantastical.

Those of us that are glued to our television screens absorbing the mass propaganda of the now moot mainstream media will not see the full picture. The media is programmed to emit limited information on limited subject matter. Journalism no longer operates under the principles upon which it was founded. Freedom of the Press was extended under the Bill of Rights to ensure a constantly opened window into the fortress that is now the Government. Such amendments are now being systematically ignored. With sports and entertainment news consuming the headlines, and pundits swaying and misinforming the public on issues that matter, there is also very little reason to believe that the public will ever have a chance to become truly informed. As a result, the public will continue to vote for major leaders of the major political parties, further exacerbating the corruption now inherent in the system.

If these issues remain ignored, it will no longer be the fault of the Government, but of the masses, for they will unknowingly participate in the destruction, or the failure, of the State they are pretending to vote in the best interest of.

Indubitable Crises

These are interesting times. It is quite simple to capture the state of things in a few paragraphs. The difficulty arises when these few paragraphs are read and evaluated by the news-media influenced public mind. Encouraging people to think of the issues themselves untainted by the propaganda machine is the most difficult thing to do for reform-minded activists. Common thinking is swayed significantly by the media, which directs its focus toward issues at the whim of the power elite. Financial institutions and multinational corporations, as Noam Chomsky highlights, are clearly at the forefront of government influence toward policy making. Chomsky points out in a recent article "American Decline: Causes and Consequences," that the public is seriously divided, not only within its own ranks, but also separated significantly from policy makers. The problem then is clearly one of misinformation, or propaganda. If the electorate is to ever have an effect on the outcome of policy, the system must be unhinged from the throes of the financial industry "masters of humankind" as Chomsky puts it.

Why is it acceptable that Obama hired on his economic team the very same individuals who manufactured the current crisis? Goldman Sachs and its economic policy is no policy at all... it encourages high risk high reward transactions at the cost of the "rabble's" livelihood. The recent bailouts of the "too big to fail" banks benefited those banks, who have further incentive to do as they please. Their security blanket is the government itself. Why should they yield? And why should a legislature that is largely bought and sold by those institutions pass reforms that would hurt the masters' bottom lines? Despite the evil of the state of the economy and government, it is entirely rational from their point of view to sustain business as usual.

Analogous is the global warming crisis. The economic crisis is a long term issue--reforms made today will not be overwhelmingly noticed today, but ought to protect future generations from having to pay their forefathers' debt. Similarly, the climate crisis is something that must be dealt with today, not because we will necessarily feel the effects today (even though the fluctuating weather patterns across the globe seem to be a surprise to everyone), but because our children will have grandchildren of their own who very likely will pay with their lives in a century or less.

These are crises of ideas. Policy follows ideas. And the ideas being generated from the current popular media and legislature are overwhelmingly "business-as-usual" in tone. Business as usual is not sustainable by any stretch of the imagination.

Far from conspiracy theory, all it takes is a day of research to connect the dots for oneself uninfluenced by the pundits on the major broadcasting networks. They do not live by journalistic principles. How could they? They are told by those in power what to report. And it isn't their fault. They trust those in power, even if one particular network is more cynical than another. The internal constraints built into the system prevent free thinking from breaking out into the public mindset. Even the tea-party grassroots movement was co-opted by the Republican Party. Accordingly, it will not be a shock to discover the occupy movements to be co-opted by the moderate-conservative Democratic Party.

Societies are complex, dynamic systems, driven and confused by what I have called the "Agency/Morality Circularity." Simply put, to be outlined in more detail, self-interested agency influences, manifests and deterministically generates moral structures (governments, social norms), which subsequently influences self-interest. Eventually, the paradigm is caught in a stagnant loop, where one side of the polarity is controlled by the other side of the polarity. The dichotomous nature of such a circularity gives rise to the very complexity apparent in the system at large. There are now layers upon layers representative of such static circular paradigms. Corporations are also driven by self-interest, despite being heavily motivated by their "lesser" working constituents. However, the upper echelon's self interest is what influences policy making on the government level. Moral agency is thus co-opted by self-interest in the guise of moral agency. Consider the recent legislation granting Corporations the ability to, as private citizens can, fund campaigns. One not need to ponder that fact for more than a moment to realize the connection.