Cosmogenesis: In a Small Boat, Drifting on the Ocean/ Parts 1 and 2

By Brian George

A while back, I posted an essay on Reality Sandwich called "Habits of the Heart." I have assembled an essay out of some of the comments from the forum, which I have been in the process of revising. (Comments to me are as orignally written--my own comments have been expanded and revised.) Over the next few weeks, I will be posting the nine sections of this essay. Here are the first two parts:

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"And in this sense, I say, the world was before the Creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive, though my grave be England, my dying place was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain.”—Thomas Browne, from “Religio Medici,” 1643

The Vanguard of a Perpetual Revolution/ Part 2

By Brian George

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Below—in sections three and five—you will find two comments that are connected with the posting of my essay “Four Scouts to the New World.” The first comment is from “Reality Sandwich” forum for the essay, just before the election of President Obama in 2008, and the second is a reflection on why I chose to re-post it on “Modern Mythology,” just after the earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent atomic disaster in Japan in 2011.

In 2008, I could not help but wonder: How is it possible for so many well intentioned people to not see that Barack Obama is just another actor—a kinder and gentler apologist for Wall Street and closet advocate for the Military-Industrial Complex—onto whom a part of the American public had projected its own dreams?

Do the crowds at an Obama rally not know that they are intoxicated—with an energy more appropriate to a televangelist’s studio—or see the glazed eyes of other members of the crowd, or hear that they are chanting to give birth to a savior? Why do his supporters not pause to notice that he has no actual record, that he went out of his way to be absent for key votes in Illinois? Do they not hear when he speaks in glowing terms of Reagan, or see that, on those few occasions that he does speak truth to power, it is only so that he can substitute speech for action? As with the wave of a magician’s hand, an incandescent city has appeared upon a hill.

It is now 2011, and I cannot help but wonder: How is it possible that, in the 1960s, GE didn’t realize that there might be earthquakes in an earthquake zone, and went full-speed ahead to build a chain of atomic power plants on a fault line? Since then, why has no one stopped to think that an earthquake might knock out both the power plants and the backup systems, and why were the spent fuel-rods stored underneath the plants?

Then too, when radiation levels of 1000 millisieverts per hour have been detected 50 miles from the Fukushima plant—i.e., four times the maximum safe level of exposure—why have people only been evacuated throughout a radius of 20 miles? So far as I understand it, this is just the level that is judged to be safe per hour.

As Kurt Nimmo points out, “A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760.” And finally, if you multiply 1000 by 8760, you get 8,760, 000 times the normal dose per year. If the total projected yearly dose is not yet so astronomical, neither could it be regarded as anywhere close to safe. The exact figures could be debated, and keep changing hour by hour and depending on the source of information—but you get the general idea.

And so, we must ask: Could the Japanese government be driven by an agenda beyond that of the well being of its citizens—an agenda of which even the key actors may, at best, be only partially aware? On what ring of an interdimensional theatre are the benches on which the audience for the current play is seated—calmly staring out of eyes that do not close, and with their thumbs poised to flip up or down?

To ask these questions is not to assign blame—whether to the overly idealistic supporters of Obama, or to Obama himself, who probably has far less actual power than we think, or to the brightest of the brightest in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and on through to the present decade, who failed to anticipate and then prepare for a disaster that was 100% predictable, and certainly not to bureaucrats without backbones. No, I am pointing to these things in order to highlight their peculiarity.

Four Scouts to the New World/ Parts 7-11

By Brian George

The premise, as presented by John Giordano: It is discovered that life can be supported on a pristine planet JUST LIKE THE EARTH located in a distant galaxy. The only difference is that there aren't any humans on the planet. The most evolved animals are apes and monkeys. All the natural resources are the same as Earth. Technology exists to get four people to the planet on a scouting mission. They will stay for one year, planning for the arrival of settlers from Earth.

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The One Year Plan

Goals will be set, but never achieved. The one year plan will fall by the wayside. Gifts will be kept in circulation. The seven day work week will go the way of taxes, death and television. Food will be sufficient for each day. Projects will be projected from an unknown source onto clouds.

There will be no permanent leader. Skills judged to be valuable on Gaia 1 may prove useless or destructive. Power relationships will be subject to ongoing negotiation. There will be no external agency to impose rules from above. There will be no police to call. The group (of necessity) will be the judge, the punishment and the refuge.

Echoes will collaborate. The dead will all at once remember how to read. Birds will excavate the crumbling records. Leaders will be the temporary masks through which the voice of the new planet will jump as it clamors to express itself.

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Future of the Group/The Open House

Let us say that the purpose of the four scouts to organize a society. Auroras will cause them forget.

Should we not put aside conventional wisdom, and attempt, as dead and resurrected actors, to see the universe anew? Anxious to avoid being ignorant, there is a good possibility that we know too much. The faculty of direct perception works best when there is empty space. It is simple to ask questions. Such as:

Does consciousness begin at birth? Is matter, as we have been lead to believe, inanimate? Are the living truly separate from the dead?

Can animals talk, and can we stretch our language to communicate with pet prehistoric species?

Four Scouts to the New World/ Parts 5 and 6

By Brian George

Note: “Four Scouts to the New World” was written several years ago, but I have chosen to post it now because of its connection to the crisis that is unfolding in Japan. One of the central themes of the essay is that any and all “perfect systems” have an innate tendency to self-destruct. The Tao Te Ching says, “The greatest perfection seems imperfect,” and “That which approaches perfection will soon end.”

People tend to use the words “tragedy” and “disaster” as if they were interchangeable; they are not. A “disaster” is an event that appears to happen by itself, that is thrust upon us from the external world—although this may or may not ultimately be so. A “tragedy,” on the other hand, is an event that directs us reexamine and to probe the highly peculiar nature of human action in the world. The key point is: That the actor has done nothing wrong.

A crisis has arrived, which demands that the actor act; in order to do so he must choose between two equally impossible alternatives. We are left with no choice but to empathize with the actor—for any choice that he makes will be simultaneously both right and wrong. The daily bureaucratic and scientific and political business of the world may be little more than the slow-motion clockwork that gives form to this tragic arc.

If the actor could view his projections from all of 360 degrees, it might be possible—for some period of time, and only just—to keep his actions in alignment with the whole.

If he launches a pet project—whether an essay called “Four Scouts to the New World,” or a boat made from the bones of gods, or a genetically engineered species, or a form of government, or a chain of nuclear reactors—he will tend to see it in a positive light. To act well, he must keep his focus; it is natural that he should block out any dissonant information. But reality is always vaster and more unpredictable than we think.

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Four Scouts to the New World/ Parts 3 and 4

By Brian George

The premise, as presented by John Giordano: It is discovered that life can be supported on a pristine planet JUST LIKE THE EARTH located in a distant galaxy. The only difference is that there aren't any humans on the planet. The most evolved animals are apes and monkeys. All the natural resources are the same as Earth. Technology exists to get four people to the planet on a scouting mission. They will stay for one year, planning for the arrival of settlers from Earth.

3 Ecoscientist

No matter what their talents, there are no four people who could represent the range or extent of human knowledge. This goes without saying. Perfect specimens would still at best be out of focus holograms.

As the first of the four scouts to Gaia 2, one of my planning group has suggested that we send an ecoscientist. It makes little sense to me, I say, to take apart what is self-sufficient, or to fix what was never broken. Next, we should send an auto mechanic to retouch a Jackson Pollock painting. The end of the world approaches. My attempt at irony does not go over well.

Though an ecoscientist is better than an ecoterrorist, I have my doubts about the wisdom of such a choice. As it is necessary to start somewhere, I will bend, for no particular reason, to the first impulse of the group.

Such a person may not please both the scientific and the ecological communities. From all sides, many would raise doubts, or probe her political philosophy for flaws, or joke about her appearance. The name rolls importantly from the tongue, but what, exactly, can the ecoscientist do?

Could she build a meeting hall from branches, or, when all of the tools and instruments have been lost, still find some way to cultivate a garden? What about the children, you say? How important is the study of whole systems when the settlers' boys and girls must one day go to bed without supper? It is possible, however, that our arguments do not fall on deaf ears, and that our questions will prompt an answer from the Hypercube.

The ecoscientist has become as pregnant as a cloud. Her biographical files might, as we speak, be reconfigured by a circle of non-spatial watchers. Even now, I can see it in minute detail. A trident has appeared as a red welt on her forehead. It is out of my hands. What she does not know, she is smart enough to learn.

Does she see the planet as a living being, whose body is coextensive with its mind, and whose forces are the active agents of creation? Did she give blood to the goddess—or rather, does she realize yet that she has done so? We should not assume that a woman would be any less materialistic in her views. She has been scarred by Occam's razor.

She is tougher than any guy. She has had to be. Does she see the planet as a concept to be turned this way and that, and its species as mere data in a computer simulation?

She will chart the interaction of natural and supernatural agents, of organic and inert geometry, of the future and the past. She will speak in the third person. Though almost mad, she will cultivate an objective tone of voice. If a disaster should overtake the group, leaving footprints but no physical remains, her thoughts will provide a starting place for those who would reconstruct the story.

Four Scouts to the New World/ Parts 1 and 2

By Brian George

The premise, as presented by John Giordano: It is discovered that life can be supported on a pristine planet JUST LIKE THE EARTH located in a distant galaxy. The only difference is that there aren't any humans on the planet. The most evolved animals are apes and monkeys. All the natural resources are the same as Earth. Technology exists to get four people to the planet on a scouting mission. They will stay for one year, planning for the arrival of settlers from Earth.

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Should our settlement on Gaia 2 be an extension of the known, no different from Gaia 1 than New York is from Timbuktu? Should we send an ambassador from Burger King, or a lawyer from the International Monetary Fund, or an ideologue from Harkin Energy to privatize the water supply? Should a lottery be held among the five large media conglomerates to see who should control the wavebands of interplanetary news? Should we transport our habits, both good and bad, in order to create an environment familiar to the touch, or should the voyage be regarded as a new beginning, in which all certainties are put aside?

The questions we ask will condition the answers that become available. We worship practicality, but in many ways our actions are not practical at all. We do not live in our bodies. Desire is abstract. Terror is no longer an emotion; it is the remote-controlled hand of the oligarch, bread for the circus, an economic windfall, or an art movement searching for the door to a museum.

Our accumulation of fetishistic objects has perhaps become a form of addiction unto death. Is technology a blessing or a curse? There is no time to judge. Once set in motion, it sweeps all before it like a juggernaut. Blocked memory pushes what the strange attractor pulls. It is we who were left as a sacrifice to the recombinant simulacrum. We are the real victims of an artificial war, which has existed from a time before necessity shrunk the atom. Should our settlers be experts, and if so, how do we insure their freedom from the influence of corrupt agendas?