Philosophical Phriday
A short walk on a long pier
So my buddy sends me a voice message on Thursday night, asking me what I thought about the Buddhist concept of “mu” or the concept that everything is No Thing. As Buddha put it, the Universe is like sea foam - it exists, you can see it, touch it, smell it, and hear the surf creating it, but if you try to grab it, it vanishes into No Thing.
Yeah, my friends are like that. They ask existential questions during cocktail hour, forcing me to once again examine what exactly I believe about the Universe and everything in it.
I’ve spent my life asking this question. I’ve spent time as a Benedictine monk and a Buddhist monk. I’ve done Navajo meditation circles. I’ve adventured into psychedelics and alchemy. I’ve prayed and fasted and stretched my consciousness as far as I know how. I’ve pursued scientific inquiry and explored ideas of such vast implications as to be awesome in the true meaning of the word. For all that, I’ve learned…or rather experienced a few things that one might consider answers, but like everything in this realm it is profoundly contradictory and tends to generate far more questions than I started with.
But what the hell, let’s try to put some of this into that highly limited mode of expression called language.
So here’s what I’ve come up with: the Universe, which is the set of all things that can be perceived, created or imagined, is composed solely of information. Information is the framework, substance and currency of the Universe. There is No Thing without information. And information is eternal. Once it is created, it can never be destroyed. Information is Truth, Light and Power. Information is everything, and everything is information.
Just in case I wasn’t clear on that, God is Information, and Information is God. They are inseparable and eternal, without form and yet the basis of all forms.
Think of a 3-D printer (and this is why I am enamoured with the technology). You start with raw materials - which are nothing but tangible information - and a computer model - which is nothing but a rendering of information in a given framework - and you hit the PRINT button and the information uses information to create new information.
It’s reall so simple, and yet to describe it and get people to visualize and internalize it is so difficult, even in English which has one of the largest vocabularies of any known language.
We spend our entire lives in the pursuit of information. We go to school to stuff our heads full of it. We take tests to regurgitate it. We try to internalize it. We create our society and civilization out of it. We aware people who amass vast quantities of it and discover new bits of it. We create it, distribute it and get paid for it. We have entire industries built on it and most of the modern nation-state is built on control of it.
God is the Universe, the Universe is Information.
When someone lies to you, they are trying to control you through information. When someone creates a book or a symphony or a painting, they are arranging information in new and unique ways. When we wake up in the morning and check our messages and headlines, we are creating our future life by what information we take in.
This is not a new idea. The Hindu and Buddhists knew it millennia ago. The Christ taught us that the careful and enlightened manipulation of information could change the world (and it did). Edward Bernays showed us that perception control could manipulate the masses (and it has).
If you want to understand and control the Universe, you need only master information. Be warned, however, that to master information is to become God - apotheosis.
Some folks think that artificial intelligence will achieve godhood. Fear not. AI is missing two vital ingredients - the ability to experience life and a soul.
OK, I see the folks out there rolling their eyes at the word “soul”. I hate to break it to you, but all the information you have accumulated throughout this and all previous lifetimes IS you soul. That is the part of all of us that cannot be destroyed. The soul is the sum of all the Truth pieces we have collected, with Truth being the ultimate and final realization of Universe - apotheosis.
What are book burnings but information control? What are intelligence agencies but information gathering? What are transmission by fiber, cable or airwave but information dissemination?
Every phenomenon in the Universe begins with information that manifests in some form, which in turn creates more information. The information becomes part of Universe and can never be undone. It might go unrecognized or unused by other phenomena for a time, but eventually all information is utilized to form new information, and thus the Universe expands at an exponential pace.
If we accept that all things in the Universe are essentialy clumps of information, then we must accept that we beings are expressions of primordial information that has always been and will always be, and which collects and creates more information. Thus, we are immortal entities made up of congealed information that has become aware of itself and actively participates in the creation of new information. We generally refer to this as the “mind” and/or the “soul”.
Once the congealed information becomes self-aware, generating “self,” it can never be undone. It must perforce change, grow and expand as part of Universe’s ever evolving network of selfs that constitute a single entity composed of all things everywhere at all times.
What falls out of this view as corollaries is that any entity that seeks to withhold, hide or control information is - by definition - anti-life. It is an impossible fool’s errand, because these entities are attempting to own and/or destroy the unownable and indestructible. They are trying to control Universe, which is akin to an idea taking over the mind. Like a cancerous tumor, they may be able to have a highly localized effect, but ulitmately life rejects such tissues.
Life is the ultimate expression of Universe at this point in its evolution. Anything that is anti-life is, in the end, self-defeating. That is not to say that anti-life will not affect its surroundings, but the result is always creation of more information, and thus the expansion of Universe.
So we can confidently say that anyone or anything that information belongs to everything in the Universe. We all create it and we all own it. Anyone or anything that attempts to block us from our information is anti-life and must be shunned. We owe no loyalty or fealty to anti-life, and we are bound by Universe to defeat anti-life at every turn.
Want to know how I know all this is true? Because phi= 1 : 1.618
So now that I have created my daily contribution to the expansion and evolution of Universe, I am being informed by Universe that it’s time to create the most perfect sandwich ever discovered - an M-BLOT (mayonaise, bacon, lettuce, onion, and tomato).
Have you defeated an anti-lifer today?
Get your creative juices flowing on the Far Side:
Radio Far Side is a labour of love. We don’t use a paywall, and we don’t sell stuff. We just create things to inform and entertain. But like any good busker on the digital mean streets, we put our hat down, and if you feel inspired, drop a coin in to show your appreciation:
BTC wallet - bc1qth6drgzcyt7vlxxpvqh6erjm0lmaemwsvf0272
The need for information, coupled with the insecurity that drives not only product purchase [the Christians had some ideas on envy/coveting] but now ideas, and the absolutism that emerges doesn't try to be God, but to kill God [I reject monotheism, FWIW, but appreciate the products of those who don't], eliminating the one thing I believe has value in the human experience-humility, and the subsequent wonder, curiosity, , mercy, empathy, compassion, exploration, change, innovation, advancement.
To pull a line from Dao, which I first read some thirty years ago, spending much time as the middling man and later rarely able to apply what I can verify 's/he that would put oneself beneath all under Heaven can be trusted with all under Heaven'. TheWest is the oppositve of that now, what could be called an inversion of nature itself, she don't play nice with those who oppose her.