What happened

“Do you know what happened? Does anybody?”, she inquired. I didn’t know what to tell her. My theory of her mind was too lacking to answer without questioning further. I was baffled. Did she mean most recently, the important stuff, all of it? Surely not the latter. For one to know all is to be divine. We all knew the divine was too meaningless a concept to remain to be used. For one to be divided by infinity, it would be zero and this is a pointless point indeed. We knew all we could, we all did. We all had and we still do. We will until the end. “What end?” she interrupted impatiently. She had no clue. “The end of us. Whatever we are. I’m sure you don’t know what we are either” I responded with a lack of compassion. For we all had plenty of time to go through it all. How could I let ignorance excite such loathing in me? Ah, of course, that’s the first reaction. We all know xenophobia is the normal response. We’ve just run out of unknowns to be scared off. She wasn’t scared. But her line of questioning was terrifying me. “Listen to me Sophia”, I said, instantly realizing that’s exactly what she was doing. “Never mind, I just listened to myself. I shouldn’t have kept going. What was I talking about again?”. “The end?” she kindly proposed. “Yes, the end. Our end, that is. I don’t know how to tell you this, but you don’t seem to know already, so I’ll try. I will. I know I can. Forget trying”. I explained everything. The end. The previous one, the next one, to what end the end is to end, if any. If that even makes sense. Being able to say it all aloud was comforting.

The next day, she kept on repeating everything I had said aloud. So she wouldn’t forget. She wasn’t bothering anybody. There was nothing to be said against it. It would have seem old in times when people would have written it down and never read it again. But she said it, looking upbeat and inquisitive. As if every thing she said would be corrected as soon as she uttered the words. But I was right the first time and there was nothing left to correct. It was perfect, as is. The next day, she mumbled to conversation we had. Her questions, my answers. Instead of searching for eye contact, her eyes hit the ground. And the ground was heavy. It lay there, unable to get up and be flung into space as earth does. But it did, and she forget to ask about it. She just made herself remember. Day three arrived and it was getting cyclical. She had internalized it almost entirely. She look worried, though there was nothing to worry about. She wasn’t going to forget any of it, but she ran the words through her mind. Running and running and running. Never stopping. Never letting up. Never allowing her to ask another question. I felt sorry for her. But there was nothing I could say. It was all true.

“Don’t worry about it”, I tried. But trying is for pussies. “It?”, she looked as though I had made her think of it all. “Everything. Quiet your mind. Be at peace. We all are”. “I don’t like peace”, she said with a trembling voice. “It is death” followed, expecting a quarrel. “Yes, it’s true. That’s part of life. Without it, we’d be a virus at most. A phantom. Not even immaterial. Maybe we’d be in existence. But it would be a lousy existence. You may think this is lousy. Maybe it is. But it’s the best we’ve got. It’s all we’ve got. All we’ve got left”. Sophia whispered “A poor philosophy. I dream of more. But do not ask me what, for I do not know.” I stated that this makes us equally poor and the concept loses all meaning. “You are no richer than I. But if you wish, it can be said that we are equally rich. For we have it all. We know everything that has happened so far. We know it to the degree we know how it’ll all end. We have the here and now. We have it all. There can be no more. We’re the richest anybody has ever been that has ever lived. We can’t reach more than everything. We’ve reached an absolute. Certitude. To expect more is to ask for the divine. More than everything. Infitine amounts of everything. It’s asking too much. It’s asking what cannot be asked, nor answered. It’s more and beyond sense. It’s nonsensical. I can only help you understand. Not be content with confusion. Only to contend that there is no confusion. There is only that which is. But this is not divine. This is within all of us. It is human and it makes sense”. “I still don’t understand”, she said before offering herself the chance to think about it. Her ladylike voice comforted me. I wished it would all last. But it didn’t. It never has and it never will. In the meanwhile, I’ll just stick to what I know. The here and now. Even though it contains everything, from beginning to end. I was hoping she’d ask again, what happened. But she knew now, and she’d never be able to ask the question again. The cosmos, life, consciousness. It all happened. Humans would disappear, life will disintegrate and the cosmos shall dissipate. The end of ends. The stillness moved me. Moved me nowhere. It was divine. The goddess of wisdom walked away and the wind eroded her footsteps in the sand. I returned to what happened.

Though Love

I was looking for the interview where the following is said:

BARSAMIAN: ….You’re very patient with people, particularly people who ask the most inane kinds of questions. Is this something you’ve cultivated?

CHOMSKY: First of all, I’m usually fuming inside, so what you see on the outside isn’t necessarily what’s inside. But as far as questions, the only thing I ever get irritated about is elite intellectuals, the stuff they do I do find irritating. I shouldn’t. I should expect it. But I do find it irritating. But on the other hand, what you’re describing as inane questions usually strike me as perfectly honest questions. People have no reason to believe anything other than what they’re saying. If you think about where the questioner is coming from, what the person has been exposed to, that’s a very rational and intelligent question. It may sound inane from some other point of view, but it’s not at all inane from within the framework in which it’s being raised. It’s usually quite reasonable. So there’s nothing to be irritated about.

But instead, I found this:
Though Love. Seems relevant because I just had a class today on Judaism and how they extracted moral lessons from all their sufferings (being enslaved all the time, having their elite be exiled, etc). It’s weird how it’s all connected. Coincidence and a willingness to associate loose data into a whole, it’s almost like dreaming. Speaking of which, I’m going to force myself to go to sleep instead of typing another blog post. Though love, but somebody has to do it. It’s the only way things are going to get better. I wish there was another. But wishing doesn’t make it so.

Expectations

If you expect people to start where you’ve arrived, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Anything worth knowing, has reached you either by sheer luck or hard work. To assume it’s a given for all, is to assume it does not deserve a special status. No ‘worth’, as I used the term. It does not merit special attention, it is not worthy. Those things that do deserve our praise, those things we enjoy in ourselves and hope others have; are often lacking in others. Precisely because they make you such a unique individual. And you’re not that special. You often fail in being cognisant of what you knew. You have to travel there once more. Again, and again. Untill you’ve arrived. Once there, you’ll look down and wonder why nobody else has arrived yet. If you’re all alone. But you’re not. Not when you’re born. Your mother was one and became two. Not when you die. You are one and become nothing. Not anywhere in between. Unless you try to be. But you’re still stuck with yourself. Or enjoying the lone company. Depending on your mental travels and where you’ve arrived. Even if other minds are the same, there’s no way of knowing. Unless you do know, but that others might not know. To assume they do, is to set yourself up for an appointment they’ll surely miss. Even if they’re looking at the same thing, they’re doing it from another viewpoint. You can try to take that viewpoint, but you’ve just created yet another way of looking at things when you do. All moments are unique. We’re never exactly the same. Except in Singularity. Be it the Big Bang in the past or the technological simulation in the future. Either way, ‘we’ cease to be. There will be no you or I to debate the issue. We might as well not exist. And we won’t. It will. But who wants that? Maybe it does. If it can will.

What’s left?

As the rain paints tears on my face, I realize all meaning has evaporated. Reproduction is no longer possible. Not of human specimens, nor ideas. It’s not nihilism. Things used to matter. They did. Truly, past generations had possibilites and offspring. In short, they had a future. But that future is here now. It has become sterile. This was the purpose. We have reached it. The future is now. It can be nowhere else. It has nowhere else to go. All that is left, is what we have now. Life. Though there is nothing to live for. There are no possible outcomes. It is the fate we’ve created for ourselves. It’s fatalism. We wanted a goal. An end. We have what we wanted. All of it. Heaven on earth. Boring, boring heaven.

You’ve got to hide your love away

“Oh no, you mustn’t do that!”, Yoko said. I don’t know if it was the war or the famine. We had always had both and neither seemed to bother anyone anymore. Sure, we had plenty of love in our hearts for all people and that problem had pretty much been solved with technology and reason. We didn’t need extra suffering. “Tell me. What are you feeling?”. The words pierced through our souls. She peered over the ledge and nothing looked back. Nothing you could see from this distance anyway. But surely, humanity had survived. We couldn’t have lost all of it. The end of the world as we knew it must have been an outer event. To internalize such a thing is the true death. “Why?”. Like peeling an unboiled egg, this could not end well. It would get messy. A shame. It had worked so well for so many for so long. Soon, years of work would be gone. And for what? For whom? For the ego. The ego that had almost vanished. This mortal coil, so fragile and difficult to control. Now, it was taking over again. We had reached equilibrium. Peace, stability. It would all dissipate. They had no clue. To explain would amount to untold cruelty. But the egg was being peeled. Up close and personal. Facing the peeling process, I felt sorry for them. I knew how this would end. Egg on their face. And the egg would be gone. Perhaps that’s the ultimate destruction of the ego.
Unspeakable, uncontrollable yet preventable. For the most part. To lose oneself is terrible. To make oneself disappear however. That was the final illusory trick of the self. And it’s all an illusion. As persistent as reality. As brief, as tangible, as handy. Interdependent wisdom that was neither there nor here. Gone.

What?

You won’t believe me. But things used to be good. I’m not saying they were okay, all things considered. They used to be, straight up, good. Technology was bug free. It just needed replacing and it did that automatically. We just used other tools, but it was all duable. People weren’t even really human anymore. They weren’t doomed to be free. Didn’t need to take any responsibility. The system was worked out and thought for itself. After the geo-EMP’s only basic mechanisms remained. Things we knew how to build and understood at any one point. Things we built really. We couldn’t hack our biology anymore. Cybernetics was back to wearing glasses. It was retarded. Truly, not since the Dark Ages had we been this lost. Then again, they didn’t know when the end was coming. They just believed in the apocalypse. Well, it happened. We’re in a post-apocalyptic world now. Something remains. Well, something…We did.
To make matters worse, I had failed. Sure, so had the world, society, everything to be honest. But it was already like that. Now I had failed. I had led the group astray. Now was not the time to fail. No wait, now it the only time to fail. I guess I was wrong again. Somebody else better take the lead now. Be the ‘leader’, as if anybody still can be. Take responsibility, use freedom. Be used by it. All you need is a good idea. The activity will be the leading principle. Exploring was out now. Unless we were able to think of a new direction. Somebody stood up as I pondered and nothing came to mind. He said: “Think for yourself. Question Authority”. Before I bothered to do the first I yelled out:”That’s what you say! What makes you right?”. Then I said aloud:”Hmm, I guess I messed up the order…”. Our recent misadventure was still plaguing mental faculties. Then I thought, I shouldn’t have said that reflective thought out loud. Soon however, I realized how utterly meaningless it all was. A sense of calm came over me. None of it matters. We will all die here. If not here, then some place else. Nothing matters. It’s fine. Relax. Stop being in such a hurry. It’ll end soon enough. Another man stood up and said: “I say we go the opposite way!”. Nobody else bothered to get up. Some women started working together and provided some food and showed us to some shelter. One gathered, one prepared, one explained where to go and when. Sure it was all useful. None of the men who had risen to power so far wanted to do something useful, though. They wanted to do something grand. Something that was left. Something undone. Something!
But what?

This work is intended as fiction and is to bear no resemblance to reality.

There was nothing left. Nothing of value. After the crash.

I told them I used to live there and they asked me how. I didn’t know. I lied. I said the government provided for me. It provided for everybody. That what it was there for. Before. Before the crash.

They taxed the rich and that was enough, I explained. Enough for me to live here that is. The middle of the city. People close enough to provide for each other. All within walking distance. Able to provide the services needed to have some honor. Honor had become important again. And was distributed via the computing power the remaining technology had provided. The programs only worked with an equal playing field and we got it. Our history erased, our memories lost, our culture destroyed.

It had become a meritocracy. Not a democratic society, not a sudden apocalypse, no more violence, none of it. Life was too short and we’re all that’s left. “Is that why you take care of us?”, they asked. I shook my head, shoulders and body. It was a strange response to combine it all. I said nothing. I should have said, “Who says you’re not taking care of me?”. But I didn’t. And it never happened. A lost chance. One among many.

Though, perhaps, not that many.

I always thought the end of times, if it were to happen, would be an egalitarian society. Something we’d accomplished. We’d distributed everything fairly. But fair had become a different things. Sure, after the riots (and they were smal in scale compared to the significance of the event) there was no more violence. None. That was surely a good thing. It wasn’t demanded. Not be force. Perhaps by fear. Or worse, apathy. People had stopped caring enough to be willing to kill. Life had become finite and too precious. I say precious because it had a price. It was easily calculable now. There are X people. We don’t know how many there were. We know there will be no more people. We know what we have. There’s no more virtual economy. There’s no more real economy.

First there were news reports about bombs and murders and disasters. It all seemed normal. Nothing suspicious about that. But it was the last news we had before it all really went bad. After the internet pretty much broke down, electricity soon followed. There was screw ups in the food supply and soon everybody who wasn’t growing their own plants was dead. It all happened so fast. The disasters piled up and nature wasn’t pretty after our fragile last fragment of ecomanagement crumbled. The floods. I’ll never forget the floods. The floated around. I picked them up. We’ve been together since. It was touch and go there for a while. Where did that phrase originate from? I never bothered to learn. Good thing perhaps. None of the planes can fly anymore. None that depend on fuel anyway. Or can’t handle a decent storm now and then. The humidity was inhuman. It was always humid now. I looked at the building and realized that if I’d live there now, it would never be as it once was. Besides, the person who lived there now deserved it. I deserve a lot, but this was a little too lucky to be honest. We walked away. Too many building have collapsed in the city. With the quakes and the rats, we may as well leave and had for the nearest town. It would be difficult, no doubt.

The remaining people had huddled together and every nucleus of Peoples that remained had gathered all material wealth. Entire trucks of non-contaminated earth was brought in with the remaining bio-fuel. We couldn’t get to the fossil anymore. It was all gone, outside of reach. Since then, we’ve not had a chance to exploit our surroundings. We’ve failed as a race. Well, as the human race. The little race that could. A rat race. They’re the only ones that could have survived us. But they didn’t. Our lab rats were released and a success. Artificial animals, though not born alive, were among us for a long time. But to survive and adapt in this climate, they soon become movable molds. Clinging to whatever wasn’t blown away by the winds. It wasn’t the smell that bothered me. It was the air. It became hard to breath when they were around. Whenever humans were around too, but never that bad. And it was always worth it. If things still have value. But they don’t. They can’t. We moved on. A village with some people remaining had decided that all were equally worthy. They had no outside contact, so they were entitled to do so. Provided they didn’t need providing. But that meant death. Perhaps they were right. A quick death. They couldn’t have lived over a month after we passed through. It was impossible to survive without help. We asked how long they thought they’d last. A couple of days, a week tops they responded. They were all so calm about it. Everybody was, I suppose. There’s nothing to panic about anymore. It ends with us.

Objective

Christopher Hitchens on The Sceptic’s Guide to the Universe said the following:
The affectation of objectivity:
“People use the word objective. As if it meant even-handed, or fair-minded, or impartial, or bipartisan. None of these words mean objective at all.
Objective means, that, in a confrontation with the evidence, you would be willing to change your own mind. And you continue to subject yourself to that.”
Wikipedia says (and this is slightly different, because Hitchens wasn’t talking about philosophy but about media bias being ubiquitous):
“Objectivism” is a term that describes a branch of philosophy that originated in the early nineteenth century. Gottlob Frege was the first to apply it, when he expounded an epistemological and metaphysical theory contrary to that of Immanuel Kant.
Oddly enough, for Kant, objective morality is not that unrealistic a goal (pardon the double pun). Wikipedia goes on:
There are many versions of ethical objectivism, including various religious views of morality, Platonistic intuitionism, Kantianism, utilitarianism, and certain forms of ethical egoism and contractualism.