Many Worlds and Many People

many worlds and many people:

to assume that there is only one world where people all live is perhaps not firmly held by most, but to those on Earth this may be somewhat tacit, a view defended by the argument that it is not falsifiable as it seems no one has come forward as someone from another world and that Earth is such a busy, large world that even if other worlds did exist, they are insignificant in comparison.

mixed in with this, perhaps, is something of the belief in the 3D mechanical motion model being actual and not merely virtual, that is, the thought that people move in space relative to each other, etc. if other worlds were not part of this 3D mechanical motion universe, how could they be real is somewhat of an implied question.

however, if the 3D mechanical motion model is false and merely theoretical, albeit a convincing one, and people are fixed in their locations in space for all time, it raises the question, what is a world? how can many people be in the same world? now, a world is the geography that a person finds himself or herself in, is the simplest answer. for many people to be in the same world, a connection between them is required, so that there could be a shared geography.

now the question that remains, is everyone so connected to everyone else that we are all in the same world? it seems highly improbable, and perhaps never happens. however note that the common usage of phrases like "in a world of her own", "in your world", "in my world", etc., does seem to imply that this is all perfectly understood, in some sense, privately anyway.

CLEARCHARGE

Beyond the Control of Thought and Intention

beyond the control of thought and intention:

the insecurity and sense of danger we have always felt can be explained thus, simply that some things are out of our control. often we may delude ourselves with a false confidence, that we are powerful beings, our minds can force the situation to our own design, but is this ever real enough to be believed, given though we accept that 100% total power never quite seems true anyway? we may not view ourselves as having the power of gods, but do we presume to exert power enough to get what we want, more or less, and in a safe manner?

at the start of time, what we have is fate. there was no rationalizing, no planning, the state of our emotions and thoughts as they were at time zero may not even have made any sense, as such. we were disorganized beings. organization could only happen after some time had passed. after much history, we figured out what was fine, what was bad, and created value judgments, and preferences formed. creation happened. anyone would ask, after examining some modern construct or invention, how much went into this, how much time spent designing and planning and refining, and would conclude it to be a marvel of rational thought and intention.

however, it would strike any observer that many things that exist, that may always have existed, may not be a product of any thought and intention. they are parts of Creation that were not created, so to speak. there are forces at work that are simply beyond or constantly evolving too fast to fall under the power of our minds. imagine the situation at the start of time, assuming there was a start of time and that something mental that would become our present minds existed at that point, of course. to our modern selves, it would appear a random, irrational, chaotic jumble mix of things. rationality and logic came later to construct the world. it is highly probable that many things are pretty much unchanged and still with us. other things have been tidied up, so to speak, rationalized.

whatever sound is and whatever light is, existed back then, of course, and it is not much of a leap to assume that the basic sounds and even shapes of letters of language did too. what we did was to apply some matching and reasoning of ideas to fit what was available as sound and text. how long does it take to create a language? one year at least?

the biggest common fear is that of death or fatal damage. this hasn't gone away since the first day but in our lighter moments we may avoid consciously thinking about this. the very reality that things are out of our control and that danger seems real, that things happen unexpectedly all the time, is the unspoken threat in our lives. things can change abruptly and some things stop suddenly. perhaps invisible to us, things we cannot yet comprehend are going on all the time in the background. we certainly haven't rationalized everything because we do not yet know everything.

CLEARCHARGE

Time and Infinity

time and infinity:

is time infinite? well, firstly, what do we mean by infinite? if everything were to continue to change, then yes, time as thought of in the common linear aggregate sense is indeed infinite. only if change were to stop, theoretically, would time then have an end.

but examining matter, all that exists in space, and i include everything in this, does an individual least bit of matter have an infinite number of states? or is this finite? this is rather like asking if there are an infinite number of shades of colour.

if the number is finite, we can imagine a very large, but finite, chart of change for all matter.

perhaps change is somewhat like a tide of flowing water. it rushes in one direction, sweeping others along with it, but eventually returns in the reverse direction at some point. one would hope. it would concern anyone to consider that change rushes in one direction only to remain stuck there forever, never to return!

and perhaps early events exert a gravitational like pull from which we can never truly escape. for language has developed thus far and it is unlikely we would ever overturn it completely as it is now and start afresh.

a popular question is that of the eternal return, that we are doomed to repeat everything forever, that somehow we return to time zero only to begin again in exactly the same way. theoretically, if we admit that a least bit of matter can return to its state at the start of time, then it seems possible. it would be likely that for some individual least bits of matter, eternal return is completely happening, that some do repeat their changes forever. but what would make a return to time zero happen throughout reality? the only thing i can think of, is that time gravity, if you like, were to exist, that is, a strong pull back to the start, that matter is reluctant to change, or to change too far, and that it naturally reverts to its original state.

CLEARCHARGE

The Push Change in Time

the push change in time:

here we are examining matter at the micro level. again we assume it to be made up of individual least bits of matter packed together. at its simplest, the theory is that each least bit of matter is affected by its neighbours in its changes.

the proof of this lies in our eyesight. as an object moves across our field of vision or even if we turn our head, a copy of each pixel is made by its neighbour, and so the image is shifted across. here, a least bit of matter forces its neighbour to become exactly like itself, as if it were ordering, "become like me!" now turn your head to the right. what you see before you is everything shifting to the left. now there are billions of pixels in your eyesight but at the micro level what is happening is thus. each pixel to the left makes a copy of the pixel to the right and so the image is shifted to the left pixel by pixel.

this is the "push change" that a least bit of matter effects on its neighbours. and so, at the start of time, time zero, a fated, by which i mean completely without human intention, for that came later, sequence of events at this micro level came into play. initially, each least bit of matter had its own starting state but was immediately affected by its neighbours.

it raises the question, would an isolated least bit of matter change at all, if it had no neighbours to push it about, so to speak? there is no changing the existing order however. all matter is fixed in position and neighbours exist and there is no changing who one's neighbours are. does time then only arise because there is neighbouring matter that provides a push change? perhaps matter changes anyway, but one's neighbours have an effect on that change.

now it is obvious that there are many types of things or matter that exist. it may be that we may never be able to know fully how these different types of matter affect each other, if they do at all. it may be that there is no effect, or very little.

CLEARCHARGE

Zeno's Paradox of the Arrow Considered

zeno's paradox of the arrow considered:

in this paradox, Zeno states that a flying arrow is motionless, for assuming time consists of instants, in each instant it occupies a certain space only and is considered at rest, and therefore the popular notion of motion is impossible.

now the general conclusion from zeno's paradoxes of motion is that time and space are not infinitely divisible, therefore that the infinitesimal has no real existence and belongs only to the abstract fields of mathematics.

again, let everything that is be called matter. it is matter that fills space. and we consider space to be finitely divisible. the simplest theory is that this matter is made up of a finite number of individual least bits of matter, each only one thing to be considered, and the smallest distance is the size of the smallest least bit of matter.

what time is, fundamentally, is change in this matter. and we consider change to be discrete, if time is not infinitely divisible.

what Zeno states is, in my opinion, entirely on the right track. if we see an object move across our field of vision, what is happening in front of us is that, pixel by pixel, the image is shifting one pixel across, in moments, to merely give the illusion of motion. because we consider change to be discrete, time does indeed consist of instants. at any one instant, for the whole of that instant, only one state of a least bit of matter holds, and in the next, it is suddenly another.

CLEARCHARGE

Time and Space and Do Things Ever Happen Again?

time and space and do things ever happen again:

again, posit the theory that all things that exist, or matter, in this reality do not "move", that they are forever fixed in their positions in space relative to each other. i do not mean matter in the sense of the current scientific meaning. by matter i mean everything that is.

it is time and the change in state of matter, indeed the changing image, that gives rise to what is commonly thought of as motion and it is vital to note that this motion is merely virtual, our eyes playing tricks on us, and very much an illusion. where people are concerned, you are always the same real distance away from me, our spatial locations are fixed forever. nothing can make us closer or further apart. in meeting, it may seem that i am only an arm's length away, but in reality, i may truly be light years away in real space.

thus lies the difficulty in thinking about reality. if you are fooled by the 3D mechanical motion model world we inhabit, you believe people actually "move" relative to one another, that objects "move" and so on, when it is all merely just a product of what we see.

but what of time? our minds may become so distorted that even change becomes hard to believe! it is all too easy to imagine a timeless piece of rock that never changes, a place where there is no time. it is harder to think of matter that actually changes! how does it change? if infinitesimal change is not the case, then discrete change is. a least bit of matter is one thing, then suddenly another the next moment!

look at the computer screen in front of you. see how it changes, where your focus shifts. notice how your thoughts change in your head as you read. now in reality, the screen, or what you see of it, is intimately connected to your head and to where your thoughts are. as your focus changes as you read the script, the thinking in your head changes also. as both are connected, we can say there is a common time across the distance between where you see the screen and your head. we say "at the same time". this common time concept is what we primarily think of when we think of time. we assume there is, if you like, a common universal time against which all local changes can be measured. everything is thought of as happening relative to this. but the manner in which the computer screen is changing is not quite what is happening with the change in your head. the key is spatial connection.

now our imagination permits us to think of unlimited events that could or could not happen. however, i posit that at the individual level of matter, changes may be very limited. imagine one least bit of matter could only have two possible states, A to B and then back to A, in perpetuity. all too often in discussing time, as such, it is thought of in the aggregate and common universal time sense. in this sense, i do not argue against that time travel to the past is impossible, or that events can repeat exactly, or somehow i can travel back 100 years in time.

i am merely saying that what reality is, is composed of a vast number of individual least bits of matter, that so to speak, can travel back in time, or repeat past states, all the time.

CLEARCHARGE

The Person on Earth

the person on earth:

the issue lies in the transient nature of a life on earth. what you are on earth is not what you were originally. it cannot be disputed that a fully populated earth with everything going on did not exist in the beginning of time. this was all later. however, the very involved life a person leads on earth makes us forget all that sometimes.

the other question that must be considered in addition to what happens after we die on earth is that, what happened before we were born on earth? do we assume it must be something similar, that earth is a place, what came before and what comes after are also places? are they the same place?

life on earth, an advertisement:
you'll have a body, a human one, male or female. you'll start off a little one. you will grow up. you'll have a family, maybe have brothers or sisters. you'll have to do something with your life. there will be lots of choices of what to do, etc.

at some point, the self questioning will begin. how did i become this? the nineteen year old looking in the mirror, wondering about life. how did i come to be on earth?

the very complexity of life on earth absorbs much of the mind but the awareness that one day it will all end, that this life on earth will be taken away, cannot be ignored. what was it all for? what was the design? how much of the person i was on earth is real?

CLEARCHARGE

One or the Other or a Bit of Both?

one or the other or a bit of both:

about earth, there are the facts commonly accepted, about population, that there are billions, age, billions again, and so on. now it must occur to anyone who has ever experienced, either visually or audibly, what could be called "errors", that something is perhaps not quite right about the many assumptions people make. now medical science would have it that these "errors" are strictly those of the individual in question, so to speak, and not of earth itself or science. however, what if the fault does lie with whatever earth is and blame is not on the person's senses? inevitably, the more glitches in the system that appear, the more you become convinced that there is some huge electronic machinery at work underlying everything, a supercomputer that simply does not work perfectly.

by visual "errors", those that i have experienced personally, from most shocking to least, first of all, a sudden total change in place, to teleport to another location, secondly, less striking perhaps, but common enough, a sudden change in text, for example, looking at a printed train timetable at a railway station and the times change, thirdly, maps that are all wrong from what you know, fourthly, definite changes in books you have, on second reading, some passages have disappeared, fifthly, and often you cannot be sure about this, objects have been rearranged in the room when no has been present or they have vanished.

actually, the only ones who could firmly believe in all that the media presents about earth and what their teachers taught them in geography and science, the only ones who actually "buy it" are those for whom there are no discernible "errors", those who have supernormal lives.

it is all too easy, however, to dismiss all common scientific theories and leap to the other extreme, that all of life on earth is a vast computer simulation and perhaps therefore you are the only real person on earth and everyone else is virtual, if you like, non player characters or NPC's, illusions, philosophical zombies, etc. such is the nature of the beast when something happens that makes you question reality. it is most likely that neither extreme, the one of a densely populated earth where everyone is real and the other of the empty simulation with a real population of one, is true. it is not all or nothing, but a little of both.

it is interesting that the thinker always thinks in absolutes first or extreme positions. this may sound perverse, but often something may be true and false, even if only time and space make the difference. now it is true, then it was false! it is true here, but not there! define your terms! clarify! what i am speaking of is a tendency, perhaps almost a hope, to think that something would be true now, here and everywhere, for all time! that things contradict themselves moments later exposes this fallacy in our thinking.

what is the suitably complex, averaged world view? it is most probable that there are many people on earth but not as many as purported, and that some people truly are not real, they are part of the background simulation. there are questions about history too. if we assume the numbers prone to exaggeration, we would guess that the true age is much younger. when the first real person was inserted into the simulation earth is another question. note that to teleport rules out the whole model of classical mechanical motion in reality.

CLEARCHARGE

Time and Space the Individual and the Aggregate

time and space the individual and the aggregate:

when it comes to time and space we cannot really escape thinking in terms of numbers. how long has it been? how far away? indeed, the way we think of mathematics greatly affects our thoughts on both. what is the number 1 truly, and what of infinity? how does the abstract nature of mathematics fit reality?

we can think of everything that exists in this reality as one space, but we certainly do not think that there is only one kind of thing that exists. there are many different things is what we assert! but surely not an infinite number? i posit just as real space is not infinite in distance from end to end, neither is there an infinite number of different things that exist in reality. a "least bit of matter" is an individual part of reality, to which we can attach the concept of the number 1 and give it real meaning.

each "least bit of matter" changes on a different path to that of any other. in aggregate, we apply a common time to reality, as we are all connected, for we are all "here" in this one space. also i posit that, for time even to be measured with any consistency, that there are regular cycles at work, never changing, for eternity. theoretically, let whatever that runs the second have a starting position at A. It changes to B, perhaps then to C, then back to A, and starts all over again, forever. surely if things could never recover a past position or state, there would be no stability to the universe, things once seen or heard would never be seen or heard again? yes, i am saying that time travel to the past, in this individual sense, is completely real! it is aggregate time travel to the past that is impossible.

again, i posit that change is discrete, there are "frames" of change in state of a "least bit of matter". the problem lies with the mind and its thinking, when it entertains the concept of continuous change and the possibility of the infinitesimal. we can think of fluid or continuous change but we are fooled and we are then crazy, for that is neither what we are seeing nor hearing! matter changes one step at a time, individually.

indeed, has not the whole concept of the movie projector showing frames at 24 per second and HDTV at 1080 x 1920 pixels resolution been telling us something like the truth about reality and time and space, as it was all along?

CLEARCHARGE

The Many Worlds of Reality

the many worlds of reality:

let us start with the assumption that a person's consciousness was not created, but always existed, even at the start of time, that it is, actually, a fundamental part of the fabric of reality, and not something that developed later in some process of "evolution". the problem for those on earth is that what came before is just not remembered or if it is, not clearly. there is something about the birth process that wipes out vital memory. i remember nothing of life on earth before the age of three, nothing before August 29, 1975, to be exact. the date is stamped on my first passport, US Immigration at Hawaii. what came immediately before was a dream sequence that became waking life on earth. yes, i awoke in the dream. i was suddenly on earth, three years old.

as it is in dreams often, we accept a convincing alternative premise and cannot remember details of our waking lives, which would explain why we remember little of what came before earth and why we are so docile to begin with.

with language, there may be some confusion with terms used over time. our knowledge is not complete. we may even have missed fundamental truths yet. inevitably, as we learn more, we realize that what we had believed or assumed was not quite true and the meanings of words are updated. a "paradigm shift" happens. i am not saying that earth is entirely a dream world, only that dreams are the entrance to it.

it opens the possibility that some have never lived on earth yet. they are still in the old worlds and they may never live on earth. so they remember things about the early years that those on earth do not.

but what happens when we "die" on earth? is it back to the old worlds from which we came or is it reincarnation on earth? allow me to digress. now i am sure the word "die" originally meant something far worse! there is a fear associated with the word that precedes earth.

how do dreams end? either you abruptly wake up or drift back to sleep or they become yet another dream.

CLEARCHARGE

Time and the Question of the Limits of Thought

time and the question of the limits of thought:

thinking about time and what it really is has absorbed the minds of many. theories abound but we find some contradict each other, so not all could be true. we enter a thought space starting with binary propositions, but then realize that perhaps the issue is more complex than a simple question and the answer true or false would tell us.

questioning time, in turn, makes us question our own capacity for thought and for thinking about the truth about reality. the subject is so difficult and so easy to wander off the path into falsity is it that we begin to doubt that full knowledge could ever be obtained. could we ever know everything or even at least think about reality, what goes on, clearly?

again, it cannot be contested against that time is to do with change. and again, in the model with the fixed spatial position of all matter, that is, everything that exists, it is true to say that a lot of matter changes state, though it is not certain that all matter changes. now, whether change is "discrete" or "continuous", is a binary proposition, i hazard. and this is where the thinking about time becomes difficult, certainly for me. the discrete change of a "least bit of matter" or "particle", to use another word, is, i would say, far easier to think about the other theoretical possibility. for a period, it has one state, then suddenly another, and so on, never mind how long it stays in one state or how many states it could have. i admit this may seem impossible. but how to think about continuous change? to me, this seems even more impossible, if both seem impossible. continuous change, if it were to be considered, would be something that never "stops" and seems therefore that could not be measured at any point, if that makes any sense?

the question then becomes, does because discrete change is easier to think about make it more likely to be true, the theory being that the non-existent is harder or even impossible to really think about?

CLEARCHARGE

Time and the Chaos Mix

time and the chaos mix:

there are a few questions of interest here. what existed or how much existed in the beginning of time or time zero? and how much creation has there been since? do we believe inflationary theories or not?

well, let us fill out the possibility ideas space. consider the big bang theory of the universe, first very little, then rapid inflation to a lot today. it is easy to understand why this is popular, people have poor memories of long ago, so the start seems little, but time makes it seem as though growth is real, so there is inflation. consider something like the reverse, perhaps much early on, but then death and destruction is slowly wiping everything out! perhaps not.

things like colours and sounds surely either existed or always had the potential to be experienced right from the start? if we view reality as something like a soup mix of light, sound and unformed ideas that is eternal, always existed, then perhaps it is not hard to conceive that many things were not created by anyone, that letters of the alphabet and connections to sounds and unconscious thought existed in some unrefined form indeed in the beginning, semi ready made language that was quickly developed.

perhaps all of what time did was to bring order to the chaos mix at the start of time, a move from unrational complexes to rational ones. it is interesting to note that this would seem to imply a dreamlike state of reality at the start whereas waking life now is rational and stable.

CLEARCHARGE

Translation and Analysis of the Text

translation and analysis of the text:

"...such is the nature of the brand"

what does that mean? it seems to be a statement of emphasis that does not convey much meaning perhaps, but let us deconstruct or analyse it carefully, indeed treat it as though it were in a foreign language and make an attempt to translate it.

there are 3 key words: "brand", "nature" and "such".

"brand" we associate with big, popular products, for example, food and drink, probably the most common category where brands are found. it also means to stamp a name on something. so perhaps a popular brand of drink, with its name stamped on the packaging.

"nature" we associate with personality or it could also be about the planet, trees, plants, and so on. so, a person roaming the natural world.

"such" implies "very" usually, as in for example, "such a good..."

combining all three, we must find a theme that links all of these ideas. we then have something like "people really like drinking a very popular brand of soda, like Coca-Cola, when they have a picnic out in the countryside" as a possible interpretation.

CLEARCHARGE

On Matter and Space

on matter and space:

let us move beyond dualism, that that exists is either mental or physical, and idealism, that all that exists is mental, and physicalism, that all that exists is physical. these arguments, after all, only involve two concepts, the mental and the physical. may i suggest that reality is more complex than that. perhaps there are things that truly exist that could not be categorized by either term!

the external world as it seems, i have argued, does not exist, but i do not deny the possibility that physical objects may exist independently "out there". for all i know, there may be a permanent tree that is lodged, forever fixed in space at certain coordinates, and there may be a statue of a human body out there too!

even mental components vary, to hear, to see, and so on, so as to render the term as perhaps too wide. but are there "in between" senses, perhaps where light merges with thought, and with mood, for example? surely there is not just one base mental component that can change to very different states, for example, what becomes light cannot become sound, surely?

and can you hear and see things at the same point in space in front of you? it seems you can in a general area and so the question becomes more complex. allow me to digress, let us call all things that exist, matter. if we consider all the definitions of the word and all its usages, this seems to be where a common meaning is found. are there only 3 dimensions to real space? so it seems. theoretically if there were more, say 4 or 5, a sound and the light could appear to be at the same point in virtual 3D space. or, there are only truly 3 dimensions in real space and it just happens that sound matter and light matter are closely packed together in a mixture, and it just seems that light and sound happen at more or less the same point.

if there is more than that that is physical or mental, what is it? it seems that to make a virtual world work, it requires electronics. the universe may be a vast, virtual work in progress, powered by a supercomputer, with electronics forming connexions that translate everything to the senses.

CLEARCHARGE

The Neighbour Effect and Time

the neighbour effect and time:

here we reject the theory of atomism, that of solid atoms moving around in a void, as being the case in actuality. it only leads to the paradox of empty space and alarming questions as to what happens when atoms leave each other, if they were together originally, could they ever return, and horrifying thoughts of violent collisions between matter, spatial chaos, and so on. atomism could only be real in a virtual sense. why does atomism seem as if it could be true? because we see objects "move" and have extrapolated all sorts of motion theories based on what we see. again, i posit that all matter stays in the same "place" in real space, that it merely changes state.

consider the evil demon, who delights in presenting the world in a way that could persuade you to believe in false things. it has shown you an object that feels real, that seems to "move" in space and so ergo you believe that all things must "move". nothing really "moves", all "motion" is virtual. even worse, when the scientist examines something under the microscope, the demon presents a compelling image for the scientist to see, it fixes the observations so as to "prove" the scientist's hypotheses. of course, later paradoxes imply the theories are invalid, are actually false. confound the demon by examining all the possibilities! the clock is ticking...

what is apparent, on the nature of change, is that the picture of a object moving across the static pixels of our eyesight involves replicating a change in light, the image of the object, along its perceived path. this is the most obvious way neighbouring matter influences an individual least bit of matter. it makes the other the same, or almost the same, as itself. it is like a wave of an order through space, "become like me!"

perhaps we cannot know how a least bit of matter would change in isolation, for none are. everything is connected. least bits of matter are perpetually influenced by their neighbours.

CLEARCHARGE

A Shifting Mosaic of Time

a shifting mosaic of time:

so, let us again posit that nothing moves physically in actuality, that physical motion is but an illusion, a delusion even, brought about by the sensational nature of our eyesight, a product of sense naivete about reality, a gullibility born of the way things look and appear. now i'm afraid i digress, i hazard a guess that the original meaning of the word "physical" was to do with the human body alone, for that is what it still means primarily to me, but that this later mutated to also mean about inanimate objects as well, and so on. i am not going to deal with the conflicting philosophical concepts of duality or monism here. here let matter mean anything that exists, to put it most simply, whether it be mental or "physical". this is somewhat different to contemporary usage and concepts, but again i hazard a guess that this is the original meaning.

in a reality where there is no physical motion, where all matter is static in space, where all matter has permanent neighbours, so to speak, the popular concept of "motion" actually happening would be the horrific breakup of matter in reality space, the ultimate sickness that cannot happen, that things actually moved away or left!

now matter does not move, but it does change, though again i digress, perhaps not all matter changes at all, that is a theoretical possibility. now let us dismiss the mathematicians' and physicists' concepts of continuous numbers, continuous motion, even infinity perhaps, and certainly infinitesimals, the infinitely little. but how does it change? what is time? the only concept that is left to me is that, if you imagine the entirety of reality to be a massive solid mosaic, and each tile representing a "least bit of matter" which i have explained in previous posts, is that all matter that changes changes suddenly to another "state" or "version", there is a "holding" period where it stays the same, then suddenly it changes again to yet another "state" or "version" of itself. as is apparent from thinking about light and our own eyesight and changes, it can be deduced that not everything changes "at the same time", each "tile" to its own beat, so to speak. "holding" periods of time when a "tile" stays the same are different too. all this could be visually represented by computer graphics, i am sure, but unfortunately i don't know how to code a program to show all this! of course, all this is predicated on the assumption that change is discrete, that infinitesimal increments of time are not real, it only seems so perhaps sometimes, and that "time" is different in a sense, everywhere.

CLEARCHARGE

Very Young Earth Theory

very young earth theory:

yes, i do know current scientific theory is that the universe is billions of years old, started very little and gradually inflated to the present day. there was nothing to begin with but much today. to loosen the mind, imagine the other extreme that everything only came into being an hour or so ago, in which case, our memories of the past are false, and the universe was in motion with everything existent already.

some Christians believe that everything is several thousands of years old. there is another distinct theory, posit that reality is only a few hundreds of years old. in this, there is the element that many things, such as nature, existed from time zero, that these things are eternal. there always were trees, there always were humans, right from the beginning, and there always will be. however, modern Earth did not exist. it was created both from the world of dreams and people's imagination, and perhaps even by design.

on Earth, some people are real, conscious beings, others are simulated characters, perhaps most, like in the movie, The Matrix. as you get older, you experience more and more errors and inconsistencies in the coding, so to speak. you may even think you've switched to an alternate universe, but no, these things are just errors.

i have thought perhaps Earth began in the 1800's and reality is only a few hundred years older, perhaps true Year 1 was AD1572, to give an example. the first people born on Earth had simulated parents but gradually Earth has filled with real people.

will the Earth end someday soon, when all have left?

CLEARCHARGE

Do We Overestimate Reality?

do we overestimate reality:

to overestimate is a process of thought. first of all, the mind is imaginative, is it not? we can think of many things that are not real. we fade in and out of fantastic, even delusional, thought all the time. we may believe things exist that do not, we have capabilities that we don't have, there is the potential for things to happen that are actually impossible.

and because of time, many things have happened, it seems as though there were inflation, but the quantity of what exists cannot really have changed surely. what about the actual process of change? when we sense what seem to be different things, we may attribute to the mind a multiple number of sensory components. could they actually just be different states achieved by a fewer number? smell and taste are like, but we account for them as two senses. are there really so many shades of colour or could just one pixel of our eyesight become different shades? are we overaccounting when we consider perception?

am i just a little brain with an oversized 3D television set attached and loudspeakers too, who likes to fantasize and guzzle food and drink and pretend i am walking about on a material planet? the magic of television is that it can represent a seemingly infinite variety of life and suggest grand size of reality, but what is it really? just a few hundred lines of pixels rapidly changing.

CLEARCHARGE

The Imprecise Nature of Words

the imprecise nature of words:

but think, if words were merely tools to manipulate thought, to shape concepts crystallizing in the conscious mind, it would seem they are often but a blunt instrument, lacking the precision to control the hoped for outcome of perfect realization of the truth. not only that, when misused, they can easily lead the thinker astray, into the realm of half truths and falsity, or even madness.

what is conscious thought? what is it to think? now this is a world of objects and feelings and sounds. in that the mind is actually connected to the very fabric of this world, these things are highlighted, so to speak, or thought about, by the conscious mind. i am conscious of, i am thinking about various scraps of images, events that happened in my world, places i have been to, and so on. it is a tangled mess. in real time, certain parts fall away, new parts appear.

now all of these things are labelled by words. what words mean to me may not be the same as what words mean to someone else. inevitably our own life experiences colour and ensure that our individual complexes of words and the personal events and things seen and heard and felt by us, to which they are connected, are unique.

however, let us assume that words can have some universal meaning. even so, words and their connections are wrapped up with the past of the universe. when something totally new happens, it has the effect of altering the language complex, for it is a disturbance. and so it always was. the mind, both conscious and subconscious or unconscious, makes and breaks connections continually. as the words in a sentence are read, each word amplifies whatever it is describing, like a live current passing through space. the very act of thinking alters the mind, and perhaps even what it is thinking about.

we all have various conceptions of what reality is, or may be. all are metaphysicians. it cannot be denied that that affects significantly how we define words for ourselves. if i believe that time is infinite, for instance, and this was the original use of the word, this affects what i think when i think about the word infinite when used generally. my argument is that it cannot be divorced from this original plank of belief. so later i may think about infinite numbers as supposedly a purely mathematical concept, but i am still thinking about time all the while. it is almost impossible to separate later thought from its original basis.

if thinking were like guiding a ball to a target, the truth, then words in a sentence hit the ball this way and that way, each word carrying its own "baggage" from the past. often it is difficult to hit bullseye. how did words come into creation? well, it is not hard to guess that merely they were the words people first thought of when something happened, that they were "in the air" at the time. the language universe has its own inflation. we know new words come into being. what may be disturbing, for as ever the new replaces the old, is that parts of the past are lost, and we have no idea how we got here.

CLEARCHARGE

A World View Distorted by Schizophrenia

a world view distorted by schizophrenia:

what is a world view? the fundamental beliefs or assumptions made about the world, the universe even, and reality and life. what drives the philosopher in all of us is the need to know what is real and what is not. to be delusional or crazy is generally agreed to be a bad thing. people are supposed to be locked up in mental hospitals for this very reason. it may be argued that on earth, busy place that it is, such knowledge is not required to be a "success in life" and even that some confusion may not affect ability to "function in society", but this a weak argument, deflected away by the very overriding emotional demand to know the truth.

what does it mean to know? i know there are more complicated theories but two words stand out, "true" and "think", indeed, to think about true things. actually it cannot be further reduced as a concept. academically, if you had little confidence in your judgment on what to be true and what to be false, you would need to think about every theoretical possibility just to cover yourself, in the faint hope that at least you had thought of everything and at some point in time "knew the truth". happily, often the search for truth is a binary proposition, for it is either one or the other, though i am sure sometimes there are multiple theoretical possibilities, and therein lies the "third way" or fourth or fifth.

i don't think i am deceiving myself when i claim to know the conventional beliefs or assumptions on earth. i went to school, after all, i read newspapers and magazines, i've watched television and films, i have attended church before, i've sat through lectures, indeed i have consumed information and media. and i've seen what is technologically possible, telephones, computers, 3D virtual reality games.

let us deal with one of the most fundamental questions. what is motion exactly? it calls into question what you think about time and space, and ultimately decides what you conclude about the so called "external world" that may be highly convincing. can matter, a person, a mind, whatever, actually "move" relative to other matter, persons, or minds? happily, this is a binary proposition. it is either true or false. what are you thinking? i presume you are visualizing an object moving towards or away from another and thinking that might be actuality! in the model of the external world, this is entirely the case put forward.

but the whole question of eyesight, what i see before me, and to the sides, and i really do see objects at a distance in front of me, not in my head, if people were actually moving relative to each other on a round planet, how does the structure of my eyesight not crash into someone else's near me, so to speak?

i began hearing "voices" or "auditory hallucinations" and seeing visual hallucinations when i was 20 years old in my third year at university. after i had been sectioned or committed and released from hospital, i had the rest of the year off and returned to repeat the final year. in that year, i teleported twice. to anyone who has experienced teleportation, the concept of an external world is simply not believable anymore! the first time, i was at an ATM, i had got the cash, i turned away and then i was suddenly at the train station, about a mile away. i even started to worry what would happen if i teleported to New York without my passport on me and couldn't teleport back! if the external world were real, how could i move to another point instantly without feeling anything, even if it was at light speed? or was i a clone somewhere else in space, with my consciousness suddenly activated? no and no. Ockham's Razor would suggest the simplest theory is that, indeed, the external world is not real and that matter does not "move" relative to other matter, space is merely that that is occupied by matter, it is not a "vacuum" or "empty container", quite the opposite.

conventional thinking about schizophrenia is that it is a mental illness of perception, that sufferers are delusional, all voices are hallucinatory and so on. i suspect it is hinged on a belief in the external world, it is posited it is only our perception that has gone awry and reality is just fine, so to speak. if we eliminate belief in the external world, an explanation would be that schizophrenia is an acute instability of the mind, that our hearing and our eyesight are "turned up", which accounts for the "hallucinations", and the system that worked for so long to provide normality, is thrashing around wildly. if the external world is not real, then perception is reality, is it not, don't you think? anything can happen to a schizophrenic!

when i returned to university, i still heard people speaking without seeing them, the "voices". one day i was calmly looking at the door handle, making it move up and down slightly by thought alone. i was staring at the light bulb on the ceiling, adjusting the brightness, dimmer and then brighter, again by thought alone. objects disappeared, i never found where my dissertation went! you see the interesting dichotomy? on the one hand, hallucinating and delusional, on the other, maybe i was telepathic and had budding psychokinesis powers!

CLEARCHARGE

The Imaginary Map Scrolls of Separate Realities

the imaginary map scrolls of separate realities:

indeed, why would you or anyone assume that this is the only reality that exists? by the word reality, i mean everything that is here, in this space of ours, that is connected to each other. now the obstacle in thinking about other, separate realities is the simple question, where are they? you see the difficulty lies in escaping the referencing of everything to here and now in this reality.

what if every reality were as if a map scroll which could be laid out on a long table next to the others end to end? note the map scrolls would not touch. some might be large, some might be little. considering our own reality, would it be one of the larger map scrolls or just medium sized? it is easy for everyone to imagine like realities, with similar people, only slightly different.

there are specific things of our reality that we do not notice as peculiar or individual perhaps, for example, subjectively, gravity is downwards and our heads are at the top of our bodies. this is our bias. objectively speaking, the alternative upside down world with gravity upwards and the head at the bottom of the body is not that different.

i imagine the old wizard genius, who has worked out what every possible reality could be, its troubles and victories, the pitfalls each face and its limitations, its history even.

CLEARCHARGE

The Range of Time

the range of time:

when speaking of the range of time, i do not mean whether linear time is infinite or not. no, it could be interpreted as the general sum total in a macro sense of all kinds of events that happen in all time. i am sure, if we are vague enough in our definitions, this is not an infinite sum, for, after all, is the universe infinite? can anything truly happen? perhaps only the imagination is unlimited. for it is the integrity over time and specific nature of our personalities which limit our actions.

there is another interpretation. again, assuming the fixed spatial position of all matter, that is all that is in space, and yes, even are minds are to be considered matter here, is there a finite range of states that an individual least bit of matter can pass through? at this micro level, at any instant, this matter can only have one state, but when we think of the range, the sum total, we have something larger.

this naturally leads to the suspicion that everyone might be grossly overestimating the universe and themselves! in actuality we are not the sum total we may think we are, but only that which we are at any one instant in time. the argument that anyone can personally "grow" is at least somewhat of a fallacy! we may hope to retain the best of knowledge and wisdom, of course, and lose that which is false or bad.

CLEARCHARGE

Quantum of Change

quantum of change:

Zeno's paradoxes make use of mathematical theory of continuous numbers and the infinitesimal to put the case that motion is but an illusion. as discussed before, the key to understanding here is that continuous numbers are purely theoretical, they are not real!

now motion may be an illusion, if motion is thought to be the actual movement of an object or body maintaining its integrity or identity as it moves in the "external world", if the "external world" itself does not actually exist and we are all "brains in a vat". then such movement is merely the function of our eyesight, that is, the image of an object or body is copied to adjacent pixels and we see what only seems to be motion. however that was not zeno's point, i believe.

there are two questions here, one is about infinitesimal space, and the other is about infinitesimal time. the paradoxes arise when we consider the concept of the infinitesimal to hold. posit that there is indeed a minimum distance that has real significance in reality and that nothing smaller should be considered, that is, the size of the littlest least bit of matter, uniform throughout, that experiences individual change. there should then be no smaller "real" distance. can we use the general conclusion that the infinitesimal is not real enough when we think about change? for when we talk about time we are really talking about change. but what do we mean by change? yes, it is a difference in the same thing! therefore there are two things to be considered here, what it was, that is, the state it was in, and the difference. a difference means a sudden change! change is sudden! if we consider the infinitesimal to hold then logically a discrete change is in itself impossible and one second would never become the next second!

what could be true is the concept of quantum of change, that is, there are discrete "steps" of change. you can think of life like a movie's film negative, with 24 frames a second. but how is it that if, like continuous numbers, continuous change with an infinite number of "instants" is not real, it is so easy to think of? like somehow, something is always changing, so it is continuously changing, something like that. however, continuous change is not that easily definable or explainable, in a strict sense, as is discrete change, and there is the example of a movie's film negative. posit that the truth is always more explainable, with more real life examples, than something that is not true, a falsity. such we hope!

CLEARCHARGE

The True Population Puzzle

the true population puzzle:

we can say, yes, the human mind is flexible when thinking about the true population. it can seriously consider it to be anything from one, the self only, during a solipsistic phase, to billions, if not trillions. what do i mean by the true population? now obviously, my mind, or anyone's mind for that matter, bases many considerations or comparisons on the self, we cannot deny we are self-centred to a certain degree, and what we are may be most of what we can know. so, when this question is asked, everyone considers the same category, those that can be defined in the same way, that is, with a mind, a capacity to think, and a human body.

is this a worrying bias? to consider only those the same as yourself to be truly alive, perhaps? we worry very much about physical damage to the human body. it may be we are less concerned about damage to things we do not even consider to be alive, for they are so different, not human. perhaps it matters, perhaps it does not.

to suppose there are billions or trillions of souls out there is pretty much what earth presents. but where do they come from when they are born and where do they go when they die? do they go back to wherever they came from? onward to heaven? and is it possible to create a soul that did not exist? and if it existed, could the death of the soul happen?

now anyone who has ever experienced hallucinations, visual and auditory, can easily consider the possibility seriously that there are far fewer people who are real. once you start hallucinating, to put it simply, you are no longer sure what is real and what is not anymore. to give examples, you see text and moving images on the wall or floor, people suddenly appear and disappear, you hear people in the background and you can talk to these disembodied voices as well, are they truly hallucinations? i personally have seen a train schedule suddenly change completely before me, a train map of the country with the cities in the wrong places, and seen used underground train tickets that seemed dated in the future. i have teleported twice and i suspect several times not obviously as there was no sudden difference to be seen all around me, the explanation being that a distant street was visually smoothly connected to the one i was on. of course eventually, i was diagnosed schizophrenic and i admit i was crazy and delusional, but who wouldn't be confused with all that happening? in acute schizophrenia, the mind is so unstable, that anything can happen, which is why it is truly dangerous.

that i had truly teleported confirmed that the "external world", whatever it is, is not what it seems. most definitely, i cannot really "move" as such in the conventional sense, what i see happening when i walk is the world moving relative to me, not me moving relative to the world. my teleporting was a sudden change in my visual feed for my supposed location on earth. the frightening solipsism hallucinations induce, that you could be the only real person in existence and everyone else is an illusion, and the realization that conventional motion is a falsity, and merely theoretical, is what fuels theories that earth could be a kind of electronic computer simulation and the "external world" does not exist as such.

does it make any difference what the true population is? what if it were only 30? or 4500? everyone has considered billions. i have considered 1 quite seriously! whatever it is, if we ever get the true answer, we would have to adjust our thinking, "change gears" as to what we believe about reality. everyone has assumptions about existence and life, we assume we would function better with the truth, after all.

CLEARCHARGE

The Discrete Nature of Change

the discrete nature of change:

if change involves a difference in state, in that something becomes something else, any absolute difference, no matter how seemingly little, is still a change, and therefore change could be considered as discrete, for there is no "in between" as such. mathematical theory has its concepts of the infinitesimal or infinitely small or little, and of continuous numbers, however these things may not have a basis in reality, they are too abstract!

if, as explained before, all things that exist in this reality, fixed in absolute and relative position to each other in space, could be divided into least bits of matter, each uniform across its volume in space, then each experiences discrete changes uniformly.

the mind and therefore the thinker is quite capable of thinking about things that may not be true. this is the peril of thought. the thinker may not notice change when there are very little differences in state. big changes catch our attention, this is what discrete change seems, after all.

CLEARCHARGE

The Participation Rate of Creation

the participation rate of creation:

assume the beginning was not so long ago, that actually, there are tangible shards of memory crystals in our minds, about the start of time and what progressed from there. various religions put it that there were powerful forces or powerful people, or one very powerful person, in the beginning. atheism holds forth the other extreme, that the human being is rather devoid of any real power, that there are no gods, that we are subject to the whim and random nature of a depersonalized universe. in those who are agnostic or believe neither completely, these theories may not agree with memory which may still be present.

often it is posited that there was practically nothing or very little in the beginning, by both religions and evolutionists. this is where they agree. then there was either rampant creation, that is, the participation rate was at a peak in the first few moments of time, or there was a rapid inflation and increase in complexity of the universe by impersonal forces, nothing to with any gods or God.

now objectively speaking, it seems there is rather a gap in between the two extremes of religion and atheism, if we were to consider the more theoretically holistic range of possibilities, from the all powerful god to demi-god, someone with lesser powers, to magician, someone with a few tricks here or there, to a person with no magical ability or powers, whatsoever, to someone who can barely move or even think, a cripple, mentally and physically. we could intuitively reason that throughout the whole range however, that the participation rate was higher in the beginning, as everything was new, that there was greater opportunity to create things at or near the start.

let us assume that none of us remember the beginning. theoretically, there are two possibilities, one we did not exist as such, in the beginning, and two that we have merely forgotten it. which brings us to perhaps the most important issue on a personal level, did we exist in the beginning or were we ourselves created, in some part or form? was consciousness present in us, whatever we are, at the start of time, or as evolutionary theory would have it, it is the culmination of a very long, tortuous process?

at our most emotionally vulnerable, we are unlikely to present such pride that we claim to have done this or that great deed in the far past. we may not even remember well enough to pass the threshold of doubt. but suppose that anyone who seems very familiar with anything right from the start, seemingly without any explanation, may have had a part in creating it!

though perhaps there is a stability to the universe, not evident always, that belies the theories of religion and evolution, that disproves the case that this much creation or evolution could even happen. perhaps the world was born quite complex and semi-completed already! indeed we could be fooled by the volatility and complexity of what we see, for it leads us to extend to the assumption that much change generally may happen for the universe as a whole.

emotionally, what happens in the process of creation at the human level? first we become excited about something, we think, what a good idea! then we busy ourselves creating it. but then we become cautious. we might even be afraid we've made a mistake! we wait for some progress to happen from others before we take the next step, we become dependent. considering all the inventions and creations of the past, it is not the case that any one being did it all, obviously. as people made connections and dependency grew throughout time, it leads us to the possibility that no one can take full credit for anything anymore. we are all levelled down and perhaps this is a good thing!

CLEARCHARGE

Instruments of Thought and the Inflation of Expectations

instruments of thought and the inflation of expectations:

our thoughts form a large part of our identity, even though the content of our thoughts may not be unique, they may seem highly personal to us. of course thoughts may be expressed in words and imagination in pictures and drawings. language is an instrument of thought. if only all thought could be expressed in language! language could be criticized as a blunt instrument, that words often express only what is obvious and clear to us, that they describe only that which is manifest, an extreme condition metaphysically.

very obviously so, no one wants to be crazy, to be a victim of insanity! however, whatever its shortcomings, language can still be used to express an infinite variety of thoughts. perhaps not infinite in every direction or area, but still infinite in others. therein lies the problem, infinite thought in a finite reality!

the human being is a social creature. and the mind naturally wanders. true thoughts about people mutate into untrue thoughts about people. that is inevitable in the thinking process. as we effortlessly make up our own fictions and add to that those of others, surely we must sometimes be living with a rampantly inflated concept of human activity in the universe?

imagine a little girl in a single room in a reality somewhere. this is a simple reality. to start with she knows nothing of language but as her imagination grows and her inventive nature dominates, she create words and then a whole language. and she draws pictures, lots of them. eventually she can imagine earth. but there is no earth in her reality and there never will be. it is all in her own mind. at best, she has overestimated things a little, though with the sense that it is her imagination, and is only somewhat crazy. at worst, she is insane, has hopes that could never be realized and she has grossly overestimated herself personally and everything else in her reality.

a word conveys a meaning. now whether a word was discovered or created or merely happened upon, it first changed our thoughts to form a concept, it channelled our minds through a certain pathway. perhaps there is no satisfactory explanation as to why a particular word means what it means, that each word is a peculiarity of this reality. it does not stretch the mind to imagine an alternate reality where the same word means something completely different.

some words we use a lot, some very little, if we use words at all to think. what is the current state of the language in the most real, metaphysical sense? words and phrases come in and out of fashion. can a word ever escape its original meaning? does precedence always determine validity?

like a musical instrument, where we can try different notes, in language, the act of randomly combining words together may not form a coherent concept to the conscious mind, but perhaps this is what is happening at the subconscious level anyway all the time? we are slowly trawling through the infinite space of thought! of course, all this is not to suggest that we began at the start of time with our minds a clean slate, for yes, there is the concept of original craziness!

CLEARCHARGE

Change and Time

change and time:

what is time? there is time because there is change. as you are aware, time is measured by the cycles of days and years and it is assumed that it is valid to do so, that the concept of common time throughout this reality is real, that every bit of matter, everything that exists, moves in time together.

what is change? a different state in the same something that exists. i will avoid most of the philosophical debate as to whether something that changes can be considered the same thing. here are some words that may confuse the issue, fluid, infinitesimal, continuous, etc. the infinitesimal is a mathematical concept but i don't believe that it is a real one, in reality, i posit that the infinitesimally small does not exist. perhaps neither is real the idea that change could be somehow fluid or continuous. change could be discrete. a high definition television of 1920x1080 pixels may show a changing image that seems fluid and continuous but it is not, the mind is easily deceived here.

it is commonly held that time travel is generally impossible, but posit that past states of a bit of matter can be achieved again, that you can, in this sense, go back to the past exactly as it was and you can even go back to the state at the start of time. even if this may not be true, a similar state may be achieved.

what little is known about is how its neighbours affect change in a single bit of matter. what is obvious is the mimicking or copying effect. this is how we see an object appear to move across our field of vision. a change in image or state is passed on to the neighbour. after a lot of change in a bit of matter, perhaps it can be brought back too by its neighbour who has not changed or changed very little.

on another note, what of change and death? well, we must define what death is, first of all. originally, it was a word associated with a nebulous dread and a vague sense of "the end of it all". on earth it means the end of a life on earth or quitting the world of earth. if we apply the word to change, does change not mean the death of a bit of matter from what it once was? is time not then constant death? rule out the concept that something that exists, that has "mass" or substance, can cease to exist in any shape or form, become nothing, lose "mass" or substance. this is a slippery slope! only that, yes, it could cease to exist only in the sense that its state has changed. much thinking is all skewed in the vague feeling that we have all "died" long ago and ongoing change towards something very different is inevitable and that we can never recover what once was. but i have just posited that exact states can be regained, we can bring the "dead" back to life! on the other hand, what if change were something very "difficult", that a return to the starting position were inevitable, that the "gravity" exerted by the start of time position were altogether too strong, that we could be imagined as a statue in equilibrium, that we could never really move about too much? of course, these are extremes, but either or both could be relatively true at the same time for different parts of reality!

CLEARCHARGE

The Inevitable Abrasive Nature of the Web of Words

the inevitable abrasive nature of the web of words:

we may think of words as something insubstantial, perhaps just images in a book, text on a screen, sounds in our heads, but consider that they might be something more tangible, an essential part of the machinery of life and the universe. any procedure or social process in life on earth requires words, words make things work.

posit that words and their languages and meanings occupy their own dimension in space, that they are something as real and varied and substantial as the material of light or sound. they are an instrument of life. all words and their meanings form a web in space, all connected to each other. the ways they are linked and the conceptual distances between different words and their meanings are something we all know intuitively. and just by thinking and using words we shape and change this web all the time.

it is unfortunate that there are bad words, just as it is unfortunate that bad things happen. again it is unfortunate that we can carelessly trigger bad thoughts in others when talking. some words or phrases inevitably conjure up negative ideas, others, though neutral in themselves, may naturally lead to bad thoughts anyway, as they are only a short distance away. when they lead to bad thoughts about the person itself, calling into question its own beliefs about self, or play on its own worst fears, such that they might be true, the sometimes abrasive nature of words and language reveals itself. we are all party to fear and pride, such is the nature of the human being.

i fear this abrasive nature of words and talk is inevitable. often it is difficult to console anyone that frightened, or to validate anyone that proud. the perfect idealized conversation requires conditions of security and jolliness and mutual interest that cannot always be met. perhaps as the other person, you can only provide at best a sense that someone is not alone, that there is the other person who cares.

CLEARCHARGE

On Numbers and Motion

on numbers and motion:

there is Zeno's paradox of motion that holds that travel from one point to another is impossible mathematically for if you were always to travel half the distance again from that just covered you would never arrive. although theoretically possible, could infinitesimally little numbers simply not be real? if we assume space is finite, we could not even write an infinitesimally little number down, there is not enough room!

but what is motion as assumed in this model? that an object really moves from one place to another relative to a fixed spatial location! the other view is that everything has a fixed spatial location, nothing can truly move. what we see, which i think could be agreed upon, is that there is a fluid change of the pixels of our eyesight which shows the object's recognizable configuration flowing across our visual range. this is just the same as what happens on a television except in 3 dimensions. therefore if only what we see is real and not based on any material world where the objects truly exist beyond our senses, we could conclude that motion is only virtual and the conventional model is false. i feel this a fundamental argument in metaphysics.

just as infinitesimally little numbers are not real, can we apply this reasoning to distance in space? everything that exists, let us call it matter, is in its own fixed space. surely an infinitesimally little distance is not real either? there are differences in matter. matter adjoins other matter. therefore, we can reason that, in isolation, neighbouring matter, by definition, is different matter, for if it were the same or subject to the same changes over time, surely you could not argue that it is indeed another separate bit of matter. we could reason that the littlest distance that matters is the size of the littlest bit of matter. it would seem obvious then, just as infinite space is impossible, that an infinitesimally little bit of matter could not exist.

CLEARCHARGE

A Practical Approach

a practical approach:

earth is a complex world. it didn't always exist, i think that can be agreed upon. it may not always exist in the future. it is a belief, however, that the soul is eternal, that is, ever present in all time. how a soul can be placed upon earth, by forces beyond our control, is another question. in this view, we all come from other worlds to earth. and what happens when we leave? there seem only two possibilities, that we return from where we came, or that we pass on to yet another world, assuming that we are not fated to live again and again on earth, and that we never truly die.

earth can seem an alien place, always a sense present that this is not truly home and that it is only for a while. because life is complicated and we are required to make many decisions, some of which go wrong, it can be a cruel, hard experience. it would seem some people are driven by their ambition, they know what they want, but i am rather more sure of what i don't want, what i want to make sure does not happen to me. you could say i am more driven by fear not by want.

in every poor decision, there is often the failure to consider all the possibilities that could happen. we naturally make optimistic assumptions at first, but we need to be more aware of risk and the likelihood that such assumptions simply do not hold, that what we have thought about for much time does not happen at all. too often, i have assumed the best outcome and subsequently been sorely disappointed. ask yourself, first, what if it's not true and second, have i considered all the possibilities? what do i need to do? what do i need to not do?

unfortunately, regret is something we all suffer. we all make mistakes. to my mind, a life without error is impossible. however, we do become more intelligent about risk as we grow older, and a future of fewer lesser mistakes and without serious accident is something to strive for.

CLEARCHARGE

The Search for Truth

the search for truth:

to anyone, the thought that you might be insane or even just a little muddled, is something deeply concerning. to not know the truth is bad enough, to believe falsity is at best embarrassing, at worst truly horrifying. to live a lie, and then to realize so, crushes the soul.

the whole problem with thought is that it is too wide in range and somewhat random. we can entertain ideas that are wildly distant from reality, not only easily, but too often. this range can be a strength, to be sure, we can happen upon true ideas from a short start sometimes, but the thought process is like watching a building being constructed haphazardly with different concepts that may or may not form a complex that is true. but thought never ceases, it continues throughout all time.

but how, if we arrive at a thought, do we know if it is true or not? we have the ability to consider all the combinations, quite carefully even. does the truth return something from the void out there, a confirmation of validity? it is frustrating when there seems no way to prove whether something is true or not. we hope that the truth will unlock the puzzle. if the mind is like a computer, trying all the combinations that fit, it would seem a slow process, and often it is.

the need to know the truth about life and existence is not just an exercise in vanity and greed, to know it all, so to speak, for how can we ever be secure in ignorance or dangerous insanity? for example, everyone knows they exist, but what do they know of others who exist, how many and who are they? the range of estimates of number, if not hardened belief, goes from zero to billions, from the world of solipsism to an entire plural universe or multiverse, but even this is confusing, for how do we define ourselves and what the other person is exactly, that is, what is a living person and can someone very different from me be a living other person as defined by myself? to believe that i am the only real person in existence, the solipsistic nightmare, is a horrific thought. basically, you are god, but you can't control that much, everything around you is an illusion and you are completely alone! alternatively, to believe there are billions of people brings its own troubling thoughts, personal insignificance, difficulties relating to so many others and so on. this leads us to assume there is a magical perfect number of people, perhaps, a "goldilocks" population, not too many, not too few.

which brings us to the perpetual thinking difficulty, if you had the power, would you want things to be a certain way, just as you think, that is, if you were God, is this what you want to be the case? there is the danger of confusing thought with emotion. caught up in our thoughts, we delude ourselves that we are thinking about what we want, when this is not truly the case.

is the truth a resonant thing? is the universe a wonderful machine where the truth is the only thing that "works"? the conscious thoughtful mind connects to the subconscious to the unconscious to the rest of surrounding reality. there is a process of testing hypotheses perhaps. we are ever closer to the truth.

CLEARCHARGE

A Motion in Time

a motion in time:

the mind is an excitable creature and easily led by its own interests and concerns. when a lot happens, our senses force many changes in our consciousness. we are caught up in the moment. our minds are almost distorted by events, though these do not have a lasting effect on our consciousness, for like an elastic band, they revert to what they once were, or like sand castles by the sea, the tide washes them away, and our minds forget.

things could be divided into those that are volatile, like the life of our minds, where much happens, and those that are not, where very little happens. if everything could be represented visually and we could sit in a control room where everything was shown on a bank of screens, we might see such a difference, one mind's thoughts, the words and images on one screen, the passing of the day on another, perhaps a still image on yet another, which never changes.

memory and the future both relate to our emotions. when we are emotional we may remember things better. it is a motion in time, if you like, that is captured. and our emotions ensure that certain things must happen, things that we want, and that certain things never happen, things that we fear or hate. in the belief that the mind is eternal, that it always did and always will exist, the question of the start of time and our memory of it emerges. when there are many things unknown to us, we become nervous or even scared. on the first day, we knew very little, therefore logically, the day was one of great fear and emotion, so we should remember something of it.

CLEARCHARGE

A Note of Discord

a note of discord:

there were four of discord
to agree without hesitation was not the case
two were fearful
one was forceful
and the other silent
not that they differed on intention
but only in the execution
varying values of importance
where attention once held
so focus lay
and so set in alarm at conflict
in discussion
but together were they
and fearful became all four
but resolution came
in modifying their aims
so four became one
the same
and forward they went

CLEARCHARGE

On Size and Complexity

on size and complexity:

on first impression, the world, and the universe, seem a very big place. there is the sense, to anyone born on earth, that there are many places we will never explore, many people we will never know, many things we will never try. we walk a narrow path in life, aware that we only sample very little of what seems possible. the world is large and complex.

but complexity is not always bound with spatial size. little things could be very complex and large things may be simple. the permutations of a spatial arrangement become increasingly complex with the number of objects. and though an abstract example, in mathematics, everything is achieved with only ten numbers. and spatially large things may only have a few states, while spatially little things may have many. a tv screen has only so many pixels but it offers size in complexity as to what can be seen on it.

is so much possible in one life? or even desirable? what would we wish to avoid? and what do we truly want?

CLEARCHARGE

The Place of Consciousness

the place of consciousness:

located in space are many, or few perhaps, centres of mental activity, each point being where individual consciousness lies, surrounded by a vivid, fluctuating field, different and to a degree separate from all others. was this arrangement always thus or was it created or was it shared?

what controls the flow of conscious thought? other than light and sound? raw data from the unconscious mind? we are so locked into thinking about what we see and hear that other things have less of a place in our thoughts.

consciousness endlessly mixes and matches ideas together to form new concepts. some thoughts are well defined, some only vague. we don't always know what we are thinking about! consciousness is a speculator, an explorer, a thing that is always chasing knowledge and understanding.

CLEARCHARGE

The Rolling Complex of Life

the rolling complex of life:

perhaps because we are easily distracted and easily forget, for short term memory is fleeting, we like and do compartmentalize different aspects of life. family is one thing, work is another, popular culture is something else. but what is true is that all are concurrently happening in the universe and what we think is no little matter, for thought binds it all together. how it all fits together in the universe is not something we can see, it is not visible, how light is connected to sound, how everything is electronically wired, in reality.

the pessimist is trapped in a black hole of despair perhaps. but optimism is needed. the thinker is required to be an all rounder, so to speak. the law of attraction is a law of magic that speaks of the effect of thought on reality and that events are determined more by what we think than can be proved by science. and why not? current science lacks an understanding of consciousness and assumes that our minds are mostly perception, not capable of the opposite, that is, to somehow drive surrounding reality itself. there is even no term currently for what i am describing, apart from magic, a very old word. if we could be likened to a radio, surely we could send and receive, that is, be a two way wireless, not be just someone who can only sense their surroundings but not materially affect them?

the whole question of magical thinking is often dismissed as a symptom of craziness, but what if some of it is true? if i do such and such, the result will be good or if i do such and such, something bad will happen. we certainly don't know how everything works yet, what depends on what. can we prove or disprove everything? perhaps not and scientific hypothesis testing, within its limits, is impossible?

imagine the successful woman or man on earth, a meticulous planner no doubt, for do we really believe that success can be gained without it? they have filled out the possibilities, weighed the risks, become more businesslike in their lives. they think a great deal.

the very nature of consciousness is that of something malleable, volatile even, you can think of something and, within a few moments, find it incredibly hard to remember what you were just thinking of. perhaps it is a little like the flame of a cigarette lighter, dancing in a darkened room, illuminating what is going on subconsciously, and posit that the unconscious is indeed very larger than the wavering conscious mind. it highlights what is going on around us, it is a highlighter. the apparent power of consciousness is revealed in our decisions of course but what other secrets does it hold?

CLEARCHARGE

Between Fearless Optimism and Fearful Pessimism

between fearless optimism and fearful pessimism:

it all starts with a wish, a hope. we are happy, we think we can win at something, we can succeed, make progress. there is little or no fear, how can there be? we know nothing of the bad possibilities of the future. we are innocent. but those at the other extreme arrived by losing time and again, for they feel only fear and a conviction, deeply ingrained, that they just cannot win.

examining the path of the doomed gamblers of earth, where the odds are never in their favour, provides a useful lesson to us all. how does it all start, the want to gamble? there is the simple glamour of it all to begin with, the urge to prove to yourself that you are indeed a lucky guy or girl, that life can be exciting and easy, and, of course, everyone needs money. perhaps in the beginning, it is likely they won a little, or even a lot, which built a mindset, so set their minds to believe that they were a winner, and this mental setting was hard to shake off. beginner's luck became a curse. when eventually they lost heavily, they could not accept it, and gambled and lost even more, to oblivion.

i would say rarely does reality meet preconception for most. it always turns out slightly differently to what you thought. some you win, some you lose, sometimes something completely unexpected happens. in the end, it is about considering the risk involved in any venture. some risks are not acceptable. the only problem is, experience and mistakes and some misfortune are almost always required beforehand to accurately assess risk in life.

CLEARCHARGE

The Nervous Animal

the nervous animal:

such is the nature of the human being, an animal born with fear, nervous from the very start. fear of what? it is said some of our fears are irrational but could we ever be completely rationally afraid? perhaps it is just not possible.

we have several words that imply horrible, dreadful things but, if we are lucky, and nothing truly bad has ever happened to us, can we really think about these things with any clarity of thought? we have only a hint of what they entail. this is to argue the case that only someone who has actually done or really experienced something can truly think about it. the rest of us live in a dimmed awareness of such things.

but fear remains, it is connected to our thought, it swells when we consider bad possibilities, when we worry about our future, it can lead to irrational panic attacks when the impossible horror seems either totally possible or real already.

a girl walking in the forest alone, she keeps looking behind her, it just goes to show state of mind. perhaps she is scared of getting lost and looking back to get her bearings straight, perhaps she is scared someone is following her and she is all on her own. indeed, a lot of nerves are about travel and other people. given that it is a universal truth we are socially anxious animals, easing others' nervousness is a skill.

there is in human nature an urge to explore and to create. this is in itself a dangerous thing, not everywhere or everything is safe. once we have made mistakes, we are nervous whenever it seems they might happen again. could we ever be so aware of danger that we can avoid the whole learning by making a mistake thing?

CLEARCHARGE

Calculation and Consciousness and the Unconscious Mind

calculation and consciousness and the unconscious mind:

the human mind is not merely an observer and audience of its surrounding world, it is also able to think about what may be purely abstract and theoretical, it can process information in order to calculate a result. so often, a person judged to be most intelligent, is someone who is a powerful calculator, so to speak.

whatever it is in the mind that calculates, is it truly only an aspect of consciousness? or posit that the calculating component might be something based mostly in the unconscious mind. indeed, when we concentrate, think hard, conscious thoughts merely follow the workings of the calculating unconscious mind.

CLEARCHARGE

Awake, Asleep and the Cycle of Thought

awake, asleep and the cycle of thought:

there is an interesting universal question, that is, was i born awake or was i born asleep? i mean, really? let us explore what we mean by these two words, awake and asleep.

awake, conscious, seeing light and hearing, thinking about the world around us. asleep, though the lights are off so to speak, this does not mean that our thoughts have died, and our thinking ceases to exist, only that it has become more abstract, less to do with the very real senses of sight and hearing.

well, why can't we remember what we dream of, and what we were thinking of before we fell asleep? when sleep fades in, our thinking becomes blurry, less controlled by what we see when awake, and it is an often wild, volatile sequence of thoughts, unto the state of being dead asleep, that we experience daily.

what is typical in the states of being awake and being asleep, probably exist simultaneously all the time. in a sense, we are never "100% awake and 0% asleep" or "0% awake and 100% asleep", at any time. which leads to a refining of the first question, well, how awake was i, at true birth, and how asleep?

dreams are a strange mixture of the two, a fluid state that is similar to the stage of falling asleep, in that thoughts are often abstract, for we cannot easily define what we are thinking about.

is this an important question, the nature of our minds at birth?

CLEARCHARGE

The Relative Inch

the relative inch:

what is an inch? put simply, it is something to measure distance in space. is it an absolute everywhere for everyone? or is my inch different to your inch?

what if on earth the perception of sight was so wired to make everyone seem of a similar physical size while in actuality true personal size differed greatly? this is assuming the virtual nature of the world and the quite fixed position of all people in space. put simply, we are assuming the 3D mechanical motion world construct is but an illusion. yes, what if the largest human body were actually a hundred times bigger than the littlest, but on earth they seemed the same height? although it is obvious to any reader what the 3D mechanical motion world construct is, let me express what it means. relative to the earth, humans "move" about, change their positions constantly on the ground, while only 3 dimensions are "allowed". the paradox of empty space arises when we consider seriously this construct to be entirely real. if motion is only virtual, we can dismiss such thoughts as a false dead end.

distance and physical size so far, but what about density and variety in true space? i think, superficially, if we can see and hear things that seem to be at more or less the same position in space before us, we can assume that our own personal field is rather dense with a great variety of things in it, can we not?

but how to overcome the rigidity in our minds that perhaps 3 dimensions in space are all that there are? it safest to say this is the minimum. perhaps there are 5 or 6 or more, we just cannot see them is the simplest explanation.

CLEARCHARGE

Change and Time and the Human Being

change and time and the human being:

from the perspective of any observer, things change. because things change, this gives rise to the concept of time. the primary sense in which this is evidenced is in our eyesight. this is something obvious we can think about, the field of our vision is ever changing, ever moving. this does not prove that all things change however, and we cannot assume it, perhaps there are parts of reality that simply do not, and therefore are without time itself yet still very much real in space. it is a great part of our consciousness that the sun rises and sets and days and years pass, indeed perhaps we overemphasize this natural cycle, chiefly because we can see it. however there are things that cannot be seen, we cannot easily think about yet, but they change nonetheless too.

what is a human? a mind with a body, that principally can see his or her interaction with a 3D physical construct. because of his or her mind, a human can think, process its movements within this construct, and even wander off into abstract thought! also a human has emotions tied in as well, which can explain his or her actions. can a human think clearly about real things that it cannot see or hear? everything is connected, so perhaps he or she can. what is consciousness and what are our senses? does one gradually become the other? the power of abstract thought is that it can consider all the possibilities that could be true of reality. the crazy person does not get very far, perhaps. we hope eventually that the truth will fit, will work so to speak, and drive the solution to the puzzle of life and the universe.

i think it can be said that not everything changes as much as everything else. this may seem obvious but actually can be quite a nebulous concept. they have different "speeds", different "distances", in the way they change. we might suppose that some things change so fast or move so fast that we cannot keep up, we cannot think about them properly. some things seem to be out of our control. it's like a part of life was born at 360 mph, and that dangerous too! we might hope to find a few "safe" courses of action which we could repeat. allow me to express something i think is mistaken. we must stop thinking of time as an endless mutation that can never return, as a linear one way passage on the mathematical x-axis to infinity. just as it is night now and the sun will rise again in the morning, and blue will be blue and red will be red forever, time is not a one way trip to oblivion, as you would think in a paranoid moment. posit that things revert to their starting point. but though it is highly unlikely, what if time were an infinite loop, somehow everything reverted to its original state at the start of time, at the same time? what makes this impossible?

consciousness is a volatile substance, and we can forget easily. assuming it always existed, everyone must wonder what it was at the start of time. lack of knowledge is an anxious making condition. everyone still worries about their future, that hasn't changed! we can only conclude the state of nervousness on the first day of time must have been extreme!

CLEARCHARGE

Language, Meaning and Values

language, meaning and values:

are we speaking the same language? of course yes, but still...

do we mean the same thing when using a word or phrase? or do our own individual personal value systems conflict or vary sometimes so as to lead to misunderstanding or worse? the language is not uniformly contained in every one of us. we all use it differently sometimes, indeed we could so define the word "individual" from this aspect.

everyone has their own values or interests, stemming from, to put it simply, first what they do want, second what they don't want, and last what they would hate having. people's values are not ever constant, they are subject to change. but primarily, as human beings, we physically need houses, food, clothes, sleep, etc. these are basic wants, but superficially, we may crave other, less important things, which differentiate personality, so that we can conclude that we are individuals. we form our own values. we speak of what we want. and we hope we can find others with the same values.

that is not to say that words can mean radically different things to different people, but even if only in a little way, context and meaning can differ, to create surprise when talking. everyone, though they may not have have written it down or thought about it at length, holds a list of personal vocabulary, not far down in the subconscious and not far from reach, a chart, if you like, of words they have thought about, ideas and concepts with values and meanings attached to each. one person might say something with happy positive associations in his or her own mind, but heard by another, invoke bad or scary thoughts. such is the abrasive nature of contact with different value systems.

but how did language develop in the first place? was it rapid or slow? such is the pace of change in the modern world that you might suspect it was always fast. and what is it in the sound of a word that triggers meaning in the minds of those who hear it and how was it that many people could agree on a meaning? does it show like mind for all those who can speak a language? is this inherent?

and what is a word, in the metaphysical sense? it exists in handwriting, in print, electronically in the internet, and in recordings. in the sum of all minds in reality, it is linked to meanings, images, actions, and perhaps even other structures of which we cannot yet identify.

CLEARCHARGE

The Eternal Environment

the eternal environment:

posit that some things are eternal, that they exist in all time. then other things necessarily are created. what can we observe around us that might be eternal? things that seem ubiquitous, things that the world seems full of. humans, trees, houses even? for if memory is not clear, the path of history lost from the mind, time can be an agent of confusion and indeed, crazy making.

what is this a universe of? were certain things made by God, or gods or goddesses, or men or women, in acts of creation or did they always exist in some form, even if only latent? what if they were always present in the unconscious or subconscious, urging people to make manifest?

posit that time does not always seem rational, by which is meant, the record of progress shows logical anomalies. A did not lead to B and then to C, perhaps the order was B to A to C. perhaps then we could conclude that B always existed, indeed is eternal, and what seems the logical starting point A, came later. visualize if you would, a world at the start of time, complete with simple houses and trees and land already, humans walking the earth from the get go, a land covered with mist in the dim dawn of the beginning.

what of things truly created? will they last forever or are they doomed to perish, lost forever, the effort to keep them alive too much? could they only recur like the flowers of spring? indeed, is that what life on modern earth is, a short trip to somewhere so far from the beginning that naturally, it cannot last?

CLEARCHARGE

Measure of a Downfall

measure of a downfall:

many the reasons for failure or loss there may be, but the one often thought of, and what might be considered yet so unnecessary and yes, even avoidable, is pride, in the worst sense of the word. pride or arrogance, resulting in overconfidence and a complete sense of assurance, and of right, lead to tragic failure. pride before the fall.

it is easy to see how this develops in everyday life, not just in some ancient greek tragedy. an easy childhood and early adult life, several successes along the way, perhaps. it would build a feeling of success, things that to most would seem too risky or even dangerous, do not flash warning. and then something bad happens.

there are those that plan rigorously, no doubt, and carefully consider the risk in every situation. those that experience such pride perhaps cannot truly evaluate risk? they have never suffered setbacks that for most would make them aware of danger. it is always appropriate to question assumptions you make before deciding on anything. what if it's not true? there are always only so many possibilities. have you considered all of them?

"if only she weren't so proud of herself! she thinks she knows everything!" this describes someone who is so afflicted by pride, with a bad meaning. you can imagine such a person, proud, unsympathetic, unempathetic, self-obsessed and convinced of her own glory, unaware of hubris. and then the error that forces the situation to tragedy. when bad things happen, they are always prefaced by a bad decision, as anyone who has made mistakes is aware of, though of course, you could argue that this is overplaying personal responsibility for everything and that some bad things may be out of our control, though hopefully not. you could think that perhaps pride, in the negative sense, and insanity are linked. they are not fully aware of what is going on, so certain are they of their own infallibility.

some passages of life may be carefree and going about on auto-pilot may be fine for that period but there are also times when things come to a head and decisions must be made carefully, using the full capacity for critical thinking that you have, so as to avoid tragedy.

CLEARCHARGE