Don't Miss the Basis of Talk

don't miss the basis of talk:

to each there is a personal value system, what you think are good things and what you think are bad things. of course this doesn't need much explanation. on one end of the scale of bad things is total irrevocable death, though of course, not having truly died, no one would know what this is, if even possible. hopefully not! on the other end of good things, things like immortality, magical powers, health, pleasures, avoiding physical damage, knowledge of all things and so on...

"so at the time, i just thought, i don't think i get along very well with this person, you know, and not much more. i didn't examine it. that's what came to mind, and then i dismissed it. it didn't really seem to matter. but now, i wonder, why don't people like each other? or when they do, why?"

"because when they like each other they have things in common and in the other case very little or nothing?"

"right, that's what everyone says. but that's just a little piece of the puzzle, coming from a mental angle where you're thinking, like, what do they do together? anything? that's about shared activity. but what's more fundamental, if you approach the problem towards the base, is that every one of us has in the past put a value on everything. it pops up into conscious thought now and then, but i mean, it's always there in the subconscious, and especially when we're talking to someone we've just met or don't know very well, it's completely what we're thinking about."

"so we're judging each other constantly in the beginning? so i guess that's why we're nervous sometimes."

"it's like we've each assigned a numerical value to everything, positive or negative, positive is good and negative is bad. so in the beginning, it's a case like where two wary animals are sniffing around each other, each trying to figure out the other's value system. we're trying to find agreement. and then everything else follows on from that. but that is the basis."

"i'm visualizing psychic feelers we're putting out."

"right, but it's done through talking, or at least let's look at it that way. i say something, and even if i'm not, you know, intentionally doing it, i'm implying what value that thing has for me. it's inescapable."

"so every time it goes wrong, it's because of a mismatch of personal values?"

"that's my argument. and you can see how the phrase "nothing in common" is derived from that. it's like my values determine my life vector and if someone else's values are different enough, we diverge paths and go our separate ways."

"so two strangers meet for the first time in a public place. is it fate? it's because they share some of the same values?"

"exactly. they like the same food, for example. they end up in the same aisle or the same restaurant."

"or they both read the same article in a newspaper. they're thinking the same thing. they end up in the same place."

"so it's like a game, in a sort of way, you need to find something that is the same, or a few things the same. then there is something to talk about. in a way, you lose when you reveal a harsh difference."

"but does it really matter?"

"well why do people talk? curiosity about other people. what's going on, what to do? reassurance that people are the same in some way. but they also want to know things. i mean, everyone's looking for answers, right? so if you can fulfil at least some of that, that's not half bad?"

"i guess so."

CLEARCHARGE

Flexible Assumptions about Life

flexible assumptions about life:

"what happened when i was 20 was quite shocking to me. i mean huge upheaval. it's like i was born, i came into this world, i accepted everything i was told, and for a long time, i believed it all. but i suppose as a child, that's typical."

"there's a docile quality to childhood. it's like in a dream. you instantly accept everything you think about the dream world. in a way psychologically that is the most docile state perhaps, in that you're completely led by your thoughts no matter how strange they seem when you wake up."

"and the first thing i remember about this lifetime is a long series of dreams. well then the breakdown happened to me and all the craziness. but what it did was, it called all my assumptions about life, about the world, about earth, into question. it's like it scrambled my brain. i knew some of my thoughts were crazy, were definitely false, but then what if some of the assumptions i had when i was, you know, "normal", also false? how could i be sure?"

"you mean normal assumptions about life and the world?"

"yes, the ones everyone accepts, like the population."

"like seeing is believing."

"exactly. that everything you see and hear in three dimensions is somehow real is the core assumption. but when you have hallucinations, when you're not sure what you're seeing or hearing is real and what is not anymore, that changes everything. and you can never change it back."

"not to lessen what you're saying, but i wonder if, what if everyone experiences hallucinations, maybe just slightly in some cases, you know, not enough to raise the alarm, but it's like, no one admits to it!? maybe it's not a minority? or not hallucinations, in that they're not real at all, but a whisper here and there, you know, they're not sure if someone spoke or not, they certainly can't see anyone, but they're none the wiser? maybe they see something and think, that's odd, but they don't really question it?"

"so, so called normal forever isn't the case for anyone? that wouldn't surprise me. the mind is a delicate thing. it's an upset or something strange that happens first."

"what happened to you was your assumptions were shaken and you became a sceptic."

"no, you're right. that's why you have to have flexible assumptions about life. what happens when you realize you were crazy about something you believed for a very long time is that the shock doesn't wear off for years. you wonder about everything. like are the people i see real, is the world full of philosophical zombies or illusions of people? are the voices i hear, without seeing anybody, real people calling to me, or not?"

"and it's not definitely all or nothing. what if the answer is sometimes?"

"right. it's like changing gears. you wake up and think, what am i going to assume about the world today? you don't want to get stuck into a mindset that collapses when you find out some part of it wasn't true and never was."

CLEARCHARGE

Earth Quick and Easy

earth quick and easy:

"so it came to me. the dream world is created in an instant, right? or maybe not an instant, some of it may have been swimming around in the unconscious for a while, but still it's pretty fast, right? coupled with that, the idea that i dreamed my way into earth, well what do you have? the concept that maybe earth is somehow part of the dream world, or was created out of the dream world, and that maybe it too was constructed pretty fast."

"the word "constructed" that you use, that just goes against what we normally think of how things, you know, buildings, roads, manufactured items, are made, like really slowly and using mechanical means."

"right, mental manufacturing is quicker and easier than manual or mechanical ways. the difference between the dream and earth is that the dream world is a blur most of the time, but the dream world extension that is earth is clear and in more detail, but it's still just an extension nevertheless."

"well it's the detail and the stability that make it seem real. it's like a computer image file loading slowly, a few big blurry blocks to start with and then it clears up into detail. the dream is the blurry image and earth is the clear image. that's a thought. i suppose it's a problem for some, the whole earth thing and science seeming to work perfectly in a lot of cases. there's the thinking i've read that how could we tell if everything were virtual, you know, if it were like a vast computer simulation, and obviously this is coming from a position where everything seems normal and odd things don't happen, you know, like it's all physical science in perfect order."

"we see glitches, real errors in the coding of earth."

"yeah, like the program has bugs, if it were a computer simulation, that is."

"right, things have happened, definitely, that make it impossible to really believe anymore. it's almost ironic. it's like the only person who knows earth isn't quite real is the person running a pretty bad, poor quality "earth simulation computer program". he's the guy with the crappy software or computer. the guy with the bug free perfect program probably still thinks earth is completely real, all science is true, and Physicalism explains everything."

"perhaps, but maybe no one buys it all, believes in everything like that."

"you're right. i guess everyone has doubts at some point. you know, but yet we're probably dismissed as crazy schizophrenics. it's like, oh you just have problems with your perception, a few crossed wires there in your brain, that's what it is, which is somehow getting divorced from a physical world."

"well ok, back on track, so earth was created in an instant or pretty quick. so when did it start? because then the earth history that we have is a lie, right?"

"well, at the start, i guess we were all in worlds of our own or in little groups of neighbouring people sharing a world. and then we imagined and dreamed earth into existence some time later, and then we slowly started to populate earth, of course, earth being a world full of philosophical zombies to start with and just a few real people."

"your best guess?"

"i don't know. from what i'm led to think, i'm guessing earth began in the 1800's. maybe the first real person on earth came before. but then, i think reality is only a few hundred years old. i know this is very alternative. what we have in the general domain of theories is that it is anything from a few thousand years old to billions of years old. what i think they've grossly underestimated is how fast things happen and how large the unconscious is and what it's capable of and how much existed right at the start of time."

"but you're an Idealist. you believe in the greater mental. it's an extreme position perhaps. it certainly means you disagree with both Creationists and people who think evolution is true."

"people who believe in evolution believe in Physicalism."

"and ok, so what is the true date, assuming that one, an accurate calendar was kept right from day one, and two, that you know what it is?"

"the year is 442 and today the date is September 24."

CLEARCHARGE

Hallucinations Gone Wild

hallucinations gone wild:

"so that's pretty much how the hallucinations started. i was feeling quite paranoid, very alone. then i started hearing people's voices. it's interesting even though a lot of it was about what i was thinking, so i should have known really, i assumed they were real. you could say i was really naive about the whole thing. i was 20 years old. i didn't know what schizophrenia was at the time. and that all makes sense the normal way. anyway that's how it all began."

"but what triggered it? something must have happened. and what do you mean by makes sense the normal way?"

"in my case i think it was just fear. but to start with it was just auditory. the visual hallucinations came later. what i mean is i worked out that probably most of the voices weren't real at that time, which is more or less what a psychiatrist would say. you know, your brain's not working the right way so you hear your thoughts and so on. what i wanted to tell you is the visual hallucinations became a lot more in an episode i had over two years ago. i really saw things! at night i looked out of the window and saw buildings move and the atmosphere, it was like my house was a starship and i was flying over a huge city. that lasted on and off over a couple of days. it's when you don't sleep, you start thinking a lot, the hallucinations pick right up."

"it doesn't sound safe."

"it's not. you have to be careful when it starts up. but the thought presented itself to me clearly that if in the general equation of everything the mental component of reality were more, that the world even could be generated in a schizophrenic fit in a moment. and even before objects seemed to appear from out of nowhere, i mean that could be touched. i'm not 100% sure but i think i got an extra bottle of Coca-Cola in my fridge, for example. the thing is, i couldn't prove it, because i wasn't sure about the number. also, in the dark, i'd see ghostly images of extra cigarettes in the pack and i was kind of hoping if i could just touch them they would materialize. and then i'd never run out of cigarettes!"

"let me get this straight. so what you are saying is, a real magician is someone having an extreme schizophrenic episode!? magicking objects up from hallucinations?"

"yeah. i guess. but i haven't seen anything out of the ordinary for years."

"but can you make things disappear?"

"well, i have lost a few things over the years."

"if it's a world full of philosophical zombies, maybe you could delete a few people here and there."

"hold on. that's dangerous territory. what if you tried to delete a real person? not good. or just thought about it even? i don't want to go there."

"no you're right. but what if you deleted all the zombies to just leave only the real people on earth?"

"well that might sound fine to start with but what if everyone was left stranded? say 9 out of 10 people disappeared?"

"yeah, you're right again. but what i'm trying to say is, if only you could control it, it wasn't a dangerous out of control thing, you know what i mean?"

"no, i see what you're saying. it did occur to me that maybe all the other real people were in different countries but who knows, right? i had this experience a year after it all started, when i was 21, of sitting in a train to London from Durham and i had this definite feeling that no one else on the train was real, i was completely alone. it's just that the mood changes so drastically sometimes you're forced to go along with it."

"yes. that's true even when you're what they call mentally normal, not schizophrenic. what do you suppose will happen when you die?"

"i expect i'll start dreaming of somewhere else beforehand and then i'll wake up there one day. just how i got here. and that will be that, the end of my time on earth."

CLEARCHARGE

The Building Blocks of Thought

the building blocks of thought:

now what we have in our minds or our brains perhaps is a network, a web of connected ideas and concepts or what we might call items of thought. these relate mostly to real things but also those abstract. by real things, i mean images, actions past, sounds, and so on. yes we all have imagination and a surprising capacity to think about things that do not exist in actuality and also we can think about abstract subjects like mathematics.

now i digress. can a fiction, a made up story, ever allow us to wander far enough away from reality to ever be truly believable? a word always connects to something real. we cannot turn off thoughts about real things that we have experienced and seen and heard. a writer creates a work, but the audience has its own individual interpretation of it. of course, if we were less strict, yes it could be admitted that we all share a general sense of this work, but each individual brain whilst reading it works in its own way. i might mention the word "drink", but whilst i think of the coffee i've just had, a reader elsewhere in space at another time might think of whatever he or she just had, orange juice perhaps. the word triggers something in our own experience. what i am saying is that we cannot truly have a "clean" reading of any work, fiction or non fiction, for everything is coloured by individual experience. to deconstruct any work is to work out what is connected to what in the world of real things, to undermine imagination really, and in so doing perhaps we discover more of the impossible and the possible.

it is clear that the conscious mind is little in relation to the unconscious and memory. it is a slim "holder" of thoughts, like a tiny screen lit up on the side of a mainframe computer. it can only hold so much at any one time. it is volatile like a multicoloured flame of a candle or lighter blowing in the wind. i would say it is incorrect to attach all of our identity to our consciousness, for we are more than what we are thinking of at any given moment. i think, therefore i am, but i am not only what i think.

let's say an intelligent person's consciousness, or mental "holder", could have 50 discrete items of thought at once. of course, let us consider that this could be a variable number. perhaps in concentrated thought, even a 100 in one go, like the flame were adjustable. now the items of thought are like building blocks which a person might play with, each represents something real or abstract. in writing this work, i've thought of a computer, a flame, building block toys, etc. i have ghostly images of these things in my mind's eye now. i have a little collection of building blocks of thought. now what lateral thinking is, briefly, is the manipulation of these building blocks, creating a new collection or arrangement of thoughts, by adding a new, different block to what we had before, something seemingly unrelated usually. what do we have now in our conscious mind? what has the addition forced us to think of?

there is an argument that the consciousness is not the leader of the total mind, rather it is the larger unconscious that is so, even that calculation is led by the unconscious. then the concept that the unconscious is the supercomputer seems more apt. the conscious mind is more like a passenger viewing the scenery of thoughts.

CLEARCHARGE

To Forget and to Sleep

to forget and to sleep:

"...well, no, that's not the point. i'm not theorizing or speculating or whatever you call it just for the sake of thinking a lot. there is a purpose to it. i want some answers. really, like how did i get here? why am i on earth? what happened before and so on."

"right, don't get so worked up. i wasn't attacking your opinion. it's just that some would say, you know, here's a guy that could better spend his time thinking about more practical things, things that you can verify, be sure of..."

"i know, i know. and that has its place. i'm not knocking that. it has its value. but don't you think there's a mystery here? this a pretty vaguely discussed topic but there must be a lot of people interested. when i was young, i mean, i had all these questions but then, you know, life got busier and they faded into the background but now i'm older they're back. you want to know what i think? and i don't mean to force my ideas on to you but i'm pretty sure about a few things."

"go right ahead. and i'm not saying i agree with what i said. i'm just communicating an opinion from somewhere or someone else."

"ok, we'll get your true opinion later. no, so i've been thinking a lot about what i'm thinking while i'm thinking, if that makes sense, becoming more aware of how my thoughts drift, kind of keeping track of what's going on inside my head."

"right. being aware of your thoughts."

"yes. so there are a couple of things i've noticed. one, you can forget something you were thinking about within two seconds. it's really that fast. you know, so, normally you may think you have a pretty sharp memory, that you remember most things, right? wrong. you can forget something instantly, especially when you're thinking fast. i mean, i know, sometimes you can recover that thought if you dig a little, right, sometimes you can get it back."

"yes, it's amazing when that happens. but i never thought i had a very sharp memory."

"and the second thing is, when you're falling asleep, there is an incredible onset of these random thoughts from the subconscious. it's as if they're from an alternative life where the rules and baseline assumptions about your world are slightly different. and in a dream, there is always a concept to it. say, for example, i'm dreaming about being back at school. ok, i'm not actually seeing that much, but i know it's at school, exams are on, i'm obviously going to fail because i don't remember the subject material anymore and so on. and the dreams are so powerful they wipe out whatever our regular daytime awake thoughts are. you know, so i can see that if life on earth begins in a dream which you wake up from actually being on earth, i can see how you might have amnesia about what your life previously was."

"and it's easy to forget anyway, right? so the argument we might make that we generally have a good memory is perhaps not so true?"

"we remember a few things very well and a few more things pretty well but which only disguises the fact that a lot of these things slip right past us."

"well i don't think you're wasting your time. i mean, it's definitely not something that anyone could say they have absolutely no interest in. it's something that concerns everyone on earth, where they come from, how did they get here... i don't know. i guess it's a different focus. and it's like the brain can only focus on a few things at a time, right? that's why we forget too, i guess, come to think of it."

"yeah. do you remember exactly what you were thinking ten seconds ago?"

CLEARCHARGE

Infinity and the Big Picture

infinity and the big picture:

infinity is a mathematical concept but personally would you want it? or would you prefer to repeat a limited number of things? what if it meant everything bad could happen as well as the nice things? put like that, most would opt for a finite number of nice things to do, would they not?

now theoretically the number of shades of colours could be infinite. however they would still fall under the basic classifications, red, blue, yellow, green and so on. so how are we to regard infinity? that detail or the shade in this case is infinite but the big picture of basic classifications is limited?

we could reduce the spectrum of human life to very few activities. in broad strokes, we sleep, we eat, we move, we walk, we sit and we think and so on. is it not the degree in the detail that gives the illusion perhaps that there are potentially an infinite number of things to do?

let us consider the graphics of the old Commodore 64 computer, 320 x 200 pixels, with 16 colours. what could we see in one minute? here it is clear that the number is a lot but is still limited. does this example reflect on the whole of reality too? that there may be so many things that could happen because of the intricate detail possible that the number seems infinite but is not?

think about the start of time this way, at time zero, we had zero. as time progressed we built and discovered and made things and learned so we gained. perhaps when we have more than enough we simply stop and history comes to an end?

what if the big picture could be expressed as a picture of a group of stick men and women with a few houses behind them and a few thought and speech bubbles? are we really any more than that as human beings?

emotionally speaking, we are creatures driven by want. what happens when we finally get all that we wanted?

CLEARCHARGE

The Question of Time Infinity

the question of time infinity:

time is of change in the matter that makes up this reality. if we assume change is eternal, then yes, we could expect linear time to be infinite, that another second will follow on from this second, another year from this year, and so on.

but of change in matter, in the total of different states matter could have, what if this number for each least bit of matter is finite? also, assuming that matter could change back to a former state, that repetition occurs, that in a sense time could go backwards, so to speak.

the other assumption, of course, is that matter changes, never to fall back to what it once was, that each state is different to all those of the past, that change is a long road to infinity. now this does not seem likely given how stable this reality is. red is still red, blue is still blue. if this assumption were true would we not always see new colours that we had never seen before?

if we accept that time could go backwards, that repetition occurs in states, we arrive at the theoretical possibility that repetition for the whole of reality could occur, that eventually, we will be locked into a grand infinite cycle of change, where we repeat everything, forever. this is like the theory of eternal return or recurrence, but here we could assume that the start of time does not repeat, but everything after a certain point. this is unless some least bits of matter could have an infinite number of states.

let us imagine a very little reality composed of 4 least bits of matter joined together. change is such that matter does revert to past states and let's say there are only 4 finite possible states for each of these 4 least bits of matter. therefore there are only 4 quadrupled equals 256 maximum possible combinations of states at any one time, and here we can easily imagine repetition for the whole of this reality to happen.

now let me say i do not understand the metaphysics of change and how neighbouring matter affect each other. and perhaps the period of time each state lasts has an infinite range and so perfect repetition, so to speak, is not the case.

CLEARCHARGE

Errors and Progress

errors and progress:

"i think generally history is put across as this catalogue of progress, as a grand accretion of knowledge, but there's something lacking, a recognition of error, or even that we could be wrong somewhat. it's all a little one sided."

"you think historians won't admit to mistakes made? it's all a glorification of the past?"

"something more insidious than that. it's like we make errors in our thinking, and we follow on from that, we build the craziness up until it almost consumes us, for decades or hundreds of years even, and then finally we recognize we were wrong and then it's wiped out, and we don't really talk about it again. it's not like it's a cover up. it's just this vacant time that's been lost."

"right, what were we thinking? so life is like the game of snakes and ladders? we make mistakes and back we go?"

"exactly. it's like, the truth is immortality. the very thought that you could be fundamentally crazy about reality or something in life is really frightening at some point for everyone, i think. and all the time you were crazy you were on the path to mortality. but i mean, even the thought that you might never know the truth about something important is pretty disturbing to anyone, right? and no one wants to really die, right? all this time spent being crazy isn't just not desirable, it's dangerous. it's hazardous to your health."

"but someone might say, we may never know the truth, that we cannot know anything for certain?"

"yes, and i think that's reasonable, but my theory is the truth fits better than a falsity. it's like it's ultimately easier to think about the truth than something that's false is the best i can put it."

"that makes sense. the truth works."

"like i have problems with belief about modern science. because i don't believe that people are powerless beings in a universe with fixed unchanging physical laws as it's put, that these scientific laws exist without the human element, so to speak, forever unchanging. i believe people are creative, sometimes very powerful beings. i wouldn't be shocked if it were put that great scientists were actually gods who created science not men who merely discovered it, that they had theories which they made real. they actually changed the way things work."

"so the world is more mental than physical. it's malleable by thought."

"yes. and that's why thought errors are dangerous."

"and Isaac Newton is the god of mechanics?"

"right, something like that. where science can't resolve something only says to me that something is false in the argument. it's like someone who has teleported knows the whole mechanical motion argument is false, but that's what the world seems. actually, nothing really moves as it seems, it's only the image that makes it seem so. that's the only explanation that works."

"i suppose it's one thing to teleport all the time in your dreams, i mean you move from one place to another in an instant, but another, quite shocking, to do it while you're awake. but how could it work, if physical laws have no original basis, that they were, in a sense, created later?"

"if it were true, you would have to imagine an earlier world, where things like these physical laws simply didn't hold, where objects behaved differently."

"so it's like the popular notion that magic existed hundreds of years ago to be replaced by modern science, that the world was a very different place a long time ago?"

"like that. the essence is that science really didn't exist hundreds of years ago."

"what else?"

"so i've thought about time and how a movie projector is supposed to work, and it's along the lines of best fit. the argument is that time and change are discrete, like the frames of the film passing through the movie projector at 24 frames per second. just as you couldn't show a infinite number of frames in the projector, time cannot be continuous, it cannot have infinitesimal change, change is discrete. it merely seems continuous like a movie does."

"but if change is discrete, are the states of real matter finite therefore?"

"well if they are finite, i guess that means repetition seems inevitable, but there is still the question of time how long states last and does that vary? but i guess it's still too early to tell. but discrete change doesn't necessarily mean there are finite states, does it?"

"i guess there still could be an infinite number of states. i'm going on like infinite is a good thing, aren't i?"

"yeah. nobody wants everything to happen, right?"

CLEARCHARGE

The Lack of Connection to Separate Realities

the lack of connection to separate realities:

the natural question when separate realities are mentioned is where are they? for we think about space and distance a lot. the key however is to think about connection. we are all here in this reality because we are all connected, and space and distance have meaning only here. now other realities may theoretically exist but there is no connection, never mind where are they?

think connection and lack of, not space!

CLEARCHARGE

What the World Seems

what the world seems:

"so at one point in time it seemed completely real, for an instant, that i could be the only person in reality. it was my solipsistic moment. and let me tell you it was a frightening concept. but even worse was that, ok, i'm thinking i'm the only real person, but all the while, i'm in a crowded room surrounded by people! it's one thing to think i am alone, but then what is going on with all the other people i can see? it means a total loss of control, right? a reality of falsity that you have little or no power over."

"but you came back from that? you stopped believing that? how long did it go on for?"

"well, yes and no. that was one extreme. and people like simple thinking, right? either other people are all not real or the other side of the coin is everyone is real. now i had gone for years thinking that everyone was real, so long that i can always revert to that, but the thing is, i think i've come to the conclusion that thinking in black and white, all or nothing, you know, that kind of thinking is flawed. what is more probable, and in the end you have to deal with probabilities because no one is going to come up to you and tell what the truth is, right, is that the world is somewhere in between."

"you mean some people are real and some people are not, they're philosophical zombies?"

"exactly. the philosophical question of the guy dreaming about being a butterfly and is he really a man or a butterfly dreaming he is a man, i think the correct answer is both. what this example just points out is, again, we like to think of binary possibilities, it's one or the other, but the truth is, to put it simply, it's all real. there are elements of truth in both situations."

"ok. but because we're talking, we know the other person is real, right, and solipsism can't be strictly true?"

"yes. but the part of that where other people are not real, is what i'm saying, that is probably the case. just not everyone."

"but how can you disprove that everyone is real and we're all together on earth?"

"well one thing i do remember clearly is that my life on earth began as a sequence of dreams, each more and more "awake" like until we get to where i have my first clear memory of being on earth at the age of three, the summer of 1975, i mean fully awake, on a flight to Honolulu from Taipei. and the weird thing is, you'd expect to forget a lot of dreams, but i still remember each of the dreams in my pre-earth sequence. so what i'm saying is, earth has something to do with the dream world. sometimes, i wonder if something really bad were to happen in life here on earth, would i "wake up" from the waking nightmare, in the world i came from before earth?"

"but what you're saying about people wanting to think of distinct possibilities, you know, as if only the extremes could be true, it's because it's hard to make sense of something more complex where bits of both or even third or fourth possibilities could be true. you can accept that, i mean, but it's hard to know where to begin, and it's frustrating, because ultimately it becomes some kind of mathematical project, where you're looking at all the combinations that could exist and you try to assign probabilities to each. it's like you want to think life is simple but in the end it's a mess of Bayesian probabilities or something like that."

"i know. i'm constantly changing my assumptions. some days it's like, well, maybe i met a real person today and other days, no one around me is real, i'm wandering around in a waking dream. and it's not like in The Matrix, where in a sense the guy got out of being a brain in a vat. if you were a brain in a vat, you couldn't exactly stop being one. the "real world" in the movie may have more real people in it, that's all it is."

"that's slightly a whole other topic. what i want to know is, if some people are real and some aren't, how do you tell who is real and who isn't?"

"well as far as logic goes, and i'm not sure, real people are more shocking."

"because philosophical zombies are more a product of the unconscious?"

"right. they're more what you expect."

"well i've met plenty of shocking people, so that's at least a few dozen real people i guess. but what if you marry someone who isn't real, or marry someone who is real, for that matter? would you have a preference one way or the other?"

"well that's a minefield. i think i have the same policy for both when i'm with people. i can't get into obsessing, well, is this person real or not all the time."

"that's probably wise. but you can't exactly escape from that. once the question is out of the bag, so to speak, you can't avoid it anymore."

"well from a paranoid point of view, and i confess, i've lain awake frightened as anything some nights, both possibilities are worrying."

"right. if the other person is not real, then no big deal, right, is one way to look at any trouble. but what's the other fear?"

"it goes back to that moment when i thought i alone was real but was surrounded by a crowd. if that situation could exist, where the unconscious runs rampant, generating zombies everywhere, it just seems a dangerous place to be."

"so more real people, please. so i guess finally, what's a good number to hold in your mind as a best guess as to what the true population is?"

"i don't know, i wish i did. but i'm sure there are other worlds too and not everyone is on earth."

"come on, give me a number! something i wouldn't end up embarrassed by, should the truth ever get out."

"ok. maybe lower estimate high two digits, which would mean the collective unconscious is huge, like a supercomputer processing all these zombie people. high estimate, maybe a million, where you couldn't really tell the difference."

"so maybe median estimate 5 digits? somebody must have written all these books in the book stores, right?"

"the main variable we need to know is how much is the unconscious capable of? if it's a supercomputer, then anything is possible, right? then we get a low figure for the true number of people. if it requires that many people to produce all the literature and stuff like that in the world then it's a high figure. and anyway, you should probably even if you have the correct estimate consciously change your assumptions all the time."

"just to get used to all the possibilities?"

"right. exactly."

CLEARCHARGE

Talking Major Pitfalls

talking major pitfalls:

between strangers, or even good friends, but generally with those whom we do not know well or may be quite different from under the surface, there is always one thing to bear in mind, that is, any conversation may be, in actuality, beneath perhaps the most disarmingly polite conversation on top, a constant probing to evaluate each other's personal value systems, what they hold dear, what they want, what they do not want, and what they hate. it is often a harsh truth that those with different values cannot get along. optimists might say that people have more in common that not, but consider that even a few differing values, though seemingly trivial perhaps, may be a deal breaker in any relationship of any depth.

for those who love to talk, for the sake of talking in itself, are perhaps most likely to forget this vital fact of life. i am certain i am not the first to tell you that many relationships break up because the parties want different things. this makes it apparent that want is very important. for the talkative person, conversation is some form of art even perhaps. they may not necessarily talk that much about what they really want or need. maybe they just like the sound of their own voice! but as for the other person, they may be trying to analyse what the person wants exactly from what he or she says. you say, "such and such is..." they might interpret that as meaning literally you really want such and such, whereas that is neither the case nor the intention.

let us consider everything that brings up negative emotions such as hate, anger and fear, as things people do not want. likewise, a conversation may be a test in the same way, what they think is bad. now people do think the same way sometimes, with the same patterns. bad is, in itself, often thought to be a bad thing to talk about, so people are even less direct sometimes about it. however, as many think along the same lines, even the most indirect, subtly far removed remark from the other person could be understood as a mark of contempt. people are highly alert to what is valued as bad and an entirely innocent remark may be misinterpreted to mean that you judge such and such as a bad thing.

now talking may seem endlessly hazardous to the paranoid and the shy, even that differences too great could lead to hostility, or indifference at best, but where the parties must be connected or at the same place as fate decrees, there is at least plenty to talk about nowadays without revealing the differing personal value systems that might lead to conflict. we may not have, as optimists believe, more in common than we think, but at least we do have some things the same about which we can talk.

CLEARCHARGE

To Think Awake and Asleep

to think awake and asleep:

we have few words as signifiers for the various states of what is perhaps the most important component of our minds, our consciousness and its cycle of change. for something that is complex, that could be considered to have many different states, we commonly reduce this to two words, "awake" and "asleep", or "conscious" and "unconscious". is it really that simple? or is this a prime example of the poverty of the language in its current form?

let us deconstruct the situation. when we are awake we are self consciously thinking, our thoughts are clearer, and so the word "think" is linked to the word "consciousness". now i seek to dismiss the most common false assumption which springs from this, that when we are asleep or unconscious we are not thinking at all, that consciousness equates to thinking and unconsciousness to no thinking, like a dead animal in our sleep, so to speak. indeed, i posit that we are thinking all the time, that a fundamental part of the self is the eternal thinker, that we can never stop thinking, even in our sleep.

however, the quality, so to speak, of what our thought is when we are asleep may be very different. words that you would associate with thinking whilst awake are "clear", "focused", "distinct", "conceptual". words that you would associate with thinking whilst asleep or unconscious might be "blurry", "cloudy", "thematic", "moody", "emotional", "stuck", etc. generally, thinking when awake could be slow or fast. when asleep without dreaming, it seems slow. thought is most volatile upon falling asleep and waking up and when dreaming.

you would think, at the very least, this subject deserves a greater, more precise vocabulary, to eliminate the misconceptions arising from the over simplistic present binary terms, "awake" and "asleep".

CLEARCHARGE

The Journey of the Head Stone

the journey of the head stone:

and so there in the fixed heavens of space, there was a head stone. it could think for itself and see and hear. and it was not alone. it was sure there were others like it but as it could never really move, it could not crawl across space to verify and measure things in any sense. it spent its time imagining things, dreamed of other worlds, and when it thought hard enough it could almost fully imagine a largely populated place called earth, where humans could interact with other humans and lead busy lives. it was as if a traveller from this place was feeding thoughts and ideas about earth to it. it seemed almost real.

then one day, the head stone fell asleep for days. and when you sleep for days, the reality is that you forget. the head stone dreamed of earth and woke up as a very young child, in a new family, with a mother and a father, perhaps a sister or a brother too. for decades, the head stone lived as a mortal on earth. it grew up, experienced life. then one particular day the head stone fell asleep and died, leaving earth, to return to the world from where it came.

CLEARCHARGE

Concept of the 3D Mechanical Motion World

concept of the 3D mechanical motion world:

the concept is of a world where objects change position, where they "move" in three dimensional empty "space". if there is no metaphysical truth in this but this is a concept that is so universally known that it barely requires explanation, there is the question of how this came about.

of the basis of this, first, it must have been seen that an object seemed to move. second, it must have seemed that the body could move relative to its surroundings too. and so the initial concept of the 3D mechanical motion world was formed.

CLEARCHARGE

The World Model Alternatives

the world model alternatives:

"what i could never get around, if what they call the external world were real, was how my senses, you know, my field of vision and sound, was not crashing into other people's senses, if we were truly close together. i mean, i see colour at a distance. if you were standing in front of me, wouldn't that mean the colours i see are somehow inside you, and vice versa?"

"you mean, if your senses, your personal parts, physically extended, and how are they not interfering with people who seem near you?"

"exactly. because i don't see images in my head. i see them truly in front of me at a distance. and then i see the people in front of me. how can the two be in the same place?"

"well, the alternative is, ok, we don't really move around, so to speak, we are not actually near each other, it only seems that, but that we are connected somehow to a system that processes what we see and hear according to the 3D mechanical motion world model that we all know."

CLEARCHARGE

A Schizophrenic View of Earth Population

a schizophrenic view of earth population:

for the schizophrenic, there is always some confusion about what is real and what is not. in an acute episode, the whole 3D mechanical motion theoretical model system does seem to stop working. everyone has some subconscious awareness of or feeling for their surroundings. for me, the breakdown happened when i was 20, for a moment, it seemed as though the buildings and immediate geography were shifting, kind of like in a dream, but this was waking reality! it seemed possible that the walls could change at any moment and that i could be blocked off and trapped. if we consider philosophical idealism, this makes sense, for if the world is merely a mental construct and mentally you are in upheaval, anything could happen. and teleporting happened later, proof positive that the 3D mechanical motion theoretical model is not the truth about reality.

when people start disappearing and appearing from out of nowhere and what they say generally not makes much sense, this confusion about what is real extends to the question of the realness of other people, are other people philosophical zombies without consciousness? what if the voices i heard, or at least some of them, the so called auditory hallucinations, were the real people speaking and everyone i saw were a zombie? fortunately, there are only a few theoretical possibilities: first, solipsism is true, you are the only real person in reality, second, perhaps everyone you see and hear is real, or third, there are other real people but some people are philosophical zombies.

now if the 3D mechanical motion theoretical model is not real, and everything is fixed in space, of course we are all "brains in a vat". but this is not like the movie, The Matrix, perhaps there is no unplugging yourself from the machine for there is no greater external world to go to. it is that the 3D mechanical motion theoretical model is inherent to this reality and our thinking, we cannot help being perpetually crazy about this!

what is a non-schizophrenic on Earth? it is someone for whom the Earth program with its "science" works perfectly. the senses are stable. it is someone who sees and hears less than the schizophrenic. life on earth begins with amnesia and a docile acceptance of how Earth seems. but this wears off for the schizophrenic. the lingering question is: who are the real people and how many are there?

CLEARCHARGE

Talk As Pinball Minefield

talk as pinball minefield:

if conversation were as a game, like pinball, the focus of our thoughts the ball, and our words the paddle, some of the board would be minefield, for talking is not without risk. of course, it has its rewards. it satisfies personal curiosities, communicates truths, validates beliefs, makes clear what is happening and what could happen, and may bring about happiness and wellbeing.

where it goes wrong it induces hate, anger, sorrow or fear, perhaps in that very order. it is all very well to say, "oh everyone's the same", but truthfully, everyone's mind is mapped at least a little differently. everyone has a unique value system. cynically, if everyone wants different things, or even perhaps the same thing but to a different degree, what are they doing together? on the other end of the scale, into the negative, there are things people do not want, or even fear or hate. the difficulty lies in that, in a real sense, words do not mean exactly the same thing to other people, they are not connected to the same ideas, concepts and experiences as in your own mind. when i say word X, i am thinking of ideas B and M, for instance, but it may trigger someone else to think of ideas Y and F. F might be something unpleasant.

and because we are driven by want, people may assume that what we casually mention, we actually want, even if this is not true or the purpose of what we say. it is not exactly about being direct or indirect, there are different manners of speaking, some speak in an emotionally loaded way, everything closely connected to their own worldview, what they want, fear or hate or what makes them angry or sad.

to reveal acute differences in value systems would usually be thought of as a loss but then again perhaps talk is only a form of art, nice when it goes well, but not a matter of life and death. even if only some common ground is found, it is in some sense a success.

CLEARCHARGE

The Passive Dreamer to Earth

the passive dreamer to earth:

it is the passive mental state that exists that marks a person as asleep or dreaming. in the early stages of sleep, before consciousness has passed fully, thoughts become less clear, less "logical", and more "random". in sleep, a stream of fact-like thoughts present. often, when they refer to waking life and people we know, they are false, but the sleeper is susceptible to believing them. the sleeper passively accepts these thoughts. they form the "rules" of the dream world.

as i have posited before, earth is a derivative of the dream world, formed from the collective unconscious, the destination after being asleep for something like four days and propelled through a long series of dreams, progressively more and more like waking life, until you wake up in the meta dream that is life on earth. even though waking life on earth feels and seems real, it is still part of the dream world. if we were paranoid, we would be convinced Descartes' malicious demon had created dream world earth and hauled us there to lie to us and imprison us in a false world. however, we must accept that false thoughts and in extension false manifestations of these thoughts naturally occur and to blame agency where there is none is perhaps the case here.

but why is the sleeper or dreamer so passive? when we are awake, we constantly question or critically review our thinking, asleep we often do not. we could characterize the sleeper or dreamer as a docile, somewhat gullible, trusting, childlike person, quite unlike the more sophisticated, cynical, jaded person awake. who amongst us would have truly chosen to awake upon earth and who wouldn't have but are still here anyway?

CLEARCHARGE

An Examination of the Possible Effects of Neighbouring Matter

an examination of the possible effects of neighbouring matter:

though we may never be able to truly, fully "see" or know in a visual sense what is happening at the micro level of matter in real space, we can posit various ways matter affects its neighbours:

it makes its neighbours more like itself. this is the most evident possibility and explains how our eyesight works and how objects seem to "move" as the visual pattern or image is copied incrementally. this is how signals are passed through space, how we communicate, etc.

it makes its neighbours more different, as though, to use a 3D mechanical motion theoretical model metaphor, it knocks its neighbours off course.

it has no effect on its neighbours.

two neighbours tend to stabilize each other, so they stay more or less the same.

what we are thinking about is how matter's change changes its neighbours' change, so to speak.

CLEARCHARGE

Reality and Earth and Dreams and Hallucinations and the Perplexing Question of What Is Real?

reality and earth and dreams and hallucinations and the perplexing question of what is real:

"i mean, what is the commonly accepted view, or opinion, about what is real on earth, or at least what everyone has to assume? i'll tell you, that there are at least billions of real people for a start, right? and for someone who is not, you know, a schizophrenic, everyone you see is real and you have to deal with them as though they're real, and also that there's some kind of science that connects everyone together but i'm not going to go into that, because i don't know a whole lot about science or how it really works or would work. and then it's like, that is the only completely real thing, everything else, dreams, hallucinations, you know, seeing or hearing things other people don't seem to, and other worlds, that's all deprecated or even dismissed as not real at all. it's like you have to believe waking life on earth is the only real thing in reality and only people you can see and meet and talk to that way are real, everything else, imaginary, or a product of the unconscious mind."

"so you're saying they could be real? i may really meet other people in my dreams?"

"listen, i can't say what is definitely real or definitely not real. i can't prove anything. what i mean is, i have doubts about the thing everyone on earth has to go by. what i'm saying is, in a sense, it's all real, it's all found in reality, you know? it's all sensory experience. the question is, are the other people you meet in waking life or in dreams or talk to in so called hallucinations, are they real or not? i mean, let's look at the possibility that even in waking life on earth some people are not real. i mean, people like to think in absolute terms, either everyone is real or it's all a simulation but it's actually more probable that, unless solipsism is true and you are the only real person in this reality, that some people are real and only some are simulated."

"i just hope it's not solipsism that's true."

"right. who wants that? but as a schizophrenic, you have to consider, you're forced to think really, at some point, that the whole thing, earth, everyone you know, is just a huge hallucination, and even if it's not, it's probable, as a schizophrenic, that some people you walk past or even know, are just not real. they're hallucinations."

"wait. but couldn't everyone on earth be schizophrenic, at least slightly? i mean, that's how we all got here? you know, it could be suppressed for most people most of the time, but my theory is the earth thing is based on, it's derived from some form of schizophrenia that everyone has, like everyone dreams, though maybe schizophrenia isn't quite the right word."

"it could be. a lot of people hear things, more than are diagnosed schizophrenic. and people have imaginations, right? it's not much of a leap to think that this feeds into what they see and hear. and who said science existed at the start of time? i'm sure it was a little different to start with."

"yeah, maybe it was all a woozy schizophrenic mess to begin with. anyway, so it's like you have to figure out all the combinations of possibilities. so like maybe i mostly live in a simulation but i know a few real people on earth and when i dream, i'm completely meeting real people sometimes, and perhaps some of the voices i hear, the so called hallucinations, i'm talking to real people."

"right. the problem is, if you assume it's neither 100% or 0% anything, you're left with a huge scale of possibilities. it could be anything in between. but i mean, it does come down to the question, how many real people are there, anyway? if it turns out there are only like 30 real people in the whole of reality, well, i mean, isn't the unconscious that's feeding the hallucination of earth huge? to power the whole illusion. if it's really in the billions, well, that means earth, as given, as it's put up to be, is something like the truth. but if it's only in the thousands or even tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, it becomes harder to think about."

"right. like who are the real people on earth?"

"yeah. and what is everyone else doing?"

"do you think they're the guardian angels? wondering about poor old us who went to earth and left and when are we going to come back?"

"you know, you have to consider that everything that's out there, in books, in culture, in myths and legends, is somehow real in some sense, though maybe there's a distortion of the truth."

"not everything is real surely?"

"well, the case may be that some things are only real in thought, truly imaginary."

"you mean, like some things in history never happened? they made it up?"

"i don't know if someone consciously made it up or history just appeared, you know. there is a theory the earth, as it is, is only like less than 200 years old. at the very start it came with a history that just wasn't real. reality could only be a few hundred years old. the real year on the calendar may be something like Year 442."

"that would be A.D. 1572 for Year 1?"

"right. except earth didn't start until about 1850 and then it was mostly illusion, a simulation."

"so gradually more and more real people went to earth. i guess you just have to think of everything, every possibility. but if it were true, why would people want to think everything is billions of years old?"

"i think people underestimate how fast things change and really how much existed already or was possible at the start of time."

CLEARCHARGE

The Start of Time and Sleep

the start of time and sleep:

"was there a start of time? and if there wasn't a start of time, what does that mean? that there was always something that happened before any time? it's mind boggling."

"well, if there were an infinite time before now, you'd think we'd be more advanced, right? but what do we mean by the start of time? in the sense that nothing came before the start in the way that time progresses now with something happening before each moment? i can see that in one sense it really doesn't matter as everything that has time is always changing and probably repeating itself, so what difference does marking the start of time make? maybe it's an interesting footnote, you know, like a flag, but nothing more."

"no, it's definitely more than that. doesn't it bug you? also, if there were a start of time, it naturally follows thinking there might be an end of time."

"it's a little paranoid. and it does bug me too. first you're afraid, right, that there was no start of time, that we're already infinitely old, yet we can't remember anything, and next, if there were a start of time, that just brings up the question of the end of time, but thankfully i don't think it necessarily logically follows."

"OK, so there could be a start of time but no end?"

"right. and maybe, you know, it's not even the right question. maybe the question is, is change, or the number of states something can have over all time, is that infinite or finite? i mean there are other questions apart from whether there was a start of time or not."

"so it's like looking at time as a set of different states and it sort of goes back and forth? so if i had a bag of say five different marbles, each marble represents a different state, and obviously there are only five states, that represents all time for the marble in general."

"right. so one of the marbles is the state at the start of time and as general universal time progresses it becomes that marble again and again, perhaps."

"like to touch home base again. so if say we were at the start of time, were we awake or were we asleep?"

"i think we were mostly awake, as we are awake most of the time, right? but i think it could have been somewhere in the middle, when we are wide awake nowadays, that's an extreme position, and likewise, when we're deeply asleep, that's another extreme position, we were born somewhere in between."

"it's just i can't remember what happened even a few minutes ago sometimes or what i was thinking, let alone what happened at the start of time!"

"no, some things can change in an instant, sometimes there is no gradual in between. maybe change is discrete, not continuous."

"what do you really think? was there a start of time?"

"i do think, yes, there was a start of time. anyway, it's easier to think about."

"the realness of progress does suggest to me there was a start of time, i guess. do you think the truth is easier to think about? how awake do you think you were born?"

"i guess fairly awake but more like in a dream. you know, maybe the wide awake stable world is something that came later. i mean, maybe it's not original."

"some people are afraid to go to sleep, and i guess some people are afraid of staying awake too long. maybe you're right, the wide awake world is not that natural because it's different from the beginning but it seems the most real sometimes."

"awake, asleep, dreaming, it's all real. the problem is you forget what happens when you're asleep so it only seems less real."

"what we were talking about before, it's faster. dreams seem to last for hours but are really only minutes long, that kind of thing. it's shocking how easily you forget what happens in your dreams."

"it's like a balancing act. sleep is seen as the solution to being awake too long, but i guess likewise being awake may be the solution to being asleep for so long. both reset things."

CLEARCHARGE

The Voyage of Sleep

the voyage of sleep:

"...so at one point i used to think that sleep was kind of like being dead, but that wasn't very satisfactory, in that you don't really know what death is, right? all the time you're alive, being dead is just some vague as yet undefined state of being, or not being, like nobody knows what death is while they are alive, right?"

"i used to think that when you are fast asleep, you're just not thinking, so you don't remember anything when you wake up."

"right. so sleep, and in extension, death, seems like an absence of thought. i mean the word "consciousness" is used, but like all words, i mean, if words and thought were like food, a particular word has its own unique flavour, right? all the words that mean the same thing, all the synonyms, might be like one type of food, like ice cream, but ice cream comes in all these different flavours, and so do words. for me, the word "consciousness" seems to suggest something mystical and fragile and fleeting, but it means the same thing as the phrase "thought in your head", right?"

"how about head think?"

"yeah. so words have different connotations. but the most commonly used words might not be the best or the simplest words. sometimes it seems the oddest words get promoted the most. it's like the most popular sandwich was banana with mustard and cucumber on raisin bread! but i digress..."

"you were talking about sleep and consciousness."

"again the word "consciousness" just makes it seem like it could go at any moment, like it was a flickering candle flame or something, and you know any minute something could come along and put it out. you know, maybe it's just the wrong word."

"right, but we are stuck with it, don't you think? as much as you'd like to, you can't change the vocabulary. anyway, i don't believe that you're not thinking whilst you're asleep anymore. i wanted to try to, you know, like observe myself as i was falling asleep, and remember what was happening."

"monitor yourself, like thinking about what was going on while you were falling asleep?"

"exactly. and a few times as i was falling asleep, i forced myself awake, you know, sat up suddenly so i could think about what i was thinking just before. and it's like, as you are falling asleep, everything in your mind becomes cloudy and violent, in that your thoughts change really fast, and they don't make much sense. you certainly couldn't easily explain in language what you were thinking about clearly. and then, yesterday, i had been drinking coffee, and i woke up further along the sleep cycle, i think actually just fallen completely asleep and then suddenly awake and i realized, you are completely thinking all the time you are asleep, that you stop thinking is a complete lie."

"i know but what you are thinking, or the quality of your thinking, if thoughts could be conceived of as like a matter substance like a diamond, are completely different to what they are when you are awake. it's like the mind switches to another substance."

"yeah, so my head could be like a giant crystal glass marble, but it's a magical marble and keeps changing inside."

"yes. during consciousness, it's say more or less clear and slow swirls and waves happening inside but as you fall asleep, the marble clouds over like you're saying and it's almost getting violent inside, everything is moving and twisting and turning so fast. that's probably why most of the time you can't remember what happens at this stage."

"yes, it's ironic. sleep seems slow and peaceful but what is really happening in the first stage is completely not."

CLEARCHARGE

The Flow of Words and Ideas and Subtext

the flow of words and ideas and subtext:

"...it's like i was talking at cross purposes with her the whole time. maybe she thought i was judging her or something but she was misconstruing everything i said and then she was, i don't want to say attacking me back, but that's what it felt like."

"she was criticizing you, you mean?"

"not directly but how to put it, it's like she knew my weaknesses, all my faults and character flaws, and kept digging at that. i certainly didn't mean to criticize her or patronize her or whatever."

"in other words, you made some innocent remark and she took it the wrong way and then she got angry and then felt compelled to return what she thought was an insult."

"exactly. also, i think she's passive aggressive."

"but what does that really mean? instead of exploding with anger, you contain it, bottle it up inside or only release a bit of the toxic stuff at worst or become unresponsive and behave a little badly maybe? but is that so bad? a lot of people avoid confrontation and it's their natural reaction."

"i know, but part of me thinks it would be a relief if everyone just said what they thought, but yes, i see how it could get out of hand. you say things you don't mean, you being the normal, thoughtful, almost placid self."

"the question does arise, though, do people know what you think? is there some inadvertent telepathy going on? is there some channel through the collective unconscious or whatever, that streams the ideas and thoughts running through our heads? i mean, we filter out most of the bad stuff when we talk, but who's to say there is definitely, you know, completely proven, no way that there is any transmission of what we are thinking? i mean, scientists say you can't prove telepathy, but can they, by the same token, prove that there is definitely zero thought transfer going on?"

"so what you are saying is, i was really actually thinking bad thoughts about her, but even though i didn't say anything of that, she picked up on it? so i'm actually a bad person anyway?"

"no, i'm not saying that. were you thinking bad thoughts about her?"

"no! not until she started attacking me!"

"what you were saying about saying things you don't mean, what you really think and feel and believe being contradicted by what you say in anger, i look back and i see where i've made mistakes, you know? like why did i ever believe that? so it's a work in progress. but, i mean, i'm here, you're where you are, eternally, it's like why should we ever deal in anything so negative, you know? i'm just glad that we can communicate, we can talk."

"i know. there's all the time in the world."

CLEARCHARGE

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