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Endlessly puzzled by human life and its ferocity. Not truly alive, I am only going through the motions. This attitude never fails to infuriate girlfriends.

Monday, June 14, 2004

Immortal, but not enough time

Universe and Life, and self-conscious life doubly so, will probably remain a mystery without end. But, for a self-consciousness there is no need for proof of itself.
Perhaps,for a self-conscious singularity such as a human being, confronting this mystery-without-end, the best way to state the fundamental fact of its own existence is by saying, "I exist therefore I am possible".
I may not know what I am but I understand myself as a realized possibility.
There can be no greater reassurance for a human being than this. Certainly a concise statement it is, and yet, it ought to console (or repel) more than a religion because it too guarantees eternal life -free of moral constraint, from prize or punishment in the afterlife - it compels a clear slate to start your life anew, endless number of times into the bargain. We could almost call ourselves Time Lords were it not for the fact that all information (personal biography) gets annihilated at the moment of death.
Could such a "realized possibility" as yourself be prevented form occurring again in the future? Not if the future is open-ended, that is endless. No qualification can operate on endlessness without imposing a condition in other words - a limit and with it a contradiction.
I am aware of a mathematician who thinks he can add (+1) to the endlessness because there is nothing in mathematics to prohibit such an action; but endlessness is not a mathematical concept; mathematics will always remain constrained within endlessness.
Given endlessness, every possibility will be realized and more, will be realized endless number of times. From which everyday disappointments spring like water out of a fountain. For example: The only reason for not winning first prize in Lottery or Lotto, and even winning it endless number of times is that you do not have enough time; your life span is just too short. And that's the origin of your deplorable luck old buddy - not enough time.
Not surprisingly, endlessness leads eventually to the concept of Eternal Recurrence of things as probably F. Nietzsche has understood it on the basis that all that is possible not only may occur but must occur given endlessness of the process itself and the concept that finite number of qualities create finite number of permutations. Not only every possibility must occur but will reoccur endlessly.
Let's push forward with philosophical impudence characteristic of dilettantes.
We are this Universe, or more precisely, this Universe is self-conscious through us; it experiences and tries to understand itself through our senses and our mental processes.
All its phenomena, all the laws and conditions of the Universe (whatever this Universe might be) are, directly or indirectly, part of us because they have constructed us as we are. What goes under the name of scientific discovery is only the work of making those existing phenomena conscious. If one pushed this reasoning to the extreme then one could say that Universe is converting itself into thought, into pure self-consciousness. This is only my fancy and I have no means to speculate on this subject further because I don't know what a thought is; but the possibility of "Universe as thought" strikes me as irresistibly charming.
One can only insist that everything is natural (or nothing is) in other words,there is nothing to distinguish natural from artificial and attempt at such a division will always be gratuitous; the artificial is commonly understood as being a products of human intelligence.

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