The Purpose Of Time (read this!)

[7chakras]

'If God is complete, then why the phenomenon of temporal enfoldment?' - Terence McKenna

here's what i think:

The whole point of the universe is perfection. The universe begins incredibly flawed and simple - just a ragtag band of gases and matter with no good purpose or design. These days the universe consists of many millions of galaxies and solar systems containing life-sustaining planets. It could be, and I believe that Earth is the most advanced of these planets. The lucky one. The highlight of the universe. Any alien life in existence, no matter how humanoid, is merely a poor man's version of the **** sapien. We haven't stopped evolving though. Perhaps biologically, yes. We assist those with disability, and help to them survive with a decent quality of life. This didn't use to be nature's way. The strongest, better evolved survive, and the rest fall by the way side (as with Earth versus the other planets). Evolution continues, but internally, within the ever increasing capabilty of the human mind.

We are the only species on this Earth (and if my theory is used - the universe) with the ability to create whatever we can imagine into physicality, We develop the wheel - which enables transport to thrive and expand and promote exploration of our world and space. We develop the steam engine, which gives us automated machinery that can further our production and self-suffiency. We invent the microchip, the personal computer and perhaps our grandest achievement to date - the Internet.

The Internet destroys barriers - allowing any human being to communicate with any other human being on the planet. Technology is the new evolution. From silent film to colour film to video to DVD - all in less than a hundred years!!! Our capability to advance technology increases with complexity and speed every day. We are at the advent of human cloning and genetic science with the ability to create life from literally nothing.

I'm ranting and I'm sorry (it's difficult to squeeze all this in). My point is this. Evolution cannot continue like this. A good metaphor is a piece of paper. If you keep folding it in half on itself, over and over, the sheet becomes incredibly small, yet with many complex folds contained within.

If you apply this to the universe and evolution, then you'll see that pretty damn soon (Terence McKenna predicted 2012) we will run out of paper to fold. When this happens, time will cease to be. Humans will have explored every possible avenue of self-evolution (we will be omniscient) and the universe will effectively be one completed enitity. God will be us, complete, and time will no longer be necessary.

I'm not saying this is a good thing - it probably isn't. I'm just trying to give a reason for our existence. This is pretty big shit I know, but McKenna explains it better so read his stuff.

Any thoughts?

[aethereddy]

i hate to always be a skeptic, but i find your theory just as hard to grasp as any other faith or belief.

you describe humanity's evolution from a strictly darwinian progression to a more humanitarian outlook (helping handicapped people, et cetera). however, this ignores humanity's self-genocidal tendencies. wait, you say, isn't people killing each other darwinian? not at this day in age. take for example, drunk drivers. in most cases, drunk driving will kill the drunk driver, and remove him/herself from the gene pool, however, there is an extremely high chance of the drunk driver killing one or more innocent bystanders, removing possibly valuable genes from the genepool; this is contradictory to darwin's theory.

speaking of theory, everything they've ever taught you in science is a theory; in other words, it has yet to be disproven.

and speaking of science, if you had payed attention in physics or chemistry, you would know it is impossible create something from "literally nothing." (i know, this is based upon theory, but all those people trying to create life, as you claim, must operate under this theory)

the internet, as it is now, is not the end-all and be-all of technological development. for the internet to break down barriers of communication between any two human beings, every human being would need to have acess to the internet. i suggest you spend some time outside and appreciate the beauty and complexity far beyond human creation in nature.

about the paper folding, may i hasten to say faulty analogy? you can fold an 8 1/2 X 11 inch piece of paper in half 9 times, if you're lucky. and then the piece of paper is exactly the same size as it was before, just in vastly different proportions. now that you have this little ball of paper you can't fold any more, do you just stop? there are so many more possibilities that can happen with this piece of paper. what if you unfold it again, and fold it a different way? what if you take out your lighter and burn it to ashes?

now, if there is an absolute maximum to evolutionary advancement, it makes more sense to me that the path of evolution follows a logrithmic curve (like everything else in nature), rather than the exponential curve you describe.

it's an interesting idea, and if i had more time, i might investigate the works of this mckenna fellow, but i remain to be convinced.

p.s. 2012 sounds like third impact from ng:e

[neo_taboolie]

Originally posted by aethereddy
i hate to always be a skeptic, but i find your theory just as hard to grasp as any other faith or belief...
but i remain to be convinced.

Hmmmm, "read this", I'm wondering whether this would prove to be something useful to fill in time or argue about. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but this is drawing a line to where debate could take us, I see it as a thread that will lead to nothing or intense discussion on evolution.

These things are so difficult to analyse without a difference of opinion... and like aethereddy said; "it's as hard to grasp as any other faith or belief..."

So although I haven't finished adding my two cents, I don't think that anyone wants to hear it and although your ideas can be interesting and stimulating there is just too much complexity in the theories to be able to narrow it down to folding of a paper...

-don't just call me a pessimist, try and read between the lines-

[ThreeDeviations]

The original post stated....
"Any alien life in existence, no matter how humanoid, is merely a poor man's version of the **** sapien."


"No matter how humanoid?"
As if humanoid is synoymous with advanced??

There's no way to accurately compare life on Earth, to life that originated/began elsewhere.

Circumstances/Variables (at least originally) would have to be the same in order to derive any meaningful analysis... even then, there's no actual criteria for anyone to make "accurate" conclusions from because there's no reference point which tells us what's right or wrong... evolved or not. You could say the Bible (if you believe life is the work of God) is a basis to draw right from wrong... but then are you supposed to hold alien life to the standard of what our Earthly Bible says? No.

If alien life does exist... and has visited our planet on ground or from the air.... we'd perceive that they're technologically well beyond our capabilities. However, that's not necessarily true either. Their environment could (would) be different, their resources could be different, their everything could be different... which means any comparison is pointless.... unless you're just going by our "human" standard on Earth. But what's the point in using a human reference point if you're going to compare it to alien life? (there is no point)

[neveragain]

No arguements here, I liked it, no need to pick it apart. Science says that our galaxy will collide with our sister galaxy, Andromeda (spelling?), creating huge black holes in our universe, this will continue to happen with other galaxies until black holes eat everything, including each other, and that is when time will end. I prefer to hope, and think that we have some greater meaning than to be a blip on time's radar screen, so I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post ThreeDeviations, cool take, especially the oragami analogy to evolution. It's evolution baby........E. Vedder

[neveragain]

Let me give props to 7chakras instead of threedeviations like I did in my previous post, got to give credit where credit is due.

[7chakras]

thanks for the feedback (especially neveragain) but i'd just like to re-iterate that this isn't supposed to be a flawless, be-all-and-end-all meaning of life. And it isn't even my theory. The Novelty Theory is part of the work of DMT guru, Terence McKenna (laugh all you want) and I have just tried to explain the jist of his ideas as I understand them. If you read his work, he explains it far more convincingly, using various analogies other than my Paper Metaphor to convey his idea. So ignore my version, read his, and then proceed to tear HIS apart if you must.

[Jerk off]

In billions of years the universe has existed you clam that man emerging in the last million or so is the best there is. I think that's a little Egotistical. If a race on an other planet started evolving just 1 million years before us they would be twice as advanced as we are. < that is if the evolved at the same rate>

[five3three]

Originally posted by neveragain
No arguements here, I liked it, no need to pick it apart. Science says that our galaxy will collide with our sister galaxy, Andromeda (spelling?), creating huge black holes in our universe, this will continue to happen with other galaxies until black holes eat everything, including each other, and that is when time will end. I prefer to hope, and think that we have some greater meaning than to be a blip on time's radar screen, so I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post ThreeDeviations, cool take, especially the oragami analogy to evolution. It's evolution baby........E. Vedder

Yah, for everything just to end through some sort of explosion or collision of sorts would be a shitty deal. Of course, if it were to happen that way, do you people that beleive it [will] happen that way think there is a heaven or hell? or some other place the [soul] goes?


But, yes it would be somewhat of a let down for the world/universe to [end] that way..

[Paladin]

A friend said to me once as i was thinking that humans are and will be best, that of course we will think we are the best. We are, so we think we are, that sort of thing. an ant thinks its the best, it can't see humans, the picture is too big to take into consideration, or maybe it can't see beyond its self other than instinct, maybe its just ignorant... at any rate its only going to know it as the best (im probably wrong). but everytime i said anything like "humans are amazing and beautifuly constructed, just look at the nervous system" he always just said, "its because you are..." and i somehow couldn't argue to him, he was jsut probably arguing childishly, but still... it made some sense. The universe is just a place to hold every possibility imaginable, and not imaginable (because we don't have the brain power to imagine it). shapes are shapes, but the shapes we see are the only shapes we know, a more advanced race or species or whatever could see more than shapes maybe. I had a long conversation (with the same friend) taking the world and turning it into a video game...we go through life (the game) doing watever we do, we are just players, others NPC's maybe (for all those geeks ;) ) when we die maybe its time for another game, lets give it a go, so the whole thing starts over with a totaly differen't set of peramiters (sp?), instead of time it could be some totaly other concept, and we must play to those rules. or maybe when we die that it, like an arcade and we are out of money, and this arcade game always changes and everyone is in it, but a certain ammount into differnt games...5 (6) billion in this one, maybe 586 in the other, it has just begun. who knows, maybe i sound stupid, maybe i sound smart, maybe i am, maybe im not. im only typing this because its christmas eve tomorrow and i get my gifts :D. or maybe im typing this to stimulate someone, either way, post about it, although it is long :D.

see you on the other side (a new game).

[Reverend Jacob]

Human's as the pinnacle of evolutiion... ugh.

what a crappy god.

Why would an organism as wicked and incomplete as us be anywhere near the pinnacle? We always feel lonely, we always feel flawed, we need other people to feel like we're worth something. When there is a peak of evolution, I don't think it will look anything like us. I think the star trek image of an energy being is the best possibility. Timeless.
By Einstein's theory, an energy based organism would live at lightspeed, so time would mean nothing. You could literally experience everything. Know everything.

I like the theory that the reason we're on earth, (from a christian perspective) is to earn the Knowledge we stole from the Tree of Good and Evil. And to earn the knowledge of the Tree of Eternal Life. Remember there were two trees in the garden of Eden. Maybe we got one fruit and felt guilty cuz it was the good and evil tree. And maybe the angels got the fruit from the tree of eternal life. That makes them closer to God than us(higher in evolution from the start) because they are above judgements of good and evil and exist forever. And maybe, just maybe, the reason we're here is that God is lonely, or just wants to grow, or be replaced. If we could exist as energy without real physical form, we would basically be Gods anyways.

[Signify]

Evolution isn't leading anywhere specific, it is simply a process of random mutations. Just becasue evolution has created human beings, isn't to say complexity is predesined or complexity when it occurs is better or an improvement on simplicity. Evolutionary processes can be down to luck as much as inherant quality. Often it is less complex or sophisticted creatures that do better in nature. Therefore to talk about a pinnacle of evolution, or something being 'more' evolved is perhaps slightly missing the point.

To put it more bluntly, evolution isn't the same as sophistication & one does not lead to the other...

[MahdHatre]

Terrence McKenna has sent a sledghammer though my door of perception. Here's an exerpt from The Archaic Revival that made a lot of sense to me.

Information is loose on planet three. Something unusual is going on here. The world is not made of quarks, elctromagnetic wave packets, or the thouhts of God. The world is made o language. Language is replicating itself into DNA, which, at the evolutionaryapex, is creating societiesof civiliezed beings that possess languages and machinesthat use languages. Earth is a place where language has lterally become alive. Language has infested matter; it is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us. My voice speaking is a monkey's mouth making little mouthnoises that are arrying agreed-upon meaning, and it ismeaning that matters.Without meaning one has only little mouth noises. Meaning is a crude form of telepathy - asyou listen to my voice, my thoughts becom you thoughts an we compare them. Thisis communication, undestanding. Reality is a domain of codes, and that iswhy the UFO problem is like a grammatical problem - like a dangling participle in the fourth-dimensionl lnguage that makes reality. It eludes simple aproaches because it nature is somehow embedded in the machinery of epistemic knowing itself.

It's in the psychedelic dimension that one finally can key into the voice of the organism and undertake a dialogue. Then it explains that things are not as you took them to be at all, and there is in fact layer upon lyer of iterlocking meaning and very little else. The imagination is the true ground of being.

Anyone who has questioned our existence should read this book.

[psilomind]

I used to think the same thing until stopped and looked over the facts once more. Our sun is one of an ample (and I mean a lot) amount of stars, all capable of bearing planets. Now, to think that not one of these planets has the ability to house intelligent life, never mind more intelligent than humans, seems pretty ignorant, if not stupid.

Don't get me wrong though. Im not one of these one-toothed inbreeds that spot aliens from their trailers, but dont forget that we were once poop-flinging monkeys. Now do you call that very intelligent. I mean, come on... flinging poop! POOOP!!!

[omnipotent]

Hello fellow-thinkers! Nice to be here finally, really enjoying this opinion/forum-thing. Good work everyone!

Well, my thanks goes out to 7chakras for introducing Terrence Mckenna to me. I have ordered "the archaic revival" and can't wait to be challanged by it. If I may suggest a book relating to the thread it would be "last chance to see" by Douglas Adams.
I am very much into the idea of evolution. And I have come to the conclusion after years of research that the question why? and the question of finding meaning in organic life is futile due to the nature of purpose and meaning which are both human qualities/quirks. Thus organic life is not human. Therefore cannot be understood/reduced into graspable pieces for an ape.
By the way does anyone know about a book that MJK proposed some time ago about how religions are basically all the same. Saints, beliefs, contents?

[Brihjenne]

Reverend: Maybe we are god taking on physical forms so we can experience everything that we are and everything that we are not. Knowledge of good and evil comes and we lose our innocence, our knowing that everything is one and the same. We have no experience of good or evil until we realize that there is a difference. How can you know what you are if you have nothing to compare it to?

[abefrohmn]

Here's a few excerpts from Henry Miller,

We speak glibly of the speed of light. What really has it for us, this speed of light? Man's struggle, ever since he ceased to grovel like the worm, has been to equate imagination with deed. For this poets and saviors were crucified. This was the nature of their heresy, that they dared to reach out, touch finger-tips with the Creator, complete the circle.

Nothing too startling will ever be accomplished by means of technic. The universe has no armature, no weight, no substance. No purpose even. Neither is it dream and illusion. It "is". The highest thought can neither add to it nor subtract from it. It grows, changes, responds to every need, every demand. It can exist with God or without. It is like a Mind which asks and answers its own questions.


We seek only that which we are ready and prepared to find. But it could happen that, struggingling to perfect ways and means of assaulting the unknown, we may stumble on shattering verities which have ever been right under our noses.

The ground for any kind of growth and cultivation is prepared by lying fallow.

No, **** Sapiens will never make it- Wherein did he fail? In refusing to recognize the wonderous nature of his own being. He asked for power instead of mastery, for efficiency rrather than glory. In time it may be said of him that never did life spawn a more efficient misfit.

The current desire to conquer space and time is premature, to say the least. It is only another, more spectacular, manifestation of our itch to free ourselves from the problems we have created for ourselves. Never has any real attention been paid to the words of the elect; in every domain, from jurisprudence to astrophysics, the quack still dominates. We make no effort to rid ourselves of our ills, our vices, our shortcomings; we beg for the impossible- to sin without paying the price.

Let us not forget the road inward towards teh source stretches as far and as deep as the road outward.

We are only, alas, what we imagine ourselves to be. But in that "only" vast universes of being are being capable of taking form and shape. If only we knew what can be all that we imagine! That we are what we wish to be.

Stand Still like the Hummingbird

To move forward clinging to the past is like draggin a ball and chain. The prisioner is not the who has committed a crim, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. WE are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. What these powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admite to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything God-like about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

Sexus

[abefrohmn]

Originally posted by Reverend Jacob
Human's as the pinnacle of evolutiion... ugh.

what a crappy god.

Why would an organism as wicked and incomplete as us be anywhere near the pinnacle? We always feel lonely, we always feel flawed, we need other people to feel like we're worth something. When there is a peak of evolution, I don't think it will look anything like us. I think the star trek image of an energy being is the best possibility. Timeless.
By Einstein's theory, an energy based organism would live at lightspeed, so time would mean nothing. You could literally experience everything. Know everything.

I like the theory that the reason we're on earth, (from a christian perspective) is to earn the Knowledge we stole from the Tree of Good and Evil. And to earn the knowledge of the Tree of Eternal Life. Remember there were two trees in the garden of Eden. Maybe we got one fruit and felt guilty cuz it was the good and evil tree. And maybe the angels got the fruit from the tree of eternal life. That makes them closer to God than us(higher in evolution from the start) because they are above judgements of good and evil and exist forever. And maybe, just maybe, the reason we're here is that God is lonely, or just wants to grow, or be replaced. If we could exist as energy without real physical form, we would basically be Gods anyways.

I like your response, and for whatever it's worth, your post reminded me of that in Hebrew, as oppposed to the static rendering created in the translation to English, when Moses asks God who he really is, he replies, "I will come to be whom I come to be."

[twix elbert]

What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Overman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. You have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm.

~~ Nietzsche.

nietzsche envisioned a being as evolved from man as man is from the ape, the overman. in the future, this overman or posthuman will likely be an AI or computer consciousness. imagine a human mind in a computer existing in a virtual reality similar to our physical reality. imagine if they were 'overclocked', their minds thinking a million times faster than ordinary humans, learning more in a day than we will in a lifetime. they could alter their desires, attaining the same pleasure from learning and being a good person as we do from getting laid. or they could create a network amongst themselves and attain unity consciousness. maybe in the future overpopulation will force us all to exist as computer consciousness. i could go on for ages but you get my drift.

what i'm saying is that humans aren't hot shit. one day we will be toppled, probably by our own creations. i'm not gonna discuss the morals and ethics of it all either, that's another topic, but i think technology will aid us in the next phase of our evolution (and that's whether we like it or not). it would be interesting to see if we would let beings more evolved than us co-exist peacefully with us or try to destroy them cos we're too insecure to accept that the universe doesn't revolve around us.

as for the initial folding paper metaphor to describe man's evolution -- when you can't 'fold' anymore this has been called the singularity. this happens when the progress curve becomes near-vertical. human development is already sorta exponential but when humans create artifical intelligence a positive feedback loop will occur where AI develops more advanced AI which progresses technology further which creates more AI... you get the picture... until finally, progress occurs so rapidly that quite literally we'll evolve further in one day than we have in the last 5000 years. predictions are that this will occur before 2035. just what we define as progress, evolution etc is of course a matter of opinion.


i've read into mckenna a fair bit, in which book does he mention this?


btw one day we WILL be able to create life literally from nothing... not exactly but as close as you're gonna get. if nanotechnology gets it's way, we'll be able to use universal constructors to pop atoms into place any way we want. think of a constructor as a microscopic self-replicating robot. if you can tell it which atoms to pop and where, you can create anything from 'thin air' just but giving it the blueprints of desired object. so yes, you could create life from thin air this way. i'm not saying this is a good thing, but the same technology that this employs could very well end world hunger and disease.


the evoluton of mankind with technology was a bit of an interest of mine a while back. and yes, i'm a real fuckin nerd :)

[dawn]

it seems that we are processing information at higher speeds. is that due to our evolution or is the air just getting so thin that we filter through it quicker?

i really do not feel that evolution is determined by the things we can create: but rather the things we can become.

the universe is defined as being anything observable in our reference frame. any thing beyond that is mere speculation.

technology is fast becoming our downfall...look at the example that mars has set for us

time is merely a relative frame set by man to establish a boundry for life events.

i believe it to be an arrogent insight to say that we are alone.i just don't want to believe that this sorry group of primates is all that cosmos has to offer itself.

[raiSINgirl420]

Originally posted by grrrl
it seems that we are processing information at higher speeds. is that due to our evolution or is the air just getting so thin that we filter through it quicker?

i really do not feel that evolution is determined by the things we can create: but rather the things we can become.

the universe is defined as being anything observable in our reference frame. any thing beyond that is mere speculation.

technology is fast becoming our downfall...look at the example that mars has set for us

time is merely a relative frame set by man to establish a boundry for life events.

i believe it to be an arrogent insight to say that we are alone.i just don't want to believe that this sorry group of primates is all that cosmos has to offer itself.


i can't agree more. :)

[Martin]

you all should read "the hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy"-trilogy.
such innovative and creative writing is...
how he come up with these ideas is unfathomable.
adams explains how god's existense was proved not to be.
it goes something like this;
"the babel fish (a fish that broke all the barriers of
language differences) could not possibly have evolved
by chance," said man. "it must be a proof of your existense, god"
But god replied that he would never prove that he existed,
and that the only way he could exist was through faith and belief.
"this is clearly a proof of your existense god, so now that you
have proven your existense, will you cease to exist?" said man
"oh, my," said god. "i hadn't thought of that"
and he disappeared in a puff of logic...

[LeoDV]

7chakras : You've got a fairly optimistic view of humanity and the universe. Which isn't a bad thing of course.

I'm going to start off by saying that 'perfection' is a comparative notion, i.e. 'the flawlessness of something.' So in order to have 'perfection' you must define that 'something' and 'perfection' is therefore a very relative and subjective concept, and that makes the universe abiding to it quite doubtful.

But what I think lacks most in what you've said is that you've argued humanity is moving towards perfection more and more. Hasn't history proved us sadly wrong on this one?

Never had we made such progress as we did in the nineteenth century, and look how we used it : war gases during world war one -> gas chambers during ww2, all the way up to Saddam gasing the Kurds when they revolted. The nuke exemplifies that perfectly : our improvements in technology haven't amounted to improvements in ourselves but rather in improvements in the horror with which we can slaughter ourselves.

You're probably thinking this is a grim picture and I'm being pessimistic, of course it isn't black and white.

But my point is this... What you've said is basically the theory of Progress, i.e. that whatever happens, as we move forward in time we move up in betterness.

But, as so many philosophers, artists and thinkers have noted throughout the second half of the previous century, our progress in technology hasn't been accompanied with a progress in our capacity to use that technology well : we're still the same human beings, sometimes brilliant and creative, most of the time vain and animal.

Besides, with entropy going on, we're headed either towards the universe slowly fading out or it crunching down to an other round.

More on this after I read the other replies to this thread.