If it's all, or mostly real...what kind of reality are we living in?

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(2019-06-14, 01:09 AM)Oleo Wrote: And now seems like a very good time ,to thank you for shining a light on many of them.

Most welcome. I'm just hoping somewhere in all this consciousness mystery hour is a Key... Big Grin

"There must be some kind of way out of here, said the Joker to the Thief...."
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


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I agree with  Hurmanetar the most because of personal experience, though with a few modifications. One being that governance is never "needed" even though its sometimes in place anyways. Another being that the person at the top is often anything but fragile and easily replaceable. Magic can put enormous power into the hands of a single individual which tends to create hierarchies of power rather than manipulation like down here. Such deceit is unnecessary when you can nuke things with your mind.

But that much power is obviously a little unnerving and I sympathize with those that think people here shouldn't have it. I've talked a lot about the various disagreements I've had with spirits here about this topic and how they were very explicit about how magic should not exist here. I don't remember them citing it specifically but an event like Loderunner is the textbook example of what they would say they think would happen. As much as I sympathize with that I also think that suppression is a bad idea. Someone's gonna figure it out whether it's me or not, might as well roll with it.
"The cure for bad information is more information."
(This post was last modified: 2019-06-14, 04:28 PM by Mediochre.)
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I wrote a reply above but I want to go into more than I could on my phone. I'm also going "full crazy" with this so, yeah.

(2019-06-05, 02:07 PM)Hurmanetar Wrote: If access is limited from outside this reality, then perhaps it is so by agreement of those who participate because the intent is to find the right balance of power to have particular kinds of interesting experiences. 

If access is limited from the outside it simultaneously mean that access is unlimited by default, necessitating the controls in the first places. As far as my past is concerned, the idea of limiting magic for such purposes certainly was a thing. Though it was done more like a quarantine, nothing gets in or out and no interaction occurs. Kinda like a nature preserve in a way. The reasoning often was that the outside Multiverse" (if you want to call it that) was not necessarily the most hospitable place and having protected bubble areas where things can be allowed to develop on their own naturally without any fear that something way further ahead of them could just come in and wipe them out or at least drastically affect their development was nice. All of these bubbles, that I ever encountered anyways, also disallowed magic inside the bubble as part of that security.

I've sometimes wondered if this place is one of those areas since is shares a lot of characteristics with them. But at the same time there's many things that are different. Such bubbles were set up without any knowledge, interaction, or consent of the population as not to affect any sort of development. So as far as I know most of the things found in NDE's and some of what happens in mediumship would've been very much against those rules.

Quote:This limitation could take the form of a heavenly bureaucracy so that one such possible interesting experience is hacking the rules to give the bureaucrats the finger and break the rules.

That's more or less what I got told... and then some. Though things have changed a lot since then from what it seems.

Quote:Or perhaps access is fundamentally unlimited and we just haven't figured out how it works yet. Maybe we can master such power and turn it into technology as we are doing with electricity.

The most powerful thing about magic, which really is just psi, is that it doesn't need to be turned into any sort of external technology. It just takes your own body, and ultimately not even that if you push it far enough. It's something that, once learned, can never be truly taken away.

Quote:If the latter is the case and we just haven't discovered the secret sauce yet, and the power to create is also the power to destroy, then the fact that things are relatively stable and predictable now means we are either early adopters in a vast universe that will certainly grow more chaotic in the future requiring a form of government to maintain stability (think cold war but on a universal scale with anti-matter weapons), or we are already under the "protection" of a government and must pass certain requirements to be trusted with such powers like getting a concealed handgun license - which might once again start to look like the Gnostic universe. Maybe the citizens of earth must prove we can shoot straight and not shoot one another in rage before we get the anti-matter time-space warping anti-gravity engines that can read minds.

No amount of regulation can prevent bad things from happening. And worse, such regulation concentrates power into the hands of very few people. Which is why large corporations down here LOVE to be regulated, it kills potential competition. Differences in power are what create the ability to abuse others. For the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, and that's all there is to it. Power does not corrupt people, it uninhibits them and helps brings out who they always were but could never be. If people were really concerned about such abuses they'd focus on mental and emotional health rather than power. Cue Loderunner


Quote:Either way I think we end up with the Gnostic universe. When you have individuated egoic consciousness with a spectrum of power, and a spectrum of cooperative to antagonistic behavior, then governance in the forms of hierarchy and networks will naturally arise. Out of the hierarchies will arise super-predators which are terrifying yet occupy a fragile position being dependent on everything below them and being the first to die off when the asteroid strikes. And out of the networks arise both love and community as well as new forms of big brother databases and encumbering prisons of communal tradition and rules that destroy individuality.

I agree with all of this, and already covered the "fragility part in my other reply.
"The cure for bad information is more information."
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An estimated ten quintillion insects populate north America alone. 
Based on that information I'm advacating a more bottom up approach.
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(2019-06-15, 12:38 AM)Oleo Wrote: An estimated ten quintillion insects populate north America alone. 
Based on that information I'm advacating a more bottom up approach.


I'm not sure if this was in response to what I wrote but just in case it was I'll make it clear that I'm also advocating a bottom up reality. Any top down-ness would be equivalent to how people can be born into a world where some people are just already rich and certain laws and tech is just in place because others just so happened to come before them. Those people may use their money and influence to create things that become the new generations reality since they never had the chance to know anything else. For example, I don't know a world without sales tax because it was already long established by the time I was old enough to buy anything here. But my parents and grandparents do. Likewise newer generations don't know a world without the internet, whereas I do. I want there to one day be a generation that doesn't know a world without magic.
"The cure for bad information is more information."
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(2019-06-15, 03:02 AM)Mediochre Wrote: I'm not sure if this was in response to what I wrote but just in case it was I'll make it clear that I'm also advocating a bottom up reality. Any top down-ness would be equivalent to how people can be born into a world where some people are just already rich and certain laws and tech is just in place because others just so happened to come before them. Those people may use their money and influence to create things that become the new generations reality since they never had the chance to know anything else. For example, I don't know a world without sales tax because it was already long established by the time I was old enough to buy anything here. But my parents and grandparents do. Likewise newer generations don't know a world without the internet, whereas I do. I want there to one day be a generation that doesn't know a world without magic.

Naw, I was just trying to point out our tendency towards anthropamorphic ldeaolgy, and come up with a clever way to put aniimism on the table.
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(2019-06-15, 10:04 PM)Oleo Wrote: Naw, I was just trying to point out our tendency towards anthropamorphic ldeaolgy, and come up with a clever way to put aniimism on the table.

IIRC Wheeler had an idea that his observer-participants could include all sorts of living things as well possibly robots/AIs of some sort. Regarding Animism and the previous mentions of Gnositicism recalls this Runesoup article:

Gnosticism is the Map. Animism is the Territory

Quote:So it seems to me the elevation of gnosticism within a wider occult milieu and the elevation of animism to philosophy's Big Table are both components of the same spectrum of phenomenological observation.

Animism was in fact a regular refrain at the conference and one of the well-made points was that it is useful in minimising neuroticism. The great difference between Renaissance Neoplatonism and animism is that Man does not stand in the middle of this energetic onion, having all the forces of the universe beaming down into us, with the rest of Creation relegated to supporting cast status or background greenery. (This is incidentally what Bruno railed against and why he thought they were all idiots. An infinite universe, a cosmos lit with countless little lamps extending into infinity is directly opposed to the magical onion worldview of Neoplatonic/planetary spheres. He was a rock star space shaman.)

The great lesson of animism from a magical perspective can be found -combining Aeon Byte with Rune Soup in the form of Dr Kripal- where Jeff says "they're not embedded in our world. We're embedded in their world."
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


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