The Shortsightedness of Technically Assisted Immortality

And now, for something completely off the wall.....

I am a wire-head. I've got tablets, phablets, and other silicon driven devices coming out my yin-yang.  Not what you'd expect from a guy who professes zen as the way to be, but an aspect of my development that I use both to see what the world is thinking and to suggest what it might like to think.  This is a suggestion day.

I do a lot of research in the area of artificial intelligence.  The latest developments suggest that the singularity is near and not so near.  You see, the singularity is something like god.  It's levels of complexity higher than the human understanding of it.  If you lived at the level of a point, you couldn't really understand a line, and a line can't understand a polyhedron and......  You probably get the picture.  A great many of the things I read deal with the extension of human life by technological supplements, the notions of artificial life, immortality, and even technological spirituality.  To me, these things are all possible, and, if you look closely (or distantly) enough, they've probably all been done already.  The big questions for me are all tied into the semantics of existence.  To be is no big deal.  A series of variables cluster, combine, evolve, and poof!!!! Let there be life.

Complicated stuff, and fun, but also reason for existential angst, agnosticism, and in extreme cases, madness. I opt for madness.  God and existence are poorly defined.  Madness is solid.  Concrete.  A madman is anyone who doesn't believe what you believe.

I don't believe anything.  There are things I know, through direct experience.  Things I feel, through direct and indirect contact with the universe.  Things I do, based on the whimsical combination of unconstrained variables in my environment as they interact with the constrained variables of my current moment.  This NOW says:  suggest.

I suggest you find a quiet place to sit and sit there, quietly.  You'll find it useful.  Don't worry about rogue planets, the North Koreans, the price of sugar, or genital warts.  Just sit.  You'll find it useful.  Being is good, being aware of being is better.  But don't be too aware or you'll start rambling like I do.......

peace and love
The Madman of Stone Street in the City of Herford in Eastwestfalia on a Friday morning in late September, a day which will probably come again......