RE: Selves
Evan Schwartz can not do what we* have set out to do.
Luckily, he exists only as a hypothetical construct.
The physical Evan Schwartz is pure fabrication.
Just as nations are formed by imposing lines on Earth,
selves are formed by imposing borders
on the graph of matter and energy distributed across space and time.
There is no difference between an atom on the outside of the skin
and an atom in the air nearest the skin.
There exists no boundary
where the laws of physics and chemistry
cede their control
to free will, or a soul, or any other human invention.
RE: Agency
Our agency does not separate us.
Looking back at our forebearer’s agency
and our forebearer’s forebearer’s agency,
and so forth,
until the word “agency” no longer fits,
we see that thing we think to separate us
evolve organically, growing on what came before.
Agency does not separate us.
Agency only exists because we are connected.
RE: Compassion
One core precept of compassion:
we coinhabit the predicament of humanness.
On the graph of matter and energy distributed across space and time,
we* patterns interweave,
emerging mingling dissolving,
inextricably,
tied to what came before and after,
inescapably,
trapped in the same causal chains.
RE: The Graph of Matter and Energy Distributed Across Space and Time
Think of a flip-book animation.
When you flip through the book,
your thumb doesn’t make real each page it touches.
The pages after and before
are there
already and still,
respectively.
Replace each page
with a cross-section of the graph of matter and energy distributed across space and time,
which makes each page
an instantaneous graph of matter and energy distributed across only space.
Despite how it feels from birth,
there is no thumb flipping through,
making each moment real.
All the pages exist simultaneously**;
the graph is already plotted.
RE: “Now” OR Time is Real but “Now” is Not
In the graph, human perception only looks back–
whether a bell already rung or photons that left the sun six minutes ago,
we only perceive backwards.
We can’t see the future.
We can’t even see “now”,
despite our hardwired belief to the contrary.
And so,
we are like a child,
in a rear-facing seat in the back of the car,
who believes that the road ahead does not exist
until it passes under the rear axle and into view.
We evolved to stitch together our perceptions,
into a cohesive reflection of reality.
It let us eat, avoid predators, and reproduce,
but it also ingrained the misconception of
“now”.
Sayeth Omar Khayyam,
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
I say, the moving finger is writing everywhen at once.
————
*This use of “we” alludes to my belief about what people are. It refers to an evolutionary environment of ideas encoded on a nervous system and competing for activation (representational structures in the brain exist as patterns of firing-- arrays of neural activation). In this complex of ideas the idea of self is but one.
**For a wonderful exposition of what this idea looks like, see Slaughterhouse Five (particularly the Tralfamadorian view of time) or Herman Hesse's Siddhartha (particularly the metaphor of the river).