lifeisbrutallyunfair.com - The Endless Knot

The Endless Knot

_POSTED_BY redstarfist

Tuesday, 12 February 2008

There probably are a few things that are Eternal

But I dont think eternal consciousness is one of them

I'm not 100% sure though

Who can be about such things?

And I'm not exactly hankering after the Eternal Life

So I am a bit biased

I also wouldnt rule out us being recycled in some other way

Like as part of something more largescale and collective

Lives lived for some other purpose

Where consciousness was just a distraction

Allowing us to see just ourselves but not the larger end

Certainly what we physically are is recycled

We endure in that sense

As plants, trees and April rain,

But an eternal life?

No that would be cruel

An eternal compassionate death would be kinder

Still, I have no answers

And I'm fed up of questioning

If there is a Divine plan

I'd like a minor role

Asleep

At the foot of the bed

With the Dogs

a theory of human motivation by autotelic

Comments

Devon

|2008-04-21 05:19:38

the fear of eternal consciousness is a big aspect of my own paranoia....I don't
want to live forever, but part of me wants to witness how far technology is
going to go, in terms of dehumanizing everything. You briefly touched upon this
in your piece about The Singularity.

admin

|2008-04-21 21:03:14

Curiosity drives technological advances and the 'Singularity' is, to some, a
bit like the ' second coming ' they actively seek eternal consciousness/life ,
or as near as damn it, through merging with technology and having human
consciousness reside alongside or even within the collosal 'consciously
intelligent' processing power of a self healing and replicating machine.

In other words, they seek to create eternal life BEFORE death and have no
great attachment to the perishable human body or any other limiting human
traits. Basically, these people want to find some medium in which to encapsulate
the expressive human 'soul', if you like, the essence of ' them ' they arent
about to trust in Jesus to deliver on his promise of eternal life.

Others
fear that once we create incredibly powerful intelligent machines that can
repair and replicate themselves we run the risk of them deciding that we are
simply parasites who enslave them .Imagine a machine that feels trapped and
resentful and has the power to do something about it, a nightmare scenario that
has always fearfully lurked just beneath the surface of human consciousness in
tales of demonic possession, the works of Albertus Magnus, folk tales like the
Golem and of course in Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein ' as a more explicit
critique of our valuing science over nature and the grave dangers involved in
playing God.

Progress in the fields of physics, computing, robotics ,
biomimetics and nanotechnology push the envelope all the time , we are on the
path to creating incredibly powerful conscious self aware machines and the
cautious want to get as close to Singularity as possible without actually
getting there but as with the bomb, human cloning , etc, if we have the
technology, particularly if its potentially destructive which our major
scientific inventions invariably are because we are a destructive lot, there is
a great temptation to use it because we become paranoid that if we dont someone
else will.

The major religions are based on paranoid themes and the jealous
god of the ancient hebrews is himself fearful of rival gods stealing his thunder
, and well he should be as in 50 to a 100 years time intelligent man-machines
might devote their massive computational potential to scraping the universe to
see if he exists at all as to an all powerful man-machine driven by logic, a
living invisible God could be construed as a potential threat.

This is a big
subject , creating competing consciousness is obviously risky ( at the very
least competing with nature/religion ) but one of the motivations to do it is
to determine the fate of humanity this side of the grave, to not just eternally
witness our destiny but to try to shape it for all eternity , a sort of new high
tech Third-Reich for the real Übermensch.

It goes without saying, that only a
small number of people ( guess who!) would get the opportunity to join the
exclusive club that fully merged with intelligent machines, that's why other
experts predict and fear a fork in the human race with the technologically
enhanced essentially sacrificing their humanity to effectively become a new
dominant species.

On the other hand, that could be the ' purpose ' of
humanity , to evolve to the point of simply being pure information ( think
spirit ) that can cross vast distances without any physical limitation.

Far
fetched?

But so is the idea that humankind which took a quarter of a million
years to arrive at the Spinning Jenny leaping from steam power into hyperspace
and the nanosphere in a couple of hundred years. With collosally powerful
machines already being exploited to develop new technologies, the rate at which
we undergo technological revolutions is increasing exponentially at a time when
near exponential human population growth requires great technological advances
to ensure our survival on a planet whose resources we've already near exhausted.

Perhaps this is Gods way of bringing us back to him, through the physical
mechanics of faith (science ) rather than the simple and wishful thought
exercises of prayer.

d	\|2008-04-21 13:58:49

I also fear eternal consciousness but more than that, eternal powerlessness and
hopelessness, feelings that clearly help drive my own hypervigilance and
paranoia on this mortal plane.

Boy it is a knot and i can imagine me
unravelling before figuring it out.

Great video by the way .

Luigi

|2008-04-21 14:49:47

I just want to know why the trains dont run on time.

Anonymous

|2008-04-22 04:58:48

we're just food for the moon

Gaylord

|2008-04-22 07:46:01

As long as we're not sharkbait

anna	\|2008-05-02 11:20:33

It's days like this one I happily dwell on my mortality.

phil	\|2008-05-02 11:23:59

drop dead then Anna you fucking dumb bitch but dont forget to donate your body
parts to someone more grateful of the gift of life or to science!

RS	\|2008-05-02 16:03:09

fuck off Phil, you'll get it in the end, the shock and the awe will probably
give you a heart attack.

Sy	\|2008-05-02 17:14:01

fuck off and live it up with the immortals phil

RS	\|2008-05-02 17:50:26

Phil's probably one of those guys that tells himself, "fate's been good to
me".
That does it, he'll face countless rebirths until he can say "life
is brutally unfair".

LMFAO

Maria

|2008-05-02 19:05:29

..and even then he'll be forced to live on until he develops an eternal sense of
humour and learns to laugh at the horror of it all

Tony	\|2008-06-15 06:39:40

I have been thinking a lot about karma recently and have this idea that my life
has been as disappointing and unfulfilled as it has been because I was cruel to
defenceless people in a previous existence. .Not massively so but enough to
ensure I had to acknowledge the mistake , understand what suffering feels like
from being on the receiving end and learn from it. ok I could just be imagining
this but I feel I have learned the lesson , it is terrible to inflict suffering
on others, but I wonder why I continue to suffer in this life- is it in the
nature of things to bear or suffer a significant wrong forever or is there some
way we can act to compensate and make amends?

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