Well, this is interesting.
Rich Terrile has put forward a theory which says that the entire Universe is code running on some extra-universal programmer's computer:
Whoa, Dude, Are We Inside a Computer Right Now?
On one level, it seems to be riffing off the world-as-Maya principle.;it's all illusion.
I don't have a big hairy problem with that idea.
The difference between the ancient Buddhist insight and Terrile's proposal lies in who is generating that illusion.
For on another level, this appears to me to be the cyber-age's version of the clockwork universe theorem beloved of industrial western civilisation and Richard Dawkins. It's all ultimately understandable, you see, and moreover it's amenable to our dissection and analysis - if only we keep probing Nature for Her secrets, we will uncover them eventually.
That must be very appealing to the scientific worldview. A great program, rather than a clockwork mechanism, about which we can learn all there is to know if we just keep going.
Nope, nothing ineffable here.
I stepped out onto the balcony. Urban birds were squabbling noisily in the background. Or were they running code loops? And was I?
The huge bloody cellphone mast rose white against the blue sky.
A sudden flash of red against the blue, the white made me look up: a Red Winged Starling had taken flight from the mast, displaying the colour of blood. Showing me the vividness of life even within the would-be sterile city.
In that moment, I knew that although I can never prove it, this Universe is not a stored procedure in some cosmic simulation.; that Life contains it's own willfulness, its own bloody-mindedness, and its own inexplicable beauty.
And that those elements often interact with my own sense of Being in a way not explicable by appeal to some external code hacker.
It's the one thing I do know, although how I know it I don't have a clue: that we all, from granite hillside rock to salmonella enterica to birch to starling have conscious being that is not pre programmed. And that it is We All who are responsible for our lives, both separately and collectively, both creating and destroying, both Being and passing out of Being.World without end. No code needed.
We're on the same wavelength here. I have had a spate of recent experiences that confirm exactly what you are saying. It's like our DNA can be hacked, and DNA is a blueprint for the the home, and even to some extent, the lighting in the home (where the windows are located). But the light also comes in from different source, natural source, and has the capacity to alter the DNA, the blueprint. Which is why those who can hack the DNA feel themselves to be quite godlike and accomplished, but they do not realize the limits of their ability to effect and create. Their imaginations are limited to the idea of the lightbulb. They can tinker with the innards and even mess with throughputs through whatever portal into which the lightbulb is jacked, but the lightbulb itself is not comparable to What We Are, in toto. Not hardly. You see, the kind of lightbulb we are can be lit from another source, filling the chamber and heating the filament indeed. And that source is not hackable. Indeed, it is what keeps the lightbulb lit even after it has been separated from its Earthly portal. But shhhh don't tell the coders ; ) (Actually, we have already, many times before, they just don't listen...)
ReplyDeleteMyself and my two girls were watching circus elephants sit on chairs and dance around, in the parking lot of westgate yesterday, surreal.
ReplyDeleteScience has not yet come to terms with the "I", what we know inside but cannot adequately express. The fire in the equation, the ghost in the machine. The soul. It cannot even describe it, never mind understand it, yet they have the audacity to reflect in the nature of creation and the purpose??
Fools.
I read something sweet the other day:
If you analysed the Creator via The creation, you could conclude the Creator was very fond of stars and curious insects.
But it is in the acknowledgement of self and the interaction of life that science can't learn, because that's against science's rules.
We are the evidence that the universe is not actually random or programmed, it's both, infinitely complex interactions, and something else.
Excuse me now please, i have to go run around the garden and jump in the muddy spots.
peace and love ;-)