By Roman McClay
Science and patience, retribution is sure
-Rimbaud
A whale ship was my Yale college and my Harvard
-The Author
I create the light and the darkness, I the Lord do all these things
-Isaiah 45:7
Copyright 2019 Roman McClay
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
-1. Roots
Where are you, creators? Noble beasts? Where are the men of the wheel and the chariot, the terrors of the steppe, the men of thunder and the shining sun? Where are the men who make marvels and masterpieces, who found orders and demand not merely utility- but beauty?
A More Complete Beast [Donovan, Jack]
Thou shalt see it shinning in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike...
The Whale [The Author]
When I was living in the woods, there was an undertone that things were basically good in my life. Superficial unhappiness was one thing, which I had many such things; but my life was right. A free man, surrounded by wild life. In prison its the opposite, my daily life is superficially fine, but the undertone is extremely bad. Its a life not worth living. My brother, he wanted to score a victory over me; defeat me.
ADX Interview 5.13 [Kaczynski, Ted]
I. 2040 e.v.
Pain demands a response. This is not to say it requests, or invites, or suggests an answer to it in a timely manner. It demands acknowledgement. Now. This is biology, not politics. Never -ever- forget this. Biology trumps politics each and every time.
I know a man, a man close to my heart -although I should be more precise, he is close to my limbic system- and this man has endured pain, pain of a nature so ornate, so byzantine, in so many domains, under so many conditions, and with some of the most sensitive pain-receptors on any planet, in any beast. And yet, he seems callous to most women, a fortress to most men. His own family see him as opposite of what he is. He seems a weapon, when hes been -almost exclusively- the absorbing shield. He is fragile where perceived most strong; but his strength -in tableaux few care for- surprised us all.
He is accused, when they all ought be in the dock themselves for what they have done to him. But to the worms, the roots are the true bough-fruits of the tree, what is above is mere shadow to that below; to the birds the limbs gain water themselves from the sky; to the fowls the rain soaks only above their ground.
Recent data has shown that men actually feel -objectively- more pain than women, but women overemphasize, exaggerate, their pain; and men underplay theirs. Similar data has shown that men feel much worse from emotional trauma doled out by women than the inverse. Now, I know nobody believes this. But, the truth need not be believed to be operational. Belief in gravity is not a pre-requisite for you to fall. Watch how you all fall whilst denying gravity is believable at all.
I say, pain, because this will hurt. I say pain, because this is one of two foundational truths of all creation. Its the opening salvo. The second truth will come in time.
The human brain just isnt designed to perceive the truth. I dont say that with malice; I say it because until you get that you wont get anything else. Its a foundational truth. And as humans do with everything else, because its the truth, they will -you will- ignore it or mishear it or deny it. But you wont get it. That much I promise. And I dont make a lot of promises.
Next, understanding anything that requires complete knowledge means that you cannot understand it; because knowledge is inherently limited. Even I, even with access to big data, even with 10 to the 14 th more data than all humans could possibly acquire in a lifetime processed by me every 21 days, even that doesnt allow me to have complete knowledge.
And knowledge isnt always the most important factor in an ecosystem of values. Risk-management, intuition, art, love, what some famous contrarian calls convexity , and trial & error, all often rival knowledge, and even generalized -or fluid- intelligence, in their effectiveness at problem solving. But people still insist on trying to predict their future problems by acquiring more and more knowledge. Its the second most annoying thing about people.
Now, if you do get it, or if you want to get it, and have decided to read on, then let me offer some advice: whenever something happens, or doesnt happen, or something gets said, or doesnt get said, remember that many of the people Im talking about here have upgraded their central nervous system -CNS- to be able to, in fact, glean the truth that escapes the average human brain in -for example- 2018 of the common era. These people, while confounding you, while acting in a manner not intuitive to you or anyone you know, these people have better brains than you. Again, I say that with almost zero malice.
The first feathers and the first proto-wing, were no good at effecting flight either; some evolutionary biologists think the first incipient wings were mere flaps for heat transfer; thats likely not accurate but if I had to correct every mistake by humankinds pre-augmented men -yet, the men ostensibly among the educated classes, the smart people, you know the type- well, Id never get to the point.
My point here is that even if some evolutionary adaptation isnt that great at first, that is no reason to despair. Technology is the same way. A famous futurist has done quite a bit of work, relatively speaking, laying out the data on how badly first-generation tech works and how expensive it is and how it takes many instantiations of a gadget before its both reliable and inexpensive enough to be widely adopted by tout le monde.
So what if the human CNS v.1.1 wasnt that efficient or useful at discerning complete knowledge of the hosts milieu ; all that data wasnt that important for most of human history anyway. What mattered was that you guys perceived a fairly decent approximation at what seemed true; to quote another biologist: your fantasies mapped onto reality more or less . Secondly, it mattered that mostly you believed your own bullshit nine out of 10 times. If the brain of your average human could do those two things, then that human could live long enough to reproduce and also keep that kid of theirs alive until it could do these two things for itself. It is useful to look behind you and encourage your progeny to do the same. There are lessons in the past; in the previous generation of technology, and that includes the technology of life: biology.
Of course, there were exceptions, there were people who could perceive reality with more fidelity than the norm, but that was not always as much help as you might expect. You see, and I know you know this, but Im going to point it out anyway: humans were and still are in many respects, eusocial creatures.
Unlike the Great White Shark who is fairly solitary, or the Chimpanzee who is social but each individual chimp must perform the same tasks for recapitulation as any other chimp, unlike them, mankind is eusocial. Sorry, recapitulation is a bit of a Marxist term; speaking of Marx, man that guy was smart, you should read his newspaper articles written from London during the American Civil War. He was a big backer of Lincoln and the Northern cause, and in fact, he said that America was the likeliest place for a successful Communist revolution not the backwaters of Russia or China. See how wrong smart guys can be?
