(Scribbled From Chapter ? of the Octavo)
RIGHT NOW
The major question facing our species at this time =
Do we want an apocalypse or not, and if so, of what kind?
Chaos always raises more questions than answers, we will always have chaos but do we want high grade evolutionary chaos or low grade devolutionary chaos?
Subsequently chaos just became a synonym for disorder, meaningless randomness, anarchy, system failure and destruction. However a few contrarian souls could still perceive the positive potential embodied in the concept of chaos. The power of chaos to reverse entropy and bend the laws of possibility. For creative destruction. For adventitious change. For unlimited possibility.
Mathematicians discovered that many process that seemed random actually showed extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Thus we now understand why we cannot solve the three body gravitation problem, and why we cannot predict next month's weather and a vast number of other moderately complex things. In fact it seems that we can now prove that we cannot really anticipate what any complex system will do beyond a certain point. To know such things we would require impossibly precise data about the starting conditions because in many systems a minute difference at the start rapidly mushrooms into a completely different future, yet this will happen to ANY system eventually.
Extreme sensitivity to initial conditions has no theoretical limit in chaos science. Thus it extends down to the quantum domain underlying physical reality where events become indeterminate. So it acts as a sort of ladder by which quantum randomness climbs up into the macroscopic world to eventually create huge indeterminacies. So not only might a butterfly changing direction over Mongolia eventually trigger a hurricane in Florida, but a random quantum quirk in the butterfly's nervous system might have contributed to the direction change in the first place.
Thus massively improbable things happen all the time. All events that occur partake of this fantastic improbability. At the times of our conceptions the chances of us encountering each other on precisely this apge would have stood at almost infinity to one against.
The whole universe runs on a Total Improbability Drive, Chaos Rules!
The Gods come from Chaos as our Hellenic ancestors surmised. The deeper you penetrate into Chaos the more primordial, powerful and unpredictable the deities you encounter.
The Elder Gods of Sex and Death, of Love and Hate, and of Fear and Desire, lurk beneath the thin and fragile veneer of our Civilization.
Yet beneath this pantheon lie the Elder Gods of all, the raw forces of creativity and destruction of the Universe itself.
The universe has a Panpsychic Sentience of a sort. It lives. Its components exhibit random quantum autonomy and they communicate with each other non-locally to produce a spectrum of 'consciousnesses' from the sub-atomic through the biological to the galactic.
Most of these 'consciousnesses' appear so alien to us humans that we can barely recognize them as such. Fellow mammals seem partly comprehensible, reptiles seem less so, insects remain inscrutable, and as for atoms and galaxies, well we merely have a few flimsy and paradoxical equations with which to understand them.
Our appreciation of Chaos has evolved from a primitive dualistic view of Order verse Chaos into a more sophisticated triality of Order-Chaos-Disorder in which Chaos not only undoes things but it also acts creatively to ferment and evolve new Order and fresh complexity.
Magicians seeking to invoke Chaos need to carefully consider the cost - benefit analysis of such Faustian Pacts, for Chaos can manifest on a spectrum from random destruction to random creativity. Making anything always involves breaking something else; the magician should carefully consider the size and quality of any omelette that may possibly result.
The magical technique of Anthropomorphic Deity Personification (ADP) remains the magician's most effective method of interacting with events that we can at best in rational mode, usually only conceptualize as abstract concepts.
Chaos phenomenises in fractal mode, from quantum particle level, through it chemical, biological, ecological, sociological, psychological, technological, and political manifestation, and then on up into astronomical and cosmological levels.
At the most basic nuclear level such anthropomorphic personifcations as H.P. Lovecraft's conception of AZATHOTH, the 'blind mad god at the centre of chaos' allow the magician to channel pure randomness to macroscopic levels.
Of course unadulterated randomness will most probably have deleterious effects on the health, lifestyle, and sanity of relatively highly structured organisms such as ourselves, and few take such risks, except in extremis. Magic may well fill the vacuum when you have exhausted the resources of common sense, but conjuring for a purely random result implies either a great faith in the universe or perhaps a great faith in one's own deep unconscious.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. For every successful artist, hero and mystic, hundreds lie dead and forgotten, their random inspirations led to nothing more.
At the more complex levels of reality the interplay between Chaos, Order and Disorder becomes more sophisticated. Order strives to control Disorder but it also provides new possibilities for Chaos, and Chaos spawns both new Order and Disorder.
The more highly ordered a structure gets, the greater the likelihood of catastrophic failure, unless it retains enough chaos to restructure itself.
As we enter the somewhat arbitrarily designated third millennium the Order of the human world seems perilously perched on the brink of Apocalypse.
We have built a fantastically complex and interdependent system of Integrated Information based critically on the energy/information input from fossil fuels. However we have now entered the realm of diminishing returns from this resource. We have already used vast amounts of it merely to create entropy and huge amounts of low grade throwaway Integrated Information instead of quality creations. If we cannot innovate and substitute some other inputs such as nuclear or renewable power then a systemic collapse will follow and most of our population and culture will go with it. End of Story.
Stand on any hillside overlooking on of our huge cities and notice its fundamental instability. Any interruption to the endless food convoys streaming into it or to the megawatts of power and fuel flowing in spells disaster, as does breakdown in its internal communications media. Modern cities lack the robustness of pre-modern towns which could usually supply themselves from the surrounding countryside, and restore command and control functions with a short walk and talk.
Our numbers and our consumption have reached levels that our technology cannot sustain for much longer.
We have severely depleted our planet's fossil fuels to achieve such levels of population and consumption.
We face catastrophic climatic and ecological changes if we continue on our present course.
We do not appear to have many viable alternatives to this Apocalypse on the horizon.
The world's richest nation now needs 10,000 gallons of oil to survive each and every second. It has few plans to reduce this dependency, and most other nations now seek to emulate this behaviour.
We have already wrecked large areas of the planet's oceans and our new unsustainable industrial farming techniques imperil the fertility of the land.
On current projections the human population of earth will climb to 9 billion by mid-century. The end of century figure remains debatable but may not exceed a few hundred thousand living in Medieval or perhaps even Neolithic barbarity in the Polar Regions only.
The four horsemen, Famine, Pestilence/Pollution, War and Death, groom their steeds. Within a few decades most of our cities and civilization may lie in ruins as the food and the fuel run out and we slaughter each other over what little remains.
This has happened many times before on local scales, it may soon happen on a global scale.
Any fall tends to occur much more quickly than the long and apparently comfortable climb up to the cusp of catastrophe.
Unless of course we evolve other plans.........
Whether we act or not, we seem to face an impending Eschaton, a global change of planetary ecology and climate and human civilization. A slim chance exists that we can Immanentize an agreeable Eschaton rather than a vast historical reversal. It seems worth a try.
The chances of advanced human civilization surviving the twenty first century now seem to diminish with every passing year. As a species we stand in dire need of creative shocks and surprising innovations to our ways of thinking.
Humanity got into its current impasse by stimulating scientific enquiry in the first place but this has led to unsustainable forms of hyper-industrialization. Now we must search for new and alternative futures. Science on its own now seems alarmingly short of technical fixes for the problems that its technology has spawned.
Cue the entry of the Fifth Horseperson, Chaos, who might just show us how to distort probability and arrest the slide into entropy sufficiently to create a merry Revelation instead, in which the impending Apocalypse becomes but a mere myth which we had the sense and inspiration to avert.
=========================================================
How are we to circumvent our circumstances?
Aren't we here to make change the course of history?
Are we not here to confound priests, princes, politicians, scientists, suits, standards and policemen?
To break the rules, bend the boundaries.....dare i say....
ARE WE NOT HERE TO ATTEMPT THE IMPOSSIBLE?????!?!?!?
TO OVERTHROW CONSENSUS REALITY!
TO REGAIN THE SPIRIT!
TO SAVE HUMANITY!
NEED A GOOD REASON FOR THE SEASON?
OUR PURPOSE = TO BATTLE THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN OF CIVILIZATION
OUR MISSION = TO RECREATE EXISTENCE IN OUR OWN MEANINGFUL IMAGE
WE ARE HERE TO FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE & PREVENT TOTAL ARMAGEDDON
SO LET US HEED THESE WORDS & IMMANENTIZE OUR OWN DAMN ESCHATON/S!
NOW JUST SO HAPPENS TO BE THE TIME FOR ACTION
NOW THE ONLY SPACETIME LEFT TO DO ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS
NOW & ONLY NOW (PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE COMBINED)
NOW THE TIME FOR
NOW IS
RIGHT NOW
now
go
"we may well be the ones
to set this world on its ear.
we may well get it done
if not, then why the hell are we here?" - Westerberg
"every dis-ease is a musical problem;
every cure is a musical solution."- Novalis
- SO (if there must be) The pope PJC
(mostly & definately not the last bit) (you know who you are)
(with minor humble editing by the number two.....seriously though absolutely full on mad deep respeck & thank you o so much Mr. Carroll.... in advanced. this needed to be passed on to show what is truly at stake. 2 gives mad love and will take down anything (specially in regards to our more than likely piss poor editing) if asked)
PS likewise goes for the art 2 and any names will be added if found,noticed and/or wanted.
