The Elita Theorem

[a short story by  Sha’Tara]
(Inspired, in part, by Isaac Asimov’s “Prelude to Foundation)

 Ansar and Elita were what you would call lovers.  Ansar was a member of the galactic arch-council located at that time on the pivotal world they called Juno.  Elita was mathematician and social historian at the famed university of Urtank, in the central high mountains of Sector T-41 of planet Quatl-Iln.  The following is a time-captured record of a brief exchange that took place in those long ago days after Elita worked out a program from a theory that stated that “time” was primarily a recording device in which could be read both past and future events.  The sharper the “reader” the more accurate would the reading of the sought events be.  It is all old hat now, as they say, but in the years prior to mankind’s initial scattering from his original galaxy (circa year 22,000 old reckoning) this was considered very naïve and pseudo-scientific.  But let’s hear what they were saying…

“We have a past, you know, Ansar.  A real past, which to this day society insists on dubbing a myth.  I’ll be brief.  We originated on one world only and you’ve heard that “myth” before, I’m sure.  You don’t buy it, but I do.  And then I don’t.”

“Make some sense, Elita.  Don’t speak to me in your usual riddles.  Either you do, or you don’t.  You can’t have it both ways.”

“No riddle.  Just simple fact which I can have “both ways” as you so eloquently put.  Our world of origin in the preserved language was called earth.  There mankind evolved, so it was thought, and taught, and from there he spread his wings and flew away to discover the galaxy.  And now, we are once more precariously balanced upon the horns of an old dilemma.  For centuries our real growth has been in decline.  At the same time, mankind is again looking beyond his doorstep, this time looking to jump to other galaxies and perhaps begin again.  And I can generally predict what is going to happen.  We are going to make the jump.  We will “begin” again and what we leave behind will continue to decline, to shrivel upon itself and die.  As did earth.”

“How do you know this?”

“Mathematical projection says so.  Observation says so.  Simple statistical projection says so.  Increasingly indolent ways of a pampered population says so.  Breakthroughs in non-ship-non-moving travel says so.  Shortages in resources marginalizing and starving millions of poorer planets says so.   The leadership vacuum says so.   Before rebellions and total war engulf the galaxy, you will have a scattering.  These scatterings are the seedings, and every time a group of humans seeds itself upon a new world as yet untouched by previous human presence and exploitation, that group is irreversibly changed.  Those who survive become, to the eyes of those left behind (if they are able to see) either monsters, mutants, or super-human depending on the point of view.  And, what was left behind fears these who have escaped.  Their authorities pursue them, hoping to control them and to feed from them.  Failing that, trying to destroy them.” 

“But what does any of that say to your belief that some mythical world called earth was man’s original world?”

“Don’t you see?  Earth man was a seedling.  It was planted on that ancient now long-gone world and it flourished there.  But it did not actually originate there.  It did not, as was then claimed, physically evolve from the muck and mire of the planet, anymore than we evolved from the rocky strata of this stony world.  The early people of earth were ruled and enslaved by their forebears but in their fevered discovery of new-found abilities, they shook off the yoke of their masters, of the sowers, and unmindful of the consequences, literally exiled themselves upon their world with no means of leaving, or of contacting any other possible sown worlds.  So engrossed did they become with self-discovery and exploitation of their world that they soon forgot how they got there.  New leadership, fearful of having to share power with galactic powers, ordered the re-writing of history and established religions that relegated the real-life human sowers to ineffable divinities to be idolized in worship.  

It would be thousands of years before the ever-present urge to resume the sowing cycle would obsess these Earthians and they would abandon their internecine warfare to concentrate on going to the stars.  Predictably they did so, for we are here.  And predictably, they carried with them the belief that they originated on earth, thus making that world the ruling world of the galaxy.  Sadly, that is why it was slagged by the “new” children who did not tolerate that a backward little planet so far from galactic centre would rule over the whole.   Much was lost in the destruction of earth but the greatest loss was in records of what happened so long ago, before Earthians were solidly established on their new world.  Records of previous generations, previous intelligences, previous star-farers who gave birth to Earthians and thence, to us.  We must re-discover those records.”  

“You make a persuasive argument but I remain unconvinced.  You have no real proof that what you have conjured could ever have some basis in  fact.” 

“Proof.  People put so much faith in that word.  But perhaps there is proof.  If I could actually and correctly predict a specific future event using certain formulas I’ve developed, would you consider that proof that we can draw out reality from the chaos of the unknown?”

“If, indeed!  Yes, if you could predict exactly a certain future event, I’d see that as proof.  But what about the past?”

“But don’t you see it?  There is no difference.  If we can accurately predict the future, we can just as accurately “predict” what happened in the unknown past.  Let’s say that your family drove to a certain town while you were in your mother’s womb.  Once in that new town, you were born there.  The family possessed a past that was not yours.  However, when old enough to drive, you could choose to drive forward from that town, or to, in a sense, retrace your family’s steps by driving back down the road into the past.  Some things would be different, but you could verify that the world they spoke of did in fact exist. 

I believe that my computer program and my calculations can do this for mankind and perhaps much more.  Certainly we will be able to “verify” not only where we are going, but where we come from. There are those who are so intent on destroying all vestiges of the old myths.  They want to destroy the old religions that have clung to mankind from the earth days to now.  The way to demystify the past is not by pretending or claiming it did not happen, but by proving it did happen, and demonstrating how it did so.  The ancient “gods” then become simple humans with what would be to us very primitive technology and were neither eternal nor all-powerful non-material beings as fabricated religions have falsely claimed for so long until now.” 

“Interesting.  With our funding, you claim you can develop this new science that will show not only how our future will develop but prove that the mythical past did in fact happen?  Will there be more to your argument when you present it to the Council for, what must certainly become, substantial additional funding?”

“Do I need more?  Are you not curious?  Would you not risk a few billion credits to find out where you came from and where you are going in, say, a thousand years from now?  If we, as humans, must continue to bootstrap our ways across parsecs and eons of space-time, can’t we at least secure stronger and longer straps for ourselves?  Must our existence continue to be an endless, chaotic gamble against the forces of time and the universe?  Must we forever be running from our enemies, be they competing intelligences or depleted environments, and towards unknown conditions that may test us beyond our abilities to resist and overcome?  I think that what we term “expanded awareness” has to include an ability to remember the distant past and to appropriate to certainty a much longer portion of the future.  We cannot continue to launch ourselves as dandelion seeds in the winds for the day will come when we will literally fall in among an inimical race that will destroy us, probably out of fear of our predatory ways coupled with our unnaturally prolific birthrate.  We are predators, Ansar, and represent a very real threat to any other intelligent species already established around us.  It would be extremely naïve to think we have not been noticed.  If we know the future, we can avoid such an encounter and prevent catastrophe to ourselves.” 

“My curiosity is certainly not as expanded as yours, love.  But I’ll support you on Council even though I don’t share your enthusiasm for socio-history.  I would be satisfied if you could predict the next day of windless sunshine so we could go mountain climbing.  What do you say to that?”

“Just the two of us?”

“Just the two of us.”

“Would you accept an educated guess?”

“I will, but I have one condition.”

“Ah?”

“Will you accept my ring?  It will be a year tomorrow since the last time you said ‘no’ to me.”

“I accept your ring, Ansar.  Without conditions. As to the weather, my guess is the wind will have to be reckoned with but safe enough for experts like us.” 

 It was ten years later that Elita’s group in Urtank saw the first fruits of her efforts.  It was another twenty-three years before the theory was fully tested when a no-ship “fleet” consisting of seventeen billion people jumping off from Juno would have encountered an enemy force that would have destroyed them had they not “seen” this prior to departure and changed course accordingly.  Two hundred years after that, as this inimical intelligence began to seriously encroach upon new human settlements, it was caught in a 5-pronged attack by humans and was annihilated.  These perfectly timed attacks were devised using the Elita Theorem of time recordings.  

To add a little explanation to this theory, let me just say that it resembles the reading of those old movie strips.  Once a “time line” is focused upon, the computer can “play” the “image frames” either forward or backward.  An identical “time line” can be read from any number of different places, even distant galaxies, without distortion.  Hence the possibility of simultaneous action at vast distances. 

And so we are in the process of conquering the universe.  What will we do, should we discover that our universal space-time model does not apply beyond our universal borders?  Who will break through the next mystery should the Elita theorem fail at that point? Are we still curious enough to dare go and find out? Do we even have a choice?

 

My Dear Earth

My dear Earth, I have a confession to make.  I am weary of you and the political promises made on your behalf by those who live totally artificial lives; who watch your “nature” by sitting on a couch in front of their TV and who “love” you without having a clue as to who you really are, or rather, what you have become. 

My dear Earth, I’m tired of your bullshit. In my opinion, backed by having grown up within your actual wilderness, by lifelong observations; by involvement in “environmental” efforts and studies, I say you are either a rank hypocrite, or you simply don’t give a horse’s patootie about what goes on over, on or in your body.  I think if I could hear your response it would be using that particularly offensive current expression: “It’s all good.”

Well no, it’s not all good. In fact it’s far from being even a bit good.  My first challenge to your fans’ claim of status, that you are a goddess, has to do with predation.  Yes, you heard me correctly. You accept, support and probably believe, or at least want your supremacist, exceptional homo sapiens species to believe that predation, the killing of large numbers of totally innocent and helpless life in order to feed much smaller numbers of not so innocent and much less useful life is of paramount necessity to the promotion of a “balanced” slate on this world. 

Let me point out how utterly wrong you are on that.  Let’s take your most successful predator species to-date, “man” and see if their unchallengeable success is conducive to engendering a balance of life on this world, on your body.  What do you think? Even among these ultimate predators (ignoring for the moment any alien force equipped with planet-busting weaponry) there is a saying, “a bad predator annihilate its host.” This so-called intelligent predator is ostensibly aware that his life-sustaining system is entropic.  After man, nothing. I don’t call that balancing the slate, I call that utter irresponsibility, arrogance and injustice of universal proportion. 

Now Earth, if I actually believed in evolution I would have to state categorically that this nefarious, and may I add, absolutely useless and pointless predator called “man” is a child of your desire and invention.  It is so perfectly adapted to your modus operandi that it is in the process of destroying itself and your living environment in the bargain.  It’s all about predation.  Every system man has used (I will not say ‘invented’ because the creature is mentally incapable of such invention) is predatory in expression.  Boil the chaos instituted by man to its lowest common denominators: organized religion, government and finance, and you hold in your cauldron all the evil that man has wrought against all other forms of life and against its own species. 

Whence comes lust? Greed? Lies? Wars? From man’s civilization. What sustains that civilization? The three predatory abominations mentioned above.  Remove them and what’s left of that civilization? Nothing that would uphold man’s claimed superior tenure of earth, of you, Earth. 

Let me back off from man and look at the rest of your “creation” and assess that.  The process of creating stress, fear, fight-or-flight reactions and necessary successful killing attack modes among every creature that flies, swims, walks, crawls or tunnels is everywhere apparent. Simply put, it’s how things work here. Kill or die.  Rule or be enslaved. Where’s the middle ground? There isn’t any. You haven’t allowed for that in your twisted reasoning.  Everything must suffer, either the predator’s fear of missing a kill and going hungry, or the victims’ fear of being targeted while simply engaged in foraging, or in raising young in a burrow or hatching eggs in a nest.  Your entire system is based on raw fear.  How did you ever let it come down to that?  What made you fall so low that you would sell your surface dependent life to fear and constant depredation?

You made a very bad choice a long time ago. You became addicted to fear, hate and pain. You learned to use gratuitous violence to create your drug. Subsequently you discovered man and subverted him to your horror, addicting him to an innate need of violence, particularly by shedding innocent blood. You taught him to use violence against all life, but mostly against the smaller, the weaker, the most helpless.  You demonstrated how the prey would greatly multiply as a defense mechanism against annihilation of its species and taught that predatory killing was a defense against the prey “taking over” the territory legitimately staked out by the predator.  

You know me, Earth.  You know I’m here observing, taking notes. You know you don’t have me. You know the programming used to subvert intelligent life here doesn’t work with me.  So don’t lie to me.  That worked for a time. I believed the lies; that you were not really sentient; that you had nothing to do with what went on; that you were a victim.  Yes, I recognize that you are a victim, just like a drug addict is a victim.

In the name of all that is fair and just as Life understands it, I condemn man’s civilization and I also condemn you, Earth, to a just death.  Your anti life perversion and corruption is beyond redemption, as is man’s.  You possess a few very shaky years yet in which to change, in which to make amends, in which to prove me wrong about you. 

I suggest you get to it.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Edge of Human

The Edge of Human (Borrowed title from Blade Runner 2 by K. W. Jeter)

[Voice of   ~burning woman~   as heard from the Other Side]

In the beginning was the Past.  Father God stood alone, last remaining Titan, proud in his quasi-Omnipotence gained from the overthrow of his enemies.

He created Time, the lever with which he would reach across eternity and weigh all life.  And he stood at one end, holding it, fondling it, loving it.  Then he created the fulcrum, which he called the Present and which history named the Christ.  Then he created the slave, the man. 

But the man was cold and afraid in the dark and cried.  And she heard his sobs in the darkness and drawn by compassion, came forth to comfort him.  She came from Spirit, without father or mother.  And she made herself human for him and called herself woman.

“Be not afraid” she said, pressing herself against him.  But the man was provoked by her naked truth and violated her.  Then she saw the emptiness of his soul, the ugliness of it.  She ran from him but could not go far.  She became heavy with child as she walked down the time ramp hoping to find its end.  She bore her child in pain and horror but also in love.  It grew heavy in her arms and took the life from her as it suckled greedily and painfully. 

Father God felt the presence of her weight and that of her child upon his lever and in his quasi-Omnipotence, pushed down to force her to come to him.  He sensed a great fear and hatred of her, as if she could somehow put an end to his self-delusion of Omni-grandeur.  The woman, whom he called Eve struggled along the incline of the lever, intent on finding the end.  She knew if she surrendered and went back she would be swallowed in the anonymity of slavery and her child would die a spiritual eunuch.  But her humanity pulled her down.  Exhausted, she dragged herself upward, splinters entering her hands and knees.  On and on until finally she could go no more and collapsed.  She put the child down and waited.  

“The End, my End, will find me here.”  She reasoned.

“Why have you stopped, Eve?” Came a gentle voice from the darkness before her.

“I can’t go anymore.  I am empty.  My child is starving.  This is my end.”

“It never is, Eve.  You have travailed throughout the history of humanity and you bore the future in your womb and in your arms.  You suckled it from your spirit.  It surely will not die.  And neither will you.  Listen carefully — It is always the darkest and coldest just before the dawn.  You are not dying, you are changing. 

You’ve come to the edge of human. 

Look at your child – it’s not like you, nor like its father.  It is all that you ever wanted for your world and yourself.  Let it stand on its own.  It will take your hand and lead you into a new world.  The world in your mind.  For that is who this child is: your world.  You created it, from your hopes, dreams and feelings.  From your sufferings and pain.  From your dignity and strength.  From your walk that refused to surrender to any man, demon or God.”   

And her child stood beside her and picked her up.  With one blow, the curtain of darkness was rent in half and she saw a shimmering light beyond, at the end of the coarse wooden ramp she’d walked on for so long; where she had left a trail of tears and blood.  The great hell of time deflated like a balloon behind her and she walked forward, knowing that she was now more than human, more than god or goddess, something entirely new. 

But she remains Eve, mother of all life. 

“Follow the raven into shadow and you will find the light”  (medicine man saying)

 

Where are the Roots?

[A thought-essay by   ~burning woman~   written by Sha’Tara]

Got this idea churning around in my head. Well, that’s nothing new, there’s always something churning around there, but this is broader  than any I’ve yet entertained outside of my tendency to imagine fiction and science fiction scenarios. It’s about man and his civilization.

There is no doubt whatsoever that civilized man (Homo Sapiens) is a totally invasive, parasitic species. Anybody can see it that wants to see. But what is not so easy to see, and I blame the programming for that, is that “his” civilization is a predatory monster; a monster that has been feeding on the planet and on the very species that believes it invented it and is “making it happen” so to speak. “Man” is civilization’s obedient slave, repeating, ad nauseam, all his previous mistakes, helplessly. Not because there is no better way; not because he could not try other ways; not because he doesn’t know of better ways but because these are the ways by which the monster feeds itself and through brainwashing, insures that the pattern is endlessly repeated.

If this is true then what is civilization? Is it simply the sum total of all that man has, is, and will, accomplish on Earth, as a species? Just a “record” of man’s passage, or is it much more? We have a tendency to always go along what is taught, what is repeatedly told and believed so this is my attempt to not do that; to present broad facts fully in evidence that no one is allowed to see or talk about.

Can we separate ourselves from our traditional beliefs and knee-jerk responses? Can we back out of the vehicle and observe “it” from a safe distance where is becomes possible to think that the vehicle man has been riding through time is really quite unsafe, dangerous, polluting, deadly to life in general and man is not in the driver’s seat?

From this unusual vantage point, let’s look at some aspects of the monster bus we cannot look at when we are stuffed in a seat halfway down the cluttered aisle and the blinds are shut tight so we can’t really see how the bus is destroying the natural environment it is passing through.  

How about analyzing the vehicle’s accomplishments over time, for example. I think, while we’re in the spirit of impeachment, it’s fair to consider civilization’s doings while in power over Earth and mankind. Since its inception, what has civilization contributed to the planet in terms of evolutionary improvements to the natural state of being? I can’t think of a single one but if you can, then how are such improvements embedded permanently in the natural processes that make this a living world? Which improvements over nature can be said to now be a permanent and essential part of the evolution of Earth? What has civilization contributed to the planet and everything that exists on it  which this world could no longer proceed without?

Going from civilization to man, what are man’s living roots in the living natural environment? When I speak of roots, I mean a measure of not just fair exchange of resources, as all other life forms here perform, but examples of how man’s presence has improved Earth’s natural biosphere… in some way or other. How is man contributing to and expanding the natural evolutionary process – emphasis on natural?

Again, I cannot think of a single way, but the list of diametrically opposite to constructive activities performed by man upon this world would be very long.

If this was a political situation and I was called upon to render a judgment on both, man and his civilization, I would call for impeachment. Guaranteed that I would not lack for witnesses to fully indict.  What does that say about man and his civilization, then? 

Question: If all evidence of man and his civilization were to vanish like fog in the morning sun how much worse off would this world be? 

  

Purpose

[an essay, by   ~burning woman~ ] 

Until perhaps a decade of Earth years ago I had not yet realized that any intelligent, sentient, self aware life form needs a purpose in order to make sense of itself and to give itself direction. Without purpose such a life falls into an endless treadmill. How can any intelligent life with the ability to self propel move forward, or in any meaningful direction, without purpose?

Serving a purpose instead of just existing as asset, a “labour resource” or a consumer makes sense. But in a world teeming with billions of Earthians how can one develop a meaningful purpose? How can “I” make myself mean something outside the dictates of a system that by observation increasingly tends to go off the rails and doesn’t seem to have any meaning in itself?

That’s a legitimate question, I think. What is our civilization’s purpose? There was a time that “purpose” for Earthians was to serve the gods. For better or worse, we lost that, or deliberately turned against it. Not totally our fault since the gods, real or imagined, no longer responded to our prayers and left us to our own devices, lead by unabashedly greedy certifiable morons in the field of religion. It wasn’t long before the System offered a new type of belief I would call political atheism.

We were swayed by a new idea: evolution, or natural selection. Instead of gods, nature was the arbiter of everything that had ever been, was, or could be. To top that, man rediscovered himself to be a meaningless physical, finite entity with absolutely no hope of any future beyond his one pointless life. Essentially that is the atheist creed. Like belief in God, gods or whatever, belief in no hereafter is just another type of faith-based concept. The difference is that this belief does not exactly promote the seeking for greater purpose.

For an ISSA being, purpose can only be properly expressed in a mind conscious of existence beyond one physical lifetime. Purpose carries across time and space to encompass cosmic reality. Purpose means partnership with life and its creative force.

Purpose awareness brings one dangerously close to thinking like a god also, and that is a place one must shun with every part of one’s being.

We’ve done the god thing and all it has accomplished is help solidify a societal reality that is destroying us as a species. While pretending to worship some God or other Force, what we have done is create a civilization wherein we would rule the world as gods. In that we have been abject failures. Instead of developing purpose as self empowered individuals we have corralled all the available resources of the planet, human and non, to jerry build a mindless, directionless, self-defeating finite monstrosity that is ever poised to destroy itself through internecine warfare. Our civilization is a predatory Frankenstein without specific direction, without purpose. When we read the questionable records of its history the final question that remains is, what was the point? What’s the point? What comes after?

If we use the Pleasantville allegory as indicative of the development of civilization – and why not? – we end up with the same question: what comes next, once the Pleasantville illusion is shattered? In the movie the answer is we’re not supposed to know. The same answer you get if you do religion. “In my father’s house are many mansions.” Fine, well and good, but that is not an answer. The type and condition of life in the father’s house are never answered. Why not?

Neither religion nor its nemesis atheism, want, or can, give anyone purpose. Purpose relates to a “higher” type of thinking. Purpose shatters the programming of the Powers and sets the mind free to be itself. To develop its own thinking patterns. To see reality, not propaganda. To dare accept a knowledge once sought by mages, visionaries, dreamers. A knowledge ignored and despised in today’s academic and political circles.

Purpose takes us out of mindless existence on the wheel of fate, or karma, or dead-end as is the more common case today. Purpose is the action field where an individual practices living at the expense of her mere existence until all that’s left is life. Once one discovers life society and its manifold chaotic beliefs no longer hold sway.

I can think my own thoughts and know beyond any doubt that they are superior to any expressed by society and those who rule and ruin it to their own destruction. From purpose I can see the past and I can walk into the future, up to “the 13^th Floor” and beyond. Can you?