Psalehesost
The Living Force
Life, nature, and the Universe work according to a simple principle: "You asked for it, you got it!"
For example, maybe a person wants to clean up a bit among personal files - but then, as the command is entered, the person accidentally enters an extra space in an unfortunate place. And suddenly, all the files are gone! Literally, the person asked for it, and got it.
Many people unfortunately believe in a fairy tale, that "What you see is what you get". While this kind of wishful thinking is particularly pronounced in New Age circles, more generally it has infected a great portion of the minds of our world.
But there are forms of stupidity which are less sophisticated than imagining that what one enters is different from what it actually is. (And people may imagine that either the form or the meaning of what they enter is different than what it actually is.) To see this, simply take a good look at humanity as a whole.
Humanity is like a monkey, banging away at the keyboard, blindly. Sometimes it creates files - mostly filled with garbage, but files nonetheless. And sometimes it manages to enter another simple command, like the command for, "delete everything".
And there you have the monkey business of the repeating rise and fall of civilizations. (And I think this is a pretty fair depiction of humanity on the whole.)
You could however change the nature of the analogy, taking as the computer, not all of life and nature, but instead simply life on Earth. Then, another person enters the picture: the system administrator!
As civilizations rise, grow, and degenerate, they eventually become so hopelessly dysfunctional that Nature (in a broader sense) pulls the plug, through its laws.
The monkey keeps banging on the keyboard, and eventually, the junk it creates takes up an impressive amount of space on the hard drive. The system administrator is not amused, however; and after sending a few reasonably polite messages - such as milder forms of climatic upheaval, earthquakes, and from time to time a volcanic eruption - patience eventually runs out, to some extent.
As time goes by and the messages remain unheeded, eventually the system administrator wipes the monkey's user account clean. For a time, the monkey sits in shock, bewilderment, confusion; but eventually, the monkey resumes its familiar banging on the keyboard with renewed excitement.
Though this has repeated many times, the system administrator has so far remained kind and patient enough to let the monkey keep its user account. The reason for this patience is, of course, that the "system administrator" represents the impersonal forces of nature - though it is of course possible that at some point, even these may "lose their patience", humanity going the way of so many species before it.
For example, maybe a person wants to clean up a bit among personal files - but then, as the command is entered, the person accidentally enters an extra space in an unfortunate place. And suddenly, all the files are gone! Literally, the person asked for it, and got it.
Many people unfortunately believe in a fairy tale, that "What you see is what you get". While this kind of wishful thinking is particularly pronounced in New Age circles, more generally it has infected a great portion of the minds of our world.
But there are forms of stupidity which are less sophisticated than imagining that what one enters is different from what it actually is. (And people may imagine that either the form or the meaning of what they enter is different than what it actually is.) To see this, simply take a good look at humanity as a whole.
Humanity is like a monkey, banging away at the keyboard, blindly. Sometimes it creates files - mostly filled with garbage, but files nonetheless. And sometimes it manages to enter another simple command, like the command for, "delete everything".
And there you have the monkey business of the repeating rise and fall of civilizations. (And I think this is a pretty fair depiction of humanity on the whole.)
You could however change the nature of the analogy, taking as the computer, not all of life and nature, but instead simply life on Earth. Then, another person enters the picture: the system administrator!
As civilizations rise, grow, and degenerate, they eventually become so hopelessly dysfunctional that Nature (in a broader sense) pulls the plug, through its laws.
The monkey keeps banging on the keyboard, and eventually, the junk it creates takes up an impressive amount of space on the hard drive. The system administrator is not amused, however; and after sending a few reasonably polite messages - such as milder forms of climatic upheaval, earthquakes, and from time to time a volcanic eruption - patience eventually runs out, to some extent.
As time goes by and the messages remain unheeded, eventually the system administrator wipes the monkey's user account clean. For a time, the monkey sits in shock, bewilderment, confusion; but eventually, the monkey resumes its familiar banging on the keyboard with renewed excitement.
Though this has repeated many times, the system administrator has so far remained kind and patient enough to let the monkey keep its user account. The reason for this patience is, of course, that the "system administrator" represents the impersonal forces of nature - though it is of course possible that at some point, even these may "lose their patience", humanity going the way of so many species before it.
