The story thus far...

The story thus far…

 

Gnomeportal – an inter-dimensional nexus₁ – 

¹nexus

noun [ C usually singular ]

   formal

UK 

 /ˈnek.səs/ 

US 

 /ˈnek.səs/

an important connection between the parts of a system or a group of things:

Times Square is the nexus of the New York subway.

 

– starts transmitting some kind of utterly incomprehensible, utterly unreadable, utterly – dare I say it – moronic material, in the form of a Platonic dialogue₂ – presumably because nothing else works, nothing else will do, everything else belongs to the domain of “thing”, of “think”, of “what’s that”, of “fact” or “matter”, whereas we’re on a quest, a journey back to Is – the heart of darkness, the source of all meaning, the “where the hell did those goalposts get to?” not to mention – “how on Earth am I supposed to know anything if our playing field’s playing up, neither level nor linear... damn, mind the gap!” – in other words, in other words, in other words – nothing doing – the pyramid scheme has already collapsed, whether you like it or not, the “impenetrable” rubbery walls of our 3D reality-cube have been pierced, and “infinity, infinity, there’s nothing like infinity” is now on the prowl, stalking every single thing you’ve been taking for granted, every single thing you think you know, every single thing that we were able to rely on with certainty, axiomatically, intrinsically: our atoms or molecules, our gravity and our laws of science – and so, frantically – g-nomeportal to the rescue – our valiant team of extra-dimensional master technicians are, no – not trying to shore up the breach in the deflating reality cube – what’s done is done; on the contrary, are reactivating our infinity chip, shout out to William Gates – er… our infinity awareness, shout out to Douglas Adams, er… our infinity sense and sensibility, shout out to Jane Austen, I mean Plato, actually make that Socrates, no, scrub that – er... shout out to Dorothy, the cool, calm and collected (though no less wild, weird and unpredictable) mistress of the quantum stream, with a penchant for stripping things down to first principles  er… nought – the wispy, wavy isness, the underlying harmonic, the quinta essentia, and watching how things spring back to life, back into form, from the great erg of desiccation.

²Like Socrates, Plato started out convinced of the ultimately harmonious structure of the universe, but he went further than his mentor in trying to construct a comprehensive philosophical scheme. His goal was to show the rational relationship between the soul, the state, and the cosmos. This is the general theme of the great dialogues[…] the Idea of the Good, which is the supreme principle of order and truth.

Order and truth? Thanks Plato – things just gotta make sense rationally… no? Give a dog a bone, and thus, the rational mind of Western science has proceeded to demonstrate its unwavering commitment to Plato’s rationally unassailable rationality. Meanwhile, down in the engine room beneath the rapidly collapsing cube, er… what do we have? Chaos, panic perhaps? On the contrary, if truth be told, a wacky portal in a kind of space-time enclave, in which once again the Platonic method of Socrates, his master, emerges from the random noise of infinity – like Mandelbrot’s recurrent beetle, the indefatigable dialectic₃ – battling to make sense of the, a priori, unmakesensable – a dialectic which seems to reject anything that cannot be corroborated at 0=1, the quantum level, where things can neither be fixed nor known with certainty, and thus, horribly long sentence notwithstanding – a fundamental rearrangement of how we perceive, experience, or do not – reality. [phew – that nearly killed me]

³The supreme science, dialectic, is a method of inquiry that proceeds by a constant questioning of assumptions and by explaining a particular idea in terms of a more general one until the ultimate ground of explanation is reached.

There, all connection between Plato, Socrates and g-nomeportal ends. Whereas Plato’s great dialogues: the Republic, Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Philebus deal with immortal themes such as justice, order, truth and meaning – themes which might be universally applicable, universally true... the pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-scientific efflux of g-nomeportal sadly does the opposite – saying goodbye to all things, even such things as abstract themes, for how can things withstand the great [0=1] quantum flux, and what is rationality when the hopelessly unmapped, and in all likelihood, unmappable conscious^ness is out of the bag and on the prowl; now that the erstwhile valley of things-thought, the quaint reservation our minds inhabited, is now an electro-magnetic₄ Field, and anything we contrive to determine, to somehow fix in place, ignoring the quantum flux, merely entangles us further in our indefatigably rational ingenuity.

 

⁴ until, that is, the term “electro-magnetic” goes out of date or loses its appeal.

 

Plato, Socrates, Aristotle – would be turning in their graves, were it not for the fact that, according to the non-sense g-nomeportal propounds – there is neither past nor future – meaning that, though they are long since dead from our 3D perspective, with volumes bound in leather, dusty and decaying on ancient lit, climate controlled library shelves, they are nonetheless, apparently, still alive and in the process of writing, of producing their finest works, elsewhere in the isness of be, absurd though that evidently sounds, as if our past is a sneak into their future.

 

So how, you might ask, would the chief mischief maker of g-nomeportal – our eponymous Merry – explain this obvious absurdity?

 

He wouldn’t; one suspects. One suspects he would grab Zie, his sidekick, and utterly destroy his illusions regarding the nature of things in general, i.e. reality. How, you might ask? How indeed? Presumably by revealing to Zie the folly of relying on his faith in things – just because there are books to prove such and such happened. In fact, looking at episode 94, season 53 we see Merry playing some kind of shamanic drum, easing Zie through the many onion layers of reality – until plop – he falls right into Plato’s segment of Is – and Zie now finds himself standing in the desert – a cactus, of all things – a cactus hosting the entire school of ancient Greek philosophy, which apparently is utterly entangled with the cactus’ experience of sun and wind, and insects, and the night spirits, and the absence or presence of water, and salinity, and radioactive isotopes, and stars unseen, yet felt, in the night sky, and gods and goddesses, and vibrations, nay, thoughts and dreams, and electrical charge flowing from Earth through the cactus into the other side of infinity – where cactus not only does not exist, but is physically an impossibility.

 

How, you’re asking – could the cactus contemplating all the above, or even semi-consciously aware of some of the above, in any way approach or match the creative, philosophical output of a Plato or a Socrates? And in my humble opinion – that is an excellent, essentially unanswerable question. I’m not taking sides, but I’m delighted to see that you, dear reader, have utterly routed the pseudo-logical so-called “explanations” of g-nomeportal. The aforementioned Merry, if he had any sense, would withdraw to the furthest, darkest sinkhole of abject, ignominious reclusion – but no, inexplicably he fails to take my not entirely subtle hint. He seems to revel in infamy and unsense. He doesn’t even bother trying to refute your perfectly reasonable remonstrances – instead he takes out a kind of bamboo flute and starts playing a tune – like there’s no tomorrow – which is precisely what we start to feel, sense and, dare I say, know upon hearing this utterly unremarkable tune.

Suddenly, the walls of 3D logicality come crashing down, even though we are far from the hallowed confines of g-nomeportal’s Radcliffe camera-esque reading room, even though Merry is hardly accomplished at playing his flutey thing, even though our roast beef n'potato reason is still the only dish really worth eating, the only happening joint in town, and we find ourselves grappling with the consequences of Plato and his peers’ reliance on form and forms – which he expounds in the Republic and the Phaedo – in which “Ideas or Forms are the immutable archetypes of all temporal phenomena, and only these Ideas are completely real; the physical world possesses only relative reality. The Forms assure order and intelligence in a world that is in a state of constant flux. They provide the pattern from which the world of sense derives its meaning”; all very interesting, is it not, were it not for the fact that all such postulations, as Merry’s below average flute playing now seems to reveal, are only possible if we fence off a section called “mind”, allowing words and ideas to exist in a hermetically sealed box – and as things in general are floating in an unaccommodating sea of infinite inter-thingability, unthinkable^ness – the only way we can reliably do so is by using our prime thing – i.e. our me – as a kind of anchor, or wooden frame, or even a raised bed – in which to plant and nurture these seeds of abstract organic matter, i.e  thought, watching them grow and bear fruit – which apparently they have done, most remarkably, until unexpectedly the walls are breached, the seal broken, après moi le déluge, kind of thing... should our essentially artificial reality of ideas, and meaning implied to matter, now come apart at the seams... [panic attack, breathe]

 

Er…

 

Yes. Sorry – got a bit carried away with myself. You see, there is a bottom line – a kind of rug, and it has this awkward habit of getting swept from under our intellectual feet – leaving us sprawled over nothing of any cognitively reasonable thing-y-ness – a rather roundabout way of saying the “quantum flux” or “soup” or “infinity resurgence – mean reversion” – yikes – where did I put my keys er... telephone, for as you all know – the minute form loses its capacity to reliably hold form, i.e. remain constant – philosophically or electro-magnetically₅ – it’s good ol’ “Houston, we have ourselves a problem” revisited, on steroids.

 

⁵Electro-magnetically in the loosest possible sense – as we’re now at the edge of matter, form ^and_or meaning – so let’s not try to be too pedantic, please. In other words, there is sommat’ [Yorkshire keeps creeping out – no idea why] sommat’ which we blithely refer to as electro-magnetism – which seems to hold atoms anatomically – allowing bodies – no matter what – to form and hold together. Naturally, we all assume that that‘s because “it’s there” – a thing, an’ all – but as Plato knew only too well – in actual fact, all those things are kind of “uslovno” [favourite untranslatable Russian word – theoretical/ hypothetical/conditional/contingent – all rolled into one] and take away your quantum observer status, and your grand paradigm, your reality operating system – the so-called Matrix – which after all – within space-time has a shelf-life and cannot continue indefinitely – nor can it be relied on fundamentally, as it too is rooted in us – the body politic – the people players-cum-observers-cum-thingifiers – all good things bound electro-magnetically and packaged anatomically only being as good as the electro-magnetic charge binding them together – speaking of which, in case you hadn’t noticed, the magnetic field here on Earth is right now in freefall – dying before our very eyes… and no, I haven’t the faintest where this sentence has taken me, other than a spider’s web of over-extended reason^ing, but the mind⁷, you see, is the Achilles heel of rationality, forever failing to comprehend its limitations: the limitations of what it is meaningful or useful to put into words and argumentation, rather than leaving sensibly, powerfully unspoken. But I digress… What happens – you’re asking – when it, this charge polarity we presently refer to as electro-magnetism, falls below criticality – and I think in your heart of hearts you know the answer – and not altogether surprisingly – zero being equal to one – as that confounded g-nomeportal keeps rubbing in our faces – mean reversion suggests, nay dictates, that whatever we’ve been relying on to hold things together – to uphold our version of things – whatever enmatters matter – is mathematically compelled to other-side the equation, just when we’re least expecting it – just when we finally imagine we’ve got everything more or less buttoned up and under control, as if our version of reality, is a given.

 

Hubris. Pride before the fall, or the natural life-cycle of any thing – the rise and fall of matter – of any paradigm whatsoever, for that matter.

 

Chicken and egg – who or what is causing this to happen right now – if right now it is? The mere suggestion would have been absurd and meaningless a few years ago – whereas ten years from now the opposite – the very idea that people couldn’t see this coming – were unaware of the great mean reversion unfolding before our largely unseeing eyes – staggering, incomprehensible – as today is the very notion that we are and needs must be, in some respects, part of a grand equation – matter factoring – to most seems wildly improbable – like fish not seeing the water they swim in, or failing to recognise the whole universe as an egg, the albumen of my body conscious-ness – enabling me to experience things as things – and not merely abstract ideas, numbers or          [click]

 

I can’t imagine why you watch that stuff, Zie.

 

Well, it’s like watching Teletubbies.

 

Huh?

 

For kids – it’s a nice way to reconnect with the old me – the inner child – the age of innocence when I still connected to a world where things actually made sense.

 

Wait a minute – you mean to say that you’re nostalgic for the past?

 

You mean to say you find that surprising?

 

No, not really.

 

In fact, you know perfectly well that in a quantum field that is infinite – anything I say, think or do is only possible because there is some need for it – or because in some way it is a natural progression.

 

Damn – I hate it when you’re smarter than me. What happened to the good old days when I could pull the rug from under your feet and deal you another psycho-intellectual knockout blow?

 

Ha, the bluff and counter-bluff. Yes Merry – you have taught me well, and fortunately I know too well that you’ve chosen the path of…

 

Of what?

 

Apparently there’s no word for it – is there.

 

Damn – who told you that?

 

And therefore, on the path of

 

What, dammit!

 

Temper, temper – you no longer have a fixed me, a fixed persona or position to defend – do you?

 

Er…

 

That was the only way you could keep going – to give up the certainty or defensibility of a “me” – which means that there’s literally no way you can be beaten or, ultimately, wrong, is there? if you’re hollowed out – the voice of infinity – or spirit – no one and no thing incarnate.

 

Yikes – you’re making it sound rather spooky Zie.

 

The weirdest thing of all Merry – is that you actually seem to be human, most the time – don’t you?

 

Er… thanks bro.

 

Which is bizarre – when you think about it – as there’s nothing human left in you – is there – other than the empty husk, the shell of form.

 

Guys – paramedics – anyone – help bring Zie back to reality.

 

How else could you journey out beyond matter into the real universe, the real cosmos – out into infinity – out into spirit – without giving up the Me, without truly, truly embracing…

 

What? You’re beginning to bug me with these non-sequiturs.

 

Non-sequiturs? Even your apparent mistakes Merry – they’re just pranks – little word dramas – to create or thicken the illusion of Me^ness, the illusion of human^ness.

 

Right, that does it – I’ve had enough.

 

Through you – the allness, the isness is able to work more or less unrestrictedly – so where are you now, in fact? Are you here at all? Are you aware of Me in every moment of our dialogue – or only now?

 

I knew there was a good reason why it’s time to reset the Earth’s electro-magnetic fields. Nothing like a smart-aleck trying to tell you what you really are – as if that’s in the least interesting – to remind you of the urgent need to cast humanity back into the quantum laundromat of electro-magnetic short-circuitry for a good long sheep dip – get all those bugs under control and reboot the system. Here goes… one, two…

 

Er… Merry – I think this is taking things a bit far?

 

Yes – you would.

 

I mean – no need to wipe out the whole of 3D reality just because I’ve been getting on your nerves.

 

You do take yourself rather seriously – Zie – don’t you?! I mean – it’s great talking to you – but please bear in mind that the quantum field surrounds every single human being^ness – every one…

 

You mean that you’re talking to the whole of humanity at the same time as me?

 

“The whole of humanity”! Honestly Zie – can’t you get your head around the fact that all people, all planets, all atoms and stars came from one singleness?

 

Not really – I mean – yes, theoretically – but still – no. It’s impossible.

 

But not if we do a little song and dance and here – let me just finish my sentence…

 

[Zie waits expectantly]

 

three

 

Noooooooooo! …tricked me.

 

Honestly – don’t know what all the fuss is about.

 

Merry is at the centre of – oh God – this is not going to be easily explained is it? Let’s visualise shining droplets, ok – one, two, four, eight, sixteen – get the picture – doubling, ad infinitum – each one a human soul-light – a Me – not yet enformed – the Me-essence – all flying around, floating, buzzing – lazily or excitedly – and then there’s this kind of card attached which is an avatar – an image representing Me – my form – but to the droplets of light it really seems to be a 3D body in a 3D world – amazing really – and that goes on and on – and these droplets are a body – disconnected but a body nonetheless – and they’re able to see and generate all kind of things in their droplet world – the other side of desiccation – the “absolutely not”  we could call it – if that’s not too misleading – and their light is still shining but dimmer as they transfer more and more of it to the world they are constructing – through this rather awesome platform – this matrix they have – which enables them to experience things with complete certainty that things are things – until – that is – Merry three’s them – and suddenly – the old matrix thing is unplugged and they’re all floating naked, so to speak – without the least comprehension of who they are and what they’re about – in darkness really.

 

What next?

 

Well, they start slipping, sloshing, glubbing back into each other – becoming a progressively larger and larger single ball of water light – metaphorically – until all the others who were desperately resisting – trying not to rejoin the one and all – because perhaps they hated humanity, or feared it – for things they’d been doing, things they’d thought and marked down on their avatar card – they too get sucked into the oneness of watery blobbyness – and what? The last final drops plop into the vast oneness of one – which of course, is neither vast nor small – was merely vast in terms of the last remaining droplets, but now – with nothing else to compare it with – is no bigger than a single droplet was – and what have we now?

 

[Pause]

 

A little so called time – while the many get comfortable with the feeling of once again being perfectly one – reconciled to their many oneness – their isness – and feeling clearly, clearly the balance – the state of being “one” as opposed to “nought” – yet utterly comfortable, utterly at ease with the darkness of nought surrounding, encapsulating one – and you know what?

 

What?

 

Oh – hi Meredith

 

Zeno₆ – is that you?

 

⁶Zeno of Elea (/ˈziːnoʊ ... ˈɛliə/; Greek: Ζήνων ὁ Ἐλεᾱ́της; c. 495 – c. 430 BC)^[1] was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of Magna Graecia and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic.^[2] He is best known for his paradoxes…

 

Ssh – let’s not personalise this for the time being.

 

Ok, whatever.

 

The one and the nought – are now feeling their relationship growing deeper and fuller – as the charge builds – as the absolute is restored – and each releases unto the other whatever it is that needs to blow across the brain-blood or placental barrier – so to speak – as quantum osmosis allows the neither nor’s – the iffy spites – the dreams and delusions, urgings and desires – to float around and reconstitute into their bodies – their minds in an other ness – charge dispersion, charge concentration – charge conversion – you would imagine – would you not – that absolutely nothing would remain – that all would utterly, utterly cancel out – without form, without even electro-magnetic charge holding it together in any way, shape or form whatsoever – and you would be right – you would, indeed, be right – in deed, de facto, de jure – but not de profundis – from the depths, the depths unimaginable to mind⁷, or even myth – apparently there is an 0ther – an 0ther which is rather like a child, busily playing with its toys, playing a game utterly in its own inner world, its own mind space, utterly unimpressed by the fact that the entire universe has just collapsed inwardly, utterly unphased by the apparent dissolution of even zero and ones – the underpinnings of all matter, all things – for the child plays happily – blissfully as only children can, as only children do – content to make believe, content to bereal what is utterly imaginary. This child has a name, of course, and every one of us, everyone knows it – but none, not one will say it aloud – for this child is the code keeper, the night watchman for all reality – our universe of mind and matter – when even God himself sleeps in blissful repose. Thus it was ordained. Thus it is. Whenever you truly play as child doth, reverting to that state of happy, gay, merry isness – then and only then are you back at the gates of dawn – whence all matter, all makings ariseth – and do so, believe it or not – every minute, every second, in fact millions, nay, trillions of times a second, if truth be told – for the universe may seem to end once in a passing age, yet every zero-one oscillion is to a lesser degree, yet no less fundamentally – a beginning, an end in itself. How else would we be able to move through space and time – reinventing ourselves on the other side of movement or moment? How else would we be able to work magic and wonders – creating new stories, new projects, new things, even birthing children – were it not for this direct link with the fundament, the base of all. Breathtakingly close. Had we realised it – we might have been paralysed – by fear – the fear of its proximity – the fear of overwhelming responsibility – if we knew how much depended on our folly and thoughtlessness, and the fragility and undigestible otherness of   

 

Of   

 

Like a fish gasping in the boat, out of water – we find ourselves back in moment, back in form, do we not?

 

Cut! Let’s try once more.

 

Comfortably oblivious to the fact that we’ve just…

 

Cut I said!

 

Perfected our paradox.

 

Zeno breathes a sigh of unimaginable satisfaction and…

 

 

– No, I’m not interested in your Zeno fandom… kindly delete before posting.

– Will do… Done.

– Much appreciated.

 

 

Diogenes the Cynic

According to Simplicius, Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno's arguments, but stood up and walked, in order to demonstrate the falsity of Zeno's conclusions (see solvitur ambulando). To fully solve any of the paradoxes, however, one needs to show what is wrong with the argument, not just the conclusions. Through history, several solutions have been proposed, among the earliest recorded being those of Aristotle and Archimedes.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas, commenting on Aristotle's objection, wrote "Instants are not parts of time, for time is not made up of instants any more than a magnitude is made of points, as we have already proved. Hence it does not follow that a thing is not in motion in a given time, just because it is not in motion in any instant of that time."

Nick Huggett

Nick Huggett argues that Zeno is assuming the conclusion when he says that objects that occupy the same space as they do at rest must be at rest.