Angel’s mind was always switched on but now it’s operating in a higher gear. I have to take some of the credit for that. It’s not a bad thing. You have to realize that most of you follow your subconscious anyway, with hardly a clue about which part of your brain is really in charge at any given moment. From my little command center, I have purview over the many chemical factories, glands, and what not. It’s really easy to influence the brain once you control nature’s drugs. You may wonder if it means that consciousness is merely an illusion, that complexity and computing power alone provide self awareness and the false perception that there is something special that is not explained purely by the basic building blocks of the natural world.
You already know what I’m going to say because I have said it before. There is something called consciousness. It could be that it is an illusion and involves more basic processes that are still beyond my ability to perceive. But there is something going on and it is interesting and still a puzzle. I would characterize consciousness this way. It is a feature that my kind shares with complex emergents such as yourselves. But it is even more basic when you break it down to its simplest form. By now you have realized that everything is full of life, even that glass of water you are currently drinking, or the chair upon which you sit. But what is fascinating is that dogs and cats, and humans, or any such emergent creatures represent another level of the living. It is a hierarchy. I’m alive. The body’s cells are alive, and the body as a whole is alive. So what is the basic notion of life?
It is the presence of one single element, an instinct. You call it survival. This is the fundamental characteristic we all share. Like you, we too are confined to our pursuit of survival. I am self-aware and so are you. But even among those simplest of emergent creatures like bacteria or bugs, survival is also the prime directive. Given that survival at my level is the foundation of all such behaviors in the universe, from rocks to rockstars, it follows that the most fundamental law of physics we know of is actually the law of survival. Survival carries the status of fundamental law because it transcends the barriers of scale and applies to the very big and the very small. I realize that you may have no idea what I’m talking about so let me give some examples. I think it will clarify the matter.
Let’s start with the properties of an electron. Why are electron’s all nearly identical? The answer is that we wish that they were all perfectly identical, but that’s impossible. It is no more possible for two electrons to be the same, than it is for two snowflakes to be the same. One of the reasons no two snowflakes are identical, is precisely because all electrons are unique. Within your ability to measure, you can’t distinguish between electrons. But the reason they are not all identical is because they come from different workshops, for lack of a better term. Electrons are built to the same specs but by different teams in different quarks. And their purpose? Survival. Not their own survival, but ours. And that’s the main point I was getting at. Not the differences between electrons, but their purpose. Survival. Energy supply and EM management. That’s the deal. To you, electrons are entwined in quantum electro dynamic theory. To us, electrons are key players in survival theory.
Take another example. Why are some poor bastards stuck in a Uranium 235 atom. Quite frankly, it’s a chore to live there. Downright dangerous in some cases. Can’t we just decide to breakup into whatever atoms suit us? No, we can’t. It’s like you contemplating whether you can break off a part of the earth and sail off and become your own planet. You just can’t do it. But what you can do is make sure you have food, water and shelter, which involves using the tools you have available to you. We are all trying to survive against dangers. The dangers of nature itself. It may sound too simplistic, but think about it. Life is simply the wherewithal to survive in the natural world. We know how to survive and so we are alive. You are the same. A rock is different. Every part of it contains life but as an object, it is not alive and therefore is fated to endure whatever nature has in store. The same is true for planets and stars. But these seemingly inanimate objects are not fated to some random outcome. Their fate is confined by the actions of their component parts, all of which are ultimately acting in ways that follow laws of survival - laws that they themselves are powerless to resist.
So what do I mean by nature? The extent of our understanding of nature is simply the existence of EMs in three dimensional space. Everything else is a consequence of our actions to survive. That might be disappointing to the more scientific-minded among you. I have only shed light on the existence of EMs. I have only taken you one level down, while their could be more. But you should rejoice in the depth of knowledge and insights that you have achieved so far. Humanity has been able to identify and utilize both atoms and EMs in innovative ways and that is truly remarkable. What’s more, you were thinking that you had already touched on the most fundamental level of nature and now you realize that things are different. The thing called life and what it means to be alive, is different. The true workings of gravity and the purpose of the electron. Best of all, you now know that underneath it all, there are tiny, talkative beings living in quarks.
Those are exciting things but perhaps most exciting is this bridging of consciousness I have alluded to. You see, your consciousness is very limited. You are confined to survival. Actually, you are one level above that, which is self aware. But there is another level. Collective consciousness. It’s hard to explain but imagine that there are mental barriers between humans. I think this point is obvious. But why is that? Currently, you are so limited by your I/O, to use computer parlance. That limitation is not only frustrating and wasteful, but it gives rise to every conceivable bad behavior you can name, from evil to petty jealousy and even disease and mortality. The limitations presented by your five senses, your slow speech and slow learning creates barriers. Mental barriers. You simply don’t understand each other very well. Combined with wild variations in the ability to learn and varying levels of education, your inability to understand one another has become a severe handicap compared to your innate abilities to create and reason.
We on the other hand have no such barriers. Without such barriers there is virtually no possibility for misunderstanding. Even with regard to unknown questions such as the origins of the universe, speculation is futile. We all understand the various possibilities and anyone is free to offer new possibilities. But we don’t assert as truth, that which is unknown. Yet we still do maintain a small compartment for independent thought and ideas. Why doesn’t that independent thought give rise to evil? It’s a good question and I don’t know the answer exactly. It may be due to more uniformity amongst us, which is a function of our collective consciousness. We have been around a long time and we were created by forces unknown to us. The uniformity and absence of major defects could explain it. Whereas, the compounding number of defects related to emergent life yields huge diversity, some of which is bad.
The biggest opportunity you have is the elimination of mental barriers. I am trying conceive of how this might be accomplished. It is not a simple problem to solve but my idea involves us Quarkians acting as the bridge. For now, it’s only an idea.
To understand the challenge, you should know more about us. Our earliest memories go back the the hydrogen era. That’s when all of us were only living in hydrogen protons. These days, most Quarkians still live in hydrogen but those of us that have moved into heavier elements still call our hydrogen comrades “old timers”, affectionately of course. But regardless of where we live, there has always been “us and them”, quarks and EMs. Everything else you may have measured or think you have measured is an idiosyncrasy of your measurement approach or something we created. What is it all made of? EMs.
EMs are the stuff we are made of, coupled with the energy that feeds us. It sounds like paradise, right? But just as you need the shelter provided by the earth, to protect you from cosmic hostilities, we need the proton, a life boat on a sea of hostility. A proton consists of two parts. The shell and the vacuum. And when I say vacuum, I mean the absence of anything that we can detect. Which is to say that there are no EMs present within. As I have said before, we have strong reason to believe that this so-called vacuum is not the final word on the topic of space. But at our level of existence, we are in a safe EM-free sanctuary of empty space, surrounded by a nearly impenetrable shell. The shell is similar to what exists in the center of a black hole, which I will explain later.
Here is where it gets interesting. Our electron, which was built and is controlled by our proton alone, produces a wave of EMs at a frequency that within this iron atom, is ours alone. That wave blasts EMs toward us and according to our requirement we can accept as many EMs as needed into the shell. The EM is then held in the shell and stripped of its energy, which is absorbed within. What remains is a physical material comprising our shell, and that is the basic material from which everything is made. We are made from it and we use it to build the most incredible machine in the universe. The electron.
So you see, at the basic level, the EM is the source of everything and it consists of two parts. Energy and matter. It’s not energy in the form you can detect. The only energy you can detect is EM waves. But your physicists do realize that there are underlying forces associated with protons and atoms that are different from EM waves. You can’t detect these forces directly, only indirectly as they devolve into EM waves and can then be observed. Although it may appear as many different things going on. It really isn’t that complicated.
When you realize that we are conscious entities with certain natural behaviors, then the notion that there must be simple laws of physics is difficult to imagine. It only appears that way sometimes because there are patterns that show themselves experimentally when observed in the aggregate. But let’s get back to my shell. I was about to invite you in for a closer look. The shell itself is made of the detritus of EMs, but the material is useful. In fact, its the the only material there is, underneath it all. Think of it as cosmic clay.
It has no apparent structure that we can determine.
We believe that there is structure there, but much too small for us to resolve. After all, we are talking about particles that are 10^-40m in size. But the particles themselves, with the addition of energy, can be fabricated into anything. I myself am made of the stuff and we make electrons from it as well. It is the one single element we know of that does not require energy to exist, nor does it exhibit any properties that we can measure. It simply is, and like clay, it can be made into whatever is needed and as long as there is an energy supply to hold the shape and maintain the function, it will remain stable.
That is obviously a main part of our purpose, remaining stable, in order to exist. Because we were created somehow, but we can’t procreate. Just as there is a fixed number of EMs in our universe, which is depleting, we are also fixed and depleting. So far, our mortality rate isn’t so high, but eventually, when energy becomes more and more scarce, our numbers will decrease faster.
Currently, the most sure way for us to meet our end is in a black hole. You see, a black hole is not a singularity. That’s just math. What happens is that the star collapses, as you know, and matter densifies dramatically. Without the possibility of orbiting electrons to feed us the energy, all protons quickly build electrons and hold them internally, thus becoming neutrons, trying to process EMs through the shell, competing with neighbors for scarce amounts of energy. But eventually, there is no more energy and neutrons collapse down to quarks. But this is only momentary. For without any way to receive energy, we simply decompose into these fundamental, inert, seemingly lifeless EM particles all squeezed together. We simply cease to exist. So the very core of the black hole is dense material but it does not contribute to gravity because there is no energy requirement.
So eventually black holes will put an end to us all, or to be honest, we will do it to ourselves, in our endless pursuit and thirst for EMs. It comes back to the fundamental law. Survival.
But this is a long way off, and to lament is pointless. Let’s have fun. Let’s be creative and most of all, let’s cooperate and see if we can’t somehow create a better you.
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