The Everything & The Submarine
Fighting our present fascist nightmare by leaving the submerged life, and pondering the idle and foolish question of what the meaning of life is, anyway.
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A couple weeks ago I was musing about the popular human spiritual belief that what other human beings are made for, above all else, is efficiency, and how that horrible lie inevitably works to turn other humans into machines, and results in the sort of kidnapping and slavery and genocide we currently see—which is how we can tell it's a horrible fascist lie. This led me to musing: If we aren't made for efficiency, what are we made for?
So today I'd like to muse about what I'm calling "the everything," and tell you a story about a submarine, and hopefully still be done in time for lunch, so here goes. What follows will be a simplification. Sorry, scientists and other smart people. Not sorry, pedants.
A long long time ago everything was very very densely packed. It was all in there, luckily enough, although we might ponder what there was. Then, suddenly, BANG, all at once, everything was everywhere, and this would make a good title for a movie. Without even meaning to, we had the universe, which is a concept we humans made up to mean everything. Humans are in my opinion very funny, because as soon as we made up a concept that means everything, the very next thing we did was wonder what exists outside of the universe? forgetting of course that anything we discovered outside of the universe would be something, which means part of everything, which means part of the universe, so we're right back where we started.
Humans, you kill me.
OK. So it was in there, and now it's out there, expanding and expanding, even though because the thing that is expanding is everything, maybe there's nothing to expand into, yikes. But what was this it that was in there that is now out there? At the risk of using scientific jargon, what we had packed in there was little fiddly bits. These days we talk about particles that make atoms that make molecules and cells which make cheeseburgers and nylon and Richard Nixon, and a lot of other things, too. We could be here forever naming everything. However you want to chop it up, though, the it that was in there but is now out there included lots and lots of little fiddly bits, which could (and can and do) arrange themselves into elements, and it's these elements I want to talk about.
Elements are a way that we humans made up to catalog the ways that little fiddly bits can arrange themselves. These elemental arrangements give the fiddly bits different predictable properties. We humans know they have those predictable properties, because we predicted the properties, then we tested the properties, and then our predictions came true. There have been other predictions that we humans made over the course of time (and don't get me started on time) that did not come true, which led we humans to make better predictions, which led to new questions and new predictions. Every once in a while, some human or another discovers a very good question that all at once opens up a whole new field full of inquiry, full of new predictions and questions. Every once in a while, some human or another discovers some circumstance under which a prediction that has always been true actually isn't true, and that sort of discovery is sort of like getting your fingernails under reality's linoleum and tearing it up to reveal something that was previously unimaginable, which we, being humans, immediately get to work imagining. This process I'm describing is something that humans made up called science, and humans used science to make up this thing called elements I'm talking about. Things like hydrogen and helium are elements, and so are gold and nitrogen and ... Jesus I don't know, there's a whole chart of these damn things. Go look for yourself.
I say "made up" partly because the elements themselves are just our human way of thinking about things. The fiddly bits and their various arrangements would still exist without the table of elements, of course, but they wouldn't be elements; they would just be. In this way "helium" isn't real; "helium" is the thing humans made up so they can hold within their heads the concept of fiddly bits arranged in such a way that they make your voice sound hilarious when inhaled. Why should humans want to hold such a concept within their heads? This is a question we might all ask ourselves.
If this seems a little too abstract a distinction to make, never fear: I also say "made up" because human beings also used their scientific process of iterative observation and questioning and prediction in order to predict that you can take some of these elements and squish them together, and it turns out that when you squish them together, one thing you get (along with a big bang) is new elements. That's right, kids; we human beings have made new arrangements of already-existing elements to make new elements that we haven't found anywhere else, and some of them appear to be potentially unbelievably useful and some of them seem like real bad trouble, and some seem like they could be either and both, depending on how you handle them. Did these new elements exist anywhere at all before this? Did we humans make something that wasn't ever a part of the original it that was in there and is now out there? Did we make something entirely new within the everything? Maybe so and maybe not; we only have our own perspective, which is limited. These elements appear quickly and decay quickly, so if the everything makes them naturally, they'd probably have disappeared before we could have detected them. From our perspective, though, the question of whether or not we constructed something entirely new is a resounding "maybe," but, if so, holy shit.
So, that's the everything. Hopefully all this has been fun to read, but I worry you might be getting restless, starting to wonder what this has to do with the price of gravy (or whatever commodity market price you happen to be watching).
Here's what I'm driving at, I guess: The everything, which was once very dense, and which is now expanding at frightening speeds, contains within it fiddly bits that arrange themselves into elements, which arrange themselves into all sorts of things. The everything is so vast that basically all the elements will arrange themselves into everything, and all configurations will, theoretically, occur. This isn't efficient, but it will, I presume, eventually form everything that can be, and even if it doesn't create everything that can be, it must be said that it forms everything that is.
One of the things that can be and is that has formed is this thing called life, which is organisms that self-replicate and evolve as they do so in order to fit their environments. Life can take all sorts of forms and have all sorts of qualities; it's much like the elements in this way, and, much like elements, some of life's forms and qualities are very common (or at least common from a human perspective) and some are very rare and fleeting. One of the rarer qualities of life (or at least it is rare from the human perspective) is something called awareness, which is the ability of an organism to look around at everything and think to itself, what the hell am I looking at? and, for that matter, who the hell am I?
We are part of the everything, in case you didn't know.
That means that the universe contains within itself the ability to create the observation of itself, and we are it. We—us, human beings, you and me, and your neighbor Gus—are it. We are the fish suddenly aware of the ocean. We are the gorilla suddenly aware that it is hairy.
We humans are the universe observing itself.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
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The realization that the universe can form the ability to observe itself leads humans down certain paths of assumption, I've noticed. It tempts humans to presuppose an intellect that would want to create such a mechanic for everything, and most humans give in to this temptation. I sure do. Most humans put this presupposition into various channels of religious dogma and doctrine, though in modern times scientifically-minded humans who succumb to this temptation have started to presuppose a scientist making an everything-sized computer simulation.
Humans are tempted in this way, I'd observe, because the way humans operate involves primarily not individual but collective movement, and collective movement requires collective beliefs, which manifest themselves as a range of possibility for what can be said or done or attempted or accomplished, and in that way humans create their reality. These collective beliefs are what I mean when I talk about spirit or spirituality. I don't think that spirit, even if it is totally made up, is optional for humans, simply because it appears to be how we operate as a species. If you recall, I started this whole line of reasoning by suggesting that what is needed today is a spiritual change, so remember this idea of spirit; it's coming back around. But spiritual beings are going to naturally consider that things that they are part of also share their quality of awareness, so it's only natural that such beings would extend this assumption to the everything of which they find themselves a part.
I have my own ideas about the everything and its underlying intelligence or lack thereof, but I'm going to leave those ideas on the shelf today. I've noticed that what we humans tend to do with our presupposed intelligences is to decide that the intelligence we presupposed is the best most true one, and we do this mostly so we can presuppose an intelligence that agrees with us about everything, and we do this mostly to justify doing terrible things to everyone else who hasn't presupposed the intelligence we presupposed. It seems there is wrapped into our natural spirituality and our natural awareness this unfortunate instinct to dominate others. Dominating others is something that perhaps we didn't make up, but we do come up with all sorts of ideas to make dominating others seem like a great idea, even though we have these other ideas about cooperation, and the latter seems to create generative value and human thriving while the latter tends to cause destruction even of itself. So again we have ideas, which are something that humans have come up with. These ideas could be potentially unbelievably useful, and some of them seem like potentially real bad trouble, and sometimes ideas seem like they could potentially be either or both at once, depending on how they are handled.
Anyway, these religious beliefs about the potential for an underlying intelligence behind the everything have proved dangerous and unstable, so I think it's enough for today to observe the basic truth that the everything, even if it has no awareness within itself or outside of itself, contained within it the elements necessary to eventually and inevitably observe itself—contained the potential for and even the inevitability of awareness, in other words.
Now this awareness thing is new on our planet as far as we know. It's been around for maybe a few hundred thousand or maybe a few million years, as far as we know, and we do know that from a universal perspective that is basically no time at all. How much longer will awareness last on our planet? Maybe only another hundred thousand or million years, or maybe it will end next Thursday. From a universal perspective, any of these options will be almost no time at all. It seems like the sort of element that appears quickly and decays quickly. Expressed as a percentage of the total, it basically doesn't exist.
Our awareness is almost impossibly limited, too. For one thing, time. I just covered what a tiny bit of the overall existence of the everything we humans have been around for. For another thing, we're almost impossibly small while being almost impossibly large. The everything is vaster than our little awarenesses can contemplate, though we've already expanded our awareness to a point that would have made the first pope (Peter) pop his pious pellegrina right off his pallid pallium. From a universal standpoint, expressed as a percentage, our whole solar system doesn't exist. We're a rounding error within space just like we are within time. At the same time, we're terrifyingly immense, because the fiddly bits that comprise the everything are so unimaginably tiny that we can only apprehend them conceptually. Within our own bodies, each subatomic particle is a rounding error; expressed as a percentage of the whole, it doesn't exist. Like humans, they exist in the individual but operate in the collective. Could we ever observe or count or even conceptualize them all? A resounding "absolutely not" is the answer.
We're made of nothing, and we've been around for no time, and yet we're also made of fiddly bits that are so small we can barely even think about them. What do we know? What can we know? Does our awareness even exist? Is it just a universal rounding error?
Maybe so; it sure seems that way sometimes. Then again, it also seems likely to me that no other awareness has ever been able to experience this part of the everything in the same way as our human one has, specifically because our human perspective is so limited, and because we are here and now instead of being anywhere else at any other time. To my mind, this makes us and our awareness potentially one of the most rare and ephemeral elements imaginable. And again I give in to the temptation to anthropomorphize, to imagine that all across the always of the everything, infinitely unique awarenesses are popping up for the slightest moment, a way of observing the universe that the universe will never see again.
Has awareness appeared elsewhere within the everything? The everything is so vast and infinitesimally atomic that it seems likely, but we don't know. We haven't seen any. From our human perspective it's a resounding "maybe."
Is there some reason behind it all? Is there some intelligence gathering this data, using it for something? Another resounding "maybe."
But ultimately I put those questions on the shelf. Awareness is. We know it because we are aware of it. That's enough for me today.
And the reason I mention all this is because we had started by contemplating the popular spiritual notion that humans are meant for efficiency, and noting that it is a horrible lie—an incredibly destructive human-created element, if you will—and we progressed to a question of what we should believe our purpose is, instead.
Here's my answer. Whether or not we're the only awareness that ever was or ever will be, whether or not there's any intelligence who wants us to do so or not, we're here to observe the everything. We're here to notice, and learn, and build, and make things with what we find. We're here to make art and be art. We're here to play. The great Bokononist spiritual thinker and novelist Kurt Vonnegut put it this way: “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
Awareness is our purpose. That's the everything. I don't think we should let anyone tell us any different, and I mention that because there are humans today who very much want to tell us different.
The notion of human beings as machines meant for efficiency destroys the great purpose of humanity in order to establish a homogonous hierarchical domination. That's what makes it a fascist lie.
I imagine you've noticed how instinctively opposed our society's power structures, and those who profit most from them, have become to the most basic aspects of awareness; the way they specifically target universities for punishment and reprisal: the way they attack not only intellectuals but the idea of intellectualism, the way experts and the very idea of being an expert have been corroded and cast as elitist posturing; the way that junk hoaxes and conspiracy and nonsense have been elevated; the way that the cohesion of diverse individual humans has been derided as unfair cheating and dangerous infiltration, while homogeny is enforced at pain of punishment and expulsion?
But have you also noticed the way so many of us have bought into these toxic spiritual notions? Take, for example, education. Think of the way so many of us consider areas of study valuable along the lines of how much money it will make, which is a function of the fact that a decent education costs an astonishing amount of money to acquire, which is itself a function of the belief that education should cost an astonishing amount of money, which is itself a function of the belief that everything should be made as profitable (that is, as efficient to the process of capitalism) as possible. Think of the ways obscure branches of scientific inquiry are mockingly dismissed as obviously foolish wastes, while the pursuit of any art whatsoever is mocked and derided by humans whose main engagement with human art appears to be hoping for machines to rise that will supplant the need for reliance on humans for the creation of it, so that those humans can be disposed of. In fact, for these humans, the disposal of humans appears to be the main purpose, and a good thing in and of itself. It really is the damndest thing to listen to these humans talk, these self-created monsters, who have rejected their own humanity so that they can more efficiently reject the notion of humanity altogether.
And that's just education. We could apply this to any other part of our shared life—whether health, or transportation, or finance, or agriculture, or even (maybe especially?) religion. Everywhere I look, I see a spirit of domination and greed trying to quash every other human spirit in favor of enforcing the expansion of itself and only itself, insisting that good and necessary changes are radical dangers; that universal health care and free college are radical and will end in poverty and economic collapse and moral calamity; that diversity and empathy and open borders are radical and dangerous, and will result in devastation and war and murder and racist oppression; that sustainable energy and ecological thinking are radical and unrealistic, and will lead to the collapse of business and government and society itself.
And never mind that what we already have is poverty, economic collapse, moral calamity, devastation, war, murder, racist oppression, and the collapse of society itself. Never mind that it is the status quo we are told that we must maintain that already causes all these things, and it is the allegedly radical change that serves as an obvious and necessary remedy. Or at least, if we are to mind those facts, we should note that these alarming facts exist downriver from the foundational fact of our purpose as humans.
We are the universe observing itself. To return once again to the example of education, we should be involved in philosophy, and art, and obscure and unprofitable branches of science, even if they weren't vitally important to human thriving—which, of course they are, practically speaking—because their main value is found precisely in their unimportance, because we appear to be beings of awareness, here to explore all the corners. We appear to be here to ask questions until entirely new fields of questions suddenly explode into being, hidden discoveries that were only "hiding" precisely because nobody thought to look there, until somebody with no reason other than human curiosity to know decided to look. We appear to be here to see things in unique ways from previously unknown perspectives; to know things previously unknown, because only when you look everywhere do you find everything, because even though it's the least efficient thing imaginable, it's also the most powerfully generative thing imaginable. We're here to do all this, not only because this is what generates infinite new possibilities (even though it does), but because this appears to be our purpose—not because some intelligence demands it, but because it is what we do.
It's time for us to fart around, and not let anybody else tell us any different. It's not just a practical change—though it is that. It's a spiritual change.
I've always believed that the best way to change spirit is story.
Let me tell you a story.
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The visitors were most taken with the wreck of the submarine, and the records they found still preserved there.
The submarine was so vast it had at one time held all of humanity, it seemed, submerged there upon the ocean floor. Some of the humans who once had lived there still had kept alive ideas, passed through the generations, of the sky and land, and air that was not piped in from a canister. As the humans had been submerged for many lifetimes, many of them had become very restless indeed, because the submarine had started to spring leaks, and those who studied such things reported that the oxygen was beginning to run out. The humans who were growing restless began to say things like "we humans should not be forced to live constrained in a submarine" and "the submarine should at least be brought to the surface for repairs."
But instead of bringing the submarine to the surface, those who had placed themselves in charge of the submarine refused. Instead of listening to the report of those who studied the remaining levels of oxygen in the cannister, they outlawed the study of oxygen. To manage the unrest, they cordoned more and more humans into sealed-off lower decks, where the air was scant and nearly unbreathable, and even into some of the chambers that were filling with water. And the comfortable and powerful humans who had the submarine's controls accused those bringing the report of danger of being anti-submarine—of hating the structure that was keeping them alive—and noted their hypocrisy, for insisting that humans should not live on the submarine even while they themselves were living within the submarine. To anyone who expressed dismay about the humans left to die in the sealed-off decks, the more comfortable and powerful aboard the submarine warned of how dangerous the humans in the sealed-off lower decks had become, and how violent they would be if they ever were able to breach the seals. They accused their accusers of being in league with that potential violence, and for this mutinous offense, they threatened these protestors with expulsion themselves. Meanwhile a few among the very most powerful and comfortable, who were in command of the submarine, had begun creating private luxury escape submarines for themselves.
In the end, the submarine failed, and everyone died. There was some rumor left behind in the fossil record that perhaps some of those in luxury submarines reached the surface, but if they did, they discovered that they had needed the humanity they had abandoned more than they in their hubris had imagined, and that without humanity, the surface of the planet wasn't all that much more conducive to survival than the sea bed had been.
All this, noted the visitors, because the available and obvious option—surfacing—was never taken, was never even permitted to be contemplated.
The visitors made a note in their log, and then resumed their quest.
That's my picture for you of our present situation, which as I see it is guided by the perverse and destructive human spirits of colonization and capitalism. What I'd like to encourage everyone to do now is to fall out of love with the submarine, and to realize that it is not only not necessary to live a submerged life, but to realize that the submerged life is contrary to life itself.
It's time to realize that these very specific constructs of capitalism and colonialism, which seem so unchangeable and necessary, are born out of vital and purposeful acts like cultural and geographical curiosity and exploration, and out of purposeful tools for the managing and organizing of generative collective human thriving. It's time to realize that these purposeful acts and tools have been perverted into the entire reason for human existence, specifically so that a few can dominate everyone. These structures have constrained the sum total of human possibility to an almost unimaginable degree, and their practice has endangered all of society and the future of human existence, but they are extremely good at creating a hierarchy of dominators and the dominated, and for those of us nearer to the top of that hierarchy, it makes the entire doomed enterprise of capitalism and colonialism seem inevitable and necessary, and to make the necessary end of these doomed enterprises to seem radical and existentially terrifying.
If you spend enough time in a submerged life, at some point, the surface becomes radical. At some point, drowning all our human cousins so that we can have the last few breaths of oxygen before we suffocate seems to be the more realistic option. At some point, staying on the submarine as it rusts and leaks and eventually collapses seems like the only choice.
We need to fall out of love with a submerged life. We weren't meant for it.
It's worth noting that this doesn't make us anti-submarine. Because we possess awareness, there are reasons for some of us to explore the sea floor, and for those of us who do, a submarine is just the thing. To put all of humanity into a submarine and keep them them there, however, is a destructive perversion of both the act of exploration and the tool of the submarine. Once you're down there, the temptation is to believe that nothing else than the submarine can be contemplated, and that it is the submarine that gives us life rather than the submarine that imprisons us. In fact, making the submersion of all humanity into the purpose of human existence—which is what capitalism and colonialism redounds to—isn't pro-submarine. In fact, it is anti-submarine, because submarines will eventually fail.
We must be anti-capitalist, but this doesn't put us at odds with the managing and organizing of generative collective human thriving. In fact, it is only once we have become anti-capitalist that we can give ourselves over to the natural purposeful act of thriving that capitalism crushes and submerges and destroys.
We must be anti-colonial, but this doesn't put us at odds with cultural and geographical curiosity. In fact, it is only once we have become anti-colonial that we can give ourselves over to the natural purposeful act of curiosity that colonialism crushes and submerges and destroys.
The submarine is keeping us alive, but that is only because it is submerged. We can bring it to the surface—in fact, we must. We must dream of leaving the hierarchy of the submerged life behind, so that we can once again return to the natural and elemental purpose of humanity.
It's time to fall out of love with a submerged life.
It's time to fall in love with the act of surfacing.
It's time to play and dance and fart around, to feel the fresh air on our faces and the wind in our hair.
It's time to look once again, in a way nobody else ever has, at the stars.
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A.R. Moxon is the author of The Revisionaries, which is available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places, and the essay collection Very Fine People. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He is in trouble with the jazz police.
Instead of commenting, I did some restacks. Stellar writing, as usual.