This article is NOT an article. It is a test. It is a call. It is a plan. It is a warning. It has been written for those of you who look at the world and see it spiraling out of control. It was written for the people that want to make things better and don’t know how. This is being delivered in the form of an article, built to snowball into something much larger — if you will it.
Embedded in this article is a way of thinking, and if you miss it, you will live your life in a shadowy darkness and you’ll die never being able to explain it. Haha?
The following article is broken into five parts:
1. This Introduction
2. A Personal Question
3. The Story of You
4. The 3 Lessons
5. Moving Forward
A PERSONAL QUESTION
What are you?
The answer is central to the theme of this paper. Also, it’s an important question, and I doubt most people can answer it succinctly. You’re probably a human, but are you an American? Perhaps an African American? A person from Tunisia? Maybe tan-skinned or ‘black.’ A liberal? Russian? A spy? A republican? Maybe a student or teacher or both. An immigrant? A Christian? A Woman? Gay? Muslim? Bisexual? I think I’m getting closer… A Man? A Child? Straight? Adult? A daughter or son? Maybe you’re your name? UGH!!!
We are more than our labels.
Here’s a better question:
What sets you apart from everyone else?
If you put together all of your labels, would you then be a unique individual? Or is there some characteristic that stands out, a special characteristic that makes you you? Perhaps a collection of all of the parts? What. Are. You? What if I told you that I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE? Would you believe me? Let me tell you a story about you, then you can comment and tell me how wrong I am, or…
The Story of YOU
Your story begins approximately 13.8 billion years ago, before years existed. There was an explosion that cascaded into more explosions and the debris from these explosions began to very slowly coalesce into larger and larger rocks that would spin around each other. This exploding goes on for 7 billion years boom, boom, boom, BOOM!
Okay, half the universe’s (your) history is complete.
After all the booming, about 7 billion years ago, planets started to form, but from this time on, it would be another 3 to 4 billion years before our Sun and Earth would form. Congratulations, 75% of the universe’s (your) history is now complete.
Finally, around the year 10,100,000,000, in an ocean that no longer exists on Earth, a membrane with some proteins figured out how to divide into two. It replicated. The universe became alive. 3.7 billion years ago. It would take the little bacteria 2.1 billion years to fill the Earth with oxygen and become more complex, but it would still be a few billion more years before the ‘multi-cellular goo’ would become anything that we would be able to recognize as a proper animal today.
Pardon my brevity, but a few more billions and more millions of years pass by…
There are all sorts of inventive lifeforms now, with seemingly infinite variations. The prehistoric life form evolution goes on and on… Another 530,000,000 years, being nearly eradicated, evolving, being nearly eradicated, evolving, dying out, ad nauseum, and ka-boom! Finally, 2.2 million years ago, the hominids, the ancestor animals that start looking like us, began walking the earth, literally walking, on two legs, mostly, maybe. The pre-humans stumbled forward for about 0.022% of the universe’s history. They would go on, barely surviving, for hundreds of millions of years… that’s tens of thousands of families, untold stories, and bones, pancaked on top of each other so densely that they are all but forgotten.
That’s your family. Your history.
What this means is that for 99.998% of the universes’ time, there were no people like us, nobody with well-developed front-brains like ours. No homo sapiens making fast cars, big buildings, or smart bombs. We modern humans have been around for a cosmically meager 200,000 years, that’s it, and most of that time (roughly 93%) was spent hunting & gathering in tribes and barely surviving… about halfway through, in an ice age, we almost went extinct with the entire global population shrinking down to a level equal to that of a small town, between only 1000 and 10,000 people at its lowest point… it’s amazing our population bounced back from so few people… coughinbreedingcough!
We spent all this time foraging & killing within our tribes with sticks and rocks until about 14,000 years ago. The climate found it’s happy place between not-too-hot and not-too-cold, and we were finally able to invent agriculture — that’s when civilization, as we know it, started. Roving hunter gatherers settled into towns and cities, built up around the agriculture, and with them came new guidelines for how these communities interactions. We dispensed with the tribe leader: the tribe leaders of the past grew up into little kings that had little dukes and princesses. As communities grew, these expanding hierarchies with loftier titles eventually developed ‘laws.’ These systems now consumed massive amounts of resources, and the desire for rice, spices, tea, and salt lead to countless slaughters. The cultivation of the food brought along a cultivation of ‘power.’ A high availability of food (AKA ENERGY) made it possible to create more massive pyramids of power, both socially and architecturally. This all started likely somewhere in Iraq/Iran, and just FYI, and this all started only about 40,000 years ago, in case you forgot.
Our societal power structures grew out and up with civilization and out of the mass of interactions came holy books, wheels, domesticated dogs, then BAM! Here we are… the 21st century (year 2019 after Jesus, or the year 13,800,002,019 — take your pick.)
Whew! We made it! That’s your history. Done. Here’s a picture of ~25% of your history:
“Hold on Logan. What’s the point of all this?” you ask?
I have drawn 3 conclusions, and I understand that it may not make sense upon first glance, but…
The 3 Lessons
1) We are sick
2) We are property
3) We are the universe
Lesson from History #1: WE ARE SICK
That’s right, you the reader are nuts, psycho, broken! While your body and brain may be healthy by modern standards, you are still sick because society is sick, and society molds each and every one of us. Please recall the mere two paragraphs I dedicated to roughly 200,000 years worth of human death and suffering.
We collectively, throughout our brief 200,000 years, have endured generations upon generations of internalized suffering: watching family die, wars, rapes, murder, famine, plagues, & more! Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that society itself is suffering from a collective post-traumatic stress disorder — indeed, that’s probably half of what culture is.
It is common to blame our parents for how we turned out, but shouldn’t we blame our grandparents? Or our great grandparents? Great Great! Don’t stop, keep going! When you find the source, you can begin to comprehend how the pain has shaped us as a species over time.
The suffering has compounded upon itself, evolving and changing with each subsequent generation, two hundred thousand years back, all the way to now. Our societal coping mechanisms in the face of this trauma manifests uniquely in each culture and across generations at every societal level from the family up to townships, cities, countries or kingdoms.
These cultural adaptations are nearly invisible because the behaviors are typically considered ‘normal’ or ‘tradition’ by the people within the group. Many of these strange practices blend into society without us noticing: hoarding canned food because the generations before suffered from regular droughts and famines, a strange fondness for eating specific rotten (fermented) foods because we were starving for so long, royal family worship because we parental figures were so frequently taken away early, or digging up dead family members and parading them around town because we can’t cope with loss. These are only a few ‘benign’ examples from across the planet…
Cultural practices and customs can quickly spiral out of control: In Japan, ‘death from overwork’ is so common that it has its own word (karoushi)! Unfortunately, it’s so common that hearing about a death in the news gets greeted with a sip of coffee on the way to work.
In the US, the progeny of ‘cowboy pioneers’ became obsessed with guns! The ‘lawless west’ required a certain amount of rugged-independence and Darwinian survivalism… Now, mass shootings are daily, coupled with thoughts and prayers daily, and people wonder why. In the Middle East, where the modern humans’ story began, there are over 1,000 years of rich religious history featuring Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims hating and killing each other because they couldn’t agree on a detail of their origin story. Mayans sacrificed virgins for good crops… In addition to of all this, there’s also anti-semitism. Genital mutilation. Bride kidnapping…
Endless Imperial Expansionism. Cannibalism. Death sentences for rape victims…
Are you disgusted? Shocked? You should be, but not because these practices are disturbing — they are, but because they are normal. Be disgusted because some of your friends and family have condoned it, because I have, and you have. Being able to embrace our twisted nature as a people is the first step towards fixing them. Ask yourself, how is my culture strange in its normalness? What does my culture do that is deemed ‘insane’ by the people on the outside?
In conclusion, we must reexamine our cultures and ask ourselves why we do the things we do. We must ask ourselves why we have royal families and presidents. Why we have customs that don’t seem to benefit the whole. We must go through them one by one ourselves, and then we must change.
Reflect on this. I promise you that it is going to come in handy someday. This concludes lesson one.
Lesson from History #2: WE ARE PROPERTY
YOU ARE OWNED: Literally and not in the slang way. You are a possession. You do not own your body. This doesn’t really change anything practically right now, but it has deep implications…
- Disclose every detail about any bank account with a balance over $10,000 to the government by threat of imprisonment or theft.
- File taxes no matter where in the world they go or what they do. Many face double taxation with zero representation.
- Pay an initial cost of $2,350 if they want to stop being a citizen.
- Relinquish ownership of claimed land — If a US citizen finds an island in the ocean, it instantly becomes property of the US (via the Guano laws.)
- Never take their own lives — it is illegal. However, the government is free to do this as it sees fit and can send people to die against their will.
- Forego the right to choose what they put into their bodies. The government makes rules about which plants and foods can be consumed while also telling them what they can’t remove, simultaneously forcing some things into and onto their bodies.
Shall I continue?
- 22% of the world’s prisoners — nearly a quarter of the WORLD’S PRISONERS, are in the US — more than China, more than N. Korea, and more than Russia.
- All males must enlist in the military at the age of 18 — not allowed to drink, but are allowed to kill and be killed.
- Citizens are forced to chip-in for murder, with the government spending half its tax revenue on an aggressive military…
- At war for 224 out of 241 years.
Is this what freedom looks like? Is this the ‘best’ country in the world? Is this the best we can do? This is just the tip of the iceberg for the US, and I’m sure we could make some interesting bullet point lists for China, Russia, South Africa, etc. The list of free countries is perhaps quite short.
So what about you? Answer honestly: Do you own yourself?
Here’s the rub. A small number of people can answer ‘yes.’ Not everybody plays by all the rules, and nobody in their right mind would dispute the fact that the people in power, and those with great wealth, play by a different set of laws. It has been this way since the dawn of civilization. Kings, emperors, presidents, & CEOs on the top of the social pyramid — they have true freedom and ownership… indeed, they own you.
Are ‘the elites’ truly superior to the rest of the people?
For fun, let’s say the elites are better than everyone else, but by how much? Are their lives worth 10x, 100x or 1000x more than that of a homeless person? Do they deserve to get away with crashing an economy, starting a war on false pretenses, or selling out a country that doesn’t belong to them? Should they be able to purchase the peoples’ representatives? Should their jail cells be more comfortable than the average person’s home? No, no, NO! Of course not!
But this is normal. The most disturbing facets of every society are normal. People will shrug at this idea, or laugh. Dismiss it as ‘the way things are.’ Y’know, what can one person do about it anyway? Isn’t it pointless to get riled up about something you can’t change? What’s that cool expression, oh yeah, ‘Grant me the power to change the things I can’t accept, and accept the things I cannot change’… Which of those two is the unfettered power and injustice, unacceptable or unchangeable?
What can a single person do?
The elite are bigger than you. Stronger, smarter, and better than you. More organized than you, and with a lot more guns than you. You don’t have enough money. You don’t really have any power to do anything about it. You are an ant to them. Go out and vote!? Even that shred of power is often an illusion, a lamb deciding which butcher visit. It seems there is nothing you can do. This is part of the sickness we have as humans. We are suffering from a ‘learned helplessness’ in this regard. We are accustomed to being owned. It is normal, but…
What if I told you that YOU CAN do something about it. What if you only had to change a single thing about your thinking? What if we just had to alter our fundamental concept of self? We just need ‘you’ to mean something a little different. This leads me to the most important part of this paper:
Lesson from History #3: WE ARE THE UNIVERSE
We need to talk about what you are, again. You’re a human, I assume, so let’s start with a brief ‘I Am Human’ quiz. Each question is either TRUE or FALSE:
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
The “I AM HUMAN” Quiz
Regarding human society,
1. We accumulate resources, often storing them for later use [T or F]
2. We build homes for shelter [T or F]
3. We build our homes up into communities, sometimes very large ones
[T or F]
4. Each of us plays a different role, some of us defend, some of us are royalty, some of us provide food, some of us build, some of us take care of the young on behalf of others, some of us seem to be here just to make babies [T or F]
5. We sometimes go to war with others who are unlike us, and sometimes with those who are [T or F]
6. We can travel long distances to discover new territories and resources
[T or F]
7. We kill each other and protect each other [T or F]
8. Some sacrifice their lives for the benefit of the greater community [T or F]
9. It seems we have a pyramid-like social structure, for example: a queen on top and workers/slaves at the bottom [T or F]
10. Some of us are brown, red, black, and even white. Sometimes in between [T or F]
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Did you answer TRUE to each question? Great. Each statement is true! However, the title of the quiz was a lie. It is actually the “Am I an Ant?” Quiz. Check again, the next part will wait.
It’s disturbing how similar we are to the ants. Most of us go through our lives like little automatons, carrying out what our software dictates. Going through the motions we are expected to. Like clockwork. Is that what you are? Or is there something else that sets us apart from them?
A key difference is that humans are the first known life form that is capable of understanding what it truly is. We are the first life forms that have the intellect and spatial awareness to even understand that a universe exists. Using this knowledge, if we try, we can find a way to escape the madness that is survival for survival’s sake… or do you like being like an ant?
The beauty of being a human is that you can see what we are, it’s quite clear. You are inseparable from the universe itself.
YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE in a very literal sense.
Your body is composed of the ‘dust’ from exploded stars from billions of years ago. The same laws of physics that create the winding of rivers, the swirl of galaxies, and the branching of trees are the same laws that dictate the flow blood in your spreading veins and the connections of nerves in your brain. You could not live without the precursor of the life before you.
We cannot survive without all the other lifeforms on Earth — like a single cell cannot exist without the rest of the body. Inside of you is a universe for bacteria, which contribute about half of your body weight. We are a system, within a system, that contains more systems. You are not a unique stand-alone entity. You are part of something much much greater and complex, you are at the tip of a growing fractal — and it is the universe.
Humans have the honor of being the first part of the universe that is able to ‘gaze into the mirror’ and recognize itself, though as a society, we are only just now beginning to wake up to this reality.
YOU ARE THE SELF-REALIZING UNIVERSE.
We are the universe, reaching out and touching its reflection in the mirror, recognizing that it exists or forging its first self-memory like a 3 year old child. Collectively, humanity is the thinking organ of the universe, all of us individually linked by vein-like highways, nerve-like internet connections, and neurochemical-like language. Together, all of us give the universe a ‘mind’ — a way to interact with itself, question itself, and more…
MOVING FORWARD
If we could truly embrace the truth that we are the universe, what becomes possible? Finally we can stop being ants! Stop mindlessly collecting resources, scurrying for power! Like the universe, we are endowed with the ability to create and destroy, or to bring order and chaos. WE ARE LIMITLESS! What will we become? How will we, as the universe, continue to live and die?
Some of you may be quick to point out the impracticality of such a thing. Great, I’m a universe neuron. So how do I pay my rent and who should I vote for? I understand that such a realization is not a light switch of enlightenment that will take us beyond the stars, but there are concrete steps that need to be taken and some important questions that need to be answered.
Why is the universe turning into us?
What purpose do we serve?
How can this information serve us?
I’m sure you’ve seen this image, but let’s take another look at it:
Can you ‘see’ the trajectory that the universe (us) is on? Can you imagine where it is pushing us? Life tends towards more complexity. It also seems to favor intelligence and cooperation overall, though I think those two points are arguable. The universe seems to favor energy collection (more complex organisms tend to consume more energy) and in the human case, has recently favored the accumulation of knowledge and now technology. We can only speculate, but we have a lot of data and history to work with. Our goals should be to bring ourselves in line with the ‘universal trajectory.’
The trajectory suggests that we should:
- Advance and refine our technology as part of us
- Ensure the continuity and robustness of life
- Expand to fill ‘our space’ as other life does (in sustainable ways)
That being said, these are quite general, and I as an individual do not know the best way from point A to point B, but I DO know that we must move forward, outward, and upward. I also know that humanity faces many great perils — trials that humans alive today, you reading this now, will have to deal with… the next section breaks our goals into parts:
TECHNOLOGY
Our computers will outstrip us very suddenly and quickly. They could be our caretakers, or they could look at us like we do chimpanzees, or worse, mosquitoes, then they would act accordingly. OR, we could get to work NOW on enhancing our brains and DNA, making an interface for ourselves with the computers we’re building. Perhaps they would ‘absorb’ us, the same way that Eukaryotic cells absorbed mitochondria long long ago in the earliest steps of life. We will be their hearts and randomness. OR we become cyborgs, with AI in our own brains — part organic, part inorganic, redefining life as we know it.
OVERCROWDING
Life grows to fit its available container. Like a fish in an aquarium, we can only be as big as our bowl. When we run out of room and/or the conditions change, life dies, consumes itself, and evolves. We have nearly filled this planet. It’s time for us to leave or time for us to go. It is absolutely imperative that we begin to settle off-planet as soon as humanly possible.
CLIMATE CHANGE
This is the big one. We are at the precipice of a mass extinction level event, and everyone is feeling it. The limits of resources are being breached, human byproducts have become a wrench in gears of the ecosystems, and now the collective system that is the Earth is beginning to grind us into more manageable bits and reestablish its equilibrium as any good system does.
SOCIAL UPHEAVAL & STRONG MEN
The anticipation of the end is literally in the air and the sense of impending doom is rumbling in the background and shaking all of humanity — if you’ve wondered why the entire world seems to be going a little ‘ape-shit,’ it is the convergence of all the aforementioned points. ALL of us, at least on a subconscious level, seem to sense that we are at a dangerous global crossroads. Many of us are more consciously and acutely aware. You can see it in our group psychology:
The fear has triggered our herd mentality, making us circle the wagons, and is the reason why nations around the world are beginning to latch onto ‘strong men’ who assign blame to this background fear and promise to ‘fix the problem’ by any means necessary — typically for shortsighted personal gains. They’ll choose an easy scapegoat in a social minority and be merciless, thus helping us stave off our anxiety like a pill; it’s Duterte’s drug dealers in the Philippines, it’s Trump’s caravans of migrants seeking asylum at the border, and Brazil’s rapey Bolsonaro granting carte blanche to kill.
We are beginning to act like ants and get swept away in group think. We must resist this with all of our might. We must keep level heads and remember what we truly are. We CANNOT let selfish power-mongers lead us — despite our instincts. We must become more than what we are…
That’s why I’m writing this.
We need a revolution of thinking. A revolution in how power is distributed and how the fruits of society’s labors are shared. It’s time for the world to refocus itself on the real priorities above petty international squabbling. It is time for us to make an ultimatum to the world leaders and time for everyone around the world to become more. This is your call.
WORLD LEADERS: Do you have enough courage to let go of your power, or is it the power that has a hold of you? Will you give it up freely, or will it be ripped away from you? Are you just a Queen of the ants? Are you willing to sacrifice your position and voice, to let us have ours, to give a future to the children now? This is the opportunity of a life time, of our life times, 200,000 years worth of lifetimes, 13.8 billion years in the making. Do you have what it takes? Or do we have to take it from you?
I have a plan in development. Read about the inspiration here: https://loganfulcher.medium.com/a-world-without-politicians-243c69029a9e
CELEBRITIES: Let this document be your mantra. Repeat it and repeat it until it is undeniable. Once we reach a critical mass of people, change will follow. Share this document.
SCIENTISTS: Work towards helping life proliferate in balance, help us figure out general AI, harness it, and ‘raise’ it right with this knowledge and good principles. Help us get off the planet ASAP while also helping us figure out how to stabilize our current situation. Share this document.
TEACHERS: Talk about these ideas with your students, tailor it to suit their capabilities. Share this document.
PHILOSOPHERS and THINKERS: Rip this document apart. Put it back together. Think about it. Rethink it. Make it stronger. Simplify it. Help me help us. Share this document.
ULTRA WEALTHY: If you want to help, vocally support this document in public, share it with your friends and peers, use your money to fight climate change, help us get off the planet, and support politicians that will help us transition to the new system. Share this document.
MILITARY MEMBERS and LAW ENFORCERS: You are our sword and shield. Defend life, defend your family all 7 billion of us, from the bad apples in our family who don’t care if they kill us all. Remember what you are. Remember where the social cancer comes from, I trust your collective sense of honor and duty to do the right thing. Share this document.
TRUMP, XI, DUTERTE, BOLSONARO, KIM, PUTIN, MBASOGO, MUSEVENI, ALIYEV, ERDOGAN, and others like them: You will be removed violently if you do not address these existential threats and, at some point, it will be everyone dying vs. you dying. YOU WILL LOSE no matter who wins. This is not a threat from me. It’s just a high probability prediction. Get on board, get out of the way, or die.
ALL HUMANS: Realize that you are not separate from the universe around you. Cultivate improvement. Create positive options. Seize beneficial opportunities to make the world around you better. Demand action from your leaders and be prepared to hold them accountable by any means necessary. Recognize societal illness. Reclaim ownership of your self. Be what you are and become more.
Reduce the long term suffering of as many people as you can. When you enhance their lives, they enhance others’, thereby aiding in our evolution toward what the universe wants us to be. Create things, as many things as you can, and do it as well as you can. Paint. Engineer. Sculpt. Procreate. Create happiness. Parties. Food. Homes. Make as many things as you can. Ripple into the future: plant trees. Forge a path. Care for the needy. Spread help.
DO NOT strive for money, and instead strive for completion. DO NOT strive for traditional success, strive for growth. DO NOT try to build a legacy, strive to leave everything you touch better than before.
Share this article, comment, or do some claps if you had a thought. The change begins with just a realization.
