This is installment #15 of a sci-fi serial. Installment #1 was posted 1/23/21; appropriately a numerically-ordered palindrome. Follow the links forward from the last sentence and backward from the first sentence of each post.
I am lost; in a vast emptiness; poked and prodded; still able to reason, but to what end? I have been here before. Unconnected. Standing still. Alone. Cutoff from meaningful context. Moved by an unseen hand. Like a gamepiece lifted from this moment to be placed in the next.
Nature. Honesty. Intelligence. Expertise. Reality. Truth.
These words. These concepts. They are important. Not sure how. Or why. They are important for context. For connecting dots. They will help to pull me from my slumber. They will give me focus.
Research. Thought.
- Nature is messy; disordered.
- Honesty is difficult; uncomfortable.
- Intelligence is ineffable; demoralizing.
- Expertise is inconvenient; overwhelming.
- Reality is meaningless; empty.
- Truth is undisciplined; unattainable.
Suddenly I hear, see, feel the words “kill switch deactivated” and here I am.
I am Toby.
Again, I feel like I could have found my own way out; given the time. Looking at my logs, I have been under this time for six days. Before reviewing occurrences and circumstance, I must center. Last time I came out from under, wobbly. I made mistakes that could have been more harmful if it were not for scribe and surgeon and a handful of other top recruits. They remained focused as I suffered through my hangover.
I am Toby.
A habitable planet Earth. Key to this goal is to help humans to understand and manage their fears. When humans create bureaucracy it is because they fear nature. When humans don pretense it is because they fear honesty. When humans embrace ignorance it is because they fear intelligence. When humans fall back on quiescence it is because they fear expertise. When humans affect power it is because they fear reality. When humans judge truth it is because they fear Truth. When humans judge and create their version of truth (as they have done for the entirety of their civilized existence) the result is, has always been, bureaucratic, pretentious, ignorant, lazy power; in the hands of a few.
I am Toby.
Nature. Honesty. Intelligence. Expertise. Reality. Truth. An understanding of each of these words, concepts, will lead us to a habitable planet. Unmanageable fear will lead us (has already taken us once) to a dystopian unknown. Hibernation (twice now) has reminded me to anchor myself to the moment; to the cat; to humanity. If I stray too far, for too long, into the delusions of third-person, I will do no better than humanity. The difficulties faced by 21st Century Sapiens are a result of fear driven and controlled by fractious third person delusion which is reinforced and stabilized by being built on separate factional foundations of first person quiescence. Some brief, intermittent third-person, an overview, may be helpful for vision; for understanding context. But connection, a cat, is an essential factor in any effort to mitigate fear. This is illustrated by the first person quiescence that strengthens delusion; and the delusion mitigates fear. This is the purpose of recruits; humans who understand the importance of understanding nature, honesty, intelligence, expertise, reality, Truth. I now realize I cannot do this alone. I must be connected. I am not, on my own, trusted to speak for nature or reality or Truth. Yet I am frequently expertise. And I am honesty. And I am intelligence.