terça-feira, janeiro 30, 2007

Sci Fi Quickies II

Power corrupts, but then again without power, what do we do? Power is, in fact, energy, and given the fact that the end of the twentieth century was awash with energy surplus, would that mean that there was never in the history of the world so much corruption? Will this explain our downfall, our demise? Should have we never accepted the fire of Prometheus, should have we never invented the wheel? These are enough questions for one to understand that simple cause-effect reasoning is never true. In fact, the measure of religious fanatic lunacy is how deep we reason life.

So, where was it? Were we doomed from the start, or was it a 50-50 chance, a coin play among gods of fortune, a mis-chanced arrow inside a vortex of space-time continuum? Have we bet in the losing side of the coin?

If so, Life on Earth is then but a final breath of a dying organism, who failed to give birth, forever dismissed in the course of Natural Selection. Earth is but a bankrupted player of poker who stubbornly insists on doubling bets, a spiral of death, lights and smoke breathe above the table. The barrel poker players listen to the sentenced planet, but still only aiming.

Yes, life is short, we all hope but to die, which is precisely what defines time for us, the unrelenting passing of life against the never-stopping hope for eternity in all life forms. That is why we keep on doubling bets, that is why we try to cheat death until the very end. Fat lady is still silent, like the barrels.

But we see the signs. The sentence was long ago whispered among the barreled guns. Only pure curiosity keeps them from firing. Curious as a biologist with a handicapped insect, "Why does it keep on it? Why doesn't it quit living?" Hope. The quintessential characteristic of all life forms. And I could say "how pathetic of it", and would be only voicing the internal hope of a better result, of a better outcome. A superior choice. A hope, nonetheless.

The far cry of Rapturists and end-of-world religious zealots is instantly recognized. They are gathering now. The sounds of chanting. The bell of rings. Hope? When all else failed, man always turned to God for an answer to death. Without a doubt, the sounds of pure despair.

- That's just cynical, man, what's wrong with having a religion, if one finds peace on it?

- And what peace is that, can I ask you? What good that peace creates? The peace of sheep? The peace of the lamb promised to the wolf? How can anyone sleep while the lions daunt us?

-Oh shut up, we DO need to sleep, if we have to have energy saved for tomorrow, you know? What is life but a hope in the future? What is rest but a trust in time? Do you really consider yourself to be a prophet of mankind's future? Ah! You're so full of yourself! And if you buy what you say, why even bother to breathe, may I ask You?

- Oh, come on, I'm just gloomy today. Didn't mean to...

- You're always gloomy! Have you perchance forgotten the history books? They are full of tragedies and end-of-the-world sets. It is really not the end of the world.

- Fine, I'm gloomy, but with good reason. We have exploited all of the world natural resources, so we are headed towards cavemen again. The wolves will hunt us down again. How's that for a future sight?

- We have to have hope, man. Eating yourself up is not going to better things, you know that.

- I'm trying to find it. I'm searching for it. Probably, it is the last thing that keeps my heart beating. And I couldn't care less of myself. Mankind is in the verge of annihilating this planet's chance of blossoming for perhaps a billion years. Do you reckon the irresponsibility of what we are about to have done to the world?

"One of the mankind's greatest errors of character was always to misinterpret personal subjective perception of reality with the real itself. The inner workings of space-time entropy were yet to be discovered and theorized, its elements still rendered as separate speculations or misguided generalisms. Man could only grasp reality in ephemerous moments, and reported efforts to verbalize them were obviously and quickly dismissed as truisms or tautologisms, self-referenced superstitions. We have to realize that man was only beginning to grasp the barriers of common language for describing chaotic and non-deterministic space-time occurrences.
(...)
Concurrently, scalable events were completely misunderstood, and individual interests alarmingly superseded political sight, without the clear restraint of awareness. A self-created tail-eater tapeworm was the only mathematical solution possible for such a system.
This is the precise essence of why ancient history is so focused in individuality myths and messianic heroic hopes, ultimately leading to the astonishingly tragic events of what was later called the Great Singularity."

From the prelude to the Zhun-Betis Earth History Book.

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