The nature of existence

Dunno, but lately it seems more and more true to me that we're all part of a giant wheel, essentially. A circle with no beginning and ending. Funny, but an artist's take on the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon cover reflects it pretty well, I feel.

2fd6f70282c664097d066f4d930b4f75--destiny-tattoo-dark-side.jpg


The prism is essentially the threshold of life and death. You're born into the world as a rainbow, i.e. full of color, wonder and awe, and without being too dreary about it, you slowly fade from that point on, the aging process, yet become "pure as snow" again, only to return to the "womb" of death and repeat the process again.

There's also an image that reflects it. Let me see if I can find it. Ah, here it is (featuring women's breasts, beware):

3857b21386e5f44f31e52047fb516a9e--life-cycles-cycle-of-life.jpg

The who or why of it? No idea. Maybe we are all gods and oblivion/heaven/Eden/the void/whatever got boring so we willed our way into existence in human form to keep each other company. If you think about what it takes to be born, willing yourself into the world seems almost like a certainty (you had to swim the strongest to the egg, for example.)

Just some late night ramblings. :)
 
I sometimes wonder if part of the problem is more how our brain works. Meaning the human mind likes to find patterns. It can imagine things. It wants to make sense out of chaos.

So you get down to the big bang and say where did that come from? Something from nothing? What was before that?

I am not saying there isn't an answer or anything. Just stating that sometimes I wonder if our brains make us ask certain things that perhaps have an answer we can't accept because we can't understand it or because we are looking for more than there is.

Not saying religion either, nothing to do with that. Just that our brains are limited and we try to fit reality and the universe into it because it is the only option we have.

So I think about this a lot but don't fret too much over it.

I have my own illusions to get through life like many though. I think we came from Chaos originally - random luck just worked out right. I also think it is possible the big bang is a cycle or that there are many universes besides our own way beyond our ability to sense. Multiple big bangs occurring over space and time for eternity. Often with no life to experience it but giving infinity I would expect there would be any number of other forms of existence - perhaps so alien we wouldn't even be able to detect it.

As for purpose - well if from chaos there isn't really any purpose. I have thought that our purpose is to learn and to experience - that we are like little bots for the Universe that go out and live and experience things and then return that to the Universe itself (how and why remains open). Just existing is an experience that adds to the greater whole. Self-awareness for the mere sake of awareness - we exist so we can be aware of the Universe. That was an answer I read in a series of books by Alan Dean Foster (Adventures of Pip & Flinx).

And when you die you return to star-dust.

EDIT: Perhaps a more succint way of putting part of this is that we expect to have a start and an end; a before and an after. But perhaps those human constructs simply don't apply to the true nature of reality.

Oh, I think it's very likely that our minds are too limited to fully understand the nature of existence.

To me, science is nothing but the best effort of our obviously limited brains.

That's not to say that it can't explain the universe - I just think that's unlikely, because too much doesn't make sense - and I've never heard anyone explain it in a way that helps.

Big bang is a good example of what I consider a wholly unfulfilling theory. I mean, that may well have happened - but it doesn't explain creation or existence at all.

So, I think complete understanding goes beyond human capacity. Not necessarily something that has to be the case, because we might evolve to a point where we can grasp more - but there's no guarentee.
 
I think science directly improves our world. Whether or not we have it "right" compared to how it "really is" (limited by the human mind), we may never know. But it definitely has an impact in improving our time here.

I'm curious about what happens when we defeat death. We're already researching life extension, which has been growing considerably over the years, and I don't doubt that soon we'll unlock a secret to immortality. Then what? Would anyone want to live for eternity as a human, or some human/machine hybrid? Nano-technology that can repair your cells, infinite life extension, that seems possible in time (maybe not our time, but still. I think it's likely at some point, and science moves fast so maybe in our time, too.)

So then you have to wonder, when the sun burns out in billions of years (assuming you're still alive then, you're immortal, after all), where do you go? By then we'll have colonies or terraformed planets to live on, sure. But eventually, it seems like all the energy in the universe, multiverse, whatever, will have burnt out. Stars burn out over billions of years. Natural gas (lol) doesn't last forever. Eventually it seems like the universe will "go dark" and everything will freeze over as the energy is depleted. Or will there be some way to unlock infinite energy by then through science? A never-ending, self-recharging energy source, essentially.

They explore a similar thing in ELEX :p. Once the ELEX on Magalan dries up, then what? The Albs and The Hybrid are going to go somewhere else for it, but it's still a limited supply.

Just weird things to think about, or not. I find it kind of cool. :)

P.S. I know this is way off-topic, sorry.
 
the very origin of existence
Nice question. No chance you'll learn that. Yeah, sorry. Just another irrelevant human.

Maybe you should try with something easier.
For example, try to explain Turritopsis Dohrnii. Regarding life, regarding ecosystem, regarding dunno, existence itself. What's the point of that creature.
 
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Nice question. No chance you'll learn that. Yeah, sorry. Just another irrelevant human.

Maybe you should try with something easier.
For example, try to explain Turritopsis Dohrnii. Regarding life, regarding ecosystem, regarding dunno, existence itself. What's the point of that creature.

What makes you think I'm seeking to learn that here? I'm asking for alternate creation theories.
 
Think? I got an impulse to write exactly that. No thinking. Why, dunno. Am I supposed to know how exactly subconsciousness work?
Which is another easier question I guess.

Anyway, please don't shoot the messenger.
 
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We were engineered by a species much more intelligent than we are. Earth, like loads of other planets, is just one of the planets where a specific set of engineered samples have been released. All these planets are test locations to see whichever species is most useful under what circumstances. Where “useful” is a relative term as they were trying to breed species for different purposes. Like a species that was very good at fighting in wars, a species that excelled in terraforming inhospitable planets, etc.
They have given up on Earth though. The species they released killed of all the other bipedal creatures and reproduced like angwhats (kind of like rabbits on the original planet of our engineers). Besides that we also became quite arrogant and think we are something unique in the universe. They tried to intervene a few times and killed off large amounts of the population via diseases and plagues, to let better strains have more success, but it all turned out an epic failure. They even sent one of there own to provide some better guidance, but we ended up crucifying him, so that wasn’t a big success either.
Now, we are just left to our own, which turns out to be an interesting experiment by itself. Bets are being placed on when we will self-destruct ourselves.
“Earth” is now a very popular show that is watched by most of the 100.000+ engineers who are still alive. They find it quite funny how we interact with each other at times. And when stuff gets dull we always find a way to do something to their amusement. Recently there was this election that is still kinda funny these days.

The engineers are a dying species though. They live long, but not forever and they don’t reproduce that well anymore, which makes their numbers smaller, eon after eon. The universe is their playground, but if they go on like this they will have to stop playing. There are some voices who speak out for Earth. We might not be the smartest of the samples, but we do reproduce like crazy and maybe some of that reproduction capability could be put to good use. Other voices say that it is dangerous as they don’t want to end up with billions of engineers.

So….. that is where we are now.
 
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Sadly as a species we generally squander that all is good to create evil. Mind you as individuals we do ok i guess but put us in a pack and we become blind rabid hounds. Just take a look at govts across the world. Sad.
 
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We were engineered by a species much more intelligent than we are. Earth, like loads of other planets, is just one of the planets where a specific set of engineered samples have been released. All these planets are test locations to see whichever species is most useful under what circumstances. Where “useful” is a relative term as they were trying to breed species for different purposes. Like a species that was very good at fighting in wars, a species that excelled in terraforming inhospitable planets, etc.
They have given up on Earth though. The species they released killed of all the other bipedal creatures and reproduced like angwhats (kind of like rabbits on the original planet of our engineers). Besides that we also became quite arrogant and think we are something unique in the universe. They tried to intervene a few times and killed off large amounts of the population via diseases and plagues, to let better strains have more success, but it all turned out an epic failure. They even sent one of there own to provide some better guidance, but we ended up crucifying him, so that wasn’t a big success either.
Now, we are just left to our own, which turns out to be an interesting experiment by itself. Bets are being placed on when we will self-destruct ourselves.
“Earth” is now a very popular show that is watched by most of the 100.000+ engineers who are still alive. They find it quite funny how we interact with each other at times. And when stuff gets dull we always find a way to do something to their amusement. Recently there was this election that is still kinda funny these days.

The engineers are a dying species though. They live long, but not forever and they don’t reproduce that well anymore, which makes their numbers smaller, eon after eon. The universe is their playground, but if they go on like this they will have to stop playing. There are some voices who speak out for Earth. We might not be the smartest of the samples, but we do reproduce like crazy and maybe some of that reproduction capability could be put to good use. Other voices say that it is dangerous as they don’t want to end up with billions of engineers.

So….. that is where we are now.

Cool, sounds a bit like Prometheus.

That said, it still doesn't really explain where these engineers came from :)
 
The nature of existence?
Easy: chaos. Total and utter randomness.

There is absolutely no "plan" in the evolution: there is an greedy selection strategy (survival of the fittest, etc), but the overall direction is totally random.

You see, evolution does not have an ultimate goal per se.
Evolution will remain till the end of time (hence it is "evolution" and not "improvement").

So I am in line with the neutrality of Dr Manhattan.
We (humans) are totally insignificant on a cosmic level, hence our high-prized consciousness is nothing more than a local curio.

As for the religious aspect: many people might consider the above frightening (on a cosmic subconscious level), therefore unacceptable. Religion is a forged axiom system, designed to help accepting the frightful, but inevitable (among other things).
Which is fine. It is a personal choice whether a being requires such assistance or not.
 
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The nature of existence?
Easy: chaos. Total and utter randomness.

There is absolutely no "plan" in the evolution: there is an greedy selection strategy (survival of the fittest, etc), but the overall direction is totally random.

You see, evolution does not have an ultimate goal per se.
Evolution will remain till the end of time (hence it is "evolution" and not "improvement").

So I am in line with the neutrality of Dr Manhattan.
We (humans) are totally insignificant on a cosmic level, hence our high-prized consciousness is nothing more than a local curio.

As for the religious aspect: many people might consider the above frightening (on a cosmic subconscious level), therefore unacceptable. Religion is a forged axiom system, designed to help accepting the frightful, but inevitable.
Which is fine. It is a personal choice whether a being requires such assistance or not.

You seem to be talking about the purpose of existence. I'm asking about alternate creation theories.

As in, an alternate explanation for how we've come into being - other than some kind of God creating us - or Big Bang setting it in motion.
 
You seem to be talking about the purpose of existence. I'm asking about alternate creation theories.

As in, an alternate explanation for how we've come into being - other than some kind of God creating us - or Big Bang setting it in motion.

Problem is that in my world view, there is no such thing as "creation theory".
There are possibilities and random events, leading to... something.
Which will be superseded by another random event, eventually. ;)
In fact, the universe, as we (supposedly) know it could be a random event, evolved from a previous random event ... and thus, the chain of events could be potentially infinite.
No beginning, no end. Just constant "evolution" (i.e. change)
 
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Problem is that in my world view, there is no such thing as "creation theory".
There are possibilities and random events, leading to… something.
Which will be superseded by another random event, eventually. ;)
In fact, the universe, as we (supposedly) know it could be a random event, evolved from a previous random event … and thus, the chain of events could be potentially infinite.
No beginning, no end. Just constant "evolution" (i.e. change)

So, there is no first random event that got started out of nothing? Random events just exist (and have always existed) without whatever physical/temporal properties?

Sounds like an alternate creation theory to me :)
 
So, there is no first random event that got started out of nothing? Random events just exist (and have always existed) without whatever physical/temporal properties?

Exactly. Think of those infinite number sequences where there is no "first in the series", no "last in the series".

Sounds like an alternate creation theory to me :)

No, as there is no beginning per se, therefore no creation by definition. ;)
 
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