THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: KNOW THE LIGHTNING

...and the mistake that was made was multiform and total. We are trapped within the mistake, because we can never see outside of it. We are the mistake. Or, more to the point, we are the mistaken.

The inherent concept: mankind has the capacity, reason and senses to unravel the physical universe is taken as a given.

It’s a given! Can you imagine? Everyone just wakes up going “oh, this is all for us! Every atom in this strange universe is just waiting to become an Arby’s or a parking lot or a highway!” And that’s that. Can you imagine the gall?

Of course you can. 

What? Seriously? Okay. Try to listen...

It is the default setting of the humanity since the enlightenment. And before that, yes, in some quarters. At least before the church settled its hands around the throat of reason...but in any case, I go on and on. You’ll have to excuse me. When you spend your time only reading, thinking, and writing you see, talking becomes something of a luxury.

What? Well, I never said that. You can ask them and they’ll tell you. I never said anything like that at all...

In any case all I’m saying is, reason isn’t the answer. That’s what I’m saying here. What I'm trying to say, anyway. Reason isn’t a way out of all of this. Nothing means anything, anymore, and it never did. That’s all that I’m saying.

No. I don’t think they’d tell you that at all. Not at all. It’s fairly clear you’re not getting it...

Okay. Okay. A bear sees a lightning bolt, right? What can the bear ever know about that lightning? That it appears on a certain mountain? That it happens when the air smells like so? That is is loud and startling and dangerous and brings fire? Of course. But what can it really know?

Nothing.

It can understand nothing of what the lightning is, because the lightning is beyond it. It exists and persists in the world of the bear. It is OF its world, but the faculties of the bear cannot encompass what the lightning is.

This is entirely to do with it! I am not changing the subject. I’m not avoiding your questions sir. Give me a moment. Listen...

Mankind is like the bear, only a bit more down the track, right? Can we know about the lightning? Well, we can predict some of the processes that bring it into being, just as the bear might notice ozone on the wind. We can sometimes channel and control it, just as the bear might avoid a mountain that is often struck by lightning. We can even use principles we’ve discovered in it to make things with it, a forest fire might leave grub rich trees to be fed upon...

But can we know the lightning? No. We’re no closer than the bear, really. WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT IS! Lightning. Consciousness. The universe. Reality. These are all as the lightning is to the bear. The only difference is we’re clever enough to trick ourselves into thinking we can know it.

They were there when I got there, sir. And if you wouldn’t interrupt me, I could continue telling you what happened...

We operate like the universe has been placed there for us to unwrap like a gift, and that one day, mankind will stand above it, its control total and complete. This is hogwash. Garbage thinking. We know nothing. We control nothing. We have conquered nothing.

Uh. Yes. That was mine. No. I’m not being evasive. I don’t feel I’m being evasive. Perhaps if you learned to listen...

Every “achievement” of science is merely a displacement. Feeding the world? The starving dead are cast further down the timeline. Curing disease? The sick are merely offset to some later, less-filled-with-plenty time. The waveform collapses. The equation resolves. The rubber band drawn taut snaps back.

Every time. 

What?

I already told you, sir. Let me tell my story in my own time, if you please...

It’s important you understand all of this because it explains a lot of what happened and why. I mean, this was the groundwork thinking. And no, I know what you’re thinking right now: oh, he thinks he’s outside of all of this!

But you’re wrong. I don’t think that. No. Not at all, sir.

But the boy is. The boy is outside of all of this! The one who survived the surgery. And, no, it wasn’t something I entered into lightly. You can tell. I prepared. I tried and failed. A lot. But I mean, you saw that. You found them. You found me out. Fair game. Caught fair and square.

But it doesn’t matter. The work was finished.

What? Are you joking?! I did it because of all of this. Were you not listening?

The boy. The boy with the...changes... The boy I changed...

He’s the bear that can know the lightning.