stardustcboy's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...more philosophical mumbo-jumbo... an interesting part of the human condition is the need for escape...the need for us to unshackle the bonds of our own flesh and our own minds and retreat into other worlds and other experiences. books, movies, television...these are all forms of escape...and even videogames are now achieving this same stature. these various forms of entertainment allow us to feel something that would otherwise be beyond our own lives. books are an internalized escape, in which the reader steps inside their own imagination through the words and pages of the book itself. movies and television are a voyueristic retreat into the lives and experiences of someone or something else. we sit idly by and watch as events unfold, we identify with the characters who move in the worlds beyond the screen. videogames are a new emergence of escapism. a form of retreat that allows the "player" to step into another world and be part of that world. to proactively affect the world and the story that unfolds within that world. since the dawn of interactive entertainment, we have strived towards the idea of "virtual reality". a reality beyond the laws and rules of our own, a place that you can truly be free. games are moving ever-so-steadily towards this ultimate ideal. developers create places in which the player can do as they wish and interact with almost anything in the world. the growth of cause-and-effect relationships is becoming greater as the technology grows. but imagine, if you will, a continuous universe within the hard casing of a network server. a place where you can do whatever you wish, whenever you wish, without reprocussion on the "real world" in which you live. someday i see ourselves entombed in black sarcophagii, wet-wired to a massive mainframe, dreaming of places we could never see...doing things we would never do... when neurology and the study of the human brain reveals more of the mysteries behind our own minds, we will begin to unravel the very essence of existence... perception. perception is merely what your senses tell your brain...i'm touching this, i'm tasting this, i'm smelling this, i'm hearing this, i'm seeing this...i'm FEELING this... what "this" is is left to your minds interpretation. what if one day there is virtual reality? what if one day the major form of entertainment is encasing yourself in a sensory deprivation chamber and downloading entire experiences to your cerebral cortex? you could conceivably live an entire lifetime within the span of a few hours in this sort of state. much like dreaming. in some dreams you sense a definite flow of time...hours, days, weeks...in others time seems non-linear, you move backwards and forwards without any clear idea of where you are in time...and there are dreams in which there seems to be no time at all, moving images without any real connection nor purpose... but despite, when you wake, mere hours have passed. such is the nature of perception. even our own sense of time can be warped or altered by what we are doing in any given moment. "time flies when you're having fun" it is a fact that everyone's perception is different. no two people will perceive the same situation the same way...we all have our own perspective of the events and experiences that surround us. einstein's theory stated that time is relative. i'd imagine that time and experience are inexorably linked, and that it is our relative perception of them that creates our experience in this world. which would then lead me to believe that "what you believe IS". that your perception affects the very fabric of time and space around you...on the most minute level... perhaps it is our collective perception that shapes the world as a whole. perhaps if enough people believe in something...it takes on a "reality" of its own? i'm a firm believer in the powers of the human mind. that remaining 90% of our brains that we never consciously use, may be transmitting/receiving experiential data that we couldn't possibly begin to unravel. the ideas of intuition, procognition, telepathy, telekinesis and the like don't seem too far beyond possibility. throughout our history there are stories of people with supernatural powers. the ability to walk on water, to kill/heal with a touch, to rise from the dead...perhaps there is some truth to these? looking at martial artists who have achieved a great level of skill, it is no surprise that all of these things may be within our power. the fact that a person can break a row of bricks with his hand or walk on firey coals is astonishing. perhaps these powers lie dormant within all of our minds? perhaps through proper meditation and training we all can achieve states of consciousness beyond our typically mundane sense. the mind is a powerful thing...and a poor thing to waste... what happens when technology and science unlock these hitherto unearthed portions of our brains? what happens when people begin to have the individual power to change the world around them? what happens when people are no longer ruled by governments, corporations, special interest groups, and religion? what happens when science makes us gods? what would we do? if we could cure diseases and live forever through sheer mental will alone? what would happen when with but a thought we could step across the boundaries of time and space and visit places we'd never see? i believe this is the next step of human evolution. just as "manifest destiny" was our fate to move westward...so too will we have a "manifest destiny" to move outward...beyond our terrestrial realm...to unseen worlds beyond. we will become children of the stars. traversing space/time in the blink of an eye. what will we do? perhaps we will become more solitary...only one of us for every 3 billion light years. perhaps we will descend to other worlds and other peoples and teach them their own destinies? maybe that is what aliens are...beings who have transcended time/space. para-gods that have an understanding and mastery of the fundamental principles of reality that is beyond what we could possibly conceive. if they are indeed out there...then it would be no surprise that they would already walk among us...for with that kind of power...if they did not want to be seen...they wouldn't. in the end, it must be understood that this is within our power as a global species. that it is our birthrite. to rise with our galactic brethren and walk amongst the stars as observers of the universe's great design... ~B-) 1:44 p.m. - 2002-12-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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