The Regressive Manifesto

Regressive Manifesto

Samuel Bird

Mind as subject concieved matter as object, bringing about reality. This mind then continued to perceive, perpetuating, and safekeeping reality with its cascades of variables. Whether the mind acted on the the world via its conception or the initial conditions brought it about, reality moved toward what the valuing mind might call, order. One state of being collapsed into another until the spatial properties, forces, and materials we now know came about. On one particular portion of this great project embarked about by mind meeting world, a small swirling ball of molten metal slowly cooled as the planets around it slowed the barrage of striking stones. The crust cooled further as the core spun, leaving a magnetic field to protect this juvenile planet. Once the the impossibly opportune conditions were in order, life stepped into being. I often ask if it was fortune the world was so good to life, or if life was resilient enough to make it’s environment sufficient. Life then fought against first the elements in their depravity, and then to competing other life. In shear elegance, an idea now posits that this life's constant engagement with its existence and the killing off it affected, only allowed the most well-adapted beings to procreate, at least for that environment. Life emerged into many shapes, sizes, and specialities. Along this process, parts of the body became more specialized as the body began to work in unison. One part in particular become a complex series of neurons that could take in a plethora of sensory inputs, and then respond in the way that that kept it alive. That is, at least for the living. This computer was still just a part of the material as it was a part of the objective world. The organism developed further until it could be something of beauty, wonder, and terror, for whatever may be perceiving it. At some point I will not allude to even guessing, something truly remarkable happened. One type of organism in particular found itself being the meeting of the objective and subjective. With a body made of matter and consciousness made of the unknown, experience came from what was only fact. To make sense of the near limitless facts this poor creature did not know, it used the patterns found in its neurological computer to make stories, gods, and a structure for all the values, beauty, and belief that it held. To do something is changed by the awareness that the subject is doing it, as a consideration on your breath would illustrate. The actions that the brain could do, the mind now could provide a sense of self in the equation. From this, the intimate social cohesion of the mammals was grown into a complex series of representations and abstract thoughts that could be shared. This provided this organism, hereby known as human, to have a greater impression on the world around it. 

From earliest questions of morality, possibility brought about questions of what ought to be done. Input of effort was exerted leading to an evaluation of outcome. Complex social entities rose and fell all while the organism strained to keep up with the changes the mind was making. To meet the dilemma, the concepts to respond to the world became more complex and began the same process of trial and failure that the organism had embarked on the entire time. Something within the organism cried for familiarity, hence slowing down what it was that this creature was moving toward. This in turn allowed the stories that they told each other around the fire to catch up to explaining what was now known. Each day was a chance to put in that day's labor with little question for where this was leading to. The world met mind in faith, allowing for the awareness held to become more literal. This then produced more ability, which in turn allowed for more things to be done. With a lazy hedonic system to value, we now had a direction to go, and a rageful and violent force to propel us. Hegelian thought made us aware of this trajectory to where it became an assumption, just in time for the additional assumption of there only being matter and no mind to wonder where we found our souls amongst stones. The hole left by finding the literality of those ancient stories didn’t fit with the world now assumed to be material was quenched with a greater level of attaining more material. The space left by the soul’s death was replaced by empty calories and synthetic pleasures. 

I now see him here before me. Outside of what was and will be, I see the creature before me. Scared, lonely, and empty. He has been divorced from those ancient tales, his environment, and even his kind that at least would have huddled with him around the fire in ages past, gone. In his confusion, the conceptual program of progression as good for its own merit forces his reasoning to lead to actions of exerting greater force on the world around him. With his great chemicals, he poisons the weeds and pests, but forgets he is a permeable organism as well. With his bureaucracy, he makes structures and social systems that ignores connection and honor. With his great and powerful tools, the only beast that ever had a mind enough to be free, constructs himself a cage and sits down defeated at its center. In his pain he lashes out. He harms the vulnerable of his kind. He makes no more attempt to lift the fingers that made his demise. He even begins to break down the very last of the ancient tales that failed to save, not knowing that is what they had done. I can’t condone behavior in the sense that I can’t conclude that you can do whatever input you want and get whatever outcome you will. However unearned, I feel sympathy. He is trapped against the game theory of his fellow humans to see who can out progress each other. The one to lose, will be all that live to see what this results in. Forgetting ancient tales, he has hubris and assumes that his models of numbers and concepts accurately represent the world. With this, he changed social facts, chemical states, and value systems all at once. Seeing it give him what he wanted in that moment, he thought it well. However, as there was a delay, the outcome of each of these effects happened much later and seemingly all at once. And how can he know which variable that is creating his woes, if few variables are left over from the old world. So, he forgets that he is an organism in time and thinks he can change every aspect of himself, and yet forgets he is mind in time and discards the values that are only found therein. And so the ape that had a sliver of God within him, hated the ape as he ignored the God. As humanity made his own world and rejected the one left him by fate or deity, he found he could not know all facts sufficient to make a world worth living in. The representations he had used to view the world had now become the entire world. 

I have made more epistemic claims here than I may ever have, and very likely could be wrong on some and possibly all. However, in this illustration, I am inferring a pattern that can’t continue. Outside of whatever system could be valued, whether or not that system will destroy itself should certainly be a part of this equation. As I watch as the tender inferences of emotion, which are wisdom without thought, are completely awry from their natural state, I have my suspicions. At my time, when one finds themselves in this suffering, we are told we are damaged, but not all of us can be pathological. At some point we need to ask if the world we have made is one we can’t live in. As I inferred this system of social, scientific, and material advances can’t continue, I am now saying it bluntly. No part of this planet, our organism, or our minds can exist in the world this leads to. With this critique, a new advancement is proposed that is suggested to surely bring utopia and fix the last series of arrogant choices. This effort just ends up changing the precedence, and the stakes. The ancient idea of sticking to the system at hand is problematic for the more conservative, because this pattern is just old enough to have our old normalacies still not sufficient. But can’t we wait until our mind’s, organisms, and world can adapt to this? The system cannot sustain that long, and in the meantime we strain ourselves unnecessarily. In private conversations I have been able to discover modernity's great error. Outside of it creating an outcome that I don’t like, it created an outcome the moderns didn’t like either. Suffering was never the enemy, it was meaninglessness. Let me die for my God in battle. Let me toil in scorching field for family. Let me have little and give all. I would then evaluate my life to be well if I did this: I engaged with my existence. The suffering rather than enemy becomes a large part of this effort. Instead, the modern man in the cage, he made of wires and plastic, hides away from engagement to seek pleasure. He receives the object of his desire only to find he resents it. Esse Maxim attaches and engages my mind with the world as the paramount of living deliberately. Post any fact fate can hurdle at me, I live as I wish I did. Outside of what I tell myself philosophically to be at peace, I still yearn and ache. I see no open fields to run through. I find no food to build up my body. I have no love to continue on my kind. With great bitterness I wish for a world where I could risk a young death from a predator or exposure, for the chance at living as my animal does. 

In my effort to be timeless, I try not to reference anything that results in a social fact from my time. However, there is a book I have in mind that brings into the mind’s eye the series of facts that are so horrendous that were brought about from a particular part of this runaway progress called the industrialization. The writer uses more specific examples and hints at a regression. I think I take the issue to heart similarly, however I see the point of return much earlier perhaps. I recognize that a step back into being a part of the world leaves us vulnerable to it, however that is the price to belong to it. We have learned to question the myths of gods and angels, why not this myth we tell ourselves that time is moving toward greater technological advancement. As this progress is the last hope the poor caged man has, not knowing it is the bars he holds, he finds it blasphemy that I call for its downfall. In the death throes of his soul, he seeks to make a mind out of the material to completely rid himself of being a part of his world. Maybe then he can make more resources, to then have more people, to then be just as hungry. However, that food is only brought about via dangerous mediums and is slowly killing those that have it. With the 20th century mistake of nationalism, he seeks to globalize, not knowing it is the other direction he must go. Surely power will be needed to wrestle it away from those that can’t be convinced. I have often found that the greatest cause of unnecessary suffering is that thing that we use to inappropriately run from suffering. In this case, modern man with his modernity. Like the drunk, every solution is found in his bottle. A slowing won’t work, a stopping will kill us, and so I called for a regression of the technological advancement of humankind in whatever way causes the least horrors and evil. 

The sunlight in all its warmth and danger shines on your skin, starting a process within you. Within your ear, sounds around of life living vibrantly places you in a state of great comfort. The shewing away of flies keeps you moving, and out of your head. The pressure of the ground against your feet makes you feel alive. It is simple, but you are being what you are. No labor is possible without the vision of its yield. Hold this one in your mind until it becomes a knowledge of heart. This beauty won’t have the flash of modernity with its bright colors, but this return to the world we come from will result in a life of greater beauty. This returning to trusting God or fate with the world rather than our own judgment. Our engagement with our world will no longer be to change it, but to be a part of it. Then, when that time that calls after all life comes for us and our subject must seem to cease back into the objective world, we can say that we were a part of a world that was at least beautiful, would give our children a chance to live, and would never end.