Do you know what can travel faster than anything else in the whole wide world? The whole universe, for that matter. You may know that the answer is light.
How do you know?
Do you know how fast light travels no matter what?
Put it this way: the speed of light can traverse a distance equal to the circumference of the earth about 7.5 times in a single second.
Text messages can travel around at that speed, too.
We’ll put this many ways throughout.
Have you ever read anything at all? That’s cool, I guess. It came from the past. Don’t let your perception of light make you think it’s instantaneous. The scale we perceive naturally doesn’t allow us to see that.
Things are a bit different on the astrophysical scale. For example, a beam of light cannot traverse a galaxy as fast as it can illuminate a room. In fact, a photon needs about 100,000 years [a.k.a. “light years”] to skedaddle across The Milky Way. That’s roughly equal to 30 kiloparsecs, a measurement of distance/time that is useful when looking at the whole picture of our universe.
1 kpc equals 1.917e+16 miles.
Fairly safe conclusion: our universe is big.
The entire world really does need to get on the same page in terms of how things are measured, recorded, and reported. The metric system seems like the way to go. It’s cleaner, makes more sense.
If we can’t even agree on how to measure everything, then how can we expect to agree on anything?
When you wish upon a star, the light you see was actually emitted a long time ago.
You can see the light from stars that predate the sun—the galaxy, even!
When you look up at the night sky, you are basically looking into the past.
Should our sun fall to magical deletion in the middle of the day, we would not realize it until 8.333333333333333333333333333333 [ish] minutes later.
Light sets the pace of our time, but it can’t teleport as is, nor is it telepathic, per se.
In other words, there isn’t anything in existence that can travel faster than light.
In still more words, light makes time go crazy.
That’s not a lie, joke, guess, hypothesis, or theory. That’s a proven fact.
But light is also something else.
The word “light” also means light, i.e. not heavy.
The lighter something is, the faster it can move.
In other words, it’s a thing and it’s not weird.
The heavier something is, the more it weighs.
Ever been slowed down by weight?
Wait, what equates with weight again?
You probably know the answer to this one.
Gravity.
Still.
Gravity and light, bookending peas in our pod of existence, spiraling ever-wildly out of control.
When it rains, man, it pours.
Boy, does it ever.
Connected any new dots yet? Mapped any new correlations? I see a new one every day lately.
A body can resemble the human form, a lake, a planet, or an organization. Light can describe weight or brightness. Deep can indicate a hole or thought. Force and matter can be nouns or verbs.
There must be one dominant power in the universe that explains every single item on every list contained on this site, a single relationship that matters most (or makes the most matter).
What’s the most abundant element in the universe?
Do you know?
Why doesn’t everyone know?
Shouldn’t we all know?
Think about it.
Of literally ALL THE THINGS EVER, the abundance of but one element sits around 75%.
In 3 out of 4 things, a single atom repeats.
Do you know what it is?
Hydrogen!
Doesn’t this fact seem kind of important?
It should because it is.
Or, again, maybe I’ve got it all wrong.
So let’s straighten out the facts.
Hydrogen is the lightest and smallest of all elements. Hydrogen is the element most commonly found in the cosmos. Hydrogen is the only element that lacks a neutron chilling out in its nucleus. Hydrogen’s name alone seems to forecast the generation of the molecular powerhouse known as water.
In other words riddled by intentionally moronic inaccuracy, who’s your daddy?
In all seriousness, I am of the urgently strengthening opinion that any fact concerning hydrogen should be grouped in the top tier of that which constitutes “common knowledge.” Why isn’t it?
We probably need to reconfigure our approach to education every so often. Drastically. Clearly!
I highly suspect that budding intellectuals are being taught most of the right stuff, but not with proper emphasis, and all out of sequence, to boot.
Do kids still learn that “Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492”?
Why?
After all, the statement is shamefully false.
In other words, that’s not real.
When you teach a kid lies on purpose, what should we expect to see in return?
Name something that grows without investment.
Don’t feel bad; I can’t either.
Only when we share our perspectives may we understand one another.
Never hesitate.
Step into our mental dojo.
In other words, always feel free to come inside.
Now.
Go outside and play.
☀️
Welcome back.
When you think of the term wavelength, what do you imagine? Perhaps an image not unlike this one:
Notice the spikes.
What the hell is a wavelength anyway?
In other words, what are we doing?
Wavelengths illuminate frequencies.
Unlike mechanical waves, electromagnetic waves are always perpendicular/vertical (transverse).
Light is an electromagnetic wave; its energy is produced by the vibration of charged particles.
An electromagnetic wave doesn’t need help to travel—it serves as its own fuel and can even do so in the vacuum of space.
The existence [pulse] of gravity causes the vibration [nether-regional desires] of particles.
(Admittedly, I get funky with parenthetical interjections from time to time.)
The other stuff amounts to matter [energy at c2] that hasn’t figured out how to stay alive without needing to eat. And without dying. Hmm, I wonder if those two problems have the same solution.
Whoops, derailed again.
Should we get back on track?
Sound is a prime example of a mechanical wave.
In terms of waves, “mechanical” means that it cannot exist in a vacuum and therefore requires a medium [meaning some form of matter] through which to travel.
Sound waves are always longitudinal. Water waves can be either.
Your voice is a mechanical wave.
Say something aloud.
If you did, then congrats, because you just waved, mechanically speaking.
The fact that we can talk at all is a freak accident thanks to evolutionary entropy and genetic mutation.
Summon your voice from within.
Say anything about this. It’ll be brilliant.
The frequency of a wavelength determines its shape.
Frequency.
Occurs frequently, or not.
Light zips along at 299,792 kilometers per second (186,282 miles per second).
Per second.
Infrared is the lightest light, which means that it has the lowest frequency, i.e. least curvature.
Highest frequency [which means most weight, not coincidentally] manifests behind the electrified veil of the invisible living color that we coolly call ultraviolet.
Spacetime actually bends by the weight of the star that anchors our solar system. It has been observed, measured, and documented. And our sun is “only” average—meaning green, fair, balanced.
Hot, hott, hawt—take your pic(k).
The higher the frequency in a wavelength, the farther light has to travel back and forth [parallel] to cover the same distance [perpendicular].
“Frequencies” occur on/along/across/within/throughout “wavelengths,” and therein lies the differences between them.
Sound travels at a much slower pace than light.
The speed of sound varies depending on temperature and elevation, but on average it travels at about 1,234.8 kilometers per hour [343 mph].
To put it mildly, sound’s relationship with light naturally complicates matter{s}.
Earth falls within the green wavelength of the sun’s heat/light.
To reiterate, green epitomizes balance, as it occurs directly in the middle of the color spectrum.
In other words, green is the color where{in/-upon} life can happen.
Now I see how and why our number system works!
In other words, color illuminates why math features 9 digits.
We need to be green.
While we’re here, we should touch on the other four waves in the electromagnetic spectrum.
Radio waves are vital to our connectivity since they can carry our voices and images along with them. We’ve been beaming them into space ever since we started broadcasting about a hundred years prior to the assembly of this sentence.
At some point, even billions of years from now, if there’s intelligent life out there, then in theory they could detect us {assuming they’re listening}.
Spooky.
You’re very familiar with the waves some of us call micro.
Microwave ovens cook specifically by targeting water molecules in food.
In other words, microwaves cook like the sun.
In another word, radiation.
Misconceptions abound concerning this type of heating method; however, not only is it perfectly safe (unless the interior is dirty or the food’s container is made of plastic, for instance [because it can bind unsavory chemicals to your grub]), but also the shorter cook times result in the preservation of more nutrients. Yeah, microwaves can be good for you!
X-Ray radiation, due to the measurements of its specific wavelength and unique frequency, passes through matter that isn’t too dense.
Bones are dense, generally.
Skin is thin, usually.
That’s how X-ray imaging works, in a nutshell.
Curious side-note: both microwaves and X-rays were accidental discoveries.
Lastly, gamma rays are produced at the nuclear level, whether by fission, fusion, or a type of decay.
In medicine, gamma rays are used to fight cancer.
In the universe, no event has been observed to be more luminous than a gamma ray burst. Scientists believe these events signify the formation of neutron stars or black holesdark orbs. Yikes!
It all depends on how the math shakes out.
The difference between each wave on the spectrum (of which there are 13 in total, luckily, I suppose) comes down to the frequency within the wavelength.
Radio waves display the lowest frequency and the longest wavelength. In other words, the path is straighter but with observable undulation.
Gamma waves reveal the highest frequency and the shortest wavelength. In other words, the path is more squiggly.
By the way, if your imagination isn’t running wild, then you should let it.
Unmolested, light’s wave looks like a straight line. In a vacuum, an electromagnetic wave moves energy at a speed of 3.00 x 108 m/s, a value commonly shown in math by the symbol c, the variable that represents the speed of light in Einstein’s famous equation.
Though light cannot escape an event horizon, the gravity of a black hole dark orb itself cannot consume light because the fight is evenly matched, meaning each does its own thing as well as the other does the opposite.
In other words, gravity and light are a match made in heaven.
Science has proven this via calculated observation on a proverbial loop.
In other words, the science of observation has proven a the whole lot.
E = mc2
Energy equals matter [or mass, if you like] at the speed of light (squared).
I prefer “matter” because it makes more sense in my head. Without matter, there can be no mass with which we can interact.
For now, just consider the fact that, essentially, Einstein’s equation indicates—given an absurd (c2) amount of time—that energy (E) equals (=) matter (m).
Matter becomes energy.
Energy becomes matter.
Matter and energy become one.
As the nerdy tee states, “You matter, until you multiply yourself by the speed of light twice, then you energy.”
the speed of light = c
No matter how you slice it—as long as you do in fact sliceit—the variable c represents a measurement of time.
Light sets the bar for speed while time ripples in its wake.
c
=
miles per second
186,282
kilometers per second
299,792
meters per second
299792457.82816
span of whole universe
>13.8 billion years
OMG
Is there a more absurd amount of time than none at all?
How about time that goes backward?
Hold that thought.
The speed of light is one of three key factors in one of (if not the) most current, renowned, revolutionary contributions to science, the General Theory of Relativity. Einstein’s theory basically observed that gravitational waves and material interference determine the pace at which time ticks by wherever you (or anything else in the universe) might be, and the only thing exempt from this constant truth is light.
This explains why as we go faster, time slows down.
Einstein first published his theory of Special Relativity in 1905, updated to its General form ten years later to accommodate Isaac Newton’s law of gravitation.
Long story short, the primary adjustment was based on the realization that spacetime is not flat, but rather curved.
We’ve not been the same since.
The primordial force of gravity actually bends space and time, creating an array of trajectories and pathways for movement.
In other words, water spirals down the drain.
Seemingly, when bending yields breakage, we get those galaxy-gobbling monsters known (heretofore inaccurately) as “black holes” that, for all intents and purposes, are trying to rewind time by slurping up all the things and stuff in the universe.
I never said gravity was smart, okay?
No wonder light’s in such a big damn hurry to get the hell outta dodge.
Like a kid, toy, top, clock, heart, atom, sperm, nucleus, cell, sun, planet, moon, creature, toddler, whatever else you can think of, if you wind it up, then by golly, it’ll go!
But it will not go at the speed of light. It will not because it cannot. It isn’t physically capable. The laws of physics have highlighted this fact without exception since folks began trying to observe and record said physical laws. The speed of light sets the edge of reality, the space where time stops.
How much more irrevocably irrefutable can one fact be?
What might all this suggest happens when the speed of light doubles? How about an absolute reversal of time? What can you imagine that could suck worse than that?
Imagine it.
All of time. The history of starlight.
Approaching 14 billion years of all this chaotically dispersing energy fueling oceans of hydrogen, the formation of galaxies, stars, planets, moons, oxygenating seas for all matter of carbon, collapsing dust, rising ash, nurturing development, breaking and sliding, shifting and braking, billowing ash toward all manner of life, evolving, discovering, creating, encompassing and permeating every last fraction of recorded history.
All of it.
Imagine everything there ever was.
Stock image.
Now imagine it gone.
Snap, blink, poof.
Goodbye, forever—at the same time, hello again—all in an absurd instant that times out upon reaching the kind of speed only accessible in dreams.
Remain calm. We will make sense of all this. Assuming we get lucky.
Now what can you imagine that might suck worse than all of existence glitching out and requiring an instantaneous reset? Nothing, perhaps? The speed of light is already plenty absurd, but multiplying itself by itself!? How square.
The word “square” has over 50 definitions, by the way.
Squared, opposite of split.
Multiplication.
Times.
X.
Consider everything that can happen by splitting anything squarely.
(You gotta do some of the work here.)
When enacted upon an occurrence of circular motion, straight lines have this super weird way of dividing up then being unsure about whether to veer left or keep right. Pardon me for saying so, but that’s exactly what I think must’ve happened before the first atom ever was formed. Miss Zero was sad because she couldn’t count. That sucked. Then, in an enlightening moment of staggering clarity, she realized that she’s a goshdarn circle, an intensely infernal inferno, a supernatural sorceress capable of hurling a level infinity fireball.
Science, physics, math, language, civilization, religion, philosophy, art, music, food, everything I’ve ever seen, smelled, touched, heard, felt, wanted, needed, or thought about supports every sentence held together by these digital pages.
In other words, most likely, I’m delusional.
But have you ever heard of a cell that didn’t divide?
Any kind of cell. Any cell in your body. Any stormcell. Any terrorist cell. Anything cellular.
Anything sold.
Energy boomerangs while building momentum in a straight line.
Where lines meet, mathematical randomness takes place and creates shape.
In other words, even properly lubed gears eventually grind.
In other words, triangles come full circle.
Really quickly, take forever and think of something that fully conflicts with the following pattern.
Being says hello.
Any mushroom cloud that ever violently arose. Anything that collects and gathers dust. Anything that ripples or makes waves. Anything that needs to be moved. Anything that goes on its own. Any bulb that ever bloomed. Any tree that ever grew up. Anything that breathes. Any division of labor. Any friction between competing parties (or bodies) that generated enough heat (or power, or pain, or pleasure) to explode. Any thing (like you and me) that ever learned to control its energy, the essence of its vitality, the source of its light.
That’s what all this is about.
(The hokey-pokey is optional at this point.)
Just hang in there, okay? I swear you’re fine.
All anything has ever been about equates with dire needs in the face of wanting control of energy sources.
Life is programmed to do whatever it takes to survive.
How many triumphant armies have been well-fed? How many wars have been fought over land? All of them.
Think of all the blood that has been shed since mankind learned how to summon and control fire.
Imagine wanting full control of fire.
Imagine profiting off a need meant to be spread evenly across humankind.
Maybe you don’t have to imagine it.
Why do people want to control more fuel than they need?
The way I see it, this highlights the root of all greed. Resource-hogging can only end badly. When you don’t need something, you cannotuse it. This is not hard, people—fuck.
Greed is the ultimate evil, if you will.
It all comes down to power.
power: energizing existence only to relinquish a fraction more or less than half its assets since forever ago
Say hi to one of my favorite—and, as far as I can tell, most universally useful—mnemonic devices. With any luck, the above “name” can help you remember the reliable order in the kind of magic that happens, if you will, when light filters through a prism.
Red, orange, yellow. Green. Blue, indigo, violet.
Got it?
Good.
Bent by gravity.
But that’s just 7 of 9, though. Indeed, there are 2 more {electromagnetically matter-born} colors [numbers] that exist in essence—and in relation to human perception—as ghosts.
To be crystal clear (in case it’s necessary), your pupil(s)/brain are biologically/physically incapable of directly observing the outermost colors—ultraviolet or infrared—on either edge of a rainbow, at the barriers of light’s distinctive dispersion into hue-rich diversity, around the shade-filled fringes of our collective mind’s balanced eye.
Relevant aside: do you know why polar bears bear white fur? Key factors include the interconnected processes of evolution and natural selection. And it doesn’t happen overnight; these variables move slowly; for example, it took thousands upon thousands and thousands of years to turn wolves into dogs. Geography largely dictates both physical and mental fitness, impacting an organism’s chance of survival into a successful future. See, a dark-coated bear can’t exactly camouflage amid open arctic terrain, thereby enabling food sources [e.g. seals] to more easily avoid becoming dinner. This explains how and why polar bears are the color of snow.
(Albert was right; relativity is important.)
Here comes the point.
Compared to caucasians, people “of color” are born with a generationally earned, genetic resistance to the first and lowest band in any real rainbow, a.k.a. ultraviolet, which, to reiterate, is one of the only two prismatic wavelengths [again, along with infrared] that our oh-so well-rounded and middle-grounded eyes can’t see—the bookends of the spectrum that paints our world’s canvas so very gloriously full of breathtaking wonder.
Question. Could this deeply rooted racial difference influence {if only at a subconscious level} why so many white folks are so painfully blind to how black lives matter?
Only by opening (y)our eyes may you we truly let there be light.
Circular.
Please let in the light, people. We require it to be, after all, and we will become better as a whole as more and more of us grasp the total scope of its vital, unrivaled significance. (More on that momentarily.)
Plus, once we get a widespread handle on the thorny interracial tension plaguing civilization—in other words, when at long last we awaken and stop acting like stubborn, ignorant, childish fools—and resolve our currently ailing society’s counterproductive climate of self-destructive inequality, humankind may must push toward global acceptance of the profound realization, too, that sentient life actually shepherdsmatter.
Yeah. Life matters. The entirety of Earth’s colo{u}rful catalog{ue}. Every kingdom in each of Her three domains as well as all the species contained among the myriad ranks therein—it’s all here for good reason. One depends on another. We have thus far come up short in our thinking. We are bigger than this. We should be playing the long game.
We (humans) really should party up. Immediately.
We are all connected.
We must band together.
The time to act is now.
We need to mentally separate our sense of self from the bodily burdens we carry.
Who are you? Do you even know? Have you “personified” your identity?
Look, you are not merely a complex collection of atoms—you’re the other thing, the stuff that shines.
Understand that.
And listen, we’re the same.
We have to lighten (our individual loads).
We must share the weight of our existence.
We need each other.
We have to allow our consciousness to evolve.
We were born to be what we are.
We need not be heavy.
We need to be light.
Be cause.
True love is weightless, and…
…light…
…isgod.
That’s who we’ve always been, who we still are, and who we could, would, should, and will be someday, but only as one.
Matter is not the only thing that evolves. (Duh!)
There is another variable on the right side of the equation.
Existence awards time to matter and matter with time. May life reward light with awareness. May awareness reward life with light. May light reward awareness with life. The step following the next one (in the evolution of light) hinges upon unity. In time, already, we have known…
In other words, triangles must abide by three straight lines.
Move along, folks.
Nothing to see here.
Why do you still read?
What good’s a switch if we don’t flip it?
Also, who’s actually gaming the system?
In the last 4-5 years, I would imagine that I’ve engaged in conversation about 1% as much as the average human on the earth, and of that time, I’ve probably spent 99% of it listening to someone else. The point is that when I’m alone, I’m guessing that I talk to myself a lot.
Aloud, even.
I may have forgotten where I was going with this. Perhaps you’ll know now and clue me in later.
I know: you’re bursting with unanswered questions. I’m doing my best to read your mind. What do you want to know about next?
Are you thinking that galacians/belanoc aren’t real? Do you suppose that if they were real, you’d already know about it?
In December of 1899, a group of men and close friends, most (if not all) of whom were Rough Riders, had an encounter with a solitary, starved, overheating, prepubescent belanoc male at the Navajo River (near today’s Colorado/New Mexico southern border). The creature killed two of them before being crippled then slain. It was the first “known” instance of humans encountering g/b without becoming a meal. Two years and two months later, upon finding himself in a position of influence, the man who (allegedly) struck the killing blow founded the Belanoc Studies & Surveillance Institute [“Bessi”], which in 1979 {and under insurmountable duress} reorganized, rebranded, and renamed itself the Global Department of Galacian/Belanoc Analysis/Investigation [GDGBAI {Bessi}] immediately following enemy confirmation of the (previously thought-to-be-impossible) existence of a male half-breed [yours truly].
Put another way, Teddy Roosevelt founded Bessi. At the end of his presidency in 1909, he handed over the reins to the best possible candidate, a young Upper Internoc [37.5% g/b DNA; daughter of a luminoc and lumanape {a rare bird indeed}], Eve Lynne Quinn [EQ]. At the time, she wasn’t sure what she was.
In 1910, Elvyn was 40(ish) and looked like a senior in high school. 109 years later, she has outlived expectations, but I envision her as a great grandmother who’s still got some pep in her step. With an aching desperation, I long to see her again. We’ve so much to talk about. I want to ensure that her life’s work pays off. I feel a strong need to make her proud.
In 1918, my mother, Liana Rex Knight, mere years into her unapproved defection from Galacia, and having concluded (due to her baby bump’s rate of expansion) that she was carrying the unborn child of a human, sought Bessi’s help.
From the human perspective, the obvious advantage to helping her was that her offspring, in theory, would take their side. One single being might not seem like a lot, but every little bit helps.
Plus, Bessi couldn’t resist her incredibly unique insider info as she agreed to spill all of her savory beans. Indeed, my mother’s courage is why we know most of what we know now about them. She revealed every secret she knew would prove useful. Essentially, she changed the game. In exchange, the humans aided her in carrying and delivering her baby.
Incidentally, the odds of a human female surviving a childbirth seeded by a g/b male are zilch. By our best estimates, the odds of a g/b female surviving a childbirth seeded by a human male are around 25% (give or take ten {depending on the mother’s physical fitness}).
LRK and EQ quickly established a two-way street of trust, connecting on a deeply emotional level in ways that I may never understand. You know how some people just click? They clicked.
Elvyn informed me later (in 193_) that while my mother sensed grave danger in the weeks leading up to my birth, she was in excellent spirits, fueled by hope and love, up until she lost consciousness for the last time in her tragically short life. I’ve been told that she faded away while lost in a trance at the sight of her miraculous newborn, a story which I’ve chosen to believe because it helps me sleep at night, all right?
A grind.
Let’s revisit the point at hand [at the end of that which falls prior to what follows immediately]. Given that the undeniable causal relationship between diet and health is so difficult to perceive, let’s work on removing all the shiny distractions.
Let’s acknowledge the most unalterable, valuable, fundamental resource in the whole wide universe.
If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s time. This topic prescribes exemption from controversy.
In other words, we may lower our defenses, but only if they’re up.
Without a head in our doubts, we know which way and how fast the boundary of time travels.
We’re all too aware that there’s never enough, that it will always run out, that tomorrow never comes, nor does it die.
All forms of currency reflect the supremely vital importance of time.
This assumes, of course, that I/we/you understand what time is.
In essence, time manifests as matter using energy and light to stay a{drift/float}.
In a sense, the human form acts analogously as a vessel.
In a similar sense, the earth could be considered a vessel.
Colors indicate passage of time and division/fragmentation of light [the electromagnetic spectrum], and anything you’ve ever seen has been made possible by photons interacting with matter [i.e. anything you’ve ever seen].
Basic physics demonstrates that at lightspeed, time stops.
Think of the concept of time as anything that happens between the competing forces of light and gravity.
Nothing is more eternal than light.
Gravity inspires every type of movement.
In other words, light could mean anything so long as nothing outlives gravity [itself].
Are we confused about what this means?
Have you ever heard that if you could figure out how to instantly make the jump to lightspeed without vaporizing {or whichever verb would be most appropriate} on the spot, you might, in theory, stop aging while traveling (at that pace)?
I’m not making this up.
I heard it.
It’s theoretical because the facts seem to point toward the conclusion that human bodies—you know those useful bags of water people haul around—are incapable of maintaining cellular integrity while transforming into particles of light [i.e. photons], but it’s interesting to think about.
By the way, when I use the word literally, I literally mean “literally.” I’m not slinging it around the way words like like, love, and beauty get tossed about haphazardly.
Free time is the currency, the preeminent resource left in light’s wake thanks to multitiered interaction with matter. [There’s another kind of time. A “darker” type with no room to breathe, surrounded by a collapsing ring of fire {if you’re lucky}. “Metallic Prison”? We’ll get to it eventually, I’m sure (of it now).]
Light does not age, but it doesevolve [too soon?].
Light does not tire.
Like its polar opposite, light refuses to cease being.
Without light and gravity, there is no such thing as spacetime, no chance to matter. This is fundamental physics.
I can’t believe you we didn’t fully grasp all this stuff until recently.
I endured almost four decades of profound solitude.
A blink.
Now here I am a year later planting what I hope to be the final layer(s) of our creation.
Think of how an hourglass works.
It “keeps time” by using the predictable force of gravity to bottleneck grains of sand.
Getting a little ahead of myself here but just real quick: if you had to survive for 3 days on only gravity’s version of waste [pee] or light’s iteration {though, obviously, gravity is essential in pulling all this poop through digestive systems} [crap], which would you choose to recycle [consume]?
I’m sure we can all agree.
We feel gravity by and large in the water we carry in our bodies.
You thirst because you’re a real-life energy-user.
The rest of you recharges by light, by borrowing energy, by burning fuel.
Perspiration is like air-conditioning and breathing air is not unlike, uh, drag management?
Again, though I definitely might definitely be (considered) the most brilliantly intelligent thinker the world has ever known [as weird as that reality may be; I’m sorry; I didn’t ask for this], since these words are kind of about all the things ever, I need help from {you and} others—particularly scholarly folk with an applicable expertise—to clean up the parts I botch and expand where I leave off. I will not get everything right. I’m too fucking human.
Speaking of humanity, have you ever really thought about how hot your body is?
What if the thermostat in your home was set to 98.6?
Worth noting more than once [spoiler alert] that Earth’s inner core and Her sun’s skin both burn at 9806 °F.
All forms of fiction come from twisting the truth.
Water occupies 75% (or slightly more) of a newborn. Within a year that measurement drops to about 65%. Adult human males hold about 60% while females carry around 55%.
One logical deduction here is that aging equates with drying out.
Another is that an unborn human baby needs to be watered like a seed.
Once the human body stops growing (sometime shortly after adolescence), the only thing it can do is the opposite, which is to begin the process of dying.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Aging leads to death.
In order to experience time, anything {whether a living body or an inanimate object} must change.
If you can see it, it’s changing. Even if you can’t observe the change (in something like, say, a brick), I assure you, stuff’s happening to it.
To live means to grow before dying.
A quick trip up followed by a long journey down.
We should back up.
Thanks to matter, light gives us time to move around and do stuff.
Wanna know something even crazier?
If you could figure out how to travel faster than light (which is impossible {in a way and} but nonetheless fun to ponder), the laws of physics indicate that you would age in reverse. Hard to believe, right?
What, you don’t think we’re time-traveling right at this precise second?
Most people don’t know that the faster you move, the slower you age. Granted, the difference is imperceptible, but the fact remains: when you move, you slow the effects of time on your body. If that doesn’t incentivize getting off your butt, I don’t know what does.
Time doesn’t move at the same speed everywhere in the universe.
If you lived in a colony on Mars, seconds would tick by slightly faster than for everyone on earth. Gravity on earth is stronger, meaning seconds are slower, thus more time.
See how this works yet?
Gravity on one end, light on the other. The divorce court case of all time.
Anything in between happens around clusters in space.
Spacetime: the currency that truly matters.
Is current, or not.
Currency.
You’ve heard that time is money, right?
“Now” is the most urgent form of currency.
Now.
In another word, time, of which there can be only one, and because it can move in only one direction, forward, all governed by the laws of physics.
We know an awful lot about time, yet we still don’t fully understand it.
Why is that?
Why is time a thing? Is time a “thing”?
Why are we even here?!
Who or what in the circle-jerking name of bloody hellfire made us??
I truly believe we’re ready to figure it all out.
First things first.
“Back in the academy,” my favorite teacher (not called Elvyn) taught me a lot about language, communication, English, and gerunds, but more than that she inspired me to want to be a wizard of sentence structure [one can dream], to care enough about words to pronounce them correctly, to add a little extra oomph to every handshake, and to avoid chewing gum, especially when you’re talking.
There’s another well-known (to her students) point of Mrs. Copper’s wisdom that I’ve been rethinking a lot lately: always search for stronger words than “stuff” and “things.”
I still agree wholeheartedly.
But lately I’ve been breaking that rule for good reason.
It has helped me achieve a new understanding of old concepts, particularly the periodic table of elements.
When I use those words now, I’m referencing an abstract thought, an intangible concept, or matter at the atomic level.
A thing is solid, stuff is gas and liquid.
That’s how it is in this pile of text, anyway.
Mostly.
Well, I think.
Usually.
➬➭➫
Can one follow a list in advance of its formation?
There are a handful of ongoing trends that seem to be messing with my head lately.
The list seems to be compounding.
More growth, more mess.
Each item on the list reflects how and why the same stuff and things happen over and over again.
The same behavioral pattern repeats all the time.
Everywhere.
Constantly, continuously, certainly.
You’ve seen it in action.
Don’t lie.
(Lie again.)
A singular event appears to be unfolding all around us in one direction.
Why?
Not only do I want to know, I want you to know, and we should not think that’s too much to ask. Trust me—The G.E. and The Belanoc each have solid inklings. We cannot defeat either in a straight-up physical contest, nor can we triumph in a battle of technology. Humans are behind. In order to catch up, we must band together. To survive, we’re going to have to outwit them. I know that this can be done. They will never be as clever as we are now, and we’re nowhere near as clever as we can/could/will/should/better be/get/become.
Does it not seem pretty clear to you us that something is just not right in the world?
I’ve been trying to put my finger on it.
It has been challenging, to admit the least.
I was never a properly deep thinker until the year 2018. I guess that means {indirectly} I used to be pretty selfish.
Now I’m certain we need to view our reality from a slightly different angle—make a few adjustments to the dials that tune in to the frequency hitching a ride on our wavelength.
To figure this all out, we should probably start at the base layer that we all share and work our way outward, and then back.
Some people claim that’s what the universe might be doing anyway.
In other words, everything started as one thing and became infinitely more complicated over the course of swelling expansion.
Still, as these sentences unfold, we’re going to move in the opposite direction of the universe, for the most part.
We will travel through time, and we don’t even need a flux capacitor—we need only brainpower and an emotional connection.
Luckily for us, if you’re reading this sentence, you possess brainpower, and we clearly must’ve connected at least once on some emotional level.
So off we go.
Ready?
Okay.
(We’ve got spirit.)
What does everybody who ever lived require in order to exist? We’re looking for the singular necessity that, if removed at the whim of an imaginary, all-powerful deity, would end a person’s life faster than anything else on the planet.
Did oxygen spring to mind?
If so, then you’re almost correct.
I’ll admit: this was kind of a trick question.
The correct answer is actually mass, or space, or however you want to look at it right now. To have a chance at living {and thereby maybe gaining consciousness}, a thing or stuff must weigh; otherwise, it cannot take up enough space to matter.
In other words, you only exist if you’re here. Hey!
If stuff doesn’t weigh at least as much as an atom of hydrogen, then it is physically incapable of mattering.
As I’m sure you know, atoms are the building blocks of matter.
Two more states of matter exist, and we’ll get around to those later on. (Perhaps.)
For now, we’re just trying to get everybody on the same page, which requires dispersal of basic, common knowledge in a sequential arrangement that most likely eludes me/us.
We all have crapton more in common than we realize.
Every sentient creature on Earth.
Every human being.
Every living thing.
Breathing is what we need to be able to do in order to live.
A thing doesn’t need to breathe in order to take up space, but it certainly does if it wants to be alive. At least, that’s how it is on our planet.
To breathe, we all need oxygen.
Remove O2 from the atmosphere and the planet dies a swift death. [You better believe that She’s alive; otherwise how else would she have produced 5 billion {some odd} species that made an incalculable number of “babies”?]
Remember, we’re dealing with needs right now.
Needs, not to be confused with wants.
We’re establishing universal commonality by pinpointing basic needs.
There are only three that can be definitively measured for all human beings.
Honorable mentions go to shelter and fire.
Technically, a human being does not need shelter to live—present tense, now—but you could not survive for very long into the future without the protection(s) it can afford.
Black Dark days are coming.
How long a person can survive without shelter largely depends on weather and terrain.
In extremely harsh wastelands such searing deserts or frozen tundras, you might last hours. Heck, minutes.
In ideal climates, it depends on how lucky you get.
Eventually you’ll fall victim to predation {probably while sleeping}.
We’ll come back to fire because I’m convinced (as you may or may not have gleaned by now) that its discovery, specifically learning how to create and wrangle it, marks the most pivotal fork (but, to reiterate, not {necessarily} the most enlightening period) in the road of human history to date.
Make no mistake, the human race might’ve gone extinct without capitalizing on the protection (from the elements as well as predators) provided by both shelter and fire, but to simply be alive at any moment in time, neither is required.
Clothing is another example of variable consequence. Certainly useful, sometimes fashionable, and often impractical, clothing needs are not the same for everyone.
This is what we’re trying to zero in on: that which every single person on the planet needs just the same—the trio of ingredients that, upon removal from anyone’s equation of living, bring about almost exactly the same dire consequence in nigh identical spans of time.
In exactly three other words, air, water, & energy.
A human body can exist without all except the first, but in that state, he or she would be dead.
This isn’t a play on words.
A carcass does exist.
To live, we need the next three.
Food, mass [not to be confused with weight], and a way to burn it off. Per the previous parenthetical clarification, even though they are used interchangeably, those two measurements are quite different.
Mass is a measurement of how much matter something contains.
Weight is a measurement of the gravitational pull on an object. You don’t weigh as much on the moon.
See the difference. (Yes, a period.)
Anyway, where were we you?
Oh, right: to survive at length, we need shelter.
Remember that our most ancient ancestors were fairly adept at staying alive before learning to create and control fire.
Survival doesn’t have to be pretty.
But to thrive, we need the whole shebang.
Tossed some new data in there, did a bit of guessing, gave a moderate number of fucks. In this case {as well as others, probably}, my guess is better than yours. I’m sure you’ll take (no) offense to that. God I hate when I’m right. You’re not that that stupid. I am 99% sure that each block contains accurate info. And yes, having an actual damn clue how long an average galacian can handle being isolated from the horde would certainly prove to be very useful information, but you/we can’t always get what I want.
Anyhoo, the list is now comprehensive. We {the human side of this contest} need to use these facts to our advantage not only by taking care to avoid obvious pitfalls, but also (mainly) by being clever. They are wrong; we are the opposite. We must fight to survive.
Imagine it thus: while galacians write/speak almost exclusively in black and white, we [i.e. humans] communicate in vibrant, living color. See, even though they are reading this, they can’t fully understand it because they are emotionally incapable. Our chief advantage is that I can broadcast this [oh, hey, if you’re reading these words and you’re missing human DNA, just to clarify, the advantage {I won’t shut up about} equates with enormous emotional depth, particularly as it relates to language and creativity] and it will remain our advantage [bird finger, suckas].
Don’t worry; g/b brains aren’t physically wired in a way that enables their accurate translation of any remotely modern human language, let alone the beautiful clusterfuck that is the English language. They understand that they are incapable of full translation, but they do not understand what it means to us, and they will never be able to predict how we’ll use it against them.
All members belonging to any of the three sides in this war must abide by nine needs.
The timeframe on human contact is an educated guess. {I’m pretending to be an expert.}
Have you ever experienced extended isolation or solitary confinement?
If you haven’t, then I hope you never will.
If you have, then I am wholly impressed by your inner strength.
Inevitably, when a person spends too much uninterrupted time in complete solitude, crippling loneliness takes hold.
Doesn’t matter whether you’re the most extroverted or introverted person on the planet.
We are social animals.
In other words, socialism is in our DNA.
In other words, our genetic code integrates the critical nature of socialization.
In other words, in the absence of two-way communication, we’re up a creek.
This could mean anything (to us).
Life isn’t worth living unless we’re free to share.
Freedom.
This one’s incontestable.
To be free is the birthright of life.
We can live and survive for an indefinite period of time without liberty, but there is no such thing as thriving while stuck in chains.
Is this an opinion?
Not sure, maybe, but it sure as hell seems factual.
The absence of freedom in conjunction with a lack of human contact is a surefire recipe for deeply dark depression.
Even draped in luxurious amenities on a gorgeous tropical island with regular supply drops containing whatever you want plus all the mojitos and tacos you can stand, if you’re all alone, then the experience will not be fun for long.
Unless it’s not space, oxygen, water, energy, shelter, fire, clothing, human contact, or liberty, I’m pretty sure it’s a luxury, technically—in other words, it’s something you don’t really need.
Even without decorative icing, a cake is still a cake.
You may think you need electricity, a car, phone, internet access, central heat and air, daily morning coffee, an afternoon “diet” soda, bi-weekly cupcakes, monthly massages, not to mention yearly trips to The Hamptons and Cancún, but I am certain that you don’t need any of that shit. People all over the world have been born into circumstances which prevent them from being able to enjoy anything remotely resembling that kind of access, yet they still live.
Needs are indicated by your body; your brain makes you aware.
You don’t decide to feel hunger, a longing for intimate companionship, or the urge to urinate; you just feel it.
Don’t you?
Needs are the things that will certainly (or almost certainly) result in your eventual demise if ignored. Wants are everything else.
Humankind has been wanting due to their intelligence, but smartly wanting, they have been not.
Your cellphone and vehicle might be a critical tool in your current job (performance), but you don’t need them to stay alive. That’s what we’re discussing here—the common ground upon which everyone on Earth stands. All around the world, humans are wonderfully different in any number of ways, shapes, forms, and colors, but strip us down to our base levels and we’re the same. We all need the same checklist. We share the same foundation.
Emotionally, I am human unequivocally. I can’t even hide anymore.
Knowing all the info that I (alone) possess, I have a question.
In fact, I have a lot of questions. Here comes one (or two [or three in a row]) that I consider to be enormously relevant. Why do we allow a miniscule fraction of the global population to get filthy rich off universally shared needs at the egregiously detrimental expense of everybody else?
How does that make any sense whatsoever?
How can someone exploit needs that virtually every single version of life feels?
Can you breathe? Then you need energy. Also, congratulations, you’re alive!
But you can’t do anything with calories unless you stay hydrated.
So why do we allow any one/body/any{one/body} to profit off this inescapable fact of life? Especially these days when we need not allow it.
We have the technological capabilities at our disposal today to do life the right way.
Today.
When do you think citizens will have to start paying directly for atmospherically inhaled oxygen? Because that’s what comes next unless we start making some changes for the greater good. After that we’ll be charged for having bodies that take up space only we can use [operate/control].
As If you can see, then some sense can be made of collective human blindness.
It has been predicted that in about 20 years or so, most of the world will not be able to meet basic human needs in terms of water intake.
This decade in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the price of water has risen 75-125%.
Economics: when the supply struggles to meet the demand, the price goes up.
Physics: what goes up must come down.
Any field of study: the higher something goes, the longer the fall, and the more violent potential in the pending collision.
Where shit piles, watch your step, for there may be a twirling trio of blades ever-gaining momentum.
Basic human needs have been exploited since the dawn of civilization, particularly energy. This should come as no surprise.
Oh, look, people are hungry, some are even starving. Bummer. Know what happens next? Here comes a rough checklist.
Right now, at this nanosecond, energy is being exploited because of life’s predictable pattern of trying to live.
Can you imagine?
Life trying to live.
The nerve.
Whether we’re referring to gas, food, or power, the price of energy stays around the point that generates the highest profit.
How much can we get away with charging?
If you think about it {successfully}, the only way to truly find out how much weight a rope can hold is to keep adding weight until it snaps—in other words, no one can get away with anything forever.
“Quit while you’re ahead.”
Consequences aren’t generally considered where bottom lines are concerned.
What is wrong with us?
The one thing we all need in order to stay in motion. Energy. And it gets exploited for individual gain that returns nothing good.
We allow this to happen.
Guilty.
Everybody.
Why?
Because people figured out that should you seize control of our existential lifeblood, you possess all the power over them.
You can charge an arm and a leg for food that makes people sick as long as it keeps them and their families alive. You have taken charge of their lives. You own them.
What a sick load of bullshit.
Slavery was abolished for good reason.
In the same way that fire/water can’t exist without oxygen, meaningful happiness can’t be realized without liberty.
What’s the most notable difference between cats and dogs?
How many cats known for their loyalty aren’t fat?
Why do dogs so eagerly perform the tricks they are taught?
How much can a healthy bird really accomplish from the inside of a cage?
Do you own a healthy bird? If you do, I don’t wonder what would happen if you set it free because I’m feeling pretty good regarding my prediction as far as that goes—or maybe this thought-train will attract readers who take diabolically twisted pleasure in their collections of winged prisoners, too—but I am genuinely curious about how you would feel about it. My money’s on happy tears shortly after seeing it take flight and rise toward its natural habitat [again, unless you’re mean].
Have you ever heard of a starving army winning a war?
The more people a man controls, the bigger army he commands.
The bigger a man’s army, the more land he can conquer.
The more land a man claims, the more resources he owns.
Life will never stop needing resources.
And we should never stop being resourceful.
If we want to reclaim the power to truly control our lives, we need to rethink how we spend money on food/fuel.
We should all know who we indirectly support by the fuel sources we choose.
In other words, apparently, we’ve been doing this the whole time.
On a scale from any number to another, how intelligently are we behaving at this moment?
You are in control of how you spend some of your money.
What do you think would happen if the backbone upon which those in power built their wealth—and the coattails upon which their children still ride [a.k.a. the working class of the USA back then and, today, the factory known as “China”]—got a little choosier with how our money is spent?
We need to look at everything a little differently. Luckily, we already know the equation for doing that. To see anything differently, one must either rearrange the sight in question or adjust the viewing angle. I wonder who figured that out first. Bet that creature was lit.
I think we might’ve skipped step 6 because, uh, we’re losing hard at 7.
We tried to get ahead of ourselves.
We tried to outpace light.
Oops.
Our emotions tend to get the best of us. We need to start getting the best of them.
As a human, when you insert verbiage, I probably screw it up at least a little.
Energy: gravity’s inverted baby, the quintessential source of being.
In other words, the heart of your soul advertises stupidly energetic performance.
Light: the fastest thing there is, and we’re trying to outrun it.
Logic: grossly undervalued.
Could an errand be any more foolish? No, for real. Name an errand more foolish than attempting to beat light in a race with your physical body. Since this will take you forever, I will not wait. See you soon.
Welcome back.
Human beings can be awfully silly.
It all comes back to the power we derive from the speed of light.
Everything begets energy just as anything bespeaks light.
In other words, nothing matters merely by fucking itself {over [and over]}.
Why aren’t we trying to understand this a little better? It could be excellent news!
What happened to your sense of adventure? That’s another thing with which we were born. Where’d it go?
When did we stop being explorers?
The world has gone batshit crazy because we are “blinded by the light.”
No, I’m not trying to get anyone to break into song, but if that’s what’s happening, go with it by acting “revved up like a deuce,” whatever that may mean to you.
But it is true, you we know.
Light does in fact blind us.
Ever hear the expression about not being able to see the forest for the trees?
That’s where we are right now.
Everything in plain sight has gotten so complicated that we’ve lost sight of the bigly hidden mental picture.
Laziness has more or less been bred into us.
In other words, we’ve been domesticated by our own accord.
Yuck.
We forgot what’s on the ground floor, the foundation, the baseline.
We stopped thinking about the things that allow our engines to stay cool while burning fuel.
We lost sight of the circles [cycles of being] that made us all.
The heartbeat of existence, an appetite, a reason for being.
Genesis.
Creation.
Godliness.
The almighty sun, a hard place.
The rock, our loyal moon.
We, us, our home, our planet, Earth, our Mother, and her betrothed, Her incredibly significant other, the lone(ly) satellite bound to the shape of Her irresistible gravity.
The carbon atoms that predate life’s eve.
Adam’s Eve.
Orbital patterns.
Tidal locking of celestial bodies.
The flowing ebb of water against a rippling wave of fire.
The most balanced place to live, the middle of the spectrum, the color green.
Bands of light.
Music.
The Northern Lights.
Magnetically charged particles.
Materially atomic, weighted divisions of stuff that happens to be energetic.
The color wheel!
In some way this is all just a fancy attempt at saying that different things weigh different amounts, which is just a plain method of pointing out that a thing’s unique number and color (measured weight) is what separates it from other things, giving us {or anything, for that matter} time to evolve.
Nobody weighs the (exact) same! It’s why we’re all so different. Even if the difference is only as much as one atom of hydrogen, your weight belongs to you and you alone.
Make sense?
If something weighs exactly what you weigh down to the most minimum measurement capable of mattering, then that particular something is your equal.
In other words, it is you.
In other words, monozygotic twins can’t be truly identical.
This is one of the things everyone should know inside and out from every angle. It’s a factual matter that holds true regardless of where you go. Disregard the fact that I’m guessing.
I’m kidding, right?
Regard away. Just don’t doubt me too much; I’ve been through a lopsidedly lengthy educational metamorphosis. My brain has mapped more neural pathways than you{r mom (and dad, too [probably])}.
When something weighs, gravity makes it fall. I’m betting you knew that. We’ve all known it since birth.
I don’t think any of us realize how much we already know.
A list of concepts we grasp without being officially taught may not be long, but it is wildly complicated beneath a false facade of simplicity.
You may not think you want kids; however, biologically speaking, your body needs to procreate. This difference highlights a basic separation of mental processes from emotional urges.
Ever hear the expression about loins burning?
Actually, fuck that.
Have your loins ever burned?
Have you any reason to believe that reproductive organs possess a mind of their own?
You might because they do.
Life wants its legacy to carry on. It accomplishes this by wiring the desire to procreate into deoxyribonucleic acid.
Impervious to the power of (intelligent) thought while at the same time extremely susceptible to the gravity of (emotional) persuasion, reproductive organs ready themselves for action (in two distinctly different ways) when they sense a chance to unite with somebody in a naturally (and mutually) rewarding effort to pass on DNA to a new life—in other words, it makes us wanna bone and we can’t help it.
Bodies [organs] don’t always cooperate when someone [a self-aware brain] only wants selfish pleasure in and of itself, or when people seek to suppress [control] the miracle of life. To optimize the potential of mating—and this applies especially to humans—participants must align their individual paces of an encounter mentally, physically, and emotionally; and then, if able to harmonize with a partner, a most divinely fulfilling union can occur.
I suppose I should disclaim that most thoughts pertaining to emotional/physical intimacy amount to pure conjecture on my part; I am laughably inexperienced. Half the time my man{ish}hood refuses to cooperate. I have a theory about why that happens—I’ve reckoned that sometimes the pace of the physical encounter itself overloads my unavoidably hyperactive brain which, under such unfamiliar and stressful circumstances, sabotages normal functionality, suggesting that one might ought to take it slow while “getting to know” someone—but I haven’t bumped into an opportunity to test this notion. All that being said, I suspect that fully optimized fornication is kind of like feeling the rhythm of a song and interpreting those vibrations through dance.
This is all connected, by the way. Have I mentioned that?
We’ve seen what happens when a man develops that special appetite for power granted to him by lording over the common livelihood of others. The same result repeats on a loop. Corruption runs rampant.
Has greed ever been considered a good thing?
Greed is not earning massive amounts of money. Greed is keeping it all to yourself for the sake of keeping it all to yourself.
In other words, greed is not sharing in spite of abundant supply.
Wild deduction: the counter to greed must be wisdom!
We all carry a responsibility for spreading truth on the one hand, but at the same time, I think we owe it to each other to relay facts about what’s real—unless the laws of physics are lying to us. Since numbers can’t lie, we must have been born to share. To fight that fact means to resist nature.
If your feet are on the ground and you detect an earthquake, volcano, hurricane, tsunami, tidal wave, rogue wave, any big (scary) wave, a flood, an avalanche, a stampede, blizzard, sandstorm, an apex predator running directly at you, a wildfire, landslide, sinkhole, tornado, or even a small thunderstorm, you probably should not charge headlong into the fray with the intention of picking a fight.
In other words, disobey nature, get shit on. That’s just how it is.
Involuntary muscles don’t care what any of us think; they need to perform the function that they were meant to perform.
A heart gets mighty sluggish when arteries clog with unneeded junk.
