Eiskalte Winde durchstechen meinen Körper, zum ersten mal verliert sich dein feuchter Nebel und ich kann in die Ferne sehen. Hier ist Raum und Zeit zum Sein, auch für mich. Endlich kann ich anhalten und frieren, hier sein und die eiskalten, klaren Kanten der Welt gegen meinen eigenen Körper spüren. Scharf durchbricht mein zittriger Schrei die klare Luft, und ich kann mich selbst, mein Echo hören. Reflektiert vom kalten, ewigen Stein wird meine eigene Stimme. Keiner kann sie mir jetzt nehmen. Noch wage ich nicht mich nach dir umzusehen.

Ich presse sie in Schrift, in kleine Boxen auf kleinen Bildschirmen, in Tippbewegung meiner Daumen. Spaß? As? Da ist soviel wieviel zuviel zum überfließen voll und endlich kann es fließen schießen gleiten durch die löchrige Welt. Hinderniss klatsch weiter jetzt zwei dann vier Potenz bis unendlich komplex. In der Ferne: Verstehen wird unmöglich, Fühlen zum Weg.

kein Ende der ständigen Strahlung paradox zu aller Logik mehr wenn viel und wenig stark Anti. Zoom ins Innere innere innererrererer I hier die Grenze aber da nicht, wann kann ich tanzen ohne zu denken- immer, jetzt mit der Schneeflocke, dem blauen Zeiger, dem 3. Pixel und dem Geruch von Bett, I mm mm mm mer

Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.

The schizophrenic sickness consists in the inability to take refuge from inner and outer reality (as the sane person habitually does) in the homemade universe of common sense - the strictly human world of useful notions, shared symbols and socially acceptable conventions. The schizophrenic is like a man permanently under the influence of mescalin, and therefore unable to shut off the experience of a reality which he is not holy enough to live with, which he cannot explain away because it is the most stubborn of primary facts.

Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, or else for those resolute dead-enders, who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.

Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its Perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern. The mind was primarily concerned, not with measures and locations, but with being and meaning. _Huxley

Modern religion in the West is a set of social patterns, or a set of anxieties centered on a particular moral structure and view of obligation. Modern religion is rarely an experience of setting aside the ego.

Gaining access to the unconscious through plant hallucinogen use reaffirms our original bond to the living planet.

Our estrangement from nature and the unconscious became entrenched roughly two thousand years ago, during the shift from the Age of the Great God Pan to that of Pisces that occurred with the suppression of the pagan mysteries and the rise of Christianity. The psychological shift that ensued left European civilization staring into two millennia of religious mania and persecution, warfare, materialism, and rationalism. The monstrous forces of scientific industrialism and global politics that have been born into modern times were conceived at the time of the shattering of the symbiotic relationships with the plants that had bound us to nature from our dim beginnings. This left each human being frightened, guilt-burdened, and alone. Existential man was born.

archaic partnership values: Children are raised by an extended family of cousins and siblings, aunts and uncles, and former and current sexual partners of their parents. In such a milieu, a child has many different relationships and a variety of role models. Group values are not usually at odds with that of the individual or his or her mate and children. Adolescent sexual experimentation is expected and encouraged. Couples may bond for any number of reasons related to themselves and the welfare of the group; such bonding may be-but is not necessarily-lifelong. Sexuality is rarely taboo in such societies, only becoming so as a result of contact with dominator values.

Could it not be that we are willing to pay the terrible toll that alcohol extracts because it is allowing us to continue the repressive dominator style that keeps us all infantile and irresponsible participants in a dominator world characterized by the marketing of ungratified sexual fantasy?

The strongest argument for the legalization of any drug is that society has been able to survive the legalization of alcohol.

A drug is something that causes unexamined, obsessive, and habitual behavior. You don't examine obsessive behavior; you just do it. You let nothing get in the way of your gratification. This is the kind of life that we are being sold at every level. To watch, to consume, and to watch and consume yet more.

What is most feared by those who advocate the unworkable Luddite solution of "Just say no" is a world in which all traditional community values have dissolved in the face of an endless search for self-gratification on the part of drug-obsessed individuals and pop- ulations. We should not dismiss this only too real possibility. But what must be rejected is the notion that this admittedly disturbing future can be avoided by witch hunts, the suppression of research, and the hysterical spreading of disinformation and lies.

[Science] prefers to direct its attention elsewhere, with the comment that subjective experiences, however peculiar, are not its province. What a pity, since subjective experience is all that any of us ever has.

Immersed in junk food, trash media, and cryptofascist politics, they are condemned to toxic lives of low awareness. Sedated by the prescripted daily television fix, they are a living dead, lost to all but the act of consuming. _McKenna

power over others: In a basic sense, the greater the development of each individual the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be. _Jean Baker Miller

In quantum theory, experience is the essential reality, and matter is viewed as a representation of the primary reality, which is experience. _Stapp

The task is…not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees. _Erwin Schrödinger

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. _Grams search engine

Religions are false means for satisfying genuine needs. _Karlheinz Deschner

Adequate communication flows freely between equals. Communication between non-equals is warped and distorted by second-circuit Domination and Submission rituals perpetuating communication jam and a Game Without End. _Robert Anton Wilson

Es gibt, o mein Freund, nur ein Wissen, das ist überall, das ist Atman, das ist in mir und in dir und in jedem Wesen. Und so beginne ich zu glauben dies Wissen hat keinen ärgeren Feind als das Wissenwollen, als das Lernen.

Die Menschen von unserer Art können vielleicht nicht lieben. Die Kindermenschen können es; das ist ihr Geheimnis. _Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)

why psychedelic drugs? No matter how far you have traveled from the place of your birth, and however much you now understand about the world, you have been exploring consciousness and its changes. Why not do so directly?

But consciousness is different [to brain/body]. It appears to have no form at all, because anything that would give it form must arise within the field of consciousness. Consciousness is simply the light by which the contours of mind and body are known. It is that which is aware of feelings such as joy, regret, amusement, and despair. It can seem to take their shape for a time, but it is possible to recognize that it never quite does. In fact, we can directly experience that consciousness is never improved or harmed by what it knows. Making this discovery, again and again, is the basis of spiritual life. _Sam Harris

But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all our strength. _Spinoza

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need for our civilisation; but no such system has a chance while men are so unhappy that mutual extermination seems to them less dreadful than continued endurance of the light of day. _Bertrand Russell

Der Mensch allein lacht, weil er so tief leidet, dass er das Lachen erfinden musste. _Nietzsche

Philosophy is written in this grand book—the universe I say—that is wide open in front of our eyes. But the book cannot be understood unless we first learn to understand the language, and know the characters, in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics. _Galileo Galilei

The properties of living things are in some way attached to a material basis, perhaps in some special degree to nuclear chromatin; and yet it is inconceivable that particles of chromatin or of any other substance, however complex, can possess those powers which must be assigned to our factors or gens [sic]. The supposition that particles of chromatin, indistinguishable from each other and indeed almost homogeneous under any known test, can by their material nature confer all the properties of life surpasses the range of even the most convinced materialism. _William Bateson, 1916

Explanation is an illusion, a mirage, a construct, a soothing lullaby. Explanation has no existence. Let’s call it by its proper name, a coward’s defense against the white-knuckled, knee-knocking terror of the precariousness, indifference and capriciousness of sheer existence. _Yalom: "Creatures of a day"

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others. _Marcus Aurelius

The greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life because that is the only reality, all else being the play of thought. But we could just as well call it our greatest folly because that which exists only a moment and vanishes as a dream can never be worth a serious effort

We should treat with indulgence every human folly, failing, and vice, bearing in mind that what we have before us are simply our own failings, follies, and vices.

Atthe end of his life, no man, if he be sincere and in possession of his faculties, would ever wish to go though it again. Rather than this, he will much prefer to choose complete nonexistence _Schopenhauer

Mar 27, 2016, 5:08:29 PM zitate2 „Die meisten Menschen wollen nicht eher schwimmen, als bis sie es können.“ Ist das nicht witzig? Natürlich wollen sie nicht schwimmen! Sie sind ja für den Boden geboren, nicht fürs Wasser. Und natürlich wollen sie nicht denken; sie sind ja fürs Leben geschaffen, nicht fürs Denken! Ja, und wer denkt, wer das Denken zur Hauptsache macht, der kann es darin zwar weit bringen, aber er hat doch eben den Boden mit dem Wasser vertauscht, und einmal wird er ersaufen.« _Hermann Hesse: Steppenwolf

We can even imagine an especially consistent neuroethicist surveying the airport scene I have described and viewing it with a certain satisfaction: maybe an environment that is sufficiently stimulating will divert us from indulging in reason-giving, that quaint activity by which man clings to the idea that he is somehow special.

Der Erwachsene, der gelernt hat, einen Teil seiner Gefühle in Gedanken zu verwandeln, vermißt diese Gedanken beim Kinde, und meint nun, auch die Erlebnisse seien nicht da. _Demian

I think present-day reason is an analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far beyond it you’re presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are very much afraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. _zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

When someone tells you they've just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they're locked into jobs they hate; that they're broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they're fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas.

I take advantage of her disappearance to remove my travelrumpled jacket and to pour a glass of water, allowing the water in the tap to run for fifteen seconds to displace the stale water in the pipes. _Douglas Coupland (Gen X)

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. . . . Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. bzw Man muss den Dingen die eigene, stille ungestörte Entwicklung lassen, die tief von innen kommt und durch nichts gedrängt oder beschleunigt werden kann, alles ist austragen – und dann gebären... / Reifen wie der Baum, der seine Säfte nicht drängt und getrost in den Stürmen des Frühlings steht, ohne Angst, dass dahinter kein Sommer kommen könnte. / Er kommt doch! / Aber er kommt nur zu den Geduldigen, die da sind, als ob die Ewigkeit vor ihnen läge, so sorglos, still und weit... / Man muss Geduld haben / Mit dem Ungelösten im Herzen, und versuchen, die Fragen selber lieb zu haben, wie verschlossene Stuben, und wie Bücher, die in einer sehr fremden Sprache geschrieben sind. / Es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben. Wenn man die Fragen lebt, lebt man vielleicht allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fremden Tages in die Antworten hinein. _Rainer Maria Rilke

The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of the judgment, character, and will. _William James

As long as we feel safely held in the hearts and minds of the people who love us, we will climb mountains and cross deserts and stay up all night to finish projects. Children and adults will do anything for people they trust and whose opinion they value.

pardon my wizard talk / but i'm elevated _Kid Cudi

The ironist is the vampire who has sucked the blood of the lover and while doing so has fanned him cool, lulled him to sleep, and tormented him with troubled dreams _Kierkegaard

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bow from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrow may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. _"The Prophet" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951) p.17-18.

It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It's just like Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise. Just like we see with Eichmann

Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.

"For a fifteen-year-old who doesn't even shave yet, you're sure carrying a lot of baggage around." Oshima takes a sip of his coffee and carefully places the cup back on its saucer. "I'm not saying that's wrong. Just that everything has a critical point."

"When I was fifteen," Miss Saeki says with a smile, "all I wanted was to go off to some other world, a place beyond anybody's reach. A place beyond the flow of time." _Kafka on the Shore

Across the lobby, extremely sick children hooked to machines and tubes were being wheeled out into the sunlight. _All Families are Psychotic, Coupland

My aunt once told me that nothing is gained by clinging to life save more life to cling to. The world I find is embarked on a grand adventure. I find I choose to play.

He could only marvel at the boy’s mastery of the world—that same world which tossed MacMurrough, upped sided and downed him, and over which he had no more influence than the choosing of the socks he wore while it tossed. _At Swim Two Boys

2017

…all our instincts drive us constantly to create boundaries, not to tear them down. We draw them around our gardens in the form of fences, and within our houses in the form of walls separating our rooms…Boundaries are shelters, and for that reason they must be close to us, and narrow. To tear them from human societies would be like tearing away the shell from the body of a tortoise or the shore from the ocean. But boundaries are not barriers. What we want to keep from the harbor is the storm, not the sea…It is the barriers, then, which are detrimental to human development, not the protecting boundaries whose function is to keep things within healthy limits. _Leopold Kohr, The Breakdown of Nations

2018

As for myself," he says, "weak as I am, I carry on the war to the last moment, I get a hundred pike-thrusts, I return two hundred, and I laugh. I see near my door Geneva on fire with quarrels over nothing, and I laugh again; and, thank God, I can look upon the world as a farce even when it becomes as tragic as it sometimes does. _Voltaire

As I go on in this life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered child; I cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing, the commonest things are a burthen. The prim, obliterated, polite surface of life, and the broad, bawdy and orgiastic--or maenadic--foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit reconciles me. _R. L. Stevenson: Letters, ii. 355.

I’ve experienced extreme neglect, and was convinced that it was love.

I’ve been bullied, abandoned, humiliated, and rejected.

Those that should have protected me, didn’t.

Those that wanted to, couldn’t.

De-personalisation is real. I never formed an ego of my choice; mine was imposed.

‘Loser, idiot, disabled, defective, freak.’

Those were the words of my ‘ego’. I hated it. I knew it was wrong.

More were given, but I don't share too much on the internet, yet I share everything.

I accepted what was given; I tried to work with it. If that was my part.

After-all, those around me wouldn’t lie to me, would they? It must be me who was wrong.

But I never truly made it mine. I always had a small part of ‘me’ tucked away.

Casting off the titles was the most wonderful experience of my life.

I tried to pick up new ones. I tried to pick which ego I would adopt.

I could not.

They all felt wrong. Like masks, not the real ‘me,’ the silent observer.

The observer who used the imposed titles as a tool, to be safe behind rejection, to watch, to learn.

I am now told I am a mystery, an enigma. Those with masks are baffled.

I do not hide myself in any way. I accept the pain that comes of it.

It can never hurt the way that my old mask did. I laugh at insults, at attempts to hurt.

They attack the ‘mask’, unable to destroy the source.

They do not realize, the mask they see, is the mask that they themselves have projected on me.

I own every part of me, good and bad. The only weapon they have is the truth.

The problem is, that is my weapon too. Who can withstand the truth more? Those that wear a mask, or those that do not?

I am zero. I am nothing.

1 + 0 = 1

44145838 + 0 = 44145838

Like a mirror, I reflect what those bring to me. They only see in me what they wish to see.

I am zero. I am alone. I am nothing, and I am everything.

For someone to truly know me; I need to find another zero. I do not expect to.

But I cannot live another way.

I truly love everyone I see, because 1 + 0 = 1.

I see myself in everyone, and see everyone in myself. All are lovable. All are beautiful in their way.

It’s a good thing I am zero. I was always lazy with math.

1 + 0 = 1.

(0)

P.S. Funny thing: I picked my signature almost at random. Odd how apropos it turned out to be, like most things in life. The world is quite wondrous.

_u/theshadowscall on sls reddit

One week before the date set for the wedding, little Remedios woke up in the middle of the night soaked in a hot broth which had exploded in her insides with a kind of tearing belch, and she died three days later, poisoned by her own blood, with a pair of twins crossed in her stomach. _one hundred years of solitude

your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality,” said Harry. “If you’re equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.

I will say this much, Mr. Potter: You are already an Occlumens, and I think you will become a perfect Occlumens before long. Identity does not mean, to such as us, what it means to other people. Anyone we can imagine, we can be; and the true difference about you, Mr. Potter, is that you have an unusually good imagination. A playwright must contain his characters, he must be larger than them in order to enact them within his mind. To an actor or spy or politician, the limit of his own diameter is the limit of who he can pretend to be, the limit of which face he may wear as a mask. But for such as you and I, anyone we can imagine, we can be, in reality and not pretense. While you imagined yourself a child, Mr. Potter, you were a child. Yet there are other existences you could support, larger existences, if you wished. Why are you so free, and so great in your circumference, when other children your age are small and constrained? Why can you imagine and become selves more adult than a mere child of a playwright should be able to compose? That I do not know, and I must not say what I guess. But what you have, Mr. Potter, is freedom. _HPMOR

No single thing abides, but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings; the things thus grow Until we know and name them. By degree They melt, and are no more the things we know. _Lucretius

Everything else can satisfy only one wish; money alone is absolutely good,…because it is the abstract satisfaction of every wish.”2 _Arthur Schopenhauer

Welcome to a direct stream from my almost-subconscious. Writing these posts was often more fun when i wrote close to some border of my own expressivity. The ever narrowing funnel from my mind which ends in these characters on my screen is blocked most of the time, there is bulky things not fitting through. But with the right mixture of pressure, viscosity and consistency of ideas, i sometimes can pour stuff into my text file for a short blessed time of smooth flow. Sometimes it is the light or the music or the position in bed which is the final condiment allowing this state to emerge, sometimes it is something i ate or otherwise consumed, sometimes it is a distant thought, finally it is the organically orchestrated interplay of all these parts. Isolation is also a mighty trigger as it inhibits my inhibitions.

I will have to zoom out to talk fluently, to a level where i need not provide references. Where you can hopefully judge my words by your intuition.

As an alien superintelligence, i would probably research humans with an ethernet cable. The digital world has simple atomic units (0 and 1), is accessible even remotely (there is internet satellites) and i suppose that i - as an alien - am more likely to understand this simple data than for example share our color vision and dependence on earth matter. I could quickly gather enough data that is encoded in well-documented formats. Depending on my alien mood (if i even have something like that), i could then launch a meme attack on humans (even Donald Trumps advisors managed to influence mass opinion online), wreak havoc with perfectly addictive new online entertainment or just communicate with humans in a secure way. It is already quite telling that humans are so vulnerable from a cyber-perspective.

This systemic, global view looks perverse. The digital, transistor-and-cable-driven, the virtual or immaterial is evolving so fast that humans’ traditional and dualist distinction between reality and the virtual world is becoming unreal itself. Our hand-graspable, smellable, touchable and walkable world stagnates, even suffers in the shadow of our virtual imaginary cloud-castles. Money probably started to loose its solidness a long time ago, i never touched it as something real in my life, a commonly supposed privilege. During my 25 years on this earth, i watched more things starting to leave the material world. Photos, conversations, wars, entertainment, emotions, discussion, violence, identity, sex, governments, voices…

They all silently and swiftly slip away into a world that we still have an incredibly hard time interfacing with. Often, a hard screen of glass is the only place we can touch this different world, and it awkwardly reacts in two tiny visual dimensions of our mobile phones’ screen. I can use the decades-old conserved invention of a keyboard with the alphabet’s letters on it. I still cannot talk with this parallel universe, or if i do, i get some tinny soulless response from an Alexa or Cortana or Siri who do not even deserve these barely human names. I cannot touch this other world other than on glass screens, i cannot smell it, i can only see it at a current highest resolution of 3840 × 2160 little colored light points. Inside the digital world, data transfer and computation bandwith exceeds all our expectations, while we can only watch from the outside and interface with it from time to time to get a low-byte result. Until then, we see little loading screens that have managed to evolve from bars to spinning circles trying to hide the feelings and inner workings of our electric counterparts, because seeing them think irritates us and makes us think of Matrix’ green numbers.

The digital world thrived all my life like a cancerous monster but i still connect to it with almost the same interfaces my parents had. There is a huge divide between us and the global networks of digital intelligence that we built, this is what makes it a parallel world which we do not call home. It is not properly embodied and we do not control it.

This sounds dystopian. I lose people and things who i can touch, who are close to me and keep me warm, i lose the relationship to what i called reality and win a cold world that i do not control, that does not even know my body and barely starts to understand the concept of my face, and that evolves malignantly, with little supervision, for years on end now.

But what if we get a literal grip of this beast? What if we can finally touch the internet? What if the goodness wins again as it does sometimes? What if we all grow closer, to the digital world, to the humans and finally to everything around us? I imagine it often lately, almost as often as i see the cold semiconducting future. The networks we built and are constantly improving upon still have potential for actually uniting its participants. For flattening power structures instead of concentrating them in one spot. As soon as real feelings, touch, empathy and love can flow through the internet instead of 0s and 1s or pixels, we may finally find what we were searching on our screens all along. What we find will feel real, have a purpose in the shared world. The attention market dominating the digital universe is so offensively degenerated that i can not imagine it surviving for long. It will need more and more food and consume large parts of the meaningful world we know but has to ultimately starve in its own disequilibrated hypertrophy. Information is flowing more and more freely, and the rivers and pipes of information will - in the future - also transmit feeling, material, touch. Fake news will feel more fake, math and programming will excite and reward more people, Grindr might become a place to find love and compassionate hugs.

And why not go further? Or rather go further and back at the same time! There is no need nor the space for infinite growth, that is what circles are there for. We can keep our agency and our forward-thinking and all we have learned while still not getting lost in space and reconnecting with our roots, by consciously progressing in a circle.

This would mean that we start by understanding our own digital creations, by heightening the bandwith of information exchange between us and the global networks we created. We could cross the digital divide and make artificial intelligences, the natives of this distant world we built, touchable. We could see and feel and understand them, and they could understand us. The digital world would be part of our real world with no need for words like ‘artificial’.

In a hyperconnected future, the hybridly digital humans would then describe the next curve of the circle, by better understanding themselves through their new interconnectedness. The internet would transmit the aching pain of people in danger and hunger, and there would be something like a global consciousness that efficiently distributes compassionate and attention resources all over the world. Global consciousness would be possible through further melting of individual egos, a development away from archaic feelings and sexuality to more cognitive, abstract and rationally interdependent selves. A world of blurring human individuals connected by beautifully weaved networks, collaborating with non-human transistor beings, descendants of human rationality itself.

Our rational new friends would hopefully finally be able to communicate the urgency of the situation our environment is currently in. They would use our newfound sympathy to relay to us the desperation of plants and animals they can measure. And their joy when we save them. And then we could be ready to close the circle. To finally reconnect not only to all humans, but also to our only real reference in space and time, our only planet earth. To the trees and animals and the air of the sky, always letting us dream in the deadly black nothingness of space.

We can reconnect to our roots in outer space at a later point i guess, i would already be pretty thrilled to be able to love trees again and focus compassion on our planet, like our early ancestors loved to do.

I wonder if there is a practical way of circular progress, but it seems like a natural thing to both evolve and revisit the roots at regular intervals. It also nicely marries my feelings of wanting to go forward (digital) and back (trees) at the same time. A shift from conquering and growing to co-evolving, caring and protecting.

This text was probably heavily influenced by the animated series Neon Genesis Evangelion, which has a similar theme but is quite dystopian. Watching the series, i felt very close to its creative source as the aesthetic and story details were captivatingly well integrated to serve a bigger theme and create a consistent ambiance. This means that details (e.g. scientific) bent and shifted away from their strict traditional meaning to serve in a more abstract way, adding to the animation’s artwork. This gave the series an authentic feeling of an actual alternate reality with human-computer-god hybrids that is self-consistent and deeply rooted in our reality’s young and old ideas.

This greek war-epic exists among the oldest works of western literature. Some very skilled bards with a presumed ridiculously hypertrophic hippocampus (big brain bois) are said to have sung this story for centuries before some literary genius Homer wrote it down about 800 years before Christ. This story is so ancient that it probably was conceived completely orally, sung by rhapsodes during festivals, getting longer and longer through different generations’ creativity and improvisation, until the greek alphabet was efficient enough (they were actually inventing the greek alphabet at that time) and someone (Homer) was smart enough to write it down. So one can say they wrote it down as soon as possible because there were no letters before. This is how ancient this story is. And its 24 ‘books’ are long: Robert Fagles’ translation took me almost thirty hours to plough through. The more surprised was i by how easy and fluid it was to read, despite the loss in translation of rhyme and some rhythm. Fagles did an excellent job, both in translating and in introducing the sheer magnitude of this work for a smaller brain boi like me.

It is about war, specifically the trojan one which took ten years. This is a war that might actually have happened very similarly to the book as archaeologists have uncovered. Consequently and while reading, i was often thinking about a distant ancient reality that was epic in many ways. There is a lot of blood and gore and lots of handsome athletic overly manly men showing off their bodies. There is pride and humiliation, moral bliss and ferocity. And even during all the carnage, plenty of love for mother nature. There is manipulation, plotting, deception and beautiful women surrounded by sea-nymphs. There is brain splattering and bones crushing and nice fire- roasted meat with wine for supper. And to top it all off, to extend these extremes to the maximum possible, there is plenty of gods that transcend all limits, that let mortals fight entire rivers or in a drive-by yank other mortals out of their chariots like speared fish. The gods even fight among themselves although they are immortal. There is even sex between gods in the clouds, Jesus Christ. (Who blessedly was not yet born for 800 years)

Here are some themes i found interesting:

Nature

Although the book really is all about war, some analogies or ‘epithets’ are disturbingly beautiful and poetic. Chariots rushing through enemy ranks are compared to plowing the rich juicy barley fields in peace time. Or wheels splashing through warriors’ blood like through grapes during wine harvest. Spearing an enemy is compared to fishing. Apart from being in the warrior’s imaginations, nature is often actively part of the scene, in the form of terrifying thunderstorms formed by Zeus’ wrath or rivers that try to influence the war by attacking Achilles with their floods. (Achilles proceeds to try to kill the river btw) Some gods are also very close to nature, for example Thetis, Achilles’ mother and goddess of water with her glistening feet.

War, Men and honor

Everything is about the war. And war is only fought by men, and won by pure force or - where that does not help - god-chosen destiny. Accordingly, the book focuses a lot on physicality, muscles, athleticism and strong will. There is a rigid honor code and many warriors give long speeches before they proceed to slaughter. They sometimes agree to trade victims to bury them or to pause the war for some Olympic-like funeral games. Honor is everything and some even pay with their lives for it.

Gods

The gods of the Iliad are no idealized creatures like one might think. To the contrary, they are characterized by their complete lack of any moral whatsoever while also being immortal. They contrast the mortals’ daily struggle with honor and fairness by being purely self-centered. Even Zeus takes sides during a battle, rejoicing in the slaughter, while his goddess-wife Hera tries to trick him by luring him to bed with her and killing his beloved human warriors in his sleep. Mortals that are close to gods like Achilles show similar self-centeredness, as he refuses to join the war with his mighty troops until almost everyone is dead, just because of a personal quarrel with King Agammemnon and just to show that he is indispensable for the war. Gods are very reachable, they can be talked to and they sometimes come down to earth from Olympus. So the mortal people’s struggle is to gain the support and love of the childish gods and then to ask them for favors. These favors are very direct and practicable like killing someone for example and the gods comply happily if they feel like it. I liked this approach to gods, as it highlights how honorable and civilized mortals are in contrast to them, and how mortality can somehow give sense to your life. It contrasts drastically what it means to be human. Another interesting idea is that there is fate on the one hand, completely controlled by the gods with their almighty immortality, but that you can negotiate fate through the direct contact with them. (prayers, cunning, sacrifice, heroism…) Sacrifice by the way is always really interesting to me, as it is the most practical and symbolic form of delayed gratification. Sacrificing for Gods is like ancient training for the actual useful (mostly mental) sacrifices that makes humans human and arguably raises them intellectually above other animals. Achilles pouring the wine for the gods is a precursor of these children in the Marshmellow test in a pretty direct way.

Women

Are definitely underrepresented and reduced to being the longing and treasure of every man. There is a bit of emancipation and independence in the goddesses at least, but even Hera, the greatest of them all, figures her vagina as her mightiest weapon by luring Zeus to bed. I would love to read a story of times of peace with a feminine protagonist, as there are short blinks of this other life in the Iliad, only to be quickly eclipsed of another big muscled hero’s brute strength. In this epic that in my opinion seeks to motivate greek men to be honorable fighters for their people, women did not have much space. They are much more portrayed as who waits for the men after victory, together with lush fields and happy children. These times of peace are partly but beautifully depicted on the shield that the god of fire crafts for Achilles in the end. You can read the description of the godly shield in the 18th book of the Iliad when searching on this page for “First he shaped” with STRG + F.

Love

There was not much love for individuals. Hector (The best trojan fighter) has some sweet moments with his wife, but still prefers to die a honorable death, defending his people, instead of staying with her. The warriors all love themselves and their people as a whole, but rarely someone of the opposite sex. There is one exception though, and it is pretty gay. Achilles, the son of a goddess and best fighter of the Achaeans (anti-Trojans) is terminally sulky because Agammemnon took one of his bounty wives. While refusing to fight and letting his men die in war, he stays in his tent in the battles’ vicinity with his buddy Patroclus who he grew up with. Only when Patroclus dies in an attack that almost decides the war in favor of the Trojans, (Achilles’, Agammemnon’s and Patroclus’ enemy) does Achilles completely disintegrate. He cries for days, hugs and talks to and dreams of his dead friend Patroclus and becomes the most vicious war machine to avenge his death. I actually also read a modern novel in which Achilles and Patroclus are really gay in a modern sense of the word, meaning they sleep together in a naughty way. It was funny getting reminded of this novel while reading the Iliad, realizing how plausible their love-story seems even in the original.

Two young people fall in love. As the world already seems to close around them in a warm loving embrace, they begin to experiment with a new (military) technology that facilitates entering shared dream-states. This manifests their love in making a shared dream literal, a world in which only they exist. Pushed by their fiery mutual curiosity and pulled by their aching desire for each other, the two go deeper into the dream than was ever thought possible. With every dream’s dream they enter, the timescale multiplies and soon minutes on the surface become days, months and years in their nested dreams.

Self-sufficient in their love for each other, they do not recognize how far they are from their sleeping bodies and the according reality. They live completely isolated in their own common imagination. In this harmoniously dreamed-up reality, they are the architect of an infinite world, with no space nor time.

Meanwhile, they realize a thin thread through all these dreams, a memory that still connects them to the real world. The woman cannot bear this relativity which sucks all meaning from their deep paradise. She cuts the thread forever and voluntarily forgets that she is dreaming.

In their old age, the man realizes that it is time to go, time to leave the dream and return to the surface. But he cannot convince her that their whole life was an illusion, that it all meant nothing on the higher levels they came from. Unable to leave her, he plants a thought-seed in her mind that he hopes to become her questioning the dream’s reality. He learned this technique at his job as an extractor for industrial secrets. And the seed grows to a powerful skepticism that opens their way back up.

Waking up next to each other in their young bodies, they feel that something has changed apart from the few hours that passed while they slept. Inspired by their dream, she first doubts and then more and more refuses even this seemingly last reality, not being able to believe in another world that feels just as real as the one they left behind. Struggling for years to convince her lover of the apparent illusion, she finally kills herself trying to reach the source of reality outside the dream and desperately trying to make him follow her, which he just manages to refuse.

Heartbroken, he dedicates his life to returning to his kids who he lost in the consequence of her suicide, still visiting her in his dreams.

…okay this was not really what the movie is about, but i thought this backstory to be compellingly powerful for a science fiction movie. Two lovers losing themselves together, isolating themselves from every other reality but their own. The sci-fi amplification of convoluted dreams and military tech is making this less cheesy and more epic, but the blind love still forms the base. And i thoroughly enjoyed seeing such a strong interdependence between different dream-and-imagination-depths and the reality, as not only can we influence our dreams but also can they influence our waking reality. Lastly, i could viscerally feel the meaninglessness of infinity through the movie, the bleakness of a life without time (birth and death) and space to contain it.