Prometheus 6

More stylistic experimentation from the past.

A Transcript of the Keynote Message Presented at the Convocation of Quantum Griots
by Earl Dunovant © 2096

Welcome to the first day of the 375th Annual Convocation of Quantum Griots. I am delighted that you've chosen to join us in our sharing and exploration of the Ways of Power. Please remove all your personae and put them in your Griot bag, for you won't be using them until you leave here tonight and they will just get in the way of our work.

Normally at this point, humans would review to the plan of the evening. From the material distributed at the door you already know we have an exciting program for you this year, so I feel no need to go into that...we are here, ready to work, and that is what is important. So rather than distract you, let me simply cede the platform to our Keynote Speaker so that we may begin. I give you he whom we all know so well...Chaos Lord, Bodhisattva Master of Time and Space, True Man, Manifestor through Speech...his titles are endless and fully appropriate. I give you...Alim Ra.

(Alim Ra walks onto the stage. He goes to the podium, reaches behind it, pulls out a wooden soap box, places it in the center of the front edge of the stage and stands on it).

Welcome, my people. It's good to be here where I can relax...walking the world amusing, but it's also strenuous. It is pleasant to abide in the Real once more.

We often wonder why people don't see the things we do, know the things we know, when it's all so obvious to us. We rarely reflect on the fact that our wondering means there is a gap in our knowledge as well. Though humans may be fools, they are a wonder as well and not to be lightly dismissed. After all, they have created most of the world on which we work our wonders. Yet many of us seem to want to dismiss them...which is a different matter than simply not joining them...and this indicates the lack of a comprehensive understanding of the nature of humans, even of that part of their nature that we share.

This is understandable. We tend to see the world as though from a great altitude, attempting to dispassionately map the patterns we see. This effort serves us as well as a street map of this city would...it guides us from place to place, but is useless once we are in the place. Once in the place, we need a floor plan more than a street map. And even then we have the same conceptual problem. A street map can't help you find the bathroom in the building in which you stand. A floor plan can ...yet it won't keep you from stumbling over the furniture on your way there, especially if it's dark Any number of differently furnished buildings can be found with a given floor plan (those of you whose personae live in a suburban housing development or urban apartment building know what I'm talking about). So light, and knowledge of the particular layout are needed to keep from banging your shins painfully, no matter how well you know the city.

Stepping briefly away from metaphor, then, we find that our understanding of humanity doesn't help us understand humans. This being the case, we should explore the nature of humans. This is still of limited benefit in understanding particular people...it's like studying architecture, whereas dealing with individuals is like exploring a building. But the study of architecture makes you understand some of the bizarre, flying buttress-like structures humans create to maintain their structural integrity ...though there's still no real need for all those gargoyles on the parapets.

Each of us has our worldview by which we explain the creation of humans. I do not intend to discuss them; as you know, that simply leads to useless disputation. I mention them to point out the one thing they all have in common...the body came first. It was completed prior to mind. This is important to recognize, because it means that mind inherits the full complement of physical capabilities and liabilities. Because they both form and filter our field of knowledge, I would like to discuss the perceptive abilities by which we navigate on the planet.

Because our bodies need material and energetic input from the planet, the first senses to develop were touch and taste, in order to determine the presence and nature of substances and energies in our environment. The olfactory sense developed as an extension to the sense of taste to allow operation at a distance...some substances being toxic, the ability to chemically analyze molecular amounts at a distance is of great benefit. Touch, meanwhile, differentiated twice...into hearing (to perceive mechanical energy at a distance) and sight (to perceive radiant energy at a distance).

Our body is the prime determinant of the nature of our respective worlds. We know we have a limited view of the planet. Consider what your world would look like if you had a terrapin's sonar. A deep pulse, essentially a sonogram, would tell you more about your friend's condition than the ritual response to a "Yo, how you livin'?" ever could. Suppose you could discriminate body sensations as clearly as you can musical themes? Suppose you could sense magnetic fields, like sharks. Suppose you had a bird's homing instinct, or could see into the ultraviolet spectrum, like bees? Even an expansion of your current senses, say acquiring a bloodhound's hearing and olfactory abilities, would present aspects of the planet that humans are unaware of...aspects that would significantly change human behavior were they but perceivable.

Bodies are connected to senses by a neural network. This network is issued with some fairly sophisticated pattern matching capabilities, and heuristics for information acquisition and processing. The network self-modifies in response to repetitive stimulus, so that its processing power is directed toward the type of input it receives. In other words, the body can, and does, learn.

Actually nothing said so far is unique to humans. Even a flatworm, possessing no more than a few hundred neurons, learns. The spatial senses are essentially the same mechanically in all living beings. They all perform the same function...converting the outside world into the inside world so that the body may operate on it. It is the particular aggregation of them that determines what the world looks like.

Our temporal senses are more interesting to investigate. As vision depends on the eye, our temporal senses depend on our nervous systems, and just as a high level of structural complexity was required to transform phototropic cell patches into eyes, temporal sensitivity requires a certain minimum level of neural complexity because it is actually patterns in neural firings, rather than time directly, that is being detected. Then we infer direction, causality, force, etc. It may be that the neural development makes temporal senses useful, rather than possible.

Unfortunately humans suffer a form of synthenasia, the blending of sense data, as regards the temporal senses. As a result the most common words for these senses...intelligence and memory...define concepts that don't quite accurately map to the actual senses. In particular, thought is perceived as part of intelligence when it is actually a response of memory, and knowledge is perceived as a part of experience when it is actually an action of intelligence. Learning the true extent and use of the temporal senses is the initiation of a Quantum Griot and the root of our power, because memory and intelligence are active senses...as neither past nor future truly exist, discrimination of possibilities is an act of creation. Any number of possible futures can spring from this point, just as any number of possible pasts could have led to this point, so by using the full power of intelligence and memory, we can select our past in order to determine our future. Not using these senses forces others to create our past and future.

Here, at the annual Convocation, we gather to reinforce and extend the knowledge that grants us the ability to choose. We also gather to transmit the knowledge, because the creation that accompanies the application of intelligence means the more people think the same way, the less localized will the effect be. So we welcome all of you, regardless of the level you have attained. In fact, three of you just wandered here by accident ... I hope you stay. As they say, 'There are no accidents.'

This year's theme, "Sensory Interfaces", is a second level theme. In the first of our three days together we present "Empty Mind" so that each perception can be seen clearly, in sharp relief against the self. At this point, the speakers will be happy to discuss first level themes to the degree necessary to make the topic at hand clear. As masters of time and space, we can be sure of covering all the material and so do not need to consider such explanations a delay.

On the second day, with Empty Mind fully engaged, we watch the transformation of substance into perception, perception into thought, thought into idea. This day is the most difficult, and the most critical. Because the work done here lays the groundwork for the third day, where we watch the transformation from idea into thought, thought into perception, perception into substance.