Math and Science; Psychology and Hubris; Limits and edges and the endless and boundless

I do not have time to try to be eloquent.

I can’t believe in Nothing. And I believe the Universe is Eternal, and Everything. No beginning - No End - No Edge. At the very least, a Phoenix.

I can’t believe in Nothing except perhaps as interstices between some things. Even that is questionable.

I am good at neither math nor science.

All things reduce to this: “Whence origin?”

The people who do these two things - science and math - at least in these particulars, are so far superior to me they may as well be considered a more evolved species. I say ‘in these particulars’ because as astounding as their capabilities in these areas of math and science are, they still sound so normal, average, pedestrian even, in the things they say, and in how they say them. In the discipline of language to convey concepts, and the ideas they have. Because of that, I can’t help but wonder about some things. In the end, I feel like Philosophers are there to keep certain things in check. One of them being sober about what is knowable, and what is not. To challenge and remind everyone that scientists may be inverted in something: Perhaps space and time and existence have no limit but knowledge might. To listen to science, it sounds more like a hubris of the opposite - that space and time and existence have limits, but knowledge none. I will call this attempt to invert the two their ‘constraint bias’. If they can circumscribe existence, put boundaries around it, then they can explain all things. Otherwise, they have to admit limits to knowledge or - that there is no such thing as ‘explaining all things with Science’. They want their silver bullet! Their smoking gun! But every discovery has with it more questions. I believe a lot of their science is heavily weighted with this ‘constraint bias’. Even as a very small and very young child - as young as perhaps five - I have never conceived of the Universe as having an ‘edge’. Yet, scientists use this strange kind of language. Notice how much emphasis is put on abstractions like ‘Beginning’ and ‘End’ and ‘Edge’ and ‘Observable’. What queer language?!

Scientists and mathematicians perform superhuman feats - powers of the brain so far superior to myself it seems rather that they are a more evolved species while I merely climb trees making guttural sounds with a dumb look on my face. And I am not being sarcastic - I am awed by their capabilities. (As a side theory I say that a part of flat earth people are so because of this divide, and a part of their driving force is the mistrust they have out of this intimidation they feel from this divide.) However, I can not help but have this perplexed feeling that when scientists talk, they sound so desperate to contain and constrain the Universe. I can not relate to their capabilities and cannot affirm nor refute things they say. Even so, some things seem to me beyond them or at the very least… thorny. There are certain things I can only say from a layperson perspective. Nonetheless, some of these I’d have to imagine are troublesome for science. I ask them - why are they so desperate to rope the Universe in? It seems they are bent on it, not objectively.

I have two overall objectives in some of the things I’m about to say, rather haphazardly. These are… just some random thoughts after all from no one particular - no one special (myself.). One is to question some of the things that seem to be said (at least, watching YoutTube documentaries or videos on various topics) and the other is to make an observation of the psychology or subconscious motivation I believe exists behind a pattern in scientists in these assertions to always constrain the Universe. To try to lasso it.

Let me start with the second. Have you ever noticed that science is always trying to put a fence around and constraints around space, time, matter, and speak endlessly about edges, beginnings, and endings? I believe there is something biased here that I will call ‘constraint bias’. If they can constrain it (it HAS limits) then they can believe and assert to us that they can ultimately explain everything. Don’t they always talk about the unifying theory (between the cosmic and the quantum scale?) If it doesn’t have constraints, and there are no limits, then they must admit that science will or might not be able to ‘explain it all’ and that, there will always be questions. That there are things beyond them. Most of this can be pointed at the science of space and time but for a moment, just take ‘consciousness’. Or, life. Ask them what it is and they might talk about atoms, brain structure and function. But all of that is merely mechanics. It does not (and CAN NOT) explain what it IS. How it came to be that we can ask how we came to be and be aware that we are aware. It is beyond comprehension. Like space and time, it falls inward on itself in infinite concentric circles, pulsating white rings thumping the mind as you fall inside it as well. (Like a mandelbrot. Consciousness, space, time, all feel like falling into a mandelbrot.) No matter what is said about it (consciousness), behind it can be asked ‘but what IS it - what IS consciousness?’ How is it that I am here, and can ask, ‘How can I even be here to ask this?’ It can never be answered satisfactorily. Scientists will make all these observations about how the brain functions but in the end it is just that, how it functions, not wherefore it came let alone any possible ‘purpose’ or ‘reason’. I believe science has a hubris and psychological problem with ‘constraint bias’ that they thrust at us so that if they achieve their constraints - that everything has an edge, a beginning, a limit - then they can answer everything about it and they have some need in themselves for this but insist that I too believe these limits and that they will ultimately be able to answer all things. Only… I don’t believe this and find this psychological phenomena strange. Don’t get me wrong, what scientists do is incredible and well beyond my capability and what they discover is astounding and thrilling and exciting and ‘mind-blowing’. But… I do believe there are things beyond science’s ken. I don’t mean God, as perhaps any who read this (will there be anyone who reads this?) might start to assume.

I carry this over too, from ‘consciousness’ to the Big Bang and Edge of the Universe and the expanding all to ultimately become nothing via entropy. (Is that exactly what they say? I am not entirely sure.) All of these things are theory yet all seem to have this ‘constraint bias’. Everything we see and our very intuition, so universal in all of us, always carries us forward to infinity and eternity. It is like instinct itself for us to conceive everything as boundless. In fact, it is fundamentally human - in fact, I don’t think a human can NOT conceive of these two things naturally. Said like this ‘I can’t NOT feel, instinctively even, the sense of infinity carrying on for eternity’. But the NEED for them to feel like they can explain it all has them continually showing us what I am starting to think are constraint biased theories and even telling us to believe that it all came from nothing. For, that is the dilemma that these constraint biased theories lead to (and I note it is a THEORY but we are told to accept it as fact.) ‘Nothing’ is a combustion of our proclivity to naturally conceive of infinity and eternity whenever a ‘limit’ is proposed. ‘Nothing’ ‘necessarily’ (what a pretentious philosopher word) arises as a consequence of friction of our instinct toward infinity against any proposed limit or boundary. ‘Nothing’ is a consequence of claiming beginning, or edge, etc.

The Big Bang - I call merely… a pin drop in a hurricane. A sneeze. The Big Bang has what I will call ‘The Cronus Problem’. It can never satisfactorily answer the question: “And what came before that?” Which leads to ‘Nothing’ and the concept of ‘Nothing’ and then they must assert ‘Something came out of nothing’. An absurdity (it seems to me?) Yes, they are using ‘quantum science’ to claim this and I can not scientifically refute but can only say what I believe. That something from nothing is an absurdity because they preclude one another absolutely. I say again, Something and Nothing preclude one another ABSOLUTELY. And since there is ‘something’ in all directions that makes ‘nothing’ an impossibility. And otherwise, science will become slippery in semantics and argue what ‘nothing’ is. To me it is exactly that, and once that, can NEVER be anything else. That is its very nature, its very SOUL. So I posit: Nothing IS Nothing. NEVER to be anything else. Otherwise, how can it be truly nothing - Nothing to Nothing is its NATURE. The pure nature of nothing IS nothing. Can never become anything (otherwise, there was something inside the Nothing which means, it can’t have been Nothing to begin with. Some pregnancy, some latency, some potentiality, some seed, some idea, some energy, existed, all requiring some impetus to create the something and that impetus itself IS something. These all are something.) A True Nothing can yield Nothing. Forever. So the Big Bang has the Cronus problem ‘what came before?’ and the Nothing problem as a natural consequence. The Big Bang an event? Possibly. The Beginning of all things prefaced by the inevitable antecedent that idea creates - ‘Nothing’? Absurd I say. “What then - It’s always been there? Impossible!” you might reply? Yes. Because that is the most incomprehensible thing, Being here IS impossible yet here we are. It is incomprehensible and beyond words or communication. I have a choice (do I?) in believing one of two things:

It came out of Nothing in a Big Bang (Absurd?)

It has always been there and there is no ‘Beginning’ (Incomprehensible. So incomprehensible, I’m inclined to believe it.)

I don’t call the Big Bang absurd as an event. Only, to me it seems merely that, one thing that happened, not the first thing that happened. Did there not have to be some initial state and furthermore, some change event? So I can believe in something beyond my comprehension or believe in what I think is an absurdity. I choose the incomprehensible. The Big Bang has the below listed problems, at least for my untrained brain. Perhaps, science has answered some of these satisfactorily - I am unsure - it seems unclear, possibly dubious. Again they are far beyond me yet, I can’t help but to have my ideas. To these scientists, I may be no more intelligent than a flat-earther. Who is just a contrarian. (As an aside, with flat Earth people it’s not a question of science, you can give them the most clear and basic science, contrarians don’t care. The question with them is psychological, not scientific, so stop trying to prove it to them. The more relevant question is, rather, what drives them to be so - to be contrarians - not solely how do we prove it to them. Perhaps incipient birthings of mistrust of science as it becomes more intimidating and more remote for people. A question for sociology and psychology? Will mistrust among the populace grow as science becomes too far unattainable for most people? Keep up… or be left behind in a divide of evolution within human species?) Is that all I am - a contrarian - born of mistrust as I am left behind in capability? Perhaps. Well, still I see these problems in the Big Bang if asserting it as anything more than one event that happened in a stream of events - if asserting it as THE Beginning:

What came before, Nothing? The resultant question as a consequence of creating or observing this constraint event.

What is and how long was Nothing there? This inevitably extends ad infinitum as is our human wont.

What exactly IS Nothing if something can come out of it? I say - it wasn’t Nothing to begin with if something arose out of it.

How can Nothing change when by its nature, change is impossible for Nothing? Change being requisite for an event like the Big Bang? That is a ‘change event’ after all. Wouldn’t a true Nothing presuppose changelessness? I would think so.

What was the impetus, or trigger or what happened to create a change event - it ‘just happened’ I am to believe?

Was there no matter, then there was just matter, just like that? ‘Poof!’ Why don’t they call it ‘The Big Poof’?

How was it or ‘who’ designed it the way it was, to operate the way it did? Where is the manual and where are the Engineer schematics of this design? Who drew them up, submitted them, who approved them and who ‘lit the match’ or ‘flipped the switch’? It just… happened?

Who or how did the energy just get there to act in the way that it did in the magnitude that it did? Explain the latent energy…

So… it ‘just happened’?

I think similar things about the ‘shape’ of the Universe. More bizarre language - how can that even be thought unless it was assumed there was a boundary? Would it not be the case that - if infinite - it can have no shape, going in all directions without end? And did they not come out and say it was flat? Does that not strongly lend itself to the idea that it is infinite?

And so, with ‘edge’ or ‘observable’. What happens every time our telescopes get stronger? We see more. The more we see… the more we see. The further we can see, the more is seen. Do these two things taken together, strengthen every time we see more, the idea that the Universe is truly infinite? So why talk of edge until that is actually a thing and not imagination? Not just a ‘constraint bias’? To me, this ‘edge’ is not an edge until proven, but rather, the limit of visibility. That does not make it an edge. In the discipline of language, I take offense that scientists presuppose some right to it that they can limit this hitherto limitless word ‘Universe’ until absolutely proven. Are scientists not subject to the rules inside the discipline of language such as acceptance by usage by a populace? I for my part do not accept it with limits like ‘edge’.

I would say the same things about ‘Edge’ and ‘End’ as to ‘Beginning'. Only, Beginning is the most incomprehensible thing of all. At any rate, science is constantly pushing constraints and talking about things beyond the Universe or other things like the Multiverse. There is no such thing - it’s all just ‘The Universe’. The umbrella of ‘Universe’ just gets bigger with more things under it as found - they do not in my view fall outside of it. Those constraints are yours, scientists, not mine. There is just ‘The Universe’. Infinity and eternity everywhere, in all directions, for all time, without beginning or ending. Too, any other supposed ‘Universe’ is still just ‘The Universe’. I don’t know why you solely as scientists get to constrain that, even in language.

Science can say otherwise about beginning and ending and edge, but how clear is it? How certain? Perhaps, I am only a contrarian, not so different from a flat-Earther. But how dubious might some of this science be? I am disarmed - for it is too complicated in math. Nonetheless, I cannot conceive of ‘Nothing’ or ‘Beginning’ or ‘End’ or ‘Edge’.

About Nothing… I can go on Forever.

Let me approach this in still different language.

Drawing a circle, call it the Universe. Inevitably, it is asked ‘what’s outside of it?’. Nothing is the inevitable response. And… it goes on forever. When did it start? Some time X. What came before? Oh… Nothing. How long was it there? Forever. Nothing is the answer to our natural ability to anticipate infinity and eternity as soon as a limit is proposed. We need something to add to X to achieve infinity and eternity and so we call it Nothing. Or God. And it goes on forever in our minds. I could go on forever about it. Truly - an entire different set of words may be strewn down here about how we feel forever as part of us, and how we would not really want it any other way. What scintillates us? While answers are electrifying, how numb would we become if we had them all. The questions drive us. Thrill us. Scintillate us. Answers are like toys long played with, laying on the floor. It is the wrapped present, unknown of contents, laying under the lights that we long to rip open, tear into. Forever is almost a need we have. A driving force. Science has answered so many questions and it's astounding what scientists and mathematicians have achieved with other worldly capabilities. But in my eyes, they have not convincingly lassoed this stallion universe. Maybe, I’m just a different version of a flat earth contrarian who is so because I am left behind in capability. But perhaps, the scientists have blind spots from a hubris and a lack of humility in the face of infinity and eternity. Not all, but those who seem to insist on a finiteness to everything.

What came before the Big Bang, what is outside of what we see, (Multiverse) what’s inside a Black Hole, what’s outside the boundary of our visibility - it’s all still just ‘The Universe’. Forever. Even if there is such a thing as ‘Nothing’ then the Universe is comprised of it as well. I do not think they solely get to dictate language unless completely proven - they too are subject to the rules of language and that includes acceptance by usage. They are trying to dictate that with what to me seem as yet not completely concrete and proven theories.

But hey, I am after all and at best an average person with no special mathematical or scientific capabilities. Still, something from nothing seems absurd, and I have difficulty just accepting that for myself.

Perhaps some will say ‘Science never said any such thing.’ But as a lay person, my source has been documentaries on Youtube and the topic ‘what came before’ is often avoided, peremptorily stated as if The Big Bang is it, and that’s it. Some do address it and say ‘we don’t know’ but I recall one where the scientist had the audacity to say ‘that’s not the right question’. Indeed?! it is the only question! So some address it, but many seem to gloss over it or make even more outlandish statements like ‘Multiverse’ (Which incidentally just gets us back to infinity and eternity, really, doesn’t it?) or ‘Its all Black Holes’ kind of stuff etc.

I have so many things on my meaningless mind. Who cares what some nobody thinks and, will I say anything meaningful, in any eloquent way, not already redundant which leads me to quote myself: “Can the echo of what has been said sound anything but hollow?” Nietzsche’s Cave Bear or Dragon comes to mind and I smile, for such an anonymous [yes, I use as a noun - call it poetic license, please], they would not bother bellowing out echoes of thoughts long expressed. Loathe of the repeated they would be; and too busy endeavoring otherwise to even share their original bones from their caves or treasurers from their hoards. (One is suspicious of one who stops - who slows down to do so, Nietzsche would say, if I remember or understood.) I am not in that league of beasts! Just some average person.

However, you will guess, I will proceed anyway. After all, we all seem inextricably attached to our Ego, an entire topic on its own to get lost in, which we love to stroke and pet and coddle. Ego - so quick to megalomania; yet so quick to quaver over the slightest slight. I cannot proceed into some lengthy endeavor to organize any of this into proper form though - I haven’t the time.

Other things that come randomly to mind:

One idea that is fascinating is existence without consciousness or, is consciousness requisite for existence? It seems strange that something can exist without awareness of it. How can it otherwise be there? It seems strange. I do not know the answer. Materially speaking it seems that all this matter predates at least our own consciousness as mere humans. Is there something grand before and beyond that? It - again - seems strange that some planet, say - Neptune - can be there if all the lights of consciousness were snuffed out. How can it be there, if there is no one to acknowledge it being there or could be there. It seems almost like - at least in this little thought experiment - if all consciousness everywhere were to close its eyes for the last time, then Neptune, and everything else, would just….disappear. I don’t know what to make of the matter - but it is fascinating to think about. Will crickets chirping be the last sound of the Universe? I wrote elsewhere it is the Wolves’ Howls that are the haunting sound of the Universe. Consciousness itself is a topic beyond comprehension.

Dark Matter. I’m just going to have a little fun here, and could be massively wrong but it seems to me this is a dubious inference. Indeed, I have seen a couple of the Youtube videos themselves admit in the very language they use that it is inferred. An inference? Hmm.. somewhat playfully, I will make an equation:

Dark Matter=Inference=Caulk [where caulk fills the hole and gap in just the shape it needs to take to fill it]=God [where God= the sum of ignorance to fill the gap between Knowledge and the Infinite and Eternal we almost instinctively feel]=Zeus Thunderbolts=Mythology where it (Dark Matter) takes on the exact attributes needed. Like Magic. So add =Magic I guess too. How much money has been spent looking for this stuff?

I may be making a fool of myself with these takes. But, there seems no shortage of that in this world today - people behave and scream proudly from the rooftops with their actions and words ‘Look at me, I’m a fool! I’m a fool and I'm proud!’ I guess I’ll throw myself onto that heap and put my pea brain out there too, probably showing myself to be a fool with my words herein.

One last thing about ‘Nothing’. If out of Nothing, Something spontaneously (without cause, energy, matter, purpose) asserts itself (is it exhaled out of nothing or inhaled from a thought?) then wouldn’t that be true everywhere ‘Nothing’ tried to be - always being supplanted by a bloom of something into it? A paradox leading to… ‘Nothing’ is impossible if everywhere it tries to be, Something suffuses itself into it. (If it happened here, then it happened everywhere, leaving ‘Nothing’ nowhere.)

This is all like a draft but when will I have time to redo it all, polish, decide, edit, etc.?

I believe that ‘Nothing’ is impossible, simply because there is ‘Something’ and that any cases against it devolve to semantics about the WORD and LANGUAGE, not purely ‘science’. To me, its very nature precludes something from ever arising out of it. That is what NOTHING IS.

Before it is science, ‘Nothing’ is a word, representative of an abstract concept. In my personal conception, it by its nature can never produce anything, precluding any and every thing, even... possibility. At its heart, in its soul, it can never be anything else but itself… nothing. No Thing.

Other words and my small personal view:

Eternity: I have heard it said on a Youtube channel that a scientist said there is a beginning but no end. In this case, eternity is one directional. But this I cannot believe is consistent with the word itself. If eternal, that means ‘forever’ - not ‘forever after’. Eternity is bi-directional. Is it not like infinity and isn’t infinity bi-directional? Infinity and eternity go hand in hand. I do not accept this one directional view of eternity.

Universe: Multiverse, Universes, edge, horizon, all bad language to me. Any new discovery fits INSIDE the Universe and only expands the scope of discovery, it doesn't sit outside the Universe as something separate. New, but part of - not separate. It’s all just ‘The Universe’. The Universe is the Big Umbrella under which all must fit. The Universe IS the Big Tent. Discoveries are additive to the Universe, never outside or separate from it.

I worry what science is doing to language in their insistence to lasso the Universe. Same with ‘Time’. Remember, abstract as it is, Time had and has more so today than ever a pragmatic use and application.

Things some of these Youtube channels say that I think are reckless and perhaps careless:

(However, accusing someone of being reckless and careless is, by itself, not precise and good use of language. It is itself reckless and careless - a dirty and lazy tactic in fact. Still, I’m not going to have time to address all of this so I just say that I think some of these phrases are so, without the dissecting of them. I'll take it as somewhat self-evident that this language is at least somewhat careless.)

“Time doesn’t exist”

“Time is an illusion”

[‘Time is illusion’ Lecture to be given by Professor X at XIT University, 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 4/1/20XX]

“We are not real/Reality is not real” [Semantic porridge (will reduce to)]

“We are a simulation”

“There is a multiverse”

“You imagine yourself” [Semantic oatmeal (will reduce to)]

“We come from a Black Hole”

“Observable Universe”

“Edge of the Universe”

“Beginning of the Universe”

First of all, I can’t falsify or confirm anything but all I mean to say is, let's keep thought experiments etc. clearly in the box of thought experiments. Personally, I think some of these phrases are reckless and can devolve less into science and more into semantics and language and science fiction. What is the concept - ‘the simplest explanation is the most likely?’ Just like the speculation about the ‘shape’ of the Universe when in the end, lo and behold, they confirmed it was flat (to which I think ‘of course it's flat!’). Thought experiments like ‘are you your own imagination?’ are fine but remember, it is a thought experiment. I can call up a different word from language to say ‘just because you ‘PERCEIVE’ does not make it an ‘IMAGINATION’. Even if it is, for all of us, purely and solely our own conscious experience. After all, I can perceive that you too perceive, albeit, in only your way.’ But when millions of people watch a sporting event and all see the same thing, are you to tell me that millions of people all had the same IMAGINATION of the goal being scored? Or all PERCEIVED it being scored? So, do you IMAGINE yourself, or do you PERCEIVE yourself? Be careful with language! Scientists are not as careful with their language as they are with their math, and that is why we need good philosophers. Differentiate the word IMAGINATION from PERCEPTION for a moment. Do this kind of thing with all words and phrases scientists use. Remember, they care about math but are careless with words and do not give the discipline of language the same respect they give their discipline of math. But a philosopher will give the discipline of language the proper respect not only down to the word, but the context in which it is used. So many nuances in language to a good philosopher! In fact, too, it will make you realize that after the math, science needs to be translated via language into a communicable conception. For some - for them - the math is enough. As such, it already loses something by having to be translated. Not being able to speak the math, it's true I am disarmed - but it is also true they use this to overwhelm and overpower you. But the things I hear in the translation to words, I grow suspicious of. I.E., anything that wants to make the Universe a non-eternal, non-infinite, non-all-encompassing thing.

Not all scientists sound like this. But watching many ‘documentaries’ or individual videos on YouTube, there seems this prevailing attitude about it:

“The Universe is finite and we will have our ‘Theory of Everything’ Holy Grail. In order to do that, we need to constrain and contain it. Assign it a beginning, an ending, and an edge.” – ‘But what came before, why or how did it begin [initial state and impetus], and what’s beyond the edge?’ Or, ‘There is no beginning, there is no ending, and there is no edge’. Might be two replies.

I am under the impression that some science is trying to dictate the terms of the word ‘Nothings' definition to contain latent potential. But this is subterfuge, dishonesty (to themselves first of all) and language tyranny. (I saw it used this way in a youtube video about Nothing, somewhere ‘latent potential’ or something like that?) Language has rules and scientists are subject to those rules, they don’t make the rules. Acceptance by usage and I for my part will not accept any concept with latent potential in the definition of Nothing. I maintain that Nothing, being nothing, has NO potential. I will resist this and call upon people to resist this.

And here we are…isn’t this lexical semantics?

About my term ‘constraint bias’. Perhaps it’s my term, perhaps not (I’m using it, perhaps it has been used otherwise, I am unsure.) I differentiate it as a more specific kind of confirmation bias - see below - while at the same time making a point on a different topic: Insisting that Life MUST exist elsewhere because there are so many galaxies with so many stars, yet with no proof (isn’t proof part of science) is confirmation bias. Insisting on beginning and edge etc. is also confirmation bias, but more specifically I change the terms because it has as its goal containment in the name of ‘The Theory of Everything’. Kind of like how Bourbon is still Whiskey, just a specific kind of Whiskey.

I’m just some random nobody hack after all, but right or wrong, contrarian, fool, stupid person, I can’t believe in a beginning, an ending, an edge, or that it all came from nothing. And that, science is biased in their search for the Holy Grail ‘theory of everything’ and so tries to put limits and boundaries everywhere around the Universe. I’m in no place to criticize scientists and their intelligence when I make snide comments about how they use language - it far surpasses mine - however, in their eagerness and desire I think they rush headlong into what they WANT to be true. If it has a limit, all can be explained. If it doesn’t, it can’t. Besides, knowing it all would destroy our soul - it's the questions we love that arise like new babes out of the wombs of the answers we found.

I know this is not formal, not polished, not organized, not anything and perhaps wrong all over the place. I don’t have the time to clean it up. I just had to say, I can’t believe in Something from Nothing. This all came from that. I know that I am just some average Joe, I know that I may sound brusk. Regardless of certain specifics, I think I have some valid general thoughts, like to remember that a lot of this pertains to the discipline of language, not purely science - and so, the realm of philosophers, too. How it is used - or misused. Don’t let scientists speak too peremptorily about it all! Into what becomes nonsense insofar as it drags into a semantical quagmire that just makes you roll your eyes and think ‘you just want to be argumentative’. Like ‘Reality is not real’. Let me tell you, the word is contained in the other, so nothing is more real than reality itself. These are attacks on words themselves, who at their core have a pragmatism that must be maintained otherwise it’s pure degeneracy and stupidity. And a waste of time.

Beyond any smugness Nihilism might have in the mind as a dried out philosophical idea, when it breathes cold and clammy into your mouth and down your throat; and down the back of your neck; when it thereby brings you to your knees, it seems to me then you are closer to it as an emotion, not merely an idea.

Duality is extension, not opposition. Out of a common center born, extending outward in equal degrees borne.

Out of a common center one aspect of something extends in proportion to how the other extends in kind.

Imagine an exercise. As a participant. A small group of children, and a teacher are on a field trip to a field. You are one of the children. Perhaps, collecting bugs, or whatever the case may be - it's unimportant. As a secondary ‘lesson’, during a break for a picnic, the teacher wants to provide napkins but he’s prepared an interactive way to do this. On a blanket, he’s placed a ball that he’s made out of the napkins, ingeniously wrapped and each tied together and formed into a ball. But it is no ordinary ball - one half of it is black, and the other white but out of each side pokes the tip of one opposite colored napkin so that out of the black is a small tip of white and out of the white, a black tip. It is a Yin and Yang napkin dispenser ball. Two of the children, of which you may be one, are asked to pull on the black and the white to unravel. As it does most everyone seems likely to expect, without much thought, that half the napkins will be black and half will be white. But rather, what happens is that from each side they become more gray until, when all are pulled out into a rope, each one tied to the other, the center napkin is gray. Duality… is extension, known in degrees by the amount it moves further away from the center and so too, the opposite must extend - for they always balance each other out. One might also view it as releasing or escaping the other extreme. Euphoria is the distance moved away from misery. A deliverance from it, so to speak. It is not the opposite of misery as if two separate things - they only know each other by degrees from a common center. A pendulum idea works here, too. I believe it’s been said ‘everything has in it the seed of its opposite.’ Like a Tree, it grows up and down, from a seed.

An interesting and fun exercise, if it could be done.

1. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Jauntily Spying,

With your flickering, frightful eyes,

Flickering fright into the frosty night -

Overlooking towns and homes above the

Raving river, roving sly along the tracks,

Where trains howl hollow metal warnings,

Like those hollow warnings on your

Treacherous, blinkless brow -

Above your hull afire just inside.

2. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Mischievously jocund,

With your devious, ghastly smile, smiling on the

Passersby who shiver in your

Shimmering sight…

Who shiver in the solemn Autumn wind -

That shakes your frantic flame inside;

And bestirs your lucid effulgence to

Billow out bedraggled;

To bewilder and bewitch those spellbound

by the daunting,

The decadent dance so haunting;

Oh the depraved dementia doled!

The bestirring in my soul!

3. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Lavishing lunacy,

Silhouetting the site of the timid’s truancy,

By burning shadows looming long along

The silent, sullen streets;

Compelling those to quiver in the quaintness

That you lend,

Yet bestowing bedlam mutely on the

Stillness that you rend!

4. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Jarring night,

With your hideous, heinous hues hurled upon

My terrified eye,

And glowing ghostly light into the seething,

Sorrowed night,

Through translucent walls charred black within -

Like men -

You stir imaginings of hidden realms,

Rife with reeling souls,

Writhing like you feverish, famished flame -

Forlorn in life’s foray.

5. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Jesting - Jeering

You stir imaginings of waning worlds,

With wicked witches wafting through

A surreal sky

A surreal sky seducing sordid secrets

To be sired

In the graveyard wrought with goblins

Gloom;

And the catacombs subsumed by dreadful

Doom;

In macabre mausoleums marooned

With monsters moaning,

And titian tombs bequeathed with gremlins

Groaning!

6. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Under the naked moon so quiet,

With its luminous, lunar luster proffering

Portals to some other side,

And illuminating lonesome leaves,

Descending softly -

Serenely from the trees they cry

Sweeping down the barren

Sky at hand

Sweeping down the star-strewn

Sky beyond.

7. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Jostling fiery light unto the sleeping

House across the way -

Your cradled candle captivates -

With a grotesque, gruesome gleam -

The mesmerized, gazing eyes,

Of bold intrepid wanderers who

Curfew have denied,

Mesmerized eyes with wonder widened,

Scintillating eyes with horror shining,

Twinkling at your splendor - beguiling,

Reflecting grim and ghoulish antics,

I see your madness in their mirror!

In the burnished, iris gloss whose

Blackness bled,

And in the white with rivers

Streaming red!

8. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Zealous jailor of morbid morgues remote

From earthly moorings,

With your torrid, taboo dance -

You allure, entice, entrance,

And sear a star,

With your light bizzarre,

And to the breeze-swept trees a

Demon’s shadow give.

A subversive shadow straining,

Struggling and complaining,

A shadow in a stupor,

Distorting and contorting

Volatile and hostile and haughtily

Imploring

Those who his taunting, flaunting scour,

At the rusty, eerie toll of the

Marauding, midnight hour,

To in his chamber clamber,

Where they - entombed -

Will evanesce -

Forevermore.

Beheld adjacent to us

In this world -

Nevermore!

9. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Jittery - Jerking,

Lunging and with lewdness lurching,

Your vehement, vaulting, violent fire,

Invokes a pernicious and palpable ire!

Your voracious and vitriol conflagration,

Evokes a paralyzed consternation!

Your vaporous, venomous, villainous visage,

Diffuses volition to mere velleity,

You vanquish the vagabond heedlessly

Veering,

Banish him into a vortex - peering.

Deliver him unto vertigo - reeling.

10. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Judicious adjutant of sovereigns below,

A vespertine vestige of Niflheim - Hades;

And Plutonian spheres bereft and

Vacuous,

Save sectarians who fostered illusions

Insidious,

To lurid lies they became the prey

Cozened by cunning so

Seemingly harmless -

They fell astray!

11. Oh Jack O’ Lantern,

Sentient sphinx of the netherworld nigh,

You tell your tale of woe -

To all you hypnotize!

End

Blustering Blizzard blowing snow,

Barring the door - nowhere can I go.

Blustering Blizzard softly laying,

White upon the ground now laden.

Blustering Blizzard blazing round,

Weaving your blanket upon the ground.

Blustering Blizzard hovering high,

Gentle snowflakes you shake from the burgeoning sky.

Blustering Blizzard silently sweeping,

Over lands, lakes and homes whilst we were dreaming.

Blustering Blizzard you paint beauty pure,

Reminding us of Earth’s elegant lure.

Blustering Blizzard you blind with your flurry,

With tumultuous stirring of your flake flying fury.

Blustering Blizzard you compare demure,

To that haughty hurricane battering shores.

Blustering Blizzard you chill us to shiver,

With less terror than quakes that make Earth and life quiver.

Blustering Blizzard I stare and gaze,

At this image you stroked so quiet and quaint.

Blustering Blizzard yesterday spent,

The Sun’s reflection now blinds off the whiteness you lent.

Blustering Blizzard I see gulls led astray,

Up the vast river from the salt-ridden bay.

Blustering Blizzard in memory’s wake,

Wind now wisps your remnants like smoke on a lake.

Blustering Blizzard, cold and bleak,

Come you to harm the old and the weak?

Blustering Blizzard, dark and grim,

Come you from nowhere on a meaningless whim?

Or come you from God on the wing of a fable,

Reminding us of this world unstable?

Blustering Blizzard, compelling repose,

To ponder thy origin from out which you rose!

Blustering Blizzard - come quiet at night,

Covertly you crept, perpetrating your plight.

Blustering Blizzard - you imbue, I imbibe -

But cannot portray - an impotent scribe!

If I couldn't laugh at a joke, what would I be?

If I couldn't hear in your voice the echo of your soul, what would I be?

If I couldn't see in your eyes the prisms of billions of years, what would I be?

If I couldn't feel on your skin, the tremble of desire, what would I be?

If I couldn't see the blue flung far and wide in the sky, what would I be?

If I couldn't taste the sweet, succulent savor of fruit, what would I be?

If I couldn't weep tears of joy cascading down my face, what would I be?

If I couldn't laugh till I cried, what would I be?

If I couldn't smile at youth... traipsing through time on clouds, what would I be?

If I couldn't have been a child, world at my feet, hopes unbound and wild, what would I be?

If I couldn't dream the stories only dreams can tell, what would I be?

If I couldn't weep from a well, divine, [What hope once was pure as Snow?!] what would I be?

If I couldn't absorb the warmth exploding from our sun, what would I be?

If I couldn't hear The songs sounding through my bones, what would I be?

If I couldn't touch and taste, the Ocean's heaving waves, what would I be?

If I couldn't tumble toward skies - swirling horizons nigh - free fall through space [A ride!] - what would I be?

If I couldn't spy the Moon looking back illumed, a wine, what would I be? Champagne of young lovers eyes! What would I be?

If I couldn't see - and trace - silhouettes of all souls behind every gesture made, what would I be?

If I couldn't hear your secrets blown in [whiley!] whispers to me, what would I be?

If I couldn't tell the rain, drumming on my pane, crying down its sombre train, what would I be?

If I couldn't feel breeze and wind, roving the Globe seeking roving kin, what would I be?

Oh wayward wind! ...peeling the wind chimes... tickling the boughs... bending the trees...

kneading and rolling tumultuous waves, and howling the howls [a bone chilling sound!] what would I be?

If I couldn't gaze at the stars swaying to and fro on strands of Time, a ballet - exquisite to see [oh! sigh...], what would I be?

If I couldn't read the words, scrolled by all the scribes, what would I be?

The words that describe, like jolts, the workings of our worlds, ripping through and raising me?...

The words by mighty men, of mind, [Without them!] what less that I would be!

If I couldn't hew existence out of my maddened mind - to me - what would I be?

If I couldn't be bold and declare - 'I am! and I will my world, extending out from me!'...

... And If I couldn't ask the rest of mankind to askance, to complete this poem perchance, add rows to its meadows of muse, add you to this sculpture to grow, what would I be?

I feel the Turn of life from the flush;

From the bloom... to the frost.

From the hue of roses and hovering halos; energy exploding from our auros - we ourselves are suns!

The aspect of youth - quasars bursting;

The aging wear chalky gray cadaver on their skin -

The cadaverous pale of death pasted on our vacuous air.

When does it pass over so? Stealing over you... stealing…

My skin - an etching - carving my face with folds and canyons,

My graying eyes house secrets and woes,

The fleeing hopes, the darkling dreams;

Time’s betrayal… Time’s betrayal!

A steely, vampiric tooth of time... seeps me as I breath,

Every breath its blood - even... as I utter this.

My lungs fill with dust;

My mind, in its dusking years, dusts memories…

Too old to make new ones

It contrives to revive old ones

To build phantasmagorical imaginations

Overtop bland and hard realities of my existence.

We live...beyond our vigor vein…

We cling...we clutch...we grasp...

A gasp…

Turn…

A fold of life...

unfurled…a wisp!

Forever furled on final...

Turn…

Immured in the immutable, impalpable pall of the perception of Death,

...Ensuing desideratum…

Delusive ululations storm the mind.

This ululant banshee felling men to tremble and pule.

Whence fear...and thus violence…

On our cold, bleak rock.