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| Pursuit of Happiness |
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| & inalienable among which are |
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| life & liberty & |
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| from that equal creaion |
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| they derive rights inherent |
The Junction Part II
Humans ^ Happiness
The Preliminary Interviews
Prefatory remarks: The Posthuman perspective
Human Intelligence in the Posthuman World Order
Not all things in our Posthuman World Order
are as Saint Bostrom of the Ox-crossing predicted. For example human
intelligence did not advance as rapidly as hoped. My IQ is in fact two standard
deviations above the average Earth person’s IQ in the Second Metaphysical
Millennium, and while Saint Bostrom predicted that to be an average range for
the PWO (Posthuman World Order), it’s not average at all; here at the urban hub
I’m considered ‘scary bright’ and out in the boonies I’m considered a genius. So why didn’t human intelligence advance as rapidly as the Saint once predicted it would? Well, here we come upon one of the limitations of the Holy Ones who Foresaw, that is the acolytes of the Future of Humanity Institute, etc.; for being trained almost exclusively in philosophy and science and mathematics (though their mathematics should have brought them into Mind-Sync with Lewis Carroll), the Holy Ones Who Foresaw were inadequately prepared to appreciate the impact of the HFF on everything post-hominid. Had they studied the Great Analysts of the HFF, a few of whom come quite readily to mind in association with their works: Aristophanes and his Wasps, Frogs, and Clouds, Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly, Mark Twain’s Everything, Flaubert’s Notebook of Stupid Episodes, Evelyn Waugh’s Black Mischief–––and Oh, many, many more: had they boarded that Ship of Fools as it left the dock, and taken the whole tour, watched the whole show: the son et lumière extravaganza of the Humiverse––had this been a part of their education, even a small part of it, something to think about, dream about, chuckle over while pondering Quantum problem sets, then neither they nor the Foretellers, less holy and more mundane, who came after them, would have been surprised at the retardation of the human IQ axis.
Religion or the Future of an Opiate : Now More than
ever
Nor would Foreseers adequately trained in
Literature have been surprised that, for reasons thoroughly explained by two
superb Analysts of the HFF––mind doctor Sigmund Freud and imaginist Mark
Twain––Religion did not wither away as people became smarter and smarter. To
the contrary, people despoiled of their hope by an increasingly precise aperture
onto the universe demanded, and needed, not less from Religion, but More and
More––––what? HFF? Human Folly Factor, of course; The Peter Principle. Sod’s Law. How many E-watts does it take to change a light bulb?
Patching the Universe involves us in understanding
Happiness
Posthumans ˆ Suffucient ˆ Surfeit
Humans ^ Happiness
“…from that equal creation
they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation
of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; ...”
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
And what had this to do with what went wrong
at the Junction? With Lynette and Arthur? You may well ask. You see, whereas Posthumans
have Sufficient and Surfeit. Humans back in the day had la chasse au Bonheur, the hunt for happiness; and so very far were
they from considering it quixotic, than they recorded it as one of humankind’s
basic rights in an American Mission Statement called the Declaration of Independence,
wherein it is claimed that all humans are entitled to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And happiness
was something somewhere between Sufficient and Surfeit, and it seemed to have
many definitions, a tenuous relation to money, and in some cases often a
relation of some significance to sex, though in other cases not.
Happiness
is Alchemy
how could it?=) = Happiness, a state which didn’t seem to
be about accretion or add-ons, but rather a condition arrived at by way of
transformation, perhaps like a chemical process, but ultimately this was
alchemy; for despite our thorough-going analysis of all of the hormones
involved: the sex-charged dopamines, the calmly blazing serotonins, the blissed-out
ocytocins, humans in general and (shhh!) women
in particular persisted in “falling in
love” a clowns’ pageant, a complete foolery that consisted in over-valuing the object
towards which the love is directed (and undervaluing everybody else) to a ridiculous
degree.And the devil of it was, for the Patch for the Universe project I was seconded to work on (Gottseidank I hadn’t been asked to head it up! just work with some 300 year-old dervish) the crack in the universe––that crack that happened when the PWO was violated by the culling and reverse-culling simultaneously of husband and wife, that crack was only expected, by the latter-day Holy Ones, to heal, if we/ I could make Arthur and Lynette happy.
Interview with Lynette Roberts
You want me to talk to you about happiness?
Well I’m not too happy about any of this, I can tell you. Glad to be alive? Sure. Being a Spirit was kind of a drag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq1fpN1qWv8
I mean people not being able to see you or hear you, sort of thing.
And it was just like in the movies. You’d be this airy nothing. If someone stuck out their arm, it would go right through you.
And the hologram they made for me––don’t get me started! Let’s just say that on my worst days before I quotes died, I was better looking than that hologram made me out to be. Like I was a size ten! I kid you not!
And no, I really don’t want to talk about my death, if you don’t mind too terribly much. I mean I know it wasn’t an actual death in that you brought me back, and in any case, I remained a Spirit hovering between Life and Death until I awoke.
It was kind of a cliché actually: the drama at the hospital, everyone screaming at one another and at the doctors. I mean I know it should make me feel good, that they were so upset that I died. But honestly? I felt like it had more to do with them than it did with me.
So no, I don’t wanna talk about my death. Even if it wasn’t really real, it was still my death, and that makes it personal.
But I don’t mind talking about what happened when I woke up –that was sort of interesting: the whole thing of being a Spirit.
The thing is there were gaps. I woke up at the hospital and followed them home. It was really annoying because they wouldn’t pay any attention to me. Like usual only for real. I kept waving at them and saying, “Hello, it’s me!” “Hello there, it’s Mommy!” and the Lord knows I’m used to flying under people’s radar. But this time I didn’t want to. This time I wanted them to pay some attention to me. And I was shouting at them when all of a sudden Arthur flailed and his arm went right through me. And then I knew. I knew I was a Spirit.
So I just followed them home because I had nowhere else to go.
You want to know what it was like for me? It was weird. The kids left eventually, and it was just Arthur and me. He cried a lot, which surprised me. A real cry baby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzoXdOAZBVM
Like I said, there were gaps. I remember my early days with Arthur, trying to get him to see me and talk to me, all that. Listening in to everything he said about me.
I have to say, I got an earful. I didn’t know he thought I was selfish and vain,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYRzES2ejcU
that he thought I was interested in other men. Maybe I was. But not men plural. There was only one, one man. And I only went forward with that when I found out about Arthur’s women. And I was only in it for the sex. I still and always loved Arthur. He was the only man I ever loved, during his lifetime. What happened after he died––that’s a different story.
Well there were the early days when I learned that even though he had these negative thoughts about me, he really loved me––had really loved me, I should say, since I was officially quote unquote dead. But in a way I really was dead, since I wasn’t able to interact with people or have any kind of impact on anyone or anything. Sure I could hover and see what I had never seen before, but it was kind of a limited existence. The only thing it satisfied was my curiosity. And my desire for the truth.
So after the early days there was a sort of blackout. Then I awoke and my eyes had to adjust to the light. It dazzled me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcWVL4B-4pI
Then one morning I woke up really hungry. Ravenous, in fact. Of course, I couldn’t eat anything. But I’d forgotten all about that, so I went to have a look in the fridge. And it was full of Chinese food. And I’m like, Arthur likes Chinese food? It used to be too spicy for him. But then I looked around. And there was this woman. He had moved this Chinese woman into our home. Talk about spicy. She was something else. Way younger than Arthur. And guess what? She was mad about him! Hung on his every word. She had this whole mad idealization where she saw him as a Warrior. My Arthur. I mean he was never that assertive, with me, or in his job or anything else. Arthur sort of got along to get along. And I would always tell him, “Don’t make waves.”
But this girlfriend had him ready to foment revolution and take over the world. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but he used to never argue with anyone, keep his ideas to himself. And now he was the opposite.
And I wondered how long I had been dead.
But she was really nice. Not in any hurry to get rid of my things. Granted, I wasn’t much competition because I was dead. But it was really nice the way she would talk to the kids about me when they came over, keep me alive in their minds.
She even got Arthur to talk to her about me, and he would cry and she would hold him.
And one thing: I know this is weird, but before you go classifying me with your DSMVI, ask yourself this simple question. Have you ever been a Spirit? Dead to the world, but alive to the sights and sounds around you? No? Then don’t be too hasty to see me as aberrant.
It’s kinda freaky, that solitude. Not that you sit in your chair, filled with despair, or anything,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmiZ2LE5GoM
No, watching is pretty darn interesting. And sometimes, you can do more than watch.
Because this was the thing. I did have a little bit of sway in the sex department. There, and seemingly only there, could I make my presence felt. So I hung around and waited until they stared to go at it, and then I literally got between them; and in a thousand tiny ways, I interfered with their lovemaking. Sometimes I participated in it; sometimes I compromised their intimacy to such a point that the woman suspected Arthur of messing with her mind. I was like an electrical current, like lightning striking again and again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BAepxjMxh0
After an amount of this, she packed her bags and left. And you know what? Arthur didn’t shed a tear.
That sounds kinda crazy, I know. But bear this in mind: an airy nothing is all about lack, and I was driven to drive that woman away, because if I wasn’t going to have anything real here, then, I told myself, neither was she.
Yeah, an airy nothing, in a hella ridiculous outfit. Because I was a Spirit made visible for the Tech Age. Visible to whoever could see me. And when I looked in the mirror I saw this hologram.
At first I couldn’t tell that it was supposed to be me. I mean, I found myself face to face with this old woman with grey hair. Then I saw that she had my face.
So point of information, Mr. Stockman (Laughs like a hyena.) Who the hell makes these things? Is it done by some team of engineers and designers? Oh yes? And I imagine they sit around congratulating themselves on what a lifelike job it is. Or is it just done by some algorithm that your engineering-design teams refined over time?
Because let me tell you something. I’m in my late fifties––
Agent David Stockman : You’re upset; I have some openings right now in therapy circle. NO? OK, we actually have your exact age recorded in a number of places. Sixty––
Detainee Lynette Roberts
OK, so I’m in my sixties. Early sixties. But let me tell you something, smart kid. This isn’t your Grandma’s old age. Women from my social background really work on themselves. I have biceps for Godssake! And quads! And no love handles. And no saddlebags (that’s what they call the fat some women get on their thighs.) I don’t have any of that. And my hair is not grey: I had some really nice color put on it–it’s worth the extra expense.
Agent David Stockman : Yes Ma’m.
Detainee Lynette Roberts : Lynette. Plese call me Lynette.
Agent David Stockman : Yes Ma’m.
Detainee Lynette Roberts : Did I hear somebody say you have 400 year-old people up here? People who are alive and functioning after 400 years?
Agent David Stockman : Yes Ma’m. The atmosphere on Alpha Syn-Thesis Hypermatrix is such that––
Detainee Lynette Roberts : Don’t waste your breath, kid. I figured out that we’re sometime in the future. How stupid do you think I am? Talking computers that look like your next-door neighbor, people talking to their walls, everyone super-smart, your women have no unwanted down on their upper lips, I’ve never seen so many blue-eyed platinum blondes, levitating key magnets, collapsible bridges, elevators to the stars, commandable cutlery––nobody’s coma lasts that long. Hey! Don’t look so worried. You couldn’t possibly have kept that a secret.
So my point is this. You have all that and most of it’s designed by some future descendant of Steve Jobs––Steve Jobs. Apple computer? Never mind. But that hologram! Where’d you get the outfit? I mean if I have to spend all eternity– or even a very long time––in one outfit, make it a designer suit, OK? Make it hip.
End of interview #1 with Detainee Lynette Roberts.
PSYCHOLOGIST’S EVAL
The human female Lynette still seems flustered. She hasn’t integrated the experience of being a Spirit; refers to self sometimes as living, sometimes as dead. Quite obsessed with husband’s affair(s), especially the current one. which she participated in almost as though it were a ménage à trois. Has a very limited grasp of life itself, of herself existentially; preoccupation with sex almost seems to stand in for what is so oddly missing in her discussion of all that has happened to her; her intense focus on omg-type reactions almost substitutes for that missing curiosity about life itself and the world. She also had a bizarre symptom that we could only attribute to some variation of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). To wit, she, a Spirit, technically one who haunts, was herself haunted by memes from the Zeitgeist, which took the form of songs popular in her adolescence. So haunted was she by these earworms, that the interviewer, “David Stockman”could hear the songs as well. Apparently then she telepathically communicated these zeitgeisty earworms, these strangely insistent ballads of a bygone millennium.
Interview with Arthur Billy Roberts
Though clearly bereaved by the loss of his wife (See: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual V), Lynette Baines Roberts, Arthur is significantly less interested in his uxor per se –– in his wife as a person, than she is in him. [See Arthur S. Interview 1/Correlations and Discrepancies with Lynette B.R., Interview 1.] In fact, his experience of bereavement is rather generic. Arthur is also less interested in all questions devolving upon his wife’s decease* than he is on the existential meaning, to him, of the experience of being a Spirit. *(Questions like: Did she love me? Has she forgotten me? In what way will she remember me? And: Does her love for me create the drive to memorialize me: to keep my memory alive on Earth for as long as possible?). Arthur is less interested in sex issues surrounding his relationship with his wife––both before and after her decease–– than she has been with him in the corresponding situation, that is when she as a pre-deceased Spirit witnessed his intimacy with another woman (and we suspect interfered with it).
Just as his wife’s concerns and way of dealing with them seem primarily personal and psychological, ABR’s perspective and emphasis seem primarily philosophical and political. ABR is quite fascinated with the experience of being asSpirit to the extent that his activity can be compared to that of a Spy. ABR frequently refers to himself as “A Spy in the House of Love” or as “A Fly on Love’s Wall” when recounting his experience of observing Lynette with her lover, Artie. He is very detached and almost clinical (a defense mechanism, perhaps?) noting the differences in the technical mastery of sex play (from what he recalled of their relationship) as well as the differences in how she responded to him and how she responds to her lover. Again, social and political implications of even this type of inactive activity are foremost in his mind. He accepts the truth of his experience as a working hypothesis, not because he believes it to be true, but because he believes it to be the best way to recover the truth.
Interview #1 with Detainee Arthur Roberts is classified.
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