by KD Rose
From Heavy Bags of Soul by KD Rose
Nihilist: I’ve lost faith in the Work.
Chaote: Good. What use is faith in the Work? The condition is complete continuity within complete discontinuity.
Nihilst: Yes, I know. And what good is that?
Chaote: Arbitrary perceptual intention combining with the determinism arising from absolute cause effect, creating the immensely entertaining experience of “will.”
Nihilist: That is not will. It is just arbitrary perceptions arising from environmental stimuli or cues that strike ones personal patterns, flaws, thoughts, ideas, etc that seem like patterns because they have a common perceiver.
Chaote: The things that were said to create the experience of will were not identified as will itself, you will notice. Rather, will itself seems to be best described as a bottomless self-iterating feedback loop of consciousness− the self of selflessness.
Nihilist: No, then you are saying the mere act of perceiving it is will.
Chaote: Yes.
Nihilist: That’s not true, perception is not will.
Chaote: So what is it?
Nihilist: Perception is perception, and it is false at that.
Chaote: But will is true?
Nihilist: Supposedly. I know nothing anymore.
Chaote: Seems safer that way, eh?
Nihilist: I don’t believe in anything anymore. There is nothing that one can put stake in as true. It’s not safer, it’s devastating. There is no reason to exist.
Chaote: What are you doing?
Nihilist: What do you mean?
Chaote: Now. Right now.
Nihilist: Wasting a body.
Chaote: Then what are you?
Nihilist: Nothing.
Chaote: Then how can you be wasting a body?
Nihilist: I don’t know what you mean. It doesn’t matter whether the body is illusion or not. There is some form of consciousness here. It is wasted.
Chaote: You are using your nihilism as a buffer from the actual shock of arbitrary randomness, from chaos. There is no standard for waste, or purpose. So you’re just making one up and denying it to save your sorry identity from something even more mind blowing.
Nihilist: Chaos is meaningless.
Chaote: Of course!
Nihilist: What is the standard I am supposedly making up and then denying?
Chaote: I don’t know but it must be something, otherwise the ideas of nothing and waste would seem as arbitrary and pointless to you as they do to me.
Nihilist: The standard is to have a purpose. That has been my standard. Different systems put their own words on it. My sorry identity has already perceived mind-blowing things. What else is there?
Chaote: You seem disappointed.
Nihilist: There is no reason to exist. That is rather disappointing, yes.
Chaote: You need one?
Nihilist: My current perception is that my current consciousness needs a purpose, yes.
Chaote: No wonder you’re disappointed.
Nihilist: There is connection to larger somethings, but I no longer believe in the purpose of any larger somethings either. Just more bullshit. The masturbation of the universe. Why, how do you see everything?
Chaote: As a continually self-iterating fractal, apparent order evolving out of apparent disorder, the extrapolation of arbitrary initial conditions spiraling through infinite reflections of its own shifting image.
Nihilist: Only sounds like hell to me. It feels otherwise to you?
Chaote: In order to have hell, you have to have something to compare it to.
Nihilist: Only imagination of otherwise, and imagination of a purpose to it all.
Chaote: There can be infinite purposes!
Nihilist: Infinite purposes is the same as arbitrary meaningless.
Chaote: Right on!
Nihilist: Man is ultimately only happy striving for something. And once having tossed away the material, emotional, power plays, and all the other layers of stuff to strive for, there is nothing else. Levels of attainment…enlightenment….all a sham. No ultimate thing to strive for. No purpose.
Chaote: And instead of being amused, you’re bored!
Nihilist: What do you want from your life?
Chaote: Nothing.
Nihilist: You don’t care? Do you enjoy it?
Chaote: Yes.
Nihilist: Are you saying you are Tao? Is that why?
Chaote: I am saying there is a probability that I could be anything at all.
Nihilist: But there are higher probabilities for this lifetime based on your particular situations and gifts, correct?
Chaote: Probably. Isn’t indeterminacy fun! Consciousness manifests indeterminacy. Cause effect is obviously absolute.
Nihilist: Um…. how do you say cause-effect is absolute?
Chaote: Everything is caused by something.
Nihilist: Really. And there is nothing self-created? The initial whatever must be self created, no?
Chaote: Doesn’t matter. That is just a masturbatory question.
Nihilist: Laughs
Chaote: If the initial conditions arise spontaneously, you could just as well say nothing created them.
Nihilist: I don’t wish to create an arbitrary purpose. I could, but it would be a lie. I could treat the world as a playground, but that would be just another form of lie. The only thing I can think of is that I like learning and exploring the unknown. But that would just be another game too− one that apparently has nothing at the end of it. Should I just get lost in humanness? Numb the consciousness with the veils of human life? Pretend I am not aware?
Chaote: You could start by reminding yourself that you really don’t have control of what’s happening to you.
Nihilist: What good would that do?
Chaote: Anything could potentially happen, so instead of arbitrarily identifying your awareness with this so called (non) truth of yours, just wait and see what does happen.
Nihilist: Should I look for burning bushes in the sky?
Chaote: You are hung up on this no meaning, no purpose awareness boredom repetition. It will pass.
Nihilist: Waiting for arbitrary happenings? What will it pass into next? The mouse will round the next corner of the endless maze and describe what it sees?
Chaote: Quite possibly.
Nihilist: One day, a mouse will figure out how to destroy all perception of the maze and mice. And what insights do you cast from your corner of the run? What phase, if any, are you in?
Chaote: Apparently the one where nothing actually matters and it is enjoyable.
Nihilist: Some would call that a final phase.
Chaote: I don’t know about anything being final. Out of infinite possibilities, initial conditions are chosen entirely at random. Any attempt at ultimate control is superfluous.
Nihilist: And you still say you seek nothing and just plan to enjoy arbitrary whatever?
Chaote: Yes.
Nihilist: Have you ever had communications with what people would label a higher being, or your higher self, or the universe, etc, type thing?
Chaote: Probably. Grins
Nihilist: Well how do you fit those into your paradigm of arbitrariness?
Chaote: They must have been caused by something which must be integrated into the pattern somehow, and the structure of the pattern is originated by arbitrariness.
Nihilist: So you are talking antecedents of determinism again. That would only be a theory, would it not? That the structure of the pattern is originated by arbitrariness?
Chaote: Yes, just a theory. But a meta-theory at that. The theory of theories.
Nihilist: Yes, yes, the map is not the territory, etc. But the very theory of arbitrariness would say, would it not, that the probability at some point would be that the origin would not be arbitrary.
Chaote: Yes, it would. In fact, the initial condition can never actually be observed so they might as well not exist. Pure chaos creates determinism from indeterminacy.
Nihilist: Well, that would be one name to give it. Others would be God, Self, Universe, Will, etc.
Chaote: Certainly.
Nihilist: Then the construct is just using the name chaos as another pose of the big dad in the sky, only one with no purpose.
Chaote: Except it would have no attributes in this case.
Nihilist: Oh, I don’t know. It ‘makes the origin of everything,’ ‘creates determinism from indeterminacy,’ ‘makes the structure of the pattern’…sounds like the big impartial dad of the universe to me.
Chaote: But there’s nothing actually there; it’s just a byword for a process.
Nihilist: And what is the fuel for this process?
Chaote: Information does not require fuel.
Nihilist: Information?
Chaote: Patterns.
Nihilist: Patterns and process imply movement, do they not? Or change. Otherwise there would be no patterns or determinism from indeterminacy. Movement or change implies fuel.
Chaote: That sounds Newtonian. Of course there is change, but not necessarily conversion of energy from one state to another.
Nihilist: No, not conversion of energy. But the energy needed for the movement at all…or call it inertia− the energy needed for inertia.
Chaote: And what are energy and inertia?
Nihilist: Concepts…. devised to explain other concepts.
Chaote: Right, so the point is, in the realm of concepts, it is no use to appeal to other concepts to explain how concepts themselves work. Pure information cannot depend upon energy, which is just a term of information itself. Concepts + information.
Nihilist: Perhaps, but inertia would not be the same term as energy and pattern and information could be. Inertia would describe their existence. Insomuch as all words are concepts, nevertheless, inertia describes a property.
Chaote: The tendency not to change?
Nihilist: The tendency to remain in the state that one is in….this includes movement….to go on moving in the same way.
Chaote: Isn’t that just another way of referring to the deterministic character of self-propagating systems?
Nihilist: I see no determinism in inertia. Only continual movement.
Chaote: But there has to be a cause, does there not?
Nihilist: You said yourself that origins are unknown, therefore what do they matter. I don’t agree, but that was your statement.
Chaote: The point is that motion is determined. It is not the motion I am claiming to be arbitrary, but rather the origin of the motion.
Nihilist: If the origin of the motion is arbitrary, then the motion is also arbitrary!
Chaote: Good one.
Nihilist: The things to wait for in life, as you said− all arbitrary.
Chaote: Ultimately the motion would be arbitrary, but from inside it looks like a determined system.
Nihilist: From inside?
Chaote: When perceiving pattern as a part of it.
Nihilist: ‘Pattern’ meaning what?
Chaote: Information manifesting consciously.
Nihilist: Yes, but one knows now that it is not a determined system, regardless of perception.
Chaote: Probably. Grins
Nihilist: Back to square zero. Or should I say Ouroboros.
Chaote: Best of luck in your passionate attempt at negation.
Nihilist: Passionate attempts to negate are only monumental efforts to find that which cannot be negated. Best of luck with the butterflies.
Chaote: Oh, we’ve moved on to Minkowski seagulls.
K.D. Rose is a poet and author who currently has published “Heavy Bags of Soul”, “Inside Sorrow”, “I AM”, “Erasing: Shadows”, “Anger’s Children”, and “The Brevity of Twit.”
K.D. has an eclectic mind and loves language, physics, philosophy, photography, design, art, writing, symbolism, semiotics, spirituality, and Dr. Who. KD Rose is an avid supporter of music, the arts, cutting edge science, technology, and creativity in all forms that encourage us to expand and explore past the artificial limits we often set for ourselves in order to see the everyday connections that exist among all things.
K.D. is also a spoonie and prefers to think of herself as “a spoonie on the lam.”
Social Media
KD Roses Blog: https://authorkdrose.wordpress.com/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/KDRose1
Networked Blogs http://www.networkedblogs.com/user/100002817280090
Tumbler http://kdrose1.tumblr.com/
Google + https://plus.google.com/u/0/102870988804959230001/about/p/pub
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kdroseauthor
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/profile/preview?vpa=pub&locale=en_US
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6038789.K_D_Rose
HELIOS 