Unless our fortunate universe is of the multiverse…

An Answer to the Confounding Exact Parameters

What great needle played, stitched, wound, and paved
The strands of the quantum fields’ types of waves
To weave the warp, weft, and woof of our ‘verse
Into being’s fabric of living braids?

The Bang’s source is a quantum computer
That reckoned all future with its qu-bits.
The path that went the furthest won the prize,
Earth being the best of all possible worlds!

The universe’s quantum computation
Finished just before the Big Bang start,
And then it played out in time perfectly,
As the longest path of complexity.

How else could the ‘shambles’ of Explosion
Result in life in our universe that’s
Only .02 percent of its way along?
The universal constants were self-taught.

Mass/energy has been shown to be
Equivalent to information, so,
The quantum universe did compute
Itself, pursuing paths that go onward.

It reached out to see what’s possible
And what’s not, like particles forming
In the quantum world, but, better than that—
It made the potential possible.

It ran scenarios of consequences,
Ever abandoning those paths that end,
Near at once, as quantum computers do,
Since it explored all ways in parallel.

Only thus could the exacting events
So improbable and deep in their depth
Have come forth in the Universe’s progress,
In its precisely tuned Macrocosm.

There never was, nor will be, but just ‘now’—
All things, interacting—instant know-how;
Thus mind ‘matters’, matter ever ‘minds’; so,
The Cosmos self-adjusted—as the Tao.

Or still:

The ‘God’ idea has fallen from its throne;
Forever quantum fields’ excitations’
Elementary quanta roll on those fields
That are everywhere and remain themselves.

The Creation of the Universe:

If we evolve aspects of our brain (or sense receptors) we could have more acute perceptions. As is the case of people who have 4 light cones instead of the traditional 3. — Manuel

(Some of was inspired from listening to the transhumanism aims of David Pearce.)

When this trans-humanism arrives…

Through natural evolution or via human-assisted evolution to higher being:

The naturalist, with the senses deepened, would be able to absorb with awestruck reverence scenes of overpowering sublimity far beyond the simple prettiness on offer now.

A musician would be able to hear and play music more exhilarating and heartfelt than anyone had ever dreamed of.

The celestial music of the spheres heard by the mystics would become as a child’s toy flute in comparison to this grand and ultimate symphony.

The sensualist would discover that what had passed for deep and passionate sex had been merely a pleasant prelude. Erotic pleasure of an intensity that flesh had never known would become enjoyable without guilt, even by thought alone.

A creator or patron of the visual arts would be able to behold representative vision in a holographic reality of indescribable glory and completeness.

Scientists would be able to apply a googolplex of neurons to their thought experiments, or by using AI, rivaling Einstein’s fortunate “ah-ha” moments, all of the time, to reveal much of what was unknown between heaven and Earth.

Arguments by people insisting on their own selfish ways would melt into a new sense of increased reasoning, just as bad and aversive emotions forced upon us involuntarily would be greatly lessened by new and safer medical miracles.

Wars would become much reduced, and humanity at large could finally progress beyond its everyday suffering.

People would actually remember their car keys and glasses that had often and usually piled up at the vanishing point of the ‘lost and found’, which is at the end of the converging railroad tracks.

Of course, throughout the ages there had always been those rare and mystical moments as described above, for some enlightened and peaceful souls or those in love, but they were but fleeting glimpses of a rare light that lit their minds for a while as a flickering candle, when all one’s thoughts perfectly conjuncted, but then, as usual, soon dispersed, scattering into the oblivion of forgotten dreams.

It's been amazing to read the thoughts and examples of personal creativity. — Amity

You've contributed much to this thread. Well done!

Good recitations for poems can be a great as singing them, plus not all poems can be easily sung.

Here are some good recitations:



The following printed versions of two quatrains got left out of the video, plus printing for the omaresque recitation at the end that I don't have the words for (perhaps someone who has better hearing than I have could transcribe them.)

Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh,
“My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry:
But, fill me with the old familiar Juice,
Methinks I might recover by-and-bye!”

And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter’d on The Grass,
And in Thy joyous Errand reach the Spot
Where I made one—turn down an empty Glass!

I also use the computer voices Brian and Amy, which are pretty good. My art is digitally composed in Photoshop by moving parts around to good places. Some of the moving character sequences were done in iclone by its features and digital compositing.

My long project of extending The Rubaiyat with my own quatrains has reached a usable stage, but the videos are hours long… (I could post them.)

Regular computer programming covering all eventualities probably can’t calculate the universe, as it’s too linear and too slow.

So,

The universe is a quantum computer,
Reckoning the future with its qu-bits;
The path that goes the furthest wins the prize,
It being the best of all possible worlds!

Some kind of a clue to something:

Having an asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs and many species to provide an opening for mammals to evolve seems too risky and clumsy for a ‘Designer’ to have done. Other near extinctions happened too; seems natural.

Our planet is very good at promoting life,
But it is much better at extinguishing it.
Of the billions upon billions of organic things,
99.99% are no longer around here living.

Of all extinctions, the Permian was the worst.
245 million years ago, for 95% of species perished,
Suddenly disappearing from the fossil recording.
Life had almost come to a total obliterationing.

“Hurray,” said the shrew; now I can evolve!

‘You’ were once a lucky shrew, darting all about,
But then attached to a favorable evolutionary line…
Every single one of your forbears on both sides
Being attractive enough to locate a loving mate,
And they fortunately had the good health to celebrate!



Our blind-fated path was the further paved
When disasters finished most of the species.
Far from a feature of Intelligent Design,
It opened up the space that was needed.

Actual footage of the Great Permian Asteroid:

That is to say, our exposure to any object in the world, is so brief, quick and fleeting, that only very brief exposure leads to an image which we have no reason to believe exists "out there", as far as manifest reality goes. — Manuel

But the exposures get repeated and eventually coalesce into a useful representation…

Conscious experiences are of qualia as reality based 'apparitions' honed in the early years and onward from outward in and inward out into what is the best guess for the model and so soon one can tell a bottle of milk apart from what’s else. It’s not like the waves have a label on them saying that they came from the bottle but that one kept estimating the separate object into the best representation. There is some help in that light peels information off of an 'obect'.

In a night dream, the apparitions and phantasms are as true ghosts in that they have no outside basis, but the same world-simulating model is being employed, already having its best guess available.

The identification of you as a self is also an experience as a best guess estimate.

I'm just now reading a book on interpretations of physics, Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli. He refers to the Indian Buddhist philosopher, Nāgārjuna, as providing an explanatory framework which is compatible with his own philosophy of 'relationalism'. (I haven't finished it yet.) — Wayfarer

In his new book, ‘Helgoland…’, about Quantum Theory, Carlo Rovelli notes that All is Relational, that no entity exists independently of anything else, so that there are no intrinsic properties at all, but only features in relation to something else, which is essentially what Nagarjuna means by ‘emptiness’ in his Buddhism.

Relationism and Buddhism
(Outline gleaned from reading Rovelli)

Quantum fields form and exhaust reality,
As partless, continuous—there’s no Space!
Reality maintains itself in place
As the net of objects interacting.

Copernicus’ revolution’s complete;
External entities aren’t required
To hold the universe; God’s not needed,
Nor any background; there is no Outside.

Nor is there the ‘now’ all over the place.
GR’s relational nature extends
To Time as well—the ‘flow’ of time is not
An ultimate aspect of reality.

All is Relational: no entity
Exists independently of anything;
There are no intrinsic properties,
Just features in relation to what’s else.

Interactions and events (not things) are
Quantum entangled with such others else;
Impermanence pertains all the way through—
What Nagarjuna means by Emptiness.

There are no fundamental substances,
No permanences, no bird’s-eye view
Of All, no Foundation to Everything,
Plus no infinite regress ne’er completed.

(The fields are not from anything—causeless!
Or ‘not from anything’ is of lawless
‘Nothing’, which can’t ever form to remain.
There is no reason, then, to existence.)

Hope’s Necessary ‘God’ vanishes!
This realization of Impermanence,
No Absolutes, and Emptiness,
Is Nirvana, though coincidently.

So, then, to continue, given that we build things 'out there' via our representations 'in here', using material that's 'out there', and the devices work 'out there' and remain 'out there, such as a computer, as known 'in here', the noumena work quite well.

I'd like to read a physicalist response. — Tom Storm

That we have senses indicates that they take something in, called noumena, and then makes it way through the brain and on into the phenomena of consciousness, and since we can navigate the world we know that we have a useful representation.

From the article:

To bring the point home, consider that in certain intense states of absorption – during meditation, dance or highly skilled performances – the subject-object structure can drop away, and we are left with a sense of sheer felt presence. How is such phenomenal presence possible in a physical world? Science is silent on this question.

However,
In meditation, the resulting quietus
Of the brain’s self-boundary & ID center
Via focus on mantras, hymns, or prayers
Is but a neurological effect, nothing more,
Thus one does not become one with the Cosmos.

(Tested via electrodes in Buddhist monk meditators)

Coding…



(One of the objectives)

The Programmer sets the if-then switches,
Like eight-way 3D Rubic Cube intercepts,
After having set the quarks and leptons,
And coding stars to generate atoms.

Then more precise tweaks, to dark energy,
To umpteen decimal places so rare,
And the forming of the DNA code
To blend life’s ingredients, stirring slow.

Darn, the n-body problem is so tough,
For unforeseen side-effects e’er arise,
Among branches of the would-be life-tree,
A zillion variables overlapping.

This was all still in a simulation
To test out the the coming universe.
Fixes were needed.

The Programmer sat up at his terminal,
Brought up his 1,000,000,000 line program,
And opened the patient for surgery,
Working swiftly from a red inked printout
Marked up during a long coffee hour.

He clamped off the bleeding capillaries,
Redid most of their interfaces,
And bloodlessly sealed them shut again,
Although these were only preparatory
And minor repairs in auxiliary areas.

Next, the main arteries had to be incised,
And therefore it was no longer possible
To open and unblock the incursions in sequence,
Since indirect ramifications and side concerns
Concerns quickly arose and wildly flared,
As fleeting thoughts, for one thing led to another,

Thereby requiring immediate attendance,
Lest, they, in the formless impressionism
Of the art of computer programming,
Fade to vague remembrance, and reappear later,
Always at an inopportune time, as defects known as bugs.

The phone rang while he was juggling
These evaporating images and so he had to ignore it;
But, no matter, for PhoneMail would record the call.

Twenty minutes later,
He had sutured the incisions and readied
A compile and regression test which would
Either attest to the quality of the operation

Or reveal its fatal errors and necessitate
The revitalization of the patient or, at worst,
Require a complete restoration to
Preoperative health from a backup file.

Then He fed it all into the Big Bang.

t would be nice to be able to ask. — Manuel

Oh, greatest of aliens, tell me what the future holds.

No, for you won’t like it.

I really want to know.

OK; thus this thread can continue about what we can and can't know.

In the Near Future, via the Great Quantum Computer projecting, he saw that:

The Lake Tahoe area is mostly saved from the fires, but its ski chairlifts get charred.

Afghanistan becomes a safe haven for terrorists to operate from and the Taliban go back to their old torturous ways, strictly enforcing the Will of Allah.

What remained of Haiti from earthquakes was destroyed by a category 5 hurricane. They had but a few trees and none afterward, and so again the island suffered severe erosion. The hurricane kept right on going and ground Cuba into the ground.

…

The Hoover Dam in the western U.S. held back nothing, its lake having gone dry. People suggested building a water pipeline to the west from the east, for the east had plenty of water from all the remnants of hurricanes that used up all the names from three alphabets in one year. Congress bickered over it and then killed it.

Trump got reelected and still said that global warming was a hoax and defunded science. Evangelicals danced in the streets.

The Covid Zeta variant virus had evolved to be able to remain alive for 400 feet and so this became the main concern for a while, drawing resources and attention away from the planet’s heat crisis until all the unvaccinated had died. Booster shots were needed for the rest.

Meanwhile, the ice caps had melted and were gone. Greenland became truly green, whose name was but an advertising ploy after not so many had moved to Iceland, but then caught on fire and turned a charcoal color. Iceland had no more ice, and so was renamed ‘No-ice-land’.

Much of the world had been ablaze for years now, and recently, a high cyclone, one of so many, had killed 150,000 people in Myanmar, and earthquakes had done in many more in China and elsewhere, as well as did a record number of tornados that had continued to sweep across many countries.

Temperatures often hit 130F degrees.

A tsunami sprung from the Atlantic and washed over Florida, coast to coast. Another one came forth in the Pacific, from the deep Marianas trench, sinking Baja. Mexico City disappeared into a sinkhole. Quebec Province was severed from Canada by quakes, and floated back towards France, where they had always wanted to be. Africa sunk two feet in an hour. The Indian ocean washed out Sri Lanka and entered the Indian subcontinent.

Siberia sunk into a mush of methane gas, increasing the warming even more. Sicily got the boot from Italy. Alaska gushed oil all over the place. Gibraltar fell and sunk and closed off the Mediterranean Sea.

All were aghast to see the LAX airport fracture, and slide into the ocean. The Amazon Jungle flooded, what was left of it after all the trees had been cut for lumber. Mauna Kea erupted and buried Hilo, Hawaii. Krakatoa came back to life. Sumatra went under. Finally, the San Andreas fault could take it no more and moved 1200 feet. What was left of California had become a small island. New Orleans was washed away like silt from a river. What was left of Mexico moved into Texas, where it used to be. Notre Dame Cathedral in France crumbled away into dust. The Eiffel Tower (Le Tour-i-fell), lived up to its name and tipped over.

Trump declared martial law and gave himself another term in office. The Arizona county recount from 2021 was still going on.

Russia shook and shook, destroying their nuclear reactors. Japan went under. In the Philippines, only the mountains broke the sea. Australia just about cracked in half. Antarctica sunk ten feet and out of sight. The pyramids crumbled, exposing the rulers of old. The Panama canal closed. Vatican City was no more. Rome was waterlogged. Venice was long gone.

It was all the beginning of the mother of all near extinctions, one that might erase 99.99% of all life. A 50 mile section of the Alps disappeared from an earthquake, looking as if it were never there; you could see right through the gap. When all of Florida easily went under, being that it was already at sea level, the world had really woken up to the end of days, but it was much too late. Every very coastal city in the world had been inundated, for water always finds its way in. Northern Canada, along with its eastern and western sections, was no more, as part of the Great Lake of the North; only the now more temperate interior remained dry, it filling up with more and more people and tropical birds by the day.

A small portion of Siberia was quite usable, too, for a while, only being at 100F degrees, and an ‘iffy’ part of Argentina was OK. Alaska was gone to its mountains, as were Central and Latin America, and most of Mexico. There were no more islands but for if they had high mountains, of course.

The heat in the world had become totally unbearable, the temperatures now reaching 140 degrees F sometimes; crops would no longer grow. A new but rare and expensive form of food pill extended life for some of the rich. Most people really had no place to go. The pace of the disaster was startling, exceeding even the grimmest of predictions by scientists.

Australia’s population, being mostly coastal, had retreated somewhat to the thin edge between its useless interior and the deep blue sea. The Great Inland Sea reappeared, then evaporated, and then returned. Meteorology had become a fruitless science; summer was now year-round everywhere.

The Great Lakes were enlarging, even with their locks having been closed, for the water runneth over. Resistance was futile, for water was slippery stuff, its tiny hydrogen atoms easily rolling around the oxygen.

Various schemes and solutions had been endlessly debated, most of them being as tough on mankind as the heat, the rest of them unattainable. It was all happening much too quickly. The estimates had been way off. Nature was now a dragon and she had roared, and was spewing her fiery breath upon her own fragile planet.

Some ever had tried to live in their basements, but the heat still found them; some dug underground, but the floods came.

Eskimos bought refrigerators and air-conditioners.

Many near extinctions had happened before, one being only 174,000 years ago, when, at Toba, in northern Sumatra, a supervolcano erupted during an ice age. Six years of volcanic winter followed this eruption, bringing pre-humans to the very edge of elimination.

There were but a few thousand of them left around, since very little light could reach the dusty ground. It took twenty thousand years for them to recompose from the caldron of fire that had almost brewed humanity away. It was from this handful of hardy souls that we modern humans arose.

Due to the intense global warming and ice melting that reached a runaway exponential point, such as in calculus, the weather patterns had been greatly altered, and were bringing numerous and severe storms every day all over the globe, causing much interior flooding, plus wiping out most of the better crops that still had a chance to grow. Roads and tires had melted. The rate of destruction was becoming astronomical. No one could keep up with it; it was everyone for themselves.

Charon had started using a fleet of huge ocean liners to ferry the damned dead across the River Styx.

Billions had perished in a matter of a few years more, and there was little government infrastructure working anywhere. Humans were hardly a match for nature gone wild. It could and would only get worse unto the sure end.

Trump still said that the 2020 election was flawed.

…

Death seemed to be a way of life throughout history. That we were even here was due to the dinosaurs and 90% of all the species being wiped out. A small and nervous shrew-like creature looked out and ‘noted’: the dinosaurs, the forever Kings of the Earth, were gone. “Hurray, no I can evolve.” The shrews attached to a favorable evolutionary line. Every single one of our forbears on both sides had survived, they being attractive enough to locate a loving mate, with whom their love to celebrate.

It no longer mattered that humans were on a one way trip from the quantum fluke, that maximal disorder within old Planck’s nook… to the escalation caused by the Dark Energy, the Universe heading toward the oblivion of its sparse and accelerated expansion, all that we ever loved and knew going to extinction; for, our world was ending now, or at least it was the beginning of the end, for the temperatures were still increasing daily.

Al Gore had been the last one into the Washington bunkers, having steadfastly worked up to the end. Greta Thunberg went in with him.

Some of the remaining nations of the world noted that they had indeed squandered the good things of life, squabbling over their differences in culture. Many had all been looking for truth in the wrong direction, which was back into the past of myth instead of to and for the future. They had fiddled, and now the world was burning.

The Ninja Empire Grandmasters and their teams flew into Niihau on their last tanks of gas, there to take sanctuary and a vote for a desperate but uncertain plan. The landing strip now had a slight but tricky slope to it.

Mountainous Niihau was somewhat unaffected, as were other of the higher island regions, although they were few and far between, for which the trade winds still brought some moderation; yet, the subtropical and near tropical areas were now all very much overly tropical.

On Niihau, Jack, a young master, had to walk the last mile on the new beach that had formed inland. The world’s roulette wheel was rolling double zero on what might soon be the last survivable day on Earth, and a hurricane was headed in his direction. Tsunamis had washed deeper and deeper inland everywhere; most of the internet no longer functioned.

The top dragon, Old Rascal, as the new #1 West, awaited them all. A rainbow appeared as the spirit of the previous GrandMaster West, flying through, past them, as the scent on the breeze and as the vision of the courage to act.

The votes had been counted. Grandmaster Rascal had now engaged one of the last working underground silos. Grandmaster Trish, #1 East, keyed in the codes and nodded to him, saying “Would you like to do the honors?”

“Yes, for unto me falls life’s last duty. Nature will now have to contend with herself. It will be fire versus ice, dragon against dragon, just as shown by the picture on the great China wall; however, this could well be the end for all of us.”

“Or not, if it works,” she answered.

“Hopefully, global warming will be defeated by the worldwide dust in the atmosphere, stopping it. The years will tell; it is our only hope. Ashes will fall everywhere like snow, and then real snow will fall.”

Rascal pressed the button: Nuclear missiles were being fired deep into the heart of the Yellowstone caldera. At least seven surrounding states and two Canadian provinces would be obliterated; yet, winter would come, probably bringing its own array of problems to contend with, but, then, after that, could spring be far behind?

On the 'lucky' fine-tuning and also the possible 'multiverse'…

THE MEADOWS OF HEAVEN

We of the highest consciousness ever known
And the most versatile form that’s been grown
Reside as consequent beings in this Earthly realm,
Possibly the most fortuitous creatures
That the universe has ever wrought.

Indeed,
We are this universe come to life—
Necessarily from a long line
Of ‘fortunate accidents’.

It had to be this way, for any universe
In which we could emerge
Would have to be appropriate for us
Or we wouldn’t be here to discuss it.

Looking back,
We already know ahead of time
That we will discover
The many ‘happenings’
That made us possible.

All this we know and expect
Because we are here.

Perhaps in some other ‘wheres’,
Junkyard universes litter the omniscape,
For they flunked, failed, and miscarried—
A quadrillion trillion universes broken down
For every one that worked to any extent at all.

In some of these forlorn universes,
Perhaps the material was inert
And so it just sat there, doing nothing, forever.

In others, maybe gravity was insufficient
Or had no natural place to collect particles
And so they thinned out endlessly,
Spreading coldly toward infinity.

In yet others again,
Even those in the same ballpark as ours,
Perhaps the portions weren’t quite right.
Although they may have formed a few elements,
They went no further than that for a zillion years.

It could also be that all the possibilities-probabilities
That are of so many imbalances must ever trace back
To the Perfect Imbalance of matter and antimatter,
This no longer seen as improbable.

In our universe, the dark chest of wonders
Of Possibility and Probability opened up
In just the just right way:

Naked quarks spewed forth,
Among other things,
And boiled and brewed
In one of the steamiest broths
Ever cooked up.

They somehow simmered and combined
Into the ordinary matter
Of protons and neutrons.

Then quite independently,
By some unknown means,
Dark matter-energy arose as well,
In just the right mix, and, luckily, too,
Some very long filaments,
Called cosmic strings,

Formed and survived long enough
To be useful as collection agents,
Which were merely imperfections,
As in an unevenly freezing pond—
A kind of a cooling flaw.

None of these happenings were connected,
Except by Potential’s destiny,
So, ‘fortunately’,
The cosmic strings attracted,
By their gravity,
Both dark and ordinary matter,
Which in turn
Attracted even more of the same.

These pearls of embryonic galaxies arose
And were strung along these cosmic necklaces,
As can still be noted today.

So it was
That some almost incidental irregularities,
Frozen out as cosmic anchors,
Were latched onto by matter, both light and dark,
The proportionate portions of which were favorable,
The dark matter dwarfing our ordinary matter
For some reason of a happy ‘circumstance’.

‘Fortuitously’, as well,
Anti-matter, if there ever was any,
Did not fully cancel out the uncle-matter.

The universe could not foresee any of this
In and of itself’s fundamental substance(s),
For if it could have
Then we’d only have the larger problem
Of how the foreseer could have been foreseen,
Ad infinitum…

So it could have been like the ‘trying out’
Of all possibilities in superposition…
A brute force happening
Of every path gone down.

We know much of the rest of the story
Of how the stars and their supernovae
Created the light and heavy elements,
Which combined into molecules,
Which ‘auspiciously’
Became able to replicate themselves, as DNA,
And progress to make cells, tissues, and life.

And then there was the luck of oxygen,
A mere waste product of photosynthesis
By bacteria, and later, plants,
That could fill the lungs
As well as build an ozone layer of protection
From the harmful rays of outer space.

Luck on top of luck, good fortune,
And then prosperity…
‘Stumbled along’ the right path.

Of course all this took many billions of years—
And it is of course this long ‘yardstick’
That baffles the mind and sticks in the throat,
But demonstrates the long time lag needed
To produce even the tiniest of advances.

It bears some of the hallmarks
Of ‘randomness’ at work,
Although quite probable
If Potential had it all ‘worked out’.

Dinosaurs roamed the Earth
For over two hundred million years—
Imagine the length of that time.

They were supreme and invincible—
The kings of all the Earth ‘forever’,
On land, sea, and even in the air—
Heading towards forevermore and beyond,

But…
Dame Fortune once again intervened
When the asteroids or some such catastrophe
Finished off the dinosaurs,
As well as 90% of the existing species.

This ‘random’ event left a vacuum
In which newer species could thrive.

Proto-man gave way to near-man
And thence to us, eventually,
When two ‘monkey’ chromosomes fused together,
Making ‘us’ incompatible with the chimps
And so our ancestors then
Truly descended from the trees!

‘You’ were once a lucky shrew, darting all about,
But then attached to a favorable evolutionary line…
Every single one of your forbears on both sides
Being attractive enough to locate a loving mate,
And they fortunately had the good health to celebrate!

We came to need no specialized niches,
Since we could adapt to any terrain,
Having brains that could learn much more
After birth than instinct could bestow before.

Our higher consciousness
Was the crowning glory—
We had won the human race—
The be all and end all; the grand prize
Of the universal lottery.

So there is nothing more,
Aside from our own progress
To be and learn.

This is it!
That’s all there is.

DNA remembers every step of our evolution—
And you can see this in ‘fast’ motion
When embryos form simply in the liquid womb,
Replicate, and then grow cells
That diversify into a human being
After going through some nonhuman stages.

The human embryo actually forms
Three different types of kidneys,
One after the other,
The first two discarded
(Resembling those of jawless fish
And reptiles, respectively)
Before our final kidney appears.

There is also a fetal coat of hair
That then greatly diminishes.

Thus four billion years compresses into
The nine months of pregnancy.

So then hail and good fortune,
Fine fellows and ladies,
And welcome all of you
To the Meadows of Heaven—
The highest point of all being,
Although we are surely
Still in our infancy.

The path “chosen” by Potential ends here,
With our consciousness.

There were many pockets of universes,
And it is was this very one
That could sing our verses.

The further design
And the role of mankind
Is now in our hands.

We were borne here upon the shoulders
Of so many who have long since come and gone,
All of them advancing the cause,
Over eons of wiles—so here we are.

Fare thee always well, fine friends,
For we are some of
The luckiest sons and daughters of being
In a rare medium well done.

Celebrate; live; be,
For everyone dies,
But not everyone lives.

But, who wrote the code? — Derrick Huestis

We are back to the Great Scientist Programmer Deity, although many believers don't want a 'God' like that, plus what is He doing sitting around there all fully formed as the First.

I was an information engineer computer programmer at IBM for 31 years creating software in support of the logic design. I've been retired for 20 years now.



An Unnatural Universe? Fine Tuning?

Physicists note that the universe seems unnatural, in that 6-7 base parameters had to be just what they are, to the nth degree.

Some of the parameters can be understood:

From Victor Stenger:

For fine-tuning, only ‘dimensionless’ numbers that do not depend on the system of units are meaningful. The Fine Structure ‘Constant, ‘a’, is not even a constant. There can still be long-lived stars if we vary the parameters and certainly the universe is not fine-tuned for this characteristic. The 7.65 million electron-volts needed for Carbon to form actually hinges on the radioactive state of a carbon nucleus formed out of three helium nuclei, which has over a 20% range to work with without being too high. The vacuum energy of the universe is not fine-tuned, for the large value of N1 is simply an artifact of the use of small masses in making the comparison. The Expansion Rate of the Universe in not fine-tuned since the universe appeared from an earlier state of zero energy; thus, energy conservation would require the exact expansion rate that is observed. Same for the Mass Density of the Universe.

Plus see:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/07/05/the-universe-itself-may-be-unnatural/?sh=763422766c9d:

https://futurism.com/is-the-universe-unnatural

Has the multiverse finally become necessary?

The quantum fields can still be the All; they are there before and after Big Bangs; they are always there.

Not exactly. The energy released by the sun is many times less then the energy of the big bang, but as that energy dissipates smaller creations can come to be, all the way down to us weak humans. Basically, we needed the energy of the universe to lessen to come into being. As power goes down, creativity rises. — Derrick Huestis

The sun's energy is as a thousand atomic bombs going off every second, a mere pittance compared to the Big Bang. It's just the Bang made the sun to be possible. Our sun is a third generation metal-rich star, which is also what we needed, plus our planet being in the Goldilocks zone with other right conditions such as having a moon (else the Earth would wobble like a top, its surface areas ever going in and out of zones too freezing and too hot, alternating).

Glad you're still looking into the logic! There's no greater philosophical quest.

Just curious. Turning it around. Does opera inspire your poetry ?
What do you listen to when you write ? — Amity

No, not regular opera, but more like the 'Phantom of the Opera', which music doesn't seem to ever wear out, or just any emotional music.

My poetic style is kind of a blend of Shelley and Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, as in particular the Rubaiyat quatrain of ten syllables, with some variations:

The verses beat the same, in measured chime.
Lines one-two set the stage, one-two-four rhyme.
Verse three’s the pivot around which thought turns;
Line four delivers the sting, just in time.

Such as:

“I’m the darkest,” boasts the Shadow to the Night.
“No,” gloats Midnight, “compared to me you’re bright.”
“You floodlights!” crows Starless Space, “Stop your fight.
The darkest plight is the lack of Love’s delight!”

I'm still hoping that some of my more lyrical poems can get sung, but may have to settle for now for some the Rubaiyat's quatrains sung, since two singers have done so that I found and incorporated into videos (they changed some of the words to make it easier to sing):

Dorthy Ashby:










Michael Montecrosssa (Bob Dylan style)(my favorite Rubaiyat rendition):




And finally, one of mine that I sang, ha, ha, needs improvement:

I then asked the Alien, “Is there randomness?”

“Your Anton Zeillinger found that randomness is the bedrock of reality to a confidence level of 3-sigma.”

“I guess so, then, but why the randomness?”

“The bedrock as the eternal fundamental with no beginning can’t have any input to it.”

“Wow! That makes sense. Does this randomness carry through all the way up?”

“Obviously, no; there is consistency in the laws of nature, regularities amenable to mathematics.”

“When and how does the randomness go away?”

“Gravity overcomes the vibrations that underlie superpositions when things get as large as a tiny piece of dust.”

“How come we didn’t know that?”

“Roger Penrose did, maybe.”

“Or?”

“When entities no longer touch the bedrock, or both ways, or another way, called decoherence.”

“Ha, you don’t really know!”

“I’ll have to ask an even higher alien.”

Intermission: one of my videos:

a few possible arguments in promotion of the idea of a mind:

1. I've presented the case for creativity… — Derrick Huestis

Look into fine tuning.

2. Consciousness as a higher-level of existence. — Derrick Huestis

In our universe, the lesser ever leads to the greater.

God as a personal being who is believed to be caring and salvaging the world would be beneficial for the followers and believers for giving the possible psychological comforts in their daily lives and hope for the possible immortality after death. — Corvus

Yes, the belief provides comfort.

It is doubtful if quantum field as a replacement for God could serve any purpose at all. — Corvus

It's doubtful that an Eternal Fundamental Existence with no beginning and thus no input could have any purpose. The only trait is that it cannot not be; that is the complete message: being is a must.

An idea that illustrates what I have in mind would be that an Intelligent Alien can, for example, perceive how quantum indeterminacy happens in an intuitive matter. Much the way we intuit how the Sun goes around the Earth. — Manuel

The Alien told me that instead the Earth goes around the sun; I explained that it was a typo.

The Alien further said that we shouldn't focus on just one probabilistic result but find the general pattern, which is that the probabilities are unitary in that they add up to one, showing precise group behavior; this is the pattern.

Any thoughts? — Manuel

Our instruments detect what we can't detect though our senses, although not yet dark matter.

Conscious experiences are of qualia as reality based 'apparitions' honed in the early years and onward from outward in and inward out into what is the best guess for the model and so soon one can tell a bottle of milk apart from what’s else. It’s not like the waves have a label on them saying that they came from the bottle but that one kept estimating the separate object into the best representation. Well, there is a bit of help in that light waves peel information of an object to help isolate it.

In a night dream, the apparitions and phantasms are as true ghosts in that they have no outside basis, but the same world-simulating model is being employed, already having its best guess available.

The identification of you as a self is also an experience as a best guess estimate.

no one really takes seriously his theory of the immaterial substance soul these days. — Corvus

Well, many religious 'God' followers believe in the 'immaterial soul' and the rest of the 'supernatural' in the way of having hopes and wishes. It's a whole nother story of why they want it.

It sounds too imaginative and naive judgement to conclude that quantum field is God for all the reasons listed up there. — Corvus

Well, QFT doesn't prove 'God' as a Person with Mind but rather replaces and gets rids of that type of 'God' idea to leave us with just a Ground of Determination (G.O.D.) type basis. Even the Deity 'God' becomes unnecessary as redundant.

QFT needs to be expanded to include quantum gravity and dark matter (unless neutrinos are already it) and then it will become the Complete Theory of Everything rather than very nearly.

Do you have any real life examples for these events? — Corvus

The closest I can think of that is of our real life is Descartes' declared separate and distinct categories of the mental and the physical. This fell apart because then the mental and the physical would not be able to interact.

Further, there is no 'metaphysical' being true by just saying the word. So, it's not like we can have an option to say if 'God' is 'spiritual' or 'supernatural' or 'intangible', and such. We have to see what comes out of any analysis we can do to approach it to make it have to be so.

Derricks' truth and proof of Existence not being optional really already suffices, but for us being curious as to its method, and quantum fields answers this.

We apparently don't have all the Omnis to the extent wished for in a 'Person God with Mind', but this may not be what Reality is bound to, plus how could any mind be fundamental, much less a really extensive one.

I suggested a Deity Scientist rather than a personal-god Theity Magician, but we can only meet a Deity's doings at the Big Bang, which we are not yet able to do, but, again, with Existence being a must, there is not really any more to it that it has to answer to.

science said — Corvus

Not just "said", as religion does, but shown and used and known.

Whatever accords to the OP, especially the happy case of a real physical example, is a candidate for 'God'. The OP starts with 'nonexistence' not being possible and thus the Base and Only Existence having to mandatory and continuous, without even any little spacers of 'nonexistence' with it.

Quantum fields are such, as fundamental, with no deeper parts, and omnipresent, as everywhere, with all the omnipotence they can have, as power to form the elementary particles, and omniscient, in the way of what all can become from it.

An example of what is not fundamental would be such as a proton, for it has quark constituents that have to be prior. What is fundamental, then, is of an even more lightness of being, such as fields.

No one knows if there is 'God' or what its nature would be if there is 'God', such as Personhood.

The suggestion was to define the nature of your God in its substance. Is it physical, spiritual or conceptual? Or non physical something like space? I am not sure what exchanging energies mean. Could you please elaborate on that, if relevant. Thanks. — Corvus

"Exchanging energies" means to be able to interact with the material. If something 'mysterious' is inert or of a distinct and separate category, then it's as if it isn't even there. If not, then it's material, too, since it can interact.

So, no 'intangible', 'non-physical', etc., affecting us and we back. 'Supernatural' would thus seem to be out and not there, or if it is then never the twain shall meet.

There's no 'space' as nonphysical. The quantum fields exhaust reality. "All is field", as Einstein claimed. There is also no space as something separate from the fields that is just there to hold the fields.

I am not sure if randomly promoting the quantum fields to the Fundamental Existence has any meaning when the OP has been trying to prove God. — Corvus

Not "randomly" promoting.

Quantum Field Theory is the most successful, accurate, and important Theory in the history of science, giving us the Standard Model and a myriad of devices that work.

The quantum fields accord with Derrick’s points in his OP, and further inform us in physical actuality of labels and associations that have been also used for ‘God’.

Since the quantum fields are already fundamental, the hypothesis for ‘God’ would want to attend to that.

Non-existence can't exist

-so, there must be infinite existence in all directions for all time

-something which exists carries certain attributes: is affected by things, effects things, takes up space and encompasses time

-things are separated by things which are not of the same type, so the only thing that could separate existence itself would be nonexistence which cannot exist, thus there must be one undivided existence

-this undivided existence must carry all the attributes labeled above. These attributes, when defined as being all-encompassing, define all the omni's associated with God: omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. And perpetual change through creativity: omnificent.

-add to this the fact that it must encompass all time: eternal, and you get all the labels attributed to God

-thus, the notion of God can be grasped from a purely logical standpoint. — "Derrick

Applause and encore ? — Amity

Yes, both, to the fine summary of the Magnificat.

Next, here's one about the decay in energy's quality driving everything:

ALL THAT LIES BETWEEN As Energy

Energy is a beauty and a brilliance,
Flashing up in its destructance,
For everything isn’t here to stay its “best”;
It’s merely here to die in its sublimeness.

Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds,
Yet ever consumes and moves on, as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion,

Ever becoming of its glorious excursions,
Bearing the change that patient time restrains,
While feasting upon the glorious decayed remains
In its progressive march through losses for gains.

We have oft described the causeless—
That which was always never the less,
As well as the beginnings of our quest,
And too have detailed in the rarest of glimpses
The slowing end of all of forever’s chances.

So now we must now turn our attention keen
To all of the action that exists in-between—
All that’s going on and has gone before,
Out to the furthest reaches, ever-more,

For everything that ever happens,
Including life and all our questions,
Meaning every single event ever gone on,
Of both the animate and the non,
Is but from a single theme played upon.

This then is of the simplest analysis of all,
For it heeds mainly just one call—
That of the second law’s dispersion,

The means for each and every occasion,
From the closest to the farthest range—
That which makes anything change.

These changes range from the simple,
Such as a bouncing ball resting still,
Or ice melting that gives up its chill,
To the more complex, such as digestion,

Growth, death, and even reproduction.
There is excessively subtle change as well,
Such as the formations of opinions tell
And the creation or rejections of the will,

And yet all these kinds of changes, of course,
Still become of one simple, common source,
Which is the underlying collapse into chaos—
The destiny of energy’s unmotivated non-purpose.

All that appears to us to be motive and purpose
Is in fact ultimately motiveless, without purpose.
Even aspirations and their achievement’s ways
Have fed on and come about through the decay.

The deepest structure of change is but decay,
Although it’s not the quantity of energy’s say
That causes decay, but the quality, for it strays.

Energy that is localized is potent to effect change,
And in the course of causing change it ranges,
Spreading and becoming chaotically distributed,
Losing its quality but never of its quantity rid.

The key to all this, as we will see,
Is that it goes though stages wee,
And so it doesn’t disperse all at once,
As might one’s paycheck inside of a month.

This harnessed decay results not only for
Civilizations but for all the events going fore
In the world and the universe beyond,

It accounting for all discernible change
Of all that ever gets so rearranged,
For the quality of all this energy kinged
Declines, the universe unwinding, as a spring.

Chaos may temporarily recede,
Quality building up for a need,
As when cathedrals are built and formed,
And when symphonies are performed,

But these are but local deceits
Born of our own conceits,
For deeper in the world of kinds
The spring inescapably unwinds,
Driving its energy away—
As All is being driven by decay.

The quality of energy meant
Is of its dispersal’s extent.
When it is totally precipitate,
It destroys, but when it’s gait
Is geared through chains of events
It can produce civilization’s tenants.

Ultimately, energy naturally,
Spontaneously, and chaotically
Disperses, causing change, irreversibly.

Think of a group of atoms jostling,
At first as a vigorous motion happening
In some corner of the atomic crowd;

They hand on their energy, loud,
Inducing close neighbors to jostle too,
And soon the jostling disperses too—
The irreversible change but the potion
Of the ‘random’, motiveless motion.

And such does hot metal cool, as atoms swirl,
There being so many atoms in the world
Outside it than in the block metal itself
That entropy’s statistics average themselves.

The illusions of purpose lead us to think
That there are reasons, of some motive link,
Why one change occurs and not another,

And even that there are reasons that cover
Specific changes in locations of energy,
The energy choosing to go there, intentionally,

Such as a purpose for a change in structure,
This being as such as the opening of a flower,
Yet this should not be confused with energy
Achieving to be there in that specific bower,

Since at root, of all the power,
Even that of the root of the flower,
That there is the degradation by dispersal,
This being mostly non reversible and universal.

The energy is always still spreading thencely,
Even as some temporarily located density—
An illusion of specific change
In some region rearranged,

But actually it’s just lingering there, discovering,
Until new opportunities arise for exploring,
The consequences but of ‘random’ opportunity,
Beneath which, purpose still vanishes entirely.

Events are the manifestations
Of overriding probability’s instantiations—
Of all of the events of nature, of every sod,
From the bouncing ball to conceptions of gods,
Of even free will, evolution, and all ambition,

For they’re of our simple idea’s elaborations,
Although for the latter stated there
And such for that as warfare
Their intrinsic simplicity is buried more deeply.

And yet though sometimes concealed away,
The spring of all creation is just decay,
The consequence and instruction
Of the natural tendency to corruption.

Love or war become as factions
Through the agency of chemical reactions,
The actions being the chains of reactions,
Whether thinking, doing, or rapt in attention,
For all that happens is of chemical reaction.

At its most rudimentary bottom,
Chemical reactions are rearrangements of atoms,
These being species of molecules
That with perhaps additions and deletions
Then go on to constitute another one, by fate,
Although they sometimes only change shape,

But too can be consumed and torn apart,
Either as a whole or in part, so cruel,
As a source of atoms for another molecule.

Molecules have neither motive nor purpose to act,
Neither an inclination to go on to react
Nor any urge to remain unreacted;
So then why do reactions occur if unacted?

Molecules are but loosely structured
And so they can be easily ruptured,
For reactions may occur if the process energy norm
Is degraded into a more dispersed and chaotic form,

And so as they usually are constantly subject
To the tendency to lose energy, as the abject
Jostling carries it away to the surroundations,
Reactions being misadventure’s transformations,

It then being that some transient arrangements
May suddenly be frozen into permanences
As the energy leaps away to other experiences.

So, molecules are a stage in which the play goes on,
But not so fast that the forms cannot seize upon;

But really, why do molecules have such fragility,
For if their atoms were as tightly bound as nuclei,
Then the universe would have died, being frozen,
Long before the awakening of the forms chosen,

Or if molecules were as totally free to react
Every single time they touched a neighbor’s pact
Then all events would have taken place so rapidly
And so very crazily and haphazardly

That the rich attributes of the world we know
Would not have had the needed time to grow.

Ah, but it is all of the necessitated restraint,
For it ever takes time a scene to paint,
As such as in the unfolding of a leaf,
The endurations for any stepping feat,

As of the emergence of consciousness
And the paused ends of energy’s restlessness:
It’s of the controlled consequence of collapse
Rather than one that’s wholly precipitous.

So now all is known of our heres and nows
Within this parentheses of the eternal boughs,
As well as the why and how of it all has come,
And of our universe’s end, but that others become.

Out of energy’s dispersion and decay of quality
Comes the emergence of growth and complexity.

(The verse lines, being like molecules warmed,
Continually broke apart and reformed
About the rhymes which tried to be non intrusions,
Eventually all flexibly stabilizing to conclusions.)

Conservation of energy — Derrick Huestis

What I wrote once:

To look for what endures in the ongoing cause,
Turn to the basics, such as the conversation laws,
For they in summation with infinite precision
Maintain the balance in all the decisions.


On infinite precision:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-time-really-flow-new-clues-come-from-a-century-old-approach-to-math-20200407/

Here you get it wrong, the universe is in every way like a magnificent mind, performing many trillions upon trillions of calculations instantaneously without flaw. "Conservation of energy" is possible because the universe never makes an error in its calculations. What is tricky to explain isn't how a Mind could be first, but how the First Mind could create many minds much like it but so much smaller (and unfortunately sizably more inclined to error as well). — Derrick Huestis

I'm OK in that we have to build up to the desired points, which you are hinting at getting on to, since the readers won't all be that accepting of as declarations of "Mind" being so, especially as this is the polar opposite inverse of what they see in the reality of the history of the universe.

Perhaps 'conservation of energy' is just due to how it has to be traded without lending/borrowing possible. There is only the energy that was or is becoming.

The Fundamental never rests and so we see a kind of topological-like transmutation of it (since it ever remains as itself) as constant change according to what we call the laws of nature, with no miracles, skips, blips, or errors unless it has some 'random', which could be because the Fundamental can't have any input to it. We on Earth are in the Goldilocks zone, where we naturally ought to be, and not impossibly out near Neptune.

As smaller minds inside the 'Mind' or created outside of it, we have to be less, and from other limits, too, perhaps as being in a lower dimension, being chained to time, limited ingredients put in, of a poor craftsman, and never being able to equal the One Mind because there can only be One.

Of course, it was easy for us to out think the 'God' of the Old Testament and its cosmology and more, but that shows nothing but the human writing of a bad role model into it that many would not follow in the sense of the imitation of His qualities portrayed.

The intended design by 'God' as the Designer or by evolution as a design without a designer evidently had to be what it became, although it's not all that pretty, but workable, and it really sticks that we can't tell one case from the other, suggesting that 'God' is the same as nature and thus a redundant idea.

Most of the universe seems to a vast wasteland, most of the 10**76 'particles' of it. It's as if among all that extravagance, there was likely to be a few planets having the right conditions for life, it still taking 13 billions years of cosmic and biological evolution to get to that life, giving credence to natural processes from a very messy Big Bang.

We have to somehow dig deeper to get to the 'Mind' doing it.

(Amity, please turn all this into something like a grand opera.) — PoeticUniverse

Amity — Amity

Done yet? Maybe your lute people could do it.

Without science I can approach and try to surround these events too. So can my dog. — MikeBlender

My cat decided that a static discharge was a pain and so growled at the person who did it ever since.

Is it even worth it to engage with these people? — Xtrix

Not worth it, for they are stuck in their notions from thoughts that so often fired together that they became very strongly wired together. It shows a fixed will to the nth degree as well as an inhibited learning disability that prevents a new and wider range of will to form beyond the stuck notion.

What we get out of it is the knowing of this trait being able to be so in human nature.

In the case of not wearing masks and not getting vaccinated, it's even the simplest of science that can't be understood, so no wonder that great stuckness is prevalent in many less simple areas, too.

So, they will die, but at least evolution has this new opening to rid us of stupid people.

So ask a simple question: "what is gravity?", "what is a particle?", "what is magnetism?". The answers given are only the effects we can perceive of the phenomena. As to what these things are, we don't know. — Manuel

Yes, we approach and try to surround these events thanks to science.

Quantum gravity remains elusive because it is a universal effect and so it cannot be renormalized such as was done with the electromagnetic in QED.

The electric and the magnetic transition one into the other and back, and so forth, as a self-generating wave. An elementary particle is known to be the certain stable energy quanta of its quantum field.

We know in general that more and more complexity emerges from the simpler and simpler from past to future.

Trying to assert an invisible, inaudible, untouchable, and un-perceivable object as some existence is irrational. — Corvus

Yes. The immaterial can’t exchange energy with the material unless they speak each other’s language, but if they can, then there is no distinct category of immaterial at play in the first place.

Every existence is optional and contingent. — Corvus

The temporaries come and go; the Fundamental Existence of the quantum fields remains.

spiritual — Corvus

Can there be a distinct and separate intangible category such as called 'spiritual' which cannot walk the walk and talk the talk of the materiel? If so, it can't interact with us and so it just goes along its separate and merry way.

Anyway, there’s no big wondering required for where things came from. Existence isn’t optional; it is mandatory because ‘nonexistence’ cannot be, much less be productive. Forever quantum fields are already seen as fundamental. There is no ‘coming from’ for what is eternal.

So what is the purpose of his existence? — Corvus

We'd first have to show Him to be, and then identify His nature, and then get at His purpose, although He appears to be an unnecessary step to posit in the first place, for Existence has to be. and that's that, end of story, not needing anything extra.

The Knowing From
The Blowing of the Big Bang

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as wind along the waste,
Omar knew not whither, willy-nilly blowing…

Now I’m knowing, that out of this muddle,
Indeed, it’s that chaos doth free me to be,
For it’s all of disorder in disarray,
An ultimate disorganized confusion,
Whence all sprung, banged, and exploded,
With no hint or trace of order, law or plan.

‘Twas mayhem, bedlam, and pandemonium,
Wreaking havoc upon the turmoil of a tumult,
Heaping high upon, a commotion of disruption,
In the utter fullness of the uproaring upheaval…

The maelstrom to end all messes and shambles,
The lawless free-for-all of total energetic anarchy,
Entropy crowned the King of the great hullabaloo,
That cosmic hoopla from which all hell broke loose.

Never there was to punish one for not even knowing,
Why you are here in this world so much growing,
That become here all so willy-nilly going.
As life’s rose—outspread your fragrance blowing!

Whither flowing free, whether knowing, or not,
Hitherto, I know not whence, but am whither going,
Willy-nilly, hence that’s all there is to knowing…
Hence thither forth I go on hither flowing to find
That I am ever more free to be in body and mind.

It is of Ovid’s “rude and indigested mass:
The lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unfram'd,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam’d.

“No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
Nor pois’d, did on her own foundations lye:

“Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water's dark abyss unnavigable.”

So it is that we the living might hereby agree,
To live a being that is much more intense,
To leap toward higher orders of actuality,
To revel in the glories of this conscious life,
To attain each minute a more euphoric joy…

And to bring this forth to all,
The increased intensity
Of life’s experience,
And build on it, etc.,

Ever growing;
Forever, amen.

Well, don't be shy. Sing us some with dance moves :cool: — Amity

I wish someone could sing some of my poems and accompany the songs with music, as there are no good apps for that yet… but they are trying to be.

Here's a dance only form a lady who I created. I haven't taught her to sing yet.



A philosophical science poem of mine on a rare subject (of a few that I found):

AFTER THE STARS HAVE GONE—
THE FINAL, SILENT DARK

The Last Chance Saloon

Entropy is always the winner in the end,
When there’s no more energy left to lend;
Meanwhile, we stabilize, in nature’s ways,
Rearranging resources temporarily.

Prelude

Going beyond our very old obsession so vast,
Of how it all began, back in the distant past,
Yet retaining our search for meaning, from that,
We now turn to how will it all end, this and that,
Whether becoming collapsed, expended, or flat.

Is there is some deep meaning in all that?

Yes, for it is there in that future distance,
We’ll find or not the end of our persistence,
Whether or not we are at all forever resistant,

Whether all that was and what was did and done
Will be of any long-lasting benefit to anyone—
Of what destiny awaits, if there ever was one.

Endings are important to us, of what we’re about,
Because we believe that how things turn out
Implies what the beginnings ultimately meant,
Of what or not is our place in the firmament.

As an ambitious species of nurture and nature
We now and have always pointed toward the future,
For, of the three forms of the chimpanzee:
The common chimp, the bonobo, and us, we
Are the only chimp who went beyond the trees…

And more importantly, ever out of Africa freed,
By that exodus, which laid down, indeed,
From that experience, the urge and the need
To move on, exploring, ever planting another seed.

The horizons on Earth sufficed us through time
For many millennia but now the horizons’ climes
Have broadened, through cosmology and physics,
And so they can well inform us of our prospects.

The future matters to us for very basic reasons:
We wish to offset our mortality, our pleasin’s,
To know if humanity’s works for every season
Will be remembered, or lost—all for nothing, even.

The Final, Silent Dark Marches On…

Time hurls a million waves of its displacements
At us, yet we are still here—the replacements.

Time ever gray with age hurls its changes then,
‘Gainst existence’s rock, time and time again,
The entropic seas denuding the sands,
Yet energy is preserved via nature’s wands.

Reminiscence had weathered but could ne’er wither,
For in the mists of time yesteryear yet appeared,
Since, without future, ‘past’ is all they’d have.

Would the prospect of a ‘Big Crunch’ bring on mania,
In an ever more confining claustrophobia?

Seems a better thought, somehow, though no picnic,
But more pleasing if the universe were to be cyclic,
Although then all would still be really crushed,
And forever lost, gone headlong into the rush.

We expect cycles, for all the days and seasons
Embedded this in our ancestors, into our reasons,
Since at least the periodic supplies some rhythm,
A pattern—the rolling hills of lives onward driven.

As for cyclic, endless repetitions, they too
Would seem to revolt more of us than just a few;
As too perhaps would some infinite abyss of time,
Which both grant us neither reason nor rhyme.

Does the drama go on forever, or does it end?
What do the visions of the future portend?
Doesn’t it all have some purpose meant—
A goodly end that all of it to us might it present?

Is our higher mammal time certainly
But of such a short parentheses within eternity?

It’s only a finite time then, which too tends
To horrify so many, as the universe ends,
Such as told by Robert Frost, a name of chill:
In heat or in cold, known as fire or ice, still.

Should we not believe in God since nothing lasts?

Well, if nothing lasts then of what our purpose past?

Is a purpose really required, so constructive,
Or would that really be quite restrictive?

No realm could really be special or sent,
Its becoming being of some specific intent,
For all has arrived as a causeless non-precedent.

Is there anything wrong with the freedom to be,
Anywhere, any how, or any time during eternity?

Should we rail against the law of entropy—
The ‘heat death’ of thermodynamic energy,
The second of its final laws, you see,
Because it would destroy all of history?

There are so many ways for disorder to be
Than any one ordered state specifically.

Would even a heaven on Earth become a misery
If as it might, contain no more novelty?

Must there be an end to our revelry?

Can’t we at least hibernate eternally?
Won’t all matter too last eternally?

Will Shakespeare’s works live on, paternally?

Is this not a Wagnerian struggle for eternity?

Science Can Settle Whether a Last Day
Is Ever Going to Come this Way

Only a decade or so ago, with consternation,
We discovered the universe’s acceleration,
Its expansion even increasing, onto a thin disaster,
The galaxies getting further away ever faster—
Then one last snapshot taken, for all to remember.

The accelerating expansion of the universe’s rafters
Means that the universe will cool even ever faster;
So, any rare forms of the future’s life prolongers
Will have to keep themselves ever more cooler,
Think more slowly, and hibernate ever longer.

One day even the protons will fade away,
Leaving but dark matter, electrons, and positrons.

The Waves of the Ancient Swells
Of Time’s Eroding Swells
Swept Ever On…
 
As Time, now hoary with age,
Yet hurls forth its ashen change,
The charge ever san, pale and colorless,
That force born to summon decay, so endless,
‘Gainst Nature’s Universe, every day.
 
Time and time again, Time feeds all upon,
In its bloodless, white, and waxen way,
But our everlasting rose would not fade,

Its luster even brightening by the day,
Ever unsuccumbing to the sickly, peakèd
State draining drawn Earth’s life away.
 
Entropic seas yet denude the mountains,
Yet our enduring flower never-endingly
Has cast Deathly Time aside, as now,
Ceaselessly somehow thriving on
Toward the hope of the near imperishable,

As beauty’s flame e’er inextinguishable,
Forever celebrated as immutable,
Gaining a seemingly perpetual permanence
From the undying love of our glorious dance.

Yet, everything was moving apart, cooling off,
The big slowdown not really so very far off;
Ultimately, even the black holes of late
And the lightless planets would dissipate.

The primordial soup once so rich and hearty
Will become a thin gruel that can’t serve the party.

One day, every particle will be moving away
From every other particle, so much out of the way
That they won’t even be able to see one another;
Thus, for all intents motion will have ceased forever.

Our spurt of life followed by an infinite stretch
Of dark equilibrium was but the briefest sketch—
A warm and fuzzy stage, so interestingly active,
Whose time relatively was but infinitesimive.

Yet we were there in all our glory,
For whenever else could we have been?

…

In the future, uncounted societies of
Overlapping minds accumulate, with love,
In island redoubts, their preserved data burning

With a vital remembrance, in which, returning,
The past is the present and future, they all reliving
The data, even animating it, and ever altering.

Without any new enrichments, the present and future
Reprise the past in this retreat from external nature.
Their candles would have been near invisible to us—
They enduring by diminishing so as not to exhaust.

They made few new memories, a kind of blind sight,
For whatever realities had ever existed out of sight
Of their own mental structures were now fractured,
And thus not so different from those manufactured.

The Penultimate Part of the Final Dark

An Escalating One-Way Trip
From a Fluke to Oblivion

The majority of the energy
Of the universe is dark today,
Although everything else passes
Through it in every way.

It’s everywhere,
Having a component
That repels its own state,
Which cause the expansion of
The universe to much accelerate.

Dark Energy Matters: The Escalation

We’re on a one way trip from the quantum fluke,
That maximal energy within old Planck’s nook,
Heading toward the oblivion of sparse expansion—
All that we ever loved and knew going to extinction.

They sent message of early warnings to some,
In those castles of illusion, yes, many a one—
That they would face the decay, not so far away,
Of the heavy particles—the ‘proton pause’, one day.

No self-assembled granularity can endure
Forever but must return to the substructure,
And so the lives must all transition, it seems,
From heavier to much lighter regimes,

Although this too would not be permanent—
All destined to be swallowed by the firmament.

We have often asked why some space exists,
Why it permits the countless to briefly persist
On Mother Earth, nourished under Father Sky—
All of those finite sparks that light and die.

There were those who endlessly debated
Whether to live in their virtuals unabated
Or to press forwards and outwards, in delirium,
To seek out new localities in the mysterium,

But the pauses of the heavy particles continued,
And so there was nowhere to go for the retinued.

It was much simpler in those days of old
When we thought that universes didn’t go cold,
But that they expanded and then collapsed,
Still destroying all, yet ever giving more to last.

And well before that, once upon a storied time,
We simply made it all up, with tales and rhyme,
In place of any physical observations,
Such as through revealing experimentations.

The past was now a reef of dead accumulation,
A graveyard of various useless information,
Which despite its splendorous beauty
Could not provide for a novel futurity.

The last one of us, born of the sparkness,
Kept a window to the outer darkness…
She looked out from a once brightly
Colored and sparkling inner reality
Into the dark abyss…

There was nothing out there,
All being so lonely and bare—
No more singing of life’s song,
For now everything was gone.

The Final Epilog

There could not have been any specific time,
One that was privileged over any other chime,
Nor any special place, nor any certain form
Arising out of the necessarily causeless realm.

Even the locally specific dates and places past
Of the events’ novel memoirs couldn’t last,
They being writ on water, with no meaning vast,
Disappearing in significance so very fast,
Since it’s only the universals that last.

The protons were now gone from the show,
Having decayed so very long ago
Into positrons—ever canceling the electrons,

And emitting the fleeing light of photons,
There being of course an equal amount
Of protons and electrons in the count.

And of course along with all the protons
Went all of the atomic elements—the end,
All of their forms becoming myth and legend,
As they were still dreamt in night dreams,
Those forms that we once had, so it seemed.

She, as many of a luckily adaptable kind,
Had long since lightened and lighted her mind,
With the dwindling electrons and precious photons—
That beginning light of ancient times growing wan.

Ours had been the only line in the universe,
One that had become sentient, with proto-man first,
The rest of the Cosmos being but a colossal waste,
A foreboding, harsh, and very dangerous place.

She was now the only one left,
Having outlived all of the rest.
The universe was near crumbling away,
Having run out of space, time, and all its sway.

She was dispersing, melting, into the vacuum, lone,
But she held on for another thousand years, alone,
And then she too was gone,
Being the last of the hominid’s song,

Of all that was sapient: the Magnificat,
The composition of Earth’s sweet plot,
The greatest symphony that was ever sown,
It now having faded into the unknown.

From near nothingness our forms became,
And into the same must go our remains.

If the unknown be such, though it’s otherwise;
But if it’s yet called ‘unknown’ then the reply
Is still for sure that we’re free to be, anywise.

If you’ve shed a tear reading here
For both the far and the near and dear
It won’t make their graves green again,
But it’s possible that life could begin again…

Be of Good Cheer—the sullen Month will die,
And a young Moon requite us by and by:
Look how the Old one meagre, bent, and wan
With Age and Fast, is fainting from the Sky! (—Omar)

Our fruits are of a universal seed
As the yield of All possibility treed,
And siblings elsewhere in the entropic sea
Will also be born of such probability.

The Eternal Return

Behind the Veil, being that which e’er thrives,
The Eternal IS has ever been alive,
For that which hath no onset cannot die,
Nor a point from which to impart its Why.

Some time it needed to learn Everything for,
And now well knows how the bubbles to pour,
Of existence, in some like universe,
As those that wrote your poem and mine, every verse.

So, as thus, thou lives on yester’s credit line
In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
As of its bowl your cup of brew was mixed
Into the state of being that’s called “mine”.

Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent?

The Eternal Saki has thus formed
Trillions of baubles like ours, and will form,
Forevermore—the comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
Of those universal bubbles blown and burst.

So fear not that a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Cycle from its pot has pour’d
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.

When You and I behind the cloak are past
But the long while the next universe shall last,
Which of one’s approach and departure the All grasps
As might the sea’s self heed a pebble cast.

Seasonings

Nature springs from winter’s tomb,
The bloom already in the seed,
The trees within the acorns.

Surging sprigs sprout from the soil;
Spring showers make the summer flower.

Summer wakes from spring’s dying kiss,
Blooming when the rose does,
Sunning after the spring’s running.

Summer reigns upon the land,
Eventually fading in the night.

Autumn falls as summer leaves,
Harvesting its sum of days,
Seconding the rose of spring.

The smile meets the tear—
Fall’s embers last through December.

Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
Snow crystals barring all that grows.

Winter is life cooled over;
Melting snows feed spring waters.

(Amity, please turn all this into something like a grand opera.)