from personal email authored by Daniel Pouzzner (the compilation editor), sent on 1999-Jan-9, to a crypto-Maitreyan scientist who shall remain nameless:

In exploring your web site, I read your paper on the ubiquitous light metaphor. You omitted some important manifestations of the metaphor, and you wrote a few things on which I must take you to task.

The two major omissions I thought of are Lucifer and Illuminism. Lucifer, "bearer of light" literally, is a name of the devil and also a name for Venus when it appears in the morning. By naming the devil Lucifer, the Christian power elite revealed too much, since they explicitly set themselves against knowledge and understanding as such. The Eden myth has a similar vicious message, so the idea isn't new, but the Eden myth simply acknowledges knowledge and understanding as a fact of worldly existence, and does not clearly encourage, or even admit of the possibility of, abandoning it.

Illuminism is Adam Weishaupt's 18th century elite theosophic cult of supposed enlightenment, obviously quite infamous. Weishaupt's platform included many points which would later appear in the platform of the Communist Manifesto.

"Ubiquitous of late is the notion that we are all, in some sense, one."

It is extremely important that you, as a scientist, deprecate this mystical garbage. We are not one in any natural sense at all, and the false precept has historically been wielded as a weapon by collectivists of every ilk, including various flavors of Marxists (including the USSR and present-day mainland China), and by the Nazis. Collectivism - the idea that the advertised interests of a supposed whole take priority over the actual interests of real individuals - is a powerful meme which enables almost limitless cruelty and destruction.

"The web is called Indra's Net. The allegory affirms the intuition that we are not only beings of light but that we are all connected. Scientists are finding that brains produce oscillations with specific frequencies and wavelengths; `good vibrations' really happen in the brain. So it seems plausible that ancient peoples were in touch with this sense in which we can be in tune and resonating with one another."

Of course, we are all connected, but our preeminent manners of connection are verbal (and other symbolic) communication, economic interaction (material commerce), sexual interaction, and warfare. My understanding of neurodynamics is consistent with - in fact, insists on - the conclusion that the activities of brain organs involve synchronized, rhythmic signals, with amplitude, frequency, phase, and spatial relationships, all being centrally involved in mentation (see http://www.mega.nu:8080/wavetrain.html). Decades ago, Norbert Wiener reported his discovery of zones of rhythmic entrainment detectable as electromagnetic potentials (early electroencephalographic measurements). However, the phenomena which you explain with an oblique theory of diffuse telepathic links among the members of ancient civilizations are almost surely fully explained by communication through vision, audition, and olfaction, often in the context of diffuse acquired mental illness. Note carefully that I do not discount the possibility of real telepathy as some sort of subtle and esoteric phenomenon, nor do I embrace it with any degree of confidence. I simply dispute that it is plausible that such a phenomenon played any significant role in shaping ancient civilizations and cultures.

By "ancient peoples" I assume you mean such civilizations and belief systems as the Egyptian, Aztec, Mayan, Hindu, and Buddhist, all of which centered on death worship. Other ancient cultures and belief systems - Sumerian, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim - are fundamentally mystic, and exhibit an undercurrent of death worship (sometimes very obvious, e.g. the ubiquitous crucified Jesus and the ritual of symbolically drinking his blood and eating his flesh - advertised as a denial of death, but in fact an embrace of supposed life after death). The mythology of Christianity, in fact, is derived almost wholly from Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Indian (Hindu) mythology, and shares with them the exhaltation of self-annihilation.

There is in fact a word for the above morbidity: Thanatos, or in Sanskrit, adhvanit, defined in my dictionary as "instinctual desire for death." Mystic faith and Thanatos are perhaps the two most important "super-memes" (broadly enabling memes) that have poisoned human civilization since its dawn.

An underlying message of your essay is that ancient civilizations have something to teach us. But we modern westerners - at least the few among us who are serious thinkers - are much closer to understanding the universe and how to be happy living in it, than were the members of any of these ancient civilizations. In place of the Hindu's Shiva and cosmic egg, we have quantum theory and the big bang - not myths, but science. Progress in this area concerns the reconciliation of quantum and general relativity, and most emphatically does not involve a return to the mysticism and Thanatos of ancient mythology and methodology. In place of the ancients' muddled, mystical mythology of eternal or immaterial soul, we modern westerners have neuroscience and the science of complex systems dynamics. The soul is not a mystery to us, but a profound physical reality.

Buddhism teaches happiness through "nirvana" (from the Sanskrit for "act of extinguishing"). Consider its dictionary definition: "the final beatitude [a state of utmost bliss] that transcends suffering, karma, and samsara and is sought esp. in Buddhism through the extinction of desire and individual consciousness." But this is adhvanit! This is a methodology of abnegation, of spiritual self-immolation. In the Hindu mythology, nirvana and karma (from the Sanskrit for "work") are myths that subserve the myth of samsara (from the Sanskrit for "passing through"). Samsara is the myth of "the indefinitely repeated cycles of birth, misery, and death caused by karma" and intrinsic to it is the idea that life on earth is fundamentally miserable - no hints here on worldly happiness! Karma is the myth of the spiritual bookkeeper: "the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine his destiny in his next existence."

Rationally, one could never arrive at a belief in the myths of nirvana, karma, and samsara. In fact, rationally, one can see that they are morbid and destructive. These are memes that conflict with physical reality. Any belief system with these principles at its core is inevitably bad for those who adhere to it. The route to happiness is the conscious pursuit and attainment of one's desires.

It is fascinating to observe that the Trimurti maps directly to the three prerequisites for evolution: Brahma as creator of information, Vishnu as preserver of information, and Siva as filterer of information (destroying information according to a set of rules). The conceptual power of the Trimurti may serve as a vehicle for samsara as a hitchhiker feature.

"The `fabric of human reality' can be viewed as a network of individuals connected by bonds of need and trust - a perspective that focuses on the separate people of which it is composed."

This is an exceedingly dangerous conceptualization of society. A healthy view is that society is a network of individuals connected by bonds of desire and coincident interest. The supposed primacy of this network of need you posit is precisely the false precept which serves to "justify" communism, in which an individual is entitled to that which he needs, and is obligated to provide to individuals in need that which he is capable of providing. This is an intrinsically bankrupt model, since there is no rational manner in which need can be ascertained, or indeed defined, and since the precept that an individual can rightly be involuntarily obligated to provide for other individuals is repugnant. Communism and its network of need can be summarily dismissed as manifest evil.

[end of message]

reply to the scientist's reply, 1999-Jan-17:

>I disagree, though, with your statement that in no way are
>we all one. The way that germs and viruses move through us, the way that
>memes spread through us, make the perspective of humanity as a one big
>entity as compelling and valid as that of humanity as separate
>individuals.

Gosh, I just do not look at things that way. I always bear in mind, when I am working on a sociological or macroeconomic puzzle, that the substrate only *seems* to be in some ways continuous. I know it is not "one big entity" except in mathematical abstractions that ignore far more than they reflect.

>I don't think I say anything anywhere about diffuse telepathic links!

I interpreted "in tune and resonating with one another" to implicitly involve telepathy, since there is no other non-technological way to create a phase locked loop (to be very specific) between the brain waves of two brains.

>You use a number of loaded words. i.e. death WORSHIP, "exhaltation of
>self-annihilation", "poisoned". I think these phrases overinterpret

Hardly! *Death* means something very different to me than to them - specifically, in their mythoses (I have no idea what the proper plural of mythos is - do you?), death is not incompatible with consciousness in some form (whereas for me, of course death and consciousness are mutually exclusive). But terms like "worship" and "exhaltation" are immediately applicable and descriptive of the attitude codified in many of the belief systems, for example Buddhism, the meso-American urban cultures, and the Egyptians.

My use of the term "poisoned" seems quite fair, if not positively reserved. Death worship and preoccupation in general, and Thanatos in particular, are the preeminent psychoaffective morbidities. That is, they are the cardinal and most profound learned disease of the mind. The effect of this morbidity is to erode human rights and autonomy, and the human inventive potential, wherever it spreads. Not only is it a poison, but it is contagious, being a meme complex. Very few people are naturally immune to, or develop an immunity to, the disease. Those who do are outcasts, at least in mind, and often in social circumstance, and live in fear of bodily destruction at the hands of the diseased masses.

>anything that "poisons" society can be viewed as a gift; it
>reveals a vulnerability, and promotes the eventual formation of a
>worldview that is NOT vulnerable to that poison.

This smacks of the "fortunate fall" madness of the Vatican. In a way, I agree with you, but at the same time, I recognize that the vulnerability is a phylogenetic characteristic of most people. There have long existed worldviews that result in invulnerability, to the poison of death worship, for some of those who have held them. I do not tolerate evil in order to have the pleasure of doing battle with it and, perhaps, surmounting it. In fact, I do not tolerate evil when it is feasible to do otherwise, and I do not particularly enjoy doing battle with it - though I will always do so, whenever I can.

>"But we modern westerners - at least the few among us who are serious
>thinkers - are much closer to understanding the universe and how to be
>happy living in it, than were the members of any of these ancient
>civilizations."
>
>--This seems unlikely, and in any event, impossible to prove. And I
>don't see how neuroscience or complexity replaces knowledge about the
>soul.

What precisely seems unlikely? The relative accuracy of understanding? The relative effectiveness of the toolchests of techniques enabling individual happiness?

The characteristics attributed to the soul by religions are in fact phenomena of mind, which I attribute to the electrochemical and "myelodynamic" activity of the brain. The soul is made of patterns of activation that circulate in brain cells and their processes. You cannot understand the soul without modern neuroscience and complex system methodologies - and with them, you *can* understand the soul.

>I suppose "coincident interest" may be a better wording than "need", but
>surely you got the idea, and it seems strange that for you the one
>wording implies so many massive horrific implications whereas the other
>doesn't.

Ah, but I explained myself. "... this network of need you posit is precisely the false precept which serves to "justify" communism ..." Between 1900 and 1987, communist regimes murdered over 110 million people in democides of various forms (see http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel, "Freedom, Democide, War: Home Page"). For comparison, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan totalled about 27 million - a horrific figure, but less than a quarter that of the communists. The Nazis, of course, were essentially communists - Nazi means National Socialist, and the ideology can be approximated as Marxism with race replacing class as the organizing dialectic principle.

I have no patience with anyone who sympathizes with the Nazis or with the communists. Collectivism kills.

[end of message]

from personel email authored by Daniel Pouzzner (the compilation editor), sent on 1999-Jan-23, on the subject of my ideology, Innovism:

[...]

>For example, where is
>the foundation for a "delayed gratification" subsystem, which is important for
>militating against a "will to power"?

You've taken a subversive tack. Short-term interest often conflicts with long-term interest. "Delayed gratification" is a byproduct of operating in one's long-term self-interest.

But even then, you're off-base, since it is innovation that I prize above all, not self-interest (which, in the absence of qualification, seems to devolve into vapidity).

In the Innovism overview on my web site, I say "My thinking is that moral right and wrong are the same right and wrong as engineering and mathematical right and wrong." In engineering and mathematics, and disciplines like them, delayed gratification is something of a euphemism for the reality - years and sometimes decades of painstaking, calculating, patient progress, with the capacity to recover from setbacks and continue toward the objective. Also, the engineer's right and wrong are sublimely practical.

>we know nothing about the "goal" of
>evolution for our species.

There is no *terminus*. If what you demand is a terminus, you will be disappointed. For my own part, I take comfort in its absence.

>for Innovism to see a purpose
>in evolution -- any purpose -- contradicts the fundamental tennets of
>evolution, as I listed above.

[...]

Innovism isn't founded on the idea that evolution was invented in pursuit of some purpose other than evolution. Innovism is founded on the observation that evolution is a fact. In my overview page on Innovism, I say "the idea is to identify the objective, the goal, of the universe." The goal of the universe is not equal to the goal of "the creator." Evolution is a fact, and it defines a goal for the universe. That goal is not a terminus, but a process of invention and turnover. The terminus paradigm is to the process paradigm somewhat as a noun is to a verb - particularly, the indeterminate present tense.

Obviously I've dispatched the matter of an individualist or collectivist terminus on one general principle above, but there is a second important general principle that applies. Evolution is unpredictable - that is to say, it is a computer of sorts, and a principle similar to the halting theorem applies: in the general case, you can't know what the results of evolution will be without waiting for them to transpire. Thus, the idea that one might confidently predict passage through a particular evolutionary way station is nonsense. One can only expect one's way stations by choosing them - by disciplined eugenical engineering, of the type that gave golden retrievers hip dysplasia and Nazis a particularly bad reputation.

Though the above is expressed in the language of biological (Darwinian) evolution, all evolutionary systems exhibit similar characteristics.

>It seems to me, and I think this line of argument demonstrates, that Innovism
>is a whole lot closer to a theistic framework than to an non-theistic
>framework, in that it opens the door for at least a glimpse of a super-
>scientific Author. But maybe you already knew that... :^)

I know that - *sortof*. It slams the door to theism, but it *is* a deistic framework. This slightly muddies the waters. I have a friend who is a straight-up atheist, and as far as I am concerned she in fact adheres to a *faith* - something of which I have none and accept none. Deism is defined in many dictionaries as a form of atheism, yet it is not the so-called strong atheism of my friend. Deism is the idea that the universe is created according to a design, but whatever created it has no connection to the universe aside from the creator relationship, and one cannot interact with the creator and design except implicitly in interacting with the creation. If you fearlessly plunge onward logically, you encounter a seamless, infinite, perfectly smooth, perfectly impenetrable wall you cannot think past, and I suspect one can go insane if one spends an inordinate amount of time hurling one's self against this wall (I only spend time thinking about it when someone else brings up the topic). The wall, to be specific, is the question of how and why the universe is here. Logic is not equal to the task, since logic is a methodology colloquial to the universe and inapplicable in the context in which the universe "is" created. I say "is" simply because it is the least committed tense, so to speak - time itself is a colloquialism applicable only inside this universe. One has to resign one's self to the perfect impossibility of understanding anything not in the universe. By the logic of this universe, this universe had to somehow be made to be, but - well, I'm back to the wall again.

What I do know, using the logic of this universe, is that this universe was created - which to me means its principles of operation were architected (etymology: "rule builder"). I can't even say "a creator architected the universe" or "a creator architects the universe" because nouns and verbs are logically founded only colloquially, in this universe, with nouns being analogies for configurations of matter and verbs being analogies for changes over time in configurations of matter. The sheer wall of the incomprehensible is unforgiving to those who waste their time trying to surmount or penetrate it.

An episode of J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 dramatizes the theistic trap. G'kar, a central character, is lecturing some fawning students. He describes the determined search of men for the living god, repeated through the ages. He describes the zealous pursuit of the searcher's mind as a hunt by flashlight, with which he intends to illuminate the god he seeks. In the long twilight search he gradually increases the intensity of his flashlight, until, straining for any hint of his goal, he raises the luminosity to maximum. And when he comes upon the wall, and sees upon it the flowering glare of his flashlight, he sees the living god and proclaims as much, and condemns those who doubt him. Nonetheless, it is only his own mind, projected upon the seamless, infinite, impenetrable wall that bounds the knowable.

When an injury deprives a neuron of input, the neuron gradually raises its gain, in an effort to compensate for the injury. If the injury is total, the neuron will increase its gain until it fires in the absence of input. This is the cause of phantom limb syndrome. An amputee's sensation of an itching toe is not evidence that he has his leg back. Similarly, if you convince yourself you are missing something, and don't relent until a sensation fills the perceived void, that void will be filled - not by reason, not by the real, but by the contrived and the false - by faith.

>an EXtrinsic, overriding,
>meta-physical intelligence, that imparts consistency (intelligent meaning) to
>the WHOLE.

No such thing. There may be some form of consistency or intelligent meaning to the whole - humanity has not yet figured out the whole of physics - but if there is such a consistency or meaning, it is intrinsic, organic, and thoroughly physical - in short, it is not miraculous.

Webster defines "extrinsic" as "not forming part of or belonging to a thing : extraneous" and "extraneous" as "having no relevance." I'll go with Webster on this one.

This extrinsic intelligence you described is a dead ringer for Philip K. Dick's VALIS. Note that Philip K. Dick was a schizophrenic prone to psychotic breaks.

[...]