Phisophonby

The professor stood before the class in the lecture hall and put forth an important question about the symbols and metaphors used by Kafka in "The Metamorphosis." What was the significance of blurb and what was the importance of whack and how do these blurbs and whacks relate to the hurr durr urp etc. etc. And one of the more insignificant students who will never amount to much, sitting in the back by the window through which the dirty city was visible over his shoulder raised his hand and was called on. "I don't think there were any symbols used in that story. I think it's a story about a guy who turns into a bug. And it doesn't mean he works too hard and it doesn't mean his Dad is a meanie. He just wakes up and he's a bug and that's it."

"Well if you say that you take out all the magic involved in the writer's craft," the stodgy professor with the broomstick up his ass said. "We may as well say nothing means anything beyond what you see and the deeper meaning that teaches us things has lost all relevance."

But not so. Actually we have no way of knowing what Kafka was symbolizing. He was just writing and the writer decides on what means what in the context of his own viewpoint and personal universe and until we were to get a clearer understanding of his own personal frame of mind it's impossible to say what meant what. Father's slapping you as a bug equating to the Godhead slapping Adam upside the head for the infidelity of the apple and blah blah blah.

The point is that since we've been able to more or less define up to as many as eleven dimensions I'd put all philosophy on hold. Kierkegaard has to have a sock in it for a while and Kant's cant can take a hike for a bit. We've got to see that there's a difference between the claim that "I think, therefore I am" which is the old world and the new claim that "I am, therefore I think," which if you ponder it has other ramifications.

When I was a little boy they told me the universe had no start and will have no end. It just always was and always will be and that's it. Along with this "God" was an old man in the clouds with a white beard who tossed thunderbolts at people who pissed him off and thought nothing of wiping out half his creation or more in one angry fit of artistic temper gone mad.

As I grew up I learned that the universe started from one singularity and from this point there was a huge explosion and everything happened after that. Coincidentally "God" became a thing in need of no gender (what use WOULD a God have for a... gender... cough cough) who was a lot more magnanimous to some people but still an unstable painter more inclined to cut off your ear than his own. But there was change. Now heaven was open to everybody and God damns nothing anymore. He/She/It can be talked to. Like a peer. Like an old buddy who can give you a break. And yet there's this idea that somehow by praying you can change God's mind. Yeah I'd say that's not bloody likely. But anyway. It was a nicer God up there. Or down there. Or around the corner.

But ever since somebody noticed that the universe's expansion is speeding up instead of doing the slowing down that all the models in physics would have always predicted it should do, people are scratching their heads. There's no real reason why contradictory principles now bouncing off each other in the realm of physics should be able to both be true, and yet the postulates explained by relativity seem to exist over in this section while the postulates explained in the quantum view are true over here. And yet they both can't be true because of their contradictions unless there is another explanation about the universe. And so the Big Bang has been losing ground to the concept of that event not being a singular explosion, but instead a collision of two separate universes, or membranes, that created a third space (where we are now) into which truths from the two sponsoring universes deposited their shit. And I'll get back to you about the "God" part.

Somebody said reality is merely what's been agreed upon by the observers. But that can't be right because the next thing that guy did was create Scientology and he was an idiot. So we can do away with that. he also said we got here from another planet in DC-10s and were dumped down volcanoes that geologists will tell you didn't exist at the time he said all that happened. So screw that noise.

No I think probably this colliding membrane scenario will simply be the next step to whatever the big minds work on after that, hopefully while I'm still alive. Because if we have at some point someone saying "this membrane concept leads me to believe that the universe always was and always will be and God is an old man in the clouds and here are my calculations to prove it" I will be right back where i started and so will everybody else.

And then there's Milnor, the guy whose work proved the existence of at least 7 dimensions (not including their differential structures) and has since been working on hyperspheres. So he's probably the guy to blame for all this.

Then Dave gave me this video past summer, after which I found this one...

In short, to make it a bit simpler, I have WAY too much time on my hands...