Darkcrazy.com's Soapbox

You know what made Einstein crazy? And I don't mean nails-on-a-chalkboard crazy, I'm talking about "these pajamas were a gift from Elvis" crazy (although that's not a direct quote). It was Unified Field Theory. The simplest idea in the world, that you could discover a single set of rules that remained true regardless of what you applied them to and regardless of the surrounding circumstances, was too much for the smartest man in the history of the world to grasp. The world tends to get awfully complicated in an awful hurry when you try to break it down in the simplest terms. There just aren't that many universal truths, just endless variables and subtle nuances that make every moment its own unique problem to solve.

For the loneliest number, 1 sure does get around a lot. We're still fixated on having 1 religion with 1 God, 1 world under 1 flag, 1 kind of loving or living or being normal with apparently a single standard that defines with singular consistency which 1 is the right 1 to be. And if there are more than 1, then we insist on our idea being 1. If not the first then the best, and if nothing else we'll go out of our way to be the last, so that maybe somehow our ideal will be the only 1 remembered when everything else is ash.

But that's a bit morose. The truth is I was talking with a friend of mine about the term E pluribus unum, which means "out of many, one". He took this to mean that the world was coming together from many into one, consolidating the diverse cultures and ideals currently represented in the world into a single homogenized abbreviation of their original ideas. He thought it meant the gradual dissolution of separate people and ideas into a generalized standard, therefore representing the dissolution of individuality.

I see it, but I don't agree. I think "out of many, one" doesn't mean we'll be crammed together into a single way of thinking or existing. It means that no matter how great in number we become, you can always draw a single one from us. The individual will continue to exist, even in the company of multitudes. No matter how many of us there are or how many we can become, we are still a group comprised of individuals, each of us capable of introducing new and different ideas to the whole. And even if the majority were to reject these ideas, the individual is still free to have them. Democracy isn't everyone agreeing on a single way of thinking, after all. It's a struggle of ideas in which it is the unabridged responsibility of every individual to contribute.

But as a hard-spoken soothsayer and sometimes proponent of unfounded half-sooths, I have had my share of arguments with a brilliantly broad diversity of people. I have come in particular to admire the capacity of young people to hold as sacrosanct the singularity of things. It's a charming self-absorption to believe that the sum of your personal experience mirrors the sum of human experience. We all do this; if we didn't we wouldn't have any opinions on anything. And it's actually true in some sense, because all of our experiences have been cumulative to the evolution of the human story. But it's still funny to hear the arguments: "I knew a girl who had an abortion, so… I had a friend who's gay… My wife has restless legs syndrome, so it's real…" These silly strings of hubris that credentialize conceptual ambiguities with individual citations of anecdotal authentication. As if to cite a single instance of anything is to eradicate any argument to the contrary. This is the beautifully linear mindset of people who still believe they are moving in a specific direction toward a defined goal.

My own life has been a constant exercise in humility, still ongoing and not altogether successful. And it is becoming increasingly formless and complex as I get older. Even as individuals we are not possessed of an inherent inner compass, and any focus seems to be a temporary means to an unforeseen end. And even more often there is no actual end. Credits don't role in real life and chapters don't close on a clever line. Every day leads into another and we are forced to enforce some structure on them that will give it all meaning to us.

But I do believe in the power of the 1. I take some pride in believing what I believe in the absence of evidence, because my opinions are gathered from casual observation rather than personal experience. I believe in the coming of 1 world. It will be a world without borders (unless otherwise geographically imposed), a world of racial harmony where so many different kinds of people have lived together for so long that they can accept their differences without having to eliminate them. And yes, a world where nationalism is a bizarre anomaly of the history we will refuse to forget. Because it will be a world without nations. Not a world united under a single flag, but a world where flags will no longer be necessary except as nostalgic adornments.

It will begin with the lifting of borders. With the borders removed the people of connected lands will find a way to share each other's problems and prosperity. Continental unification will create strong economic powers while marginalizing the threat of military disputes. It is a difficult thing to annex a territory that is separated from you by an ocean, and damn near impossible when that territory is united with its continental neighbors.

The rise of continental economic superpowers will begin two prevalent political trends. Corporate competition will replace military warfare as the world becomes a thriving global marketplace. This will lead to single universal system of currency. While the rise of a single language will not occur, a single dominant language will be adopted in the global market and as an ancillary measure many cultures will become multi-lingual. The strongest tool in the global economy will be communication, so being able to speak many languages will be useful and therefore become part of an average education.

Increased trade and communication coupled with a decrease in military hostility will encourage people of all cultures to travel and live abroad, mingling with and eventually becoming a staple of other cultures. Shared land and language and experience will lead to a stronger understanding of other religions and ethnic cultures, and as this continues the ideals of these cultures will not assimilate into each other, but enrich each other. The scope of human experience will broaden, and with it personal understanding on an individual level. Increased education and exposure to new ideas will erode the xenophobia and prejudice that infect and infest today's world, and people will hunger for new horizons and new frontiers. We will work to build a better world and once this is done we will work to reach, explore, and ultimately inhabit other worlds. All of this will become possible when we accept that we can become many yet remain 1.

But we will never see this world. You and I won't, and probably not our children or their children. It will be a long time coming, this world, and before it can come to be the world we live in now is likely to get a lot worse. A world like that isn't made overnight, and change doesn't happen without struggle or sacrifice. We will most likely die in a world that is nothing like the one I just described. And I'm sorry for that, but it doesn't relieve us of any of the responsibility we have to make that world happen.

I believe this in the absence of evidence. It is not representative of my experiences. I have not devised or discovered a unified set of rules that proves it to be true. But it is true. And it will happen. The people of today's world may not be the generation to make it happen, but it has begun with us. And as it's passed down from this generation to the next, it will build from a low rumble to a roar, until it builds into an undeniable cacophony of many voices crying for change. And then it will happen.

Because change only happens when the voice of the many demands that it happen. And that voice is only heard when many cry out as though they are 1. And this only happens when enough people have shared enough experiences, witnessed enough truths, or lived together long enough to celebrate their differences as much as their similarities. It happens when enough people know each other well enough that they realize that despite their differences, they are basically the same. That they can live as many and remain 1.

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Check out Apocalypse Party by Sean Gilbert.

This is not a horror story, although it could have been. The world does come close to ending more than once in it. but this really happened, and seeing as how the world is still here, we can assume it didn’t end in this book.This is about the time I bought a house, and the strange housewarming that followed. It’s about Savannah and St. Patrick’s Day and the night the lights went out on both. It’s about storms and friends and unexpected happenings. It’s about sad and funny things and how we deal with them. So that would make it a story about life, I suppose...

The Robots Are Taking Over! is a series of essays and articles I have written over the past couple of years regarding the state of my own personal life (represented as a microcosm) as it is affected or as it relates to the current state of the world. You may view this as an amusement, a random collection of ranting ramblings and off-color observations, but I see it as a survival guide to the twenty first century. It's all here: Love, sex, religion, the new virtual society, the indenture of corporate servitude, spaceships, giant robot monkeys and the ongoing debate over whether beautiful women are possessed of an anus. No subject is too worldly, wild, taboo or nonsensical to be addressed because the future has no boundaries.

Or pick up issue one , two, three or four of the Whisper World magazine!