I don’t remember who I am 

because I erased all of me to make space for all of you.

I cannot think straight

because I think around myself to think for you.

I know how to erase myself until I forget who I am 

because all you want to see is who you are.

At least I know who I am

because of where I stand.

🚩

人

person

umuntu

l’humain

∞ words for ∞ ways of being ∞

together we are ∞

alone we are📍

☀️

∞

🌏∞🌍∞🌎

💧∞🌎∞🌍∞🌏∞💨

🌏∞🌍∞🌎

∞

🔥

🙏🏻✨

but that is why I can’t describe it.

Love is a thing in and of itself.

Love is something you extend to others and give freely without losing any part of it.

Love is something which grows as you give it away.

Love is continuous because it starts where it stops and it does not stop where it starts.

Love is a constant.

Love does not have levels.

It is impossible to love something more than something else which you love less.

Love does not have quantity.

Love is acceptance.

Love is space.

Love is freedom.

Love is everything and nothing is love.

and that is why I can describe it.

I found love

        We rest in the center of an ever-expanding sphere in a position we call now. The space around us does not reach end, and we are not sure that we are actually in the center of a sphere. Rather, we know only that, right now, we rest without knowledge of up or down, the past or future, before or after, and so on. In our meditative rest, all we know is that we rest because that is the only thing we can experience. For what is there to know if nothing is to be seen? Then, suddenly, another particular thing approaches us from some direction and we are set in motion. Before at rest and now in motion, we continue forward not knowing our future. This is the image of our birth from the past, experience of the present, and curiosity of the future.

It seems rather unfortunate that we ought to be moving through some endless void in which we have not the power to control our future. Gifted with sensory powers, we are capable of feeling the sensations of now and anticipate the sensations of the future. Our anticipations are made possible by recognizing that patterns of particular things approach us and leave. The ways in which these patterns arise and new patterns arise between these patterns are the observations on which we base our theories which predict our future events. Eventually, we gain some new friends who travel forward with us and other new friends who rest in our past. This is the image of our experience of progress. 

Though each particular thing in the universe has some individual collection of experiences, the shared experiences of the collective particulars provides the means by which they move forward. If we were simple particles, then perhaps our origin story would be one very similar to the previous paragraphs. However, the origin of humans is much different than that of one particular at rest in a void in which other particles interact with it. The means by which we humans have evolved over time are remarkable. Albert Einstein states this sentiment very well in his short book Cosmic Religion, “The basis of all scientific work is the conviction that the world is an ordered and comprehensive entity…” (Einstein 98) 

The simple belief that the world exists as a cosmos governed by universal laws dates back to Ancient Greece. Though much of human thought has changed since these times, this basic principle endures and is the assumption on which our science rests today. Lucretius attempts to explain the nature of material things in On the Nature of Things. His explanations assume a universe in which there exists a void filled with fundamental solid particles. These particles are governed by universal laws; one of these laws being that the particles are indestructible. (McGrew, Alspector-Kelly, Allhoff 65) The development of universal ideas through reason, such as the existence of fundamental particles, is important because they provide some lattice on which individuals can grasp and come to some collective agreement. On a very basic level, this is the goal of science – to build a large lattice comprehensible by all individuals.

It seems natural here to explore some of the sociological implications and motives for building some lattice – or we can call it a network – of universal ideas. Very much how constants are used in physics to make calculations, scientific ideas are to serve as a unifying constant in collective thought. This network of scientific theories provides the conceptual means by which societies can organize and create new technologies.  However, ideas are worthless when they cannot be disseminated due to lack of technological means or censorship. The invention of the printing press started a communication revolution that has evolved into new means of communication (e.g. mobile phones, computers, the internet etc.). This is one implication of science on society – as science progress, the means by which it is communicated also progresses. Without a scientific understanding of machines, the printing press could not have been built. Likewise, modern computers would not exist without science – most notably physics and chemistry. This observation sets science apart from other unifying ideologies, such as religion, nationalism, etc., because it improves itself through its own processes. As individuals interact with scientific ideas through print or digital means, they are exposed to the same ideas and begin to share similar experiences. That is the unifying power of science. 

Feyerbend alludes to some unifying power of science in The Tyranny of Science when he discusses the ability of scientific theories to impose some order on seemingly chaotic things. (Feyerbend 49) I point to this acknowledgment of unity in science because Feyerbend is very critical of modern science, and this sentiment is written in a chapter named “The Disunity of Science.” Where science goes wrong is when it imposes its perspective on people as if it were the one true and objective perspective. Because science is socially accepted to have some practical applications, it is easy to fall into this way of thinking. However, science does aim to be objective, and as a result, individual perspectives and experiences are cleaned from its body. This results in a sociological phenomenon called social anomie. When the individual loses his or her place in society, he or she might commit suicide as a result of anomie. (Marks 332) Scientific thought displaces individual differences because it progresses by means of universal ideas. This is one negative social implication of science.

Perhaps we were warned about the forthcoming effects of science on the individual when Francis Bacon wrote his Aphorisms on the inductive method. The thirty sixth aphorism of Book 1 in New Organon describes a way of teaching in which humans are expected to abandon all thoughts but those of inductive reasoning. (McGrew, Alspector-Kelly, Allhoff 191) This is quite clearly an abolishment of individual experience in thought. It dehumanizes the experience of learning. When proponents of conventional science education create curriculums in public schools embed this dehumanized ideology within the minds of young students, they create a society in which humans cannot behave naturally. Simple decisions of where to eat, which brand of deodorant to buy, etc. turn into if-then statements. When human emotions are disconnected from human thought, people lose the ability to share their feelings. Students learn to be told how to think, and so they do not know what to think when they feel something new. Today, social anomie and dehumanized thought are real problems that exist in society.

Just as science has provided us with new means of communication, it has created new means by which we organize society. Slavery can be traced throughout humanity’s history. Though we recognize it as a great evil, the way in which people are enslaved has only evolved. This is caused in part by the lack of value of individual experience in society’s composition. One might assume that because science creates a great lattice by which humans can communicate and create new things, that it also reveals the individual and gives him or her ultimate freedom. Remark that it is the universally smooth bottom of an object that reduces friction and gives it the freedom to slide along a surface. We might imagine that perfectly universal ideas shared by all humans might give us the ultimate freedom to move as we please. Karl Marx tells us why this is not the case.

Karl Marx heavily criticizes capitalism because it develops into a class system which favors those with the most capital. Capitalists own the means of production which treat humans as machine-like laborers. (Mark and Engels 14) Science provides capitalism with the tools necessary to become more efficient and create new materials. However, it does not seem to be the overarching goal of science to increase production, but rather to reach some universal truth. In this way, capitalistic societies value individuals based on their physical capabilities and output of work, but fail to encourage understanding between individual experiences. People become isolated because they are worthless except by the means of their contribution to some systemic process of production. In this picture of society, people turn to robots because their individual realities exist solely within their minds – the structure of society is valued over the purpose of society. 

Luckily, all that needs to change in order to solve some of these negative social implications of science is the perspective by which we look at our collective and individual realities. Collectively, we share this universal understanding of a structure by which we communicate, create, and move. Let us revisit the story of the two particulars at the beginning of this paper. We are those particular sensual things which move in some direction within an infinitely large space. The only means by which we can responsibly organize society is through responsible scientific thought that rests upon the assumption that each of us has something to share through universal concepts. Our shared reality exists only for the benefit of our individual experiences. Einstein beautifully states this concept; “Never forget that the fruit of our labor does not constitute an end in itself. Economic production should make life possible, beautiful, and noble. We must not permit ourselves to degrade into mere slaves of production.” (Einstein 106)

Works Cited

Einstein, Albert. Cosmic Religion with Other Opinions and Aphorisms. New York, Covici Friede, 1931.

Feyerabend, Paul, and Eric Oberheim. Tyranny of Science. Cambridge, UK, Polity Press, 2016.

Marks, Stephen R. “Durkheim's Theory of Anomie.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 80, no. 2, 1974, pp. 329–363. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2777505?ref=search-gateway:6533fc63f7d777563939e8010b109a0d. Accessed 4 Dec. 2017.

Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. “Communist Manifesto.” www.slp.org/pdf/marx/comm_man.pdf. Accessed 4 Dec. 2017.

McGrew, Timothy, et al. Philosophy of Science: An Historical Anthropology. Malden, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

I died so that I could be born. 

I am so that I can think. 

I think with my body and I feel with my mind. 

I feel with my mind and I think with my body. 

My body is my mind. 

My mind is my body. 

My mind is my mind. 

My body is my body. 

I think with my mind. 

I feel with my body. 

I think, so I am. 

I was born, so I will die. 

Normal

👦🏻🧒🏻👧🏻

I am the little boy who played in the dirt.

I am the little child who drew on their skin.

I am the little girl who wore makeup.

👦🏻🧒🏻👧🏻

I am who I used to be.

In math, they would say that ...

I want to define the shape by the space which it fills—not by the lines which entrap it. 

This is the source of Truth.

I wonder what they see …

when they see me.

when they see them.

when they see you.

They see everyone within a box.

Oh, they are [insert identity here]. That’s why they [insert prejudice here].

I wonder what they see when they see me. 

What box do you give me?

Am I too stupid to see?

Am I too stubborn to fit?

Am I too unfit to matter?

Or is it you?

Please, tell me, what do you want me to be?

I wonder what they see when they see what they want me to be.

Am I in a box?

Must be about what happens 

When words from a page 

Are translated from 

2D symbols

to

3D ideas

to

4D experiences

to

Existence in and of itself.

Liberation.

Let’s go there.

THIS is not THAT

you cannot have THAT

you have THIS

THAT is better than THIS

THAT must not be near THIS

THIS is too precious

THAT is trying to destroy THIS

keep THIS forever and forget THAT

we are THIS and you are THAT

we are HERE and you are THERE

we don’t want to see you 

THAT goes THERE

where do I go? 

aestheuo

Imagine this: A bike is a perceived whole understood to be formed by a sum of parts.

I’m not going to bore myself with the task of laying out how a sum of parts forms a whole bike.

There are two ways for perceiving this bike that I would like to explore:

(1) A sum of parts form a whole bike, which is understood as it functions as a bike.

(2) A sum of parts form a whole bike, which is understood by projecting a consciousness on an aesthetic. 

An autonomous agent could approach an object, attempt to use it as a bike, and then label it as “bike” if it functions as a bike.

A conscious agent could approach an object, observe it, and then label it as “bike” should it have the aesthetic of a bike.

Now, tell me, which are you?

🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎

🍎🍏🍏🍎🍏🍏🍎

🍎🍎🍏🍎🍎🍏🍎

🍎🍏🍏🍎🍏🍏🍎

🍎🍎🍏🍎🍎🍏🍎

🍎🍏🍏🍎🍏🍏🍎

🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎

I’m in here!

I’m in this tangled mess that seems to tangle itself more and more.

I’m somewhere in the inside looking out.

I’m waiting for someone to look in and say,

“Hey, look at me!”

That’s when I’ll be on the outside looking in!

I’m out of this tangled mess that seems to tangle itself more and more.

I’m somewhere on the outside looking in.

I’m waiting for someone to look out and say,

“Hey, look at me!”

That’s when I’ll be in the inside looking out!

I am where there is light. 💡