Listening to A Clockwork Orange

[Mr. Tea]

we used to think space and time were absolute, the same everywhere. This was an assumption built into our perception of reality, and we were wrong. I think we do the same thing with our notion of existence or reality, in the sense we think something either ABSOLUTELY exists or ABSOLUTELY does not exist. To be or not to be. This assumption is built into language, into the core of logic itself, and I don't think this is an accident. This assumption is also incorrect. Which leads to the idea that something's existence can be variable, ie something can 30% exist or 90% exist, etc. This concept is near impossible to comprehend or articulate, because again it violates the core of logic and language itself (the "to be" verb/concept), but quantum mechanics, especially the Schrodinger wave equations, led us to this inevitable conclusion. Something's reality or existence is a variable quantity.

Some good stuff here. As it happens I wrote a story a few years ago that featured a man who only partially existed: https://dointhelambethwarp.wordpress...1/st-clements/

There's a Henry James story called 'The Jolly Corner' that centres around a person who exists as a potentiality or a sort of alternate history - which ties neatly into your post because it reminds me of Hugh Everett's 'many worlds' interpretation of QM.

[Agent Nucleus]

Loving the clinical Ballardian style, the inventory of anomalies. This is fantastic and look forward to digging deeper into Lambeth and the Dissensus novel.

Incidentally I have a bit of experience with spontaneous involuntary (and unwanted) time travel. It was all terrible, I witnessed some of the worst. Like, did you know the Romans gang raped Jesus before his crucifixion so he "wouldn't die a virgin"? Or that Pilate and Judas, watching the precession to Golgotha, cast lots for bragging rights to his murder? I watched Jesus change genders on the cross. I, with a flock of vultures, had to protect the bastard during his misguided excursion into the wilderness. I regret every favor I did for the man, and that's all he was, a man. A spiritual savant, sure, but all too human, and a fucking vicious insincere bastard, and kind of fraudulent, but this was so clear from his bezoomy sermonizing and sophical oratory theatrics which always ended with a stab and twist to the logic of his morality that even I could forgive him for it. But he never forgave me.

I told them everything too. Everything that would happen if they went through with the crucifixion, which was avoidable. But alas Jesus was a vain, venal, vile fame whore and he got what he deserved.

Bear in mind I am admittedly, and certifiably, crazy, and I was under the spell for the two or three weeks, floating on cannabis which unwinded me when said "visions" occurred, but I know dream from clear and this one felt real, like the smell of something that evokes old lost, buried, and broken memories only to reveal itself, discovered in a flash, electrifying these forgotten scenes which lie dormant for revelation. Hopefully it was my mind that shattered at the end of it, not someone else's, or the world's.

Bolshy bezoomy with crazy orbiting eye, I am that canned crazy, I know, but alternate realities like polytheism have been around longer than monoreality - which insists logic has been stretched to the limit and nothing past reality can exist even as a concept. Monotheism, the monouniverse assume we inhabit a totality, like we know dark matter and dark energy don't have designs on gravity, matter, black holes. The object to our subject, but wait there's more, so much more, and the news gets worse and worse. History is one big joke played on mankind by a sadistic psychopath.

[Agent Nucleus]

Okay re: involuntary time travel. I'm being a bitch. It hasn't been all bad. Like the time I watched Killer Party with mid-80's (I think) Van Halen, who were just the best guys. Like, we only hung out for a few hours, but that was the closest I've come to just relaxing, hanging out with other heterosexual dudes, and just having a good time. In my life.

[Mr. Tea]

Loving the clinical Ballardian style, the inventory of anomalies. This is fantastic and look forward to digging deeper into Lambeth and the Dissensus novel.

Thanks. The story is part of a series of weird tales I wrote on a one-a-day basis during Advent a few years ago and the 'Dissensus the novel' project was an attempt at a multi-author, 'multimedia' project (well it had text and images, anyway) involving Dissensians taking the piss out of Dan Brown. A few people got involved and it was fun for a couple of weeks but then fizzled out, as these things often do. (Edit: feel free to contribute the next chapter if you're so inclined!)

That talk of Jesus/Pilate/Judas makes me think of The Master And Margarita, which I read earlier this year and which made a big impression on me (one of those 'believe the hype' books, I think). Although Pilate is a fairly sympathetic character in that book, if I remember right.

[luka]

heres an interview with don theall and bob dobbs
http://www.fivebodied.com/archives/a...05--Theall.mp3

[Agent Nucleus]

I miss Bob Dobbs and hope he finally worked out how to transform your astral body into a virtual avatar, or like a videogame avatar you can flip into your social media profile (say, you get on yr LinkedIn and witness yr profile pic as a radiant God form, summoning Illuminati force, and hunting Deloitte while they merely scout you). I bet he cannot wait to finally unleash the cure for AIDS he's kept under lock and no key.

It took a quarter century for McLuan to get the vindication he deserves. Deserved. When will history realize Dobbs was right all along, too? We should embrace neurosis of the extended nervous system as the natural symptom of the arrival of a new kind of being, and instead of screaming when we realize, glazzies stretched by some impossibly sticky surface, we should smile knowing this cybernetic global network organism is eating us alive, stripping us clean and empty. Bone cold and empty but still alive, I think.

[thirdform]

YESSSSSSS agree 1000%

What you call dematerialization I have been calling de-realization. I can't articulate it now because I'm just too tired and about to go for my morning jog but simply put: we used to think space and time were absolute, the same everywhere. This was an assumption built into our perception of reality, and we were wrong. I think we do the same thing with our notion of existence or reality, in the sense we think something either ABSOLUTELY exists or ABSOLUTELY does not exist. To be or not to be. This assumption is built into language, into the core of logic itself, and I don't think this is an accident. This assumption is also incorrect. Which leads to the idea that something's existence can be variable, ie something can 30% exist or 90% exist, etc. This concept is near impossible to comprehend or articulate, because again it violates the core of logic and language itself (the "to be" verb/concept), but quantum mechanics, especially the Schrodinger wave equations, led us to this inevitable conclusion. Something's reality or existence is a variable quantity.

Which leads to the real insight, the important takeaway: reality is getting less real, it is going from 90% to 80% or whatever, while SIMULATION is getting more real. That's what I mean by de-realization and I bet that's close to what you mean by dematerialization.

Please, for the love of God, take more drugs. This is like some edgey media studies 1st year seminar wank. you seriously paid £9000 to say this?

[IdleRich]

bratty means brother in NASDAT, it's not a misspelling of Barty.

From brat which is Russian for brother I guess.

[Agent Nucleus]

This is like some edgey media studies 1st year seminar wank. you seriously paid £9000 to say this?

I don't see how my interpretation of Schrodinger's wave equations via deconstructing the "to be" verb/concept as indicative of variable ontology has anything to do with media studies. I'm not saying anything new here, just saying it in a slightly different way than, I dunno, the Copenhagen Interpretation, which essentially says nothing (including the observer?) exists until it is observed.

I get paid way more than that to say and do way nuttier things

I like you thirdform. I like the cut of your jib.

[Mr. Tea]

From brat which is Russian for brother I guess.

Well Nadsat as a whole is based largely on Russian, isn't it?

[pattycakes_]

Yeah

[IdleRich]

Yes it is. Thing is that as I spend more time in Russia/with Russians more of the words jump out at me. There is a Balabanov film called Brat/Brother so I know that word I suppose.