5 PCE - late in the summer

Anchorage Saturday Market - TIME MACHINE FOR PEACE market research booth...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some time into the visitor’s peace process:

The Brave Soul hesitated, then asked if she could ask a personal question. The Individual consented.

      "So what’s your angle?"

      "My angle. ? My angle. You mean like, my selfish reason for attempting to invent a world piece computer?"

      "Yeah, what’s your selfish angle."

The Individual thought for a minute, mentally deliberating. Should he divulge? He relented:

      "I suffer from chronic mental illness, and I believe I have a high likelihood of developing Alzheimers in old age."

The reception, and corresponding pause, the stare, waiting. The Individual elaborated.

      "I need it for myself, to unify my inner fragments—my inner pieces—into a whole. I need my personal world piece computer. Every time my world piece computer goes offline or falters, things get really really bad for me. But I don’t have the strength to maintain my world piece computer alone on my own, so I need help.

      "This is why I need to make this into a social invention project. I am very sick. I need the help of this technology and of others. I need interested people like your help, which is why I am even talking to you. I am here to assimilate your wisdom, figure out how to do this.’

She stood there staring for a moment, considering, then gently exclaimed,

      "I think, that’s.. powerful."

Shifting uncomfortably, a wave of emotion, The Individual replied,

      "Well it’s the truth. It’s my reality. I need this..."

The Individual waved hands around the booth’s tent’s space, gesturing like it was a much larger object than it was,

      "...I cannot survive without it, without this. For me this is a deeply existential concern."

The Individual let out a massive sigh, crumpling, melting, humility, then let out a slight roar of exasperation with a snarl to match. The Individual went on,

      "And my grandpa had Alzheimers. I got to experience the progression as an observer, to experience how his personality eroded over time. It’s an ugly disease. I think it might be one of the ugliest diseases, besides perhaps dementia or schizophrenia. Alzheimers is the opposite of other diseases; the healthy individual person is the entity that erodes, not the body. And it is not a nice experience—things get ugly.

      "I am at risk for Alzheimers and must erect a system that can manage all the pieces in my world, even if my faculties to act as a singular free agent erode, if my personality erodes. If I contract Alzheimers, I will have my world piece computer to help me remember things and stay focused, to help my self keep from fragmenting into frustration and anger and rage, to help prevent my individual image and legacy and dignity from disintegrating in front of my loved ones. I could rant about this for hours, but I think you get my point..."

The Brave Soul responded.

      "Thank you for your candor."

      "It’s.. my..pleasure."

      "I think you could really reach people with that."

      "Oh wow, I don’t know, but really I sure hope so because it’s coming out one way or another."

And they carried on with the market booth universal piece—the peace process—conversing about peace in the context of a global computational peace system.

(~~ light teal paperclip ~~)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later in the summer:

This Brave Soul was obviously well educated and very well off. He read the large cardboard sign propped front-and-center with a smile, then looked up at The Individual watching him from behind the front door-table.

      "Any thoughts? Feedback?"

      "No, no, no, I really don’t want to step on your toes."

      "Oh! No issue, it’s ok; I happened to wear my steel-toe boots today!"

The Individual flashed a stupid grin that elicited a big grin in kind.

      "So go o—"

      "—It won’t work."

The Brave Soul was expecting some sort of a counter attack or something.

      "—any of it. It just won’t."

But inquisition was all he found.

      "Umm, ok sure, that’s.. a pretty strong statement, but would you care to elaborate?"

The Brave Soul read aloud the statement framed in black from the cardboard sign perched up against the market booth’s table:

’THE MOST I CAN DO IS START A CONVERSATION! ...I HOPE IT TURNS INTO MOVEMENT TOWARD HUMAN SOLIDARITY & UNITY...’

      ’The social invention project to invent the world piece computer.’

The Brave Soul was thrusting his palms toward the cardboard signage as if to push a point. Continuing,

      "Ok, sure. Problem is, any time there’s a social movement with good intention, people inevitably take that movement and distort it, perverting its original good essence in one way or another. This project you propose will be no different."

Ah. The Individual thought for a moment. Then a few pieces clicked into place within the universal piece running in real time, a process pivot:

      "Well, for one, I said movement, not a movement. What I’m describing is more like a collective of individuals all doing their own thing, all doing their own thing as individual free agents, just following a set of universal rules that have the emergent effect of networking their individual world piece computers into a greater whole. Right? The overall movement itself will have evolution. baked. in. —as part of the universal ruleset, so, in principle movement will always be one step ahead of the perversion and distortion. But yes, I agree, we Humans will always pervert and distort the good, I mean it’s basically etched into the negative aspect of our Human Nature! You and I can agree on that, certainly."

The universal piece was running smoothly, rapport building. The Brave Soul was in the sunlight, and he was clearly uncomfortable in his tucked in collared shirt and bluejeans, perspiration on his forehead—hot. That piece exchange was clearly worth suffering the discomfort.

      "Ok, so then what’s your business model? How will you and your non-movement be supporting yourselves with this?"

      "That’s one of the hard questions..."

The Brave Soul snickered.

      "...I have a high-level long-term notion, but nothing concrete in the immediate-term. Ultimately the revenue that funds the universal piece computer and its participants’ livelihoods will revolve around big-data sales plus world piece computer manufacturing and production—a peace industry running parallel to the preexisting global economy, but indelibly tied to it by virtue of common roots, competition."

The Brave Soul shifted and cocked his head a bit. It was time to lay down some weight:

      "Ok, I mean more like, how are you sustaining yourself now?"

      "Oh. Oh! I’m living off savings and trying to raise money as a conceptual peace artist."

      "A conceptual peace artist. And... how is that going?"

It really wasn’t going very well.

      "Not very well! hah."

      "So what happens when you run out of money?"

      "I go back to electrical engineering, or maybe I teach myself blockchain engineer—."

      "—Electrical engineering. ?!!"

      "Yeah, I have a degree in electrical engineering, I was working in telecom before this. I retired though, ’cause I got tired of it, and not conducive to my mission."

      "Ok. Now you have my attention. I work in big data analytics, multiple advanced degrees. Yadda yadda yadda not important. You could call me a life learner."

      "—Hah! Kindred spirits. ! Yeah, so, like I’m serious about inventing computers; ideally the world piece computer will involve many electronic extensions and components, comprising a proper commercial computer manufacturing enterprise. But with none of that shitty Steve Jobes Apple outsourcing bullshit. I’m talking local-grown, at least within the states, but ideally primarily Alaska."

      "Hm. Let me take your card. I’ll get back to you. I really gotta get going though, wife is calling."

The Individual handed over a shitty business card over to this powerhouse of a Brave Soul. The Brave Soul,

      "—oh! And take this pen⁠(1), you’ll love it, government issue! —literally best pen you can find, and they’re all made by blind people, nation’s largest employer of the blind. Inspiring! By the way, my name’s Pattrikc..."

The Individual extended his hand.

      "...and you must be Blair."

      "In the flesh."

      "I’ll be in touch; best of luck to you!"

The Brave Soul bolted off and left before having a chance to suffer the paperclip routine of the universal piece. In a few fleeting moments afterward, The Individual fixated on the recurring difficult problem: how would he or anybody else sustain themselves in the social invention effort? The simmer and smolder of inner conflict, apparent. This was a hard problem and things weren’t going well financially for The Individual. Selling button pins with funny symbols or t-shirts at a market booth would never sustain. The psychological pressure of economic hardship with yet again failing mental health was settling in. The Individual chose a paperclip anyway for the Brave Soul.

(~~ gold matte clip ~~)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even later in the summer:

He leaned in close, intimidating. Another man this time, a Brave Soul, this one short and stocky, with a black hole for a gaze. Voice low and serious, enveloping like the gaze,

      "So are you a psychopath or something? You’ve gotta be a psychopath. This is the boldest exhibit I have seen, maybe ever. Look around at this display of originality, just in. your. face. Who are you. ? You on meds? —You gotta be on meds. What kind of meds do you take?"

      "No, uh. Uh, no. —Not now. I’m Blair. My.. only label is my name. I’m just an individual like anybody else. Like yo—"

      "—No, no, no...you know what you are?"

      "...What’s that? ."

The Individual was working extremely hard to stay focused, keep cool. The Individual had no idea who this man was, nor what he was capable of. It seemed like a potentially volatile, potentially scary situation, a wildcard. The Individual braced for impact.

      "You are what I call an unexpected event."

Huh.

      "Huh."

Ok, not so bad. The Individual followed up.

      "Well I certainly agree. I certainly wasn’t expecting to become this, to experience anything at all for that matter. It’s a real trip, this reality thing."

      "You got that right."

Uncomfortable shifting, staring. The Brave Soul was short but stout, large. The Individual was tall but broad, large. It felt like two beasts meeting in the wild.

      "Ok listen, Blair, now you just move your little stool to the left right here now ok? I’m gunna to interview you and film it with my camera."

* IMPACT!

      "! Ooo...uh... I’m not sure if I feel comfortable with that, I mean, I really don’t know you man."

      "Oh what, you afraid that I’ll expose you? And post this recording on the internet and that everybody will ridicule you?"

      "—Hahahaha, well, yes, but then again, no. You can’t expose me can you, for I already exposed myself here..."

The Individual was terrified of the prospect of an interview with no notice, but he was feeling increasingly reckless as the summer went on; impulse control was impaired, so The Individual relented and filmed an impromptu recorded interview with a complete stranger. The surrounding busy market slowed to a halt, seemingly frozen in time outside the time machine for peace booth. It got heavy as fuck. Later on in the interview, the Brave Soul presenting,

      "And this is my parting gift to you, the distillation of my entire life’s belief system and experience."

The Individual hardened. This was the moment. It was time to assimilate wisdom, and a lifetime at the sound of it. The Individual lived for these moments, having experienced many hundreds over a lifetime’s travels—straight addicted.

      "Ok, hit me, I’ll carry it with me, incorporate it into the time machine for peace social invention program."

The Brave Soul seemed relieved, validated; everything lightened.

      "Ok. Everything—this entire universe—boils down to three fundamental principles. Ready?"

The Individual sat, staring, perhaps another wildcard, but it wasn’t:

      "1) state of being,

      2) individual free will, and

      3) morality."

The Individual repeated:

      "State of being.

       Individual free will.

       Morality."

A pause.

      "Ok. Explain."

The Brave Soul leaned in,

      "State of being is when you come online, you are aware and conscious. You realize you exist.

      "Individual free will is when you recognize that you have the ability to choose the way you face reality.

      "Morality is the choice you make to face reality.

      "That’s it, everything, it all boils down to that."

The Individual took a moment to encode the information into their memory palace.

      "Thank you. That is a lot to take in. I appreciate the simplicity though. Elegant."

If there was any remaining tension in the exchange, the simple validation melted the Brave Soul. That man was only looking to be heard. They continued talking.

      "..."

      "..."

They parted ways, friends, warm.

(~~ white paperclip ~~)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The end of the summer:

A woman and her husband stopped by the booth, two Brave Souls.

The Individual was feeling down about things, and the weather was cold and rainy too.

The two Brave Souls read the big cardboard sign. The setup that day was minimal—just the two main signs, to keep out of the rain because the tent was leaky, but mainly because The Individual was growing tired in failing health. He acknowledged their presence with a warm gaze.

The woman stepped up:

      "I just want to share what I think will be crucial for this project to really take hold:"

The Individual piqued, lurching up like a hyena, ears perked:

      ’"Please."

She returned the primal attention.

      "We need to focus on improving education more than we actually are, and we simultaneously need to focus on getting women—especially mothers—into positions of political power. No woman with children will entertain sending other women’s children to war, not to mention their own. They just won’t do it. I’ve been involved in education and politics my entire life and that’s just what I’ve seen; it’s what I know. Get mothers into positions of power. Your project depends on it."

Fuck yes. Simple. Elegant and, reaffirming an earlier plea for education; that man was Craig and he made the sale that day at the beginning of the summer: education is of paramount concern for a peace project of this magnitude to take hold. This is exactly what The Individual was looking for. The booth was paying massive dividends.

      "Wow..thank you, I honestly had never thought of that... Moms. Yeah. Moms in power!"

Though The Individual could think of a couple pathological cases where moms in power could be a bad thing, it seemed like sound reasoning otherwise. As she kept speaking The Individual kept nodding intently, never breaking eye contact when people were sharing their wisdom. It was too valuable to miss a single expression. The man stepped up alongside her; she deliberately relinquished control of the conversation. This was obviously a coordinated performance; the two Brave Souls were a cohesive unit, no doubt.

      "See this on my wallet?"

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

      "I don’t know Latin. What does it mean?"

The man leaned in, as if delivering a test, almost as if expecting The Individual to be some die-hard pacifist.

      "If you want peace, prepare for war..."

Ah. The Individual was deeply familiar with the concept. The Individual explained that this was not a new idea in their world. In fact, the idea was fundamental. The male Brave Soul proceeded to deliver a monologue:

      "I’m a retired military intelligence officer in the Navy. Did it my whole life, still regularly consult. Let me assure you; from what I’ve known, for the foreseeable future at least, there will always be bad people who want to kill and harm others, people who want to cause war, people who want to exert their unbending will on the innocent and the vulnerable."

The Individual was thrilled to meet someone so grounded in physical reality, responding,

      "So far you and I are in complete agreement."

The eyes locked, two worlds completely connected, the universal piece running. The Individual nodding yet again, intently, permissively this time. The male Brave Soul continued, his female Brave Soul counterpart nodding and staring in unison, injecting here and there. They were clearly a unified pair:

      "So then I’m sure you see that the reason for the global arms race in general is for the same reason you wouldn’t sleep peacefully in your home if your front door was unlocked and open all the time. There are bad people out there; there likely always will be, even when the police are there to protect you. To insure domestic peace and tranquility by the constitution, we have to be prepared for any international or domestic adversary. If not, how could you and your family sleep peacefully at night knowing that at any moment a foreign army or criminal super-cartel could invade and start laying waste to our home land, your home? How could you feel at peace if there were not a governmental monopoly on violence, where at any moment a group a bad people could get a hold of some weaponry and start persecuting this or that other group of the population, maybe that group being you and your kind?"

These were difficult and important questions. Violence. It is detestable, but it is important, the capacity to do so at least. He continued,

      "How can you as an individual feel at peace in volatile situations if you know that you’re incapable of physically defending yourself, without immediate help at least? The sense of insecurity is quite the opposite of peace, and the peace of security demands preparing to meet intruding adversaries with violent force. Again, we use police for this in most cases, and you dial 911, especially if you are incapable of protecting yourself from an adversary forcefully intruding into your world. But the world at large doesn’t have a police force. So we prepare for war. Further, police often take a long time to arrive, minutes at best. To feel genuinely secure, one must be prepared to defend oneself until the police arrive."

Continuing,

      "Even if we declare some global entity as having the monopoly on violence over planet Earth, we would still need national military forces for temporary self-defense; the global super-police will likewise still take time to respond. Even if we invent some technology or operation that made it impossible for Humans to do violence, we would find that still a large proportion of the population would not consent due to fear that they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves. The only recourse there would be to force them to undergo the operation against their will, and, that would be wrong, authoritarian, eugenic even."

The Individual was intimately familiar with this line of reasoning, but enjoyed hearing it from somebody with experience to back it up. The Individual generally embraced it, except for when he didn’t; Humans will almost certainly always have violence (though perhaps in the inconceivable future we might overcome that). The man concluded,

      "My point is, we will always need to be prepared to do violence. Otherwise the truly evil people in this world will exploit the lack of preparedness to systematically do unthinkable things to vulnerable people. To stop preparing for violence would be to concede and declare evil people as the official authoritarian rulers of the world, the monopoly of violence would belong to them. Until we figure out how to make bad people not exist—which is almost certainly impossible—we must prepare for war. This is the principle of deterrence⁠(2)."

The Individual looked back and forth at the older couple, nodding slowly, with a deep hardened face, stern, then, a rather maniacal grin spreading across the face. The absurdity of it. Him. It struck The Individual like a bus in that moment, the immense gravity of the task at hand, the challenge of engineering ’world peace’, it was heavy, looming, crushing. Speaking,

      "You and I are in alignment; thank you for presenting that so eloquently, and validating that particular perspective by sharing yours. Ok. So, education and women in politics, and be prepared for violent adversaries. That’s my takehome in a nutshell. You two seem from elsewhere, are you just visiting?"

They smiled as if hoping The Individual would call them out; they were all ready to relax and be pleasant after such a heavy exchange.

      "Yeah, we’re from New Jersey. This is Mrak, and I’m Shonann!"

Big smiles, and a round of handshakes.

      "I am thrilled to meet you, and that you stopped by the booth!"

      "Likewise!"

The universal piece paperclip routined executed.

Finally, the male Brave Soul made a gentle yet assertive statement, realistic but encouraging:

      "You know, I really commend you. You... ...you have this massive mountain ahead of you. It will be an extremely difficult and dangerous journey, and you have a very very long way to go. Though I hate to say it, you probably will not succeed. But you know this."

The Individual broke into a big smile, lightly watering eyes. This Human, this Brave Soul knew. Replying,

      "I feel like I haven’t made it past the foothills. I know I will probably never succeed, like I want to at least. But I am inventive, and an aspiring mountaineer, so who knows, maybe I’ll learn what I need to make it to the top as I make my way up to the top!"

      "It will take time friend. And much effort. But if you persist, I think you really have something good here. Trust me, I’ve seen it all, the good and the evil. I think you’re onto something. I wish the very best of luck to you and I really hope to hear of you in the future."

The shook hands and bade farewell. The Individual concluded that aspect of the peace process, feeling the weight of it all, heavy, looming, crushing.

(~~ maroon and grey paperclips ~~)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The end of the last piece exchange, the same day, rainy and wet:

It felt like two hours at least had gone by. The time machine for peace booth in a funny sense, did become a time machine every time The Individual had a conversation about peace. Everything slowed down.

      "Ok, so say your project takes off and blows up..."

A nod.

"...chances are you get assassinated."

A pause.

      "I know⁠(3)."

Silence among the group...

      "So why do you persist? I don’t get it."

The Individual deliberated within. Thinking was getting harder and harder as the illness progressed, and now The Individual felt an impulsive rant beginning to lurch withi—

* LURCH!

      "—Listen, you wanna know why? I’m tired of this fucking shit. I’m tired of all this fucking. shit. I don’t care for this world. If you beg to differ, then I will accuse you of taking the privilege you have for granted. Like, take a fucking look around, things. are. NOT. o.k. Your notions of progress—society’s notions of progress—are marginal. at. best. I just want to mould this world into something that I actually want to live in for a change. I want to see significant change. No bullshit.

      "—And, I just wanna have a good time and do cool shit and get laid like anybody else. Like, I’ll even take it a step further: I want to have only the best times, to do the coolest most epic shit, and have only the best lays. I want to feel the deepest love, pet the cutest puppies. Like, I’m probably just jaded. My standards are simply a lot higher than anything capable of being offered here, in this world. And most people? —most people are complacent. They experience sub-optimal. And they call it the good life. Hah.

      "So now, my problem is.. I can’t just go and kill myself like I’ve really wanted to in the past, mainly because I know bad things will happen to me if I do, and I won’t hurt my family. So to be honest, I don’t really care if someone assassinates me. That would be a relief and only further my cause. Besides, until we have the universal piece computer in perfect form—which is probably not possible—I will always exist in essence. I am The Individual who defines themself strictly in terms of the global pursuit of computational peace, treating peace as a computational process—the only way.

      "There will be many more instances of my individuality in the future. We will live forever. So go on, kill me. I’m gunna do some epic shit and have some epic experience and have a great time living life until then. Unpleasant demise be damned."

Much of the rant really wasn’t true in an absolute sense—it was super maniacal, and extremely ironic—but The Individual was under incredible mental pressure and in a nearly constant state of inner war at this point in the summer. The war spilled out right then, there, in the middle of a space devoted to peace. Very awkward. They were all staring. The Individual thought some more, recognized the hole being dug, then adjusted course, adopting a less self-centered stance.

      "But I think more importantly, it’s just important, important for our existence as a species. Like, it’s grandiose but I really mean it. You said so yourself, that you believe we will annihilate ourselves, and that we should all just focus on having a good time and cherishing our loved ones—don’t waste energy on changing things—don’t waste energy on finding a way to systematically violate the second law, on thwarting our adversary, the ever-increasing state of entropy in the universe. A fool’s errand, a fool’s errand you said.

      "What I propose is a way that I believe we can do both—prevent self-annihilation and have a great time in the process. I don’t see anybody else attempting what I am aspiring toward, so I must assume I am alone. I have to try. I call it The Human Imperative. We need this. My intention is still to have a good time, so even if I fail, or get assassinated, it was at least fun, a real fucking trip. I have to hold onto hope though, for the grand us. Life’s too shitty without hope for our species."

The Individual caught themself, preferring not to got on rambling and ranting any longer. The brain wasn’t working very well. Reeling in. The weight again, setting in, heavy, looming, crushing. The gravity of the epic quest that lay ahead. The mind was crushing. It was looming. Heaviness.

They talked more. It was fruitful, cordial, enjoyable, but something about the conversation left The Individual unsettled. Maybe it was the all the real assassination talk, or maybe it was the direct confrontation with a highly-intelligent, highly-convincing nihilist testing resolve. Who knows.

After they terminated the clip process, that was it:

The Individual packed up all the world pieces in that booth, loaded up the tent and totes in truck. The Individual never returned to the marketplace that summer. Enough was enough.

Non-electronic digital memory segment number 149. The end.

(~~ dark green, yellow, light teal paperclips ~~)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Afterward:

There was the first and the second dark age prior to that summer, and this particular market research and development program on The Individual’s behalf was an attempt at sparking a renaissance in the world piece computer invention effort, a break from the darkness.

But at that point, The Individual’s peace process—the universal piece and his corresponding world piece computer—were shaky to begin with; something about the process was programmed incorrectly, or perhaps it was missing some vital component that the inventor just couldn’t figure out. The market research and development booth was erected from a place of profound instability. It was doomed from the beginning.

A final thrust was the tipping point, a humiliating effort to crowdfund world piece computer invention efforts under the time machine for peace on Kickstarter. It was a spectacular effort, to a whimpering and embarrassing failure. Eventually The Individual’s universal piece—having become progressively buggier and less reliable over the summer months—it completely collapsed, the personal world piece computer and peace process completely shutting down; it was a fatal error⁠(4), a complete system crash, very very bad. Those that knew The Individual were not sure if the hardware was recoverable, or if the operating system and software had been wiped blank in the graceless exit. It was ugly.

There simply wasn’t enough social support to maintain The Individual’s primitive peace process in such a deteriorated mindstate. The Individual needed help, but not just that kind of help; they had none.

So marked the beginning of the final dark age in the Piece Computer Era.

The year was 5 PCE.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

7 PCE

I discovered that I had not been accepting responsibility for my wellbeing. I was living with a sickening god-mode mentality, from a place of fear and profound mental unwellness. War.

It was too much. My pursuit of peace consumed me to the point of being at war with myself and the world. I cannot bear any more dark ages. I will not bear another dark age. Another dark age would break me. My will cannot be broken. I have a prosperity mission to uphold. I have the universal piece to maintain. I have The Individual to become, The Human Imperative to satisfy. War against war, the pursuit of peace.

During my recovery from the last dark age, I struggled with violent ideations, intense emotions, wild and confusing thoughts, frightening delusions. Pain, exhaustion, live deep in the soul; mental illness is no fucking joke. This last road of recovery was longer than the rest. Sometimes even medicine and therapy isn’t enough. War and more war.

The world piece computer invention project once again became my only saving force and grace coming out of that last dark age. But the project has caused me immeasurable pain over the the past seven years. Or maybe that was just my fear clouding my vision. How could I know. It was very much a love-hate relationship. I was struggling. I was at war, and mainly within myself.

One day however, I discovered that I could just stop living in fear, mainly by facing my fears in written and spoken form, with acceptance and humility, like this. It doesn’t need to be trapped in my head. I could share it with others. I didn’t have to be mentally ill alone, or confined to some support group. So I started to write it all out. Peace talks ensued.

After writing for a while, I encountered a lightbulb moment: I didn’t need to suffer all the time. I am deeply privileged. I have the resources and the wherewithal to just get the help I need and be ok if I want to. I am fortunate in that regard. I just wasn’t accepting responsibility for my inner world and what I need to do in this life. Quite simply, it was time to grow up, and face myself.

So it struck me: individual free will means nothing without a morality, and morality is a choice—at first at least. The reason I was suffering was all along that I was not submitting my will to the fact that I need others to survive. I cannot live this alone. My morality prior to this moment was a morality that believed it was ok to act in terms of individual pride, fear, and lonesomeness. Or maybe I just didn’t know it was fear. Doesn’t really matter. The morality I choose is my devotion to treating peace as a process.

Interestingly though, it seems that once the right morality is chosen, it no longer becomes a choice. That is, the morality must be followed, because it becomes a necessary aspect of survival. The morality wasn’t really a choice, it was just what that individual needs to survive—their identity, that is, oftentimes even their physical form. The Individual simply needed to choose to survive. I was lucky that way.

So for me, the universal piece is not a choice. The universal prosperity mission is not a choice. The Human Imperative is not a choice. I live it because I need it to survive as a person.

I have a responsibility to see this through. This is my response to the forces of reality that surround me. This is my response to my upbringing, my environment, my head. I am compelled, a calling.

But now I accept that I cannot do this alone—impossible, would never want to. And there isn’t enough time—certainly never be enough time; there is rarely enough energy, and the right people are rarely there when you need them. This endeavor, this responsibility, it may be never-ending. How can this work? How would one go about erecting a global computational peace system? There has to be a way to engineer a solution to this conundrum...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And so it was, The Individual materialized, passing from the maturation stage into the final stage of life, the adult phase.

The Individual was finally ready to procreate. But this Individual did not believe in physical procreation.

The Individual believed that the only way for individual agents of peace to take hold and erect and maintain the computational global peace system was for those agents to persist across generations, to become stewards of the system. This is because The Individual believed peace must be a never-ending evolutionary process, certainly even past the end of time, however that works.

But The Individual was not interested in inventing another in-group out-group situation, such as a religion or a movement. Instead, The Individual hatched a plan to achieve some semblance of general immortality, being the particular identity itself, the one devoted to The Human Imperative. The objective would be to design and engineer the identity, then upload it into our species’ psyche so that any Human being on the planet could become it if they so chose, their own instance, their own implementation of The Human Imperative framework, their own world piece computer.

So the Individual sought to create a network of like-minded Individuals, Individuals whom like himself would pass through maturation phase and become their own instance of The Individual, all individually devoted to satisfying The Human Imperative, building the universal piece computer, erecting the computational global peace system, operating world piece computers. They would synchronize their mindsets, deliberately, methodically, with precision—calculated, engineered. Their minds would become one.

From The Individual’s perspective, he was in fact alone in the world. There were a few like him in spirit, just not with this particular spirit, nor that particular vision and strategy. But one would suppose this is to be expected from individuals like so. They really just needed a lingua franca—a common language, a unifying glue—and a synchronizing force—a timepiece running in timespace.

To this end, it would only be a matter of time before other Individuals like him, became The Individual. Or, The Individual became them. Or, they all just became one overarching Individual—The Individual—with no real personal preference or orientation, all just stewards of the universal piece.

Besides for the fun of it and for experimentation with others, The Individual had no ego. The Individual was two parts: sophisticated emotion and an articulate inner voice of impartial reason—id and superego, in old psychological terms. The Individual’s constitution was the The Human Imperative; The Individual was devoted solely to it, to maintaining the universal piece by operating a world piece computer. All other devotions were in principle, compatible as a strict subset—religion, nationality, ideology, family, etcetera.

There is only one. There may be many bodies, many perspectives, many different experiences, many unique personalities, but The Individual numbers only one.

As it stood, as long as Humanity persists, The Individual, if engineered correctly, would live forever, for Humanity will always need to treat peace as an evolutionary computational process.

There will always be people who put computational peace above all else—people who treat peace first as a process, not a result, then go from there. There will always be people dissatisfied with the state of global peace. Those people who stand by their dissatisfaction, and they will likewise inevitably become The Individual.

The Individual is not a movement. The Individual is made up of however many independent free agents there exist devoted to The Human Imperative. The Individual interacts with itself and others on an as needed basis to satisfy The Human Imperative.

The end of as we know it begins, the final push to overcome our greatest adversary—time.

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We are all living in a fantasy.

The real question, is which fantasies are least fucked up? This like most things, depends on one’s perspective. There may not be a satisfactory answer. As the next best thing, we could try be be biased, biased to favor those fantasies that are most humane, most peaceful, and most practical.

This is a loosely-veiled fantasy sci-fi literary piece, a novel meta-fiction epic.

Welcome to the time machine for peace, a social invention program.

Please read on carefully; our fate as a species depends on it.

The Individual needs you.

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And so the story goes ...

FOOTNOTES

1 Skilcraft: https://industriesoftheblind.com/our-products/

2 deterrence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory

3 I know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinated_human_rights_activists

4 fatal error: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_of_death

Next Chapter: Opening pieces.