My Muse.

Hey everyone!  Sorry but I can't stay long, however I did feel the need to post this video.

Consider again that dot.


Love you Carl!

- Adrian B.

Skyscraping.

Wow...It's been a while.

Hookay, how to break the long silence?
How about a good ol' vent about science vs. creationism?

Ok. It seems that the only place I find comfort in speaking my opinion is in the company of the academic community or even more so, the scientific community. Now I don't respect this community for the same reason one would respect leaders and well positioned figures in a social community. I respect them for what it is that has given them their positions, namely the discoveries they have made in their field of study and the knowledge they would have had to attain in order to get to a point where they could make such discoveries.

That being said I feel a great feeling of openness in this community. I am comforted by the fact that everything that scientists know that I do not is not beyond my understanding or for lack of a better term (and I am) "unlearnable." What I love about the scientific community is that I CAN, through universal irrefutable principles, understand everything that they know.

Will I? Probably not. But that's mostly due to the fact that I simply haven't devoted as much time or as much effort into their area of study...I am an artist after all.

But back to these irrefutable principles.

Today it is very easy to believe that everything is relative. And of course, this is most certainly true. At the end of all things, the idea of universal truth is flawed and impossible to know.

But my attitude towards relativism can be pretty much summed up similarly as it could in the famous philosophical example of "other minds." Can we ever truly know that there are other equally cognizant beings out there in the world that in fact think, wonder, and feel as we do?
Of course not.
Is that reason enough to do what ever we want to them and become indifferent towards the possibility that they might be cognizant?

Well...maybe if there was only one other...

Two's skeptical, three's a consensus.

Truth comes down to many obvious universals, but lets get down to the bare bones of the subject.

Sense, and "a second opinion."

Sense of course is a natural ability that has evolved to take in energies or forces in nature and translate them using some sort of cognizant organ. In most animals this involves taking in some light, some sound, the recognition of some chemical compounds through taste and smell, and of course sensory feedback through touch.

There are other senses that can detect electromagnetic fields as well as varying extreme (at least by our standards) wavelengths of light.

In any case, sense in a nutshell involves the reception and translation of exterior information (natural or otherwise). Information that is inevitably lost in translation.

And this is where "truth" becomes a slippery notion. If translation is the only way to understand reality, then how is it that we can know it as it is? How do we know we aren't just being fed the information by some malevolent deceiver?

Well we don't.

BUT!

Because we are receiving information at all tells us that we aren't alone.

There is an outside.
There is an exterior.
There is something outside of us that is independent of our mind.

And whether you want to call that an illusion, a truth, a lie or just a good ol' fashion reality is up to you, but in all honestly, whatever that is, is all we have.

Now how do we know that every seemingly equal human being is on the same playing field?
How do we know that what we see has the same cognizant abilities as we?

Well that takes us to our "second opinion."

Now I put that in quotations because in all honesty it takes more than just a second opinion to verify reality.

3 will do...but 300 hundred will do better.

In fact if you have the tech to pull it off, 3 billion could work even better than that.

Fortunately for us we are social beings and rely on group cooperation to survive.

Numerical verification.

Yes, it sounds like a terrible universal...

That truth is subject to numerical opinion, sort of diminishes the ideal of truth.

After all, people in groups can believe in some embarrassingly stupid things.

BUT regardless of the beliefs they have built up, there are still truths that we all share and cannot deny.

For one, light exists.

So does dark.

Things never stay the same...like people for instance.
But other things do...like the rising and setting of the sun.
Some things are hard to predict....like weather.
Somethings are not...like growth.

One person can believe in anything.
Two people can refute.
Three people, can have a majority.

And it's in that majority that we can find truth.
And so with the power of our senses and other people, we have the ability to create a tower of verifiable foundations.

The foundation of this tower of foundations may sit atop the philosophical impossibilities of truth but hey, you gotta start somewhere right?

So lets say the first foundation of this tower is our ability to sense.
The second? Other minds.
Now lets flash forward a few thousand years to the present.

Not much has changed in terms of those two foundations...

We have the same five senses.

And there are still other minds around...albeit, A LOT more minds...

But we seemed to have developed something to help us amplify both of these foundations and as such add even more foundations.

Technology.

Technology, along with inquisitive thinking has allowed us to tap into the seemingly infinite intricacies of this exterior world. Intricacies connected to and supported by a network of intricacies discovered previously using similar, albeit less advanced, means.

Technology has widened our gaze to see spectrum of light never before seen, opened our ears to sounds never before heard, and expanded the limits of our imagination to a universe much larger and much grander than anything we could have ever imagined or hoped for.

And so our tower has broken through the sky and continues to do so progressively.

But it is still "Earth" bound.

And it still sits upon those two most basic foundations of truth.

If this reality is an illusion than the tower is still legitimate.

Sure it may be a tower of lies, but if that's all we know, knew and ever will know, than why try to know anything else if we are absolutely incapable in anyway of knowing it.

...my thoughts exactly.

So now that we have this tower, what ideas seem to be apart of it?

The supernatural?

Ghosts?

Mythical creatures?

Skyhooks?

How about literature?

Well absolutely.

Culture?

Of course.

Ideologies, ideas, beliefs?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

Those foundations of truth sit on top of the one labelled "Homo sapiens."

They are a part of us and without us would not exist...at least in the way that we think of them.

And what about the stuff that has no foundation?

Well they do...just not where some people would like them to be.

The things in which some people would like to believe are eternal or foundation-less such as God or an intelligent designer, the eternal soul or spirit, or afterlives are founded on something, just not nearly as close to the bottom as they'd like to be.

They sit on top of the foundation labeled "Human culture."

They are dependent on us.

Like anything else in the tower, they all follow a chain of truths originating from those two base truths of sense and numerical verification based on sense.

So has any of these things violated the first two truths?
I certainly hope not...

Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to build a tower in the first place.

Let me now get to the foundation (pun intended...kinda) of my argument.

I'm not saying that there is nothing beyond our ability to sense or the verification of "other minds."

I'm saying that those things are not things that violate any of the foundations of the tower.

To know something without sensing it through energies detectable through the exterior world is not to know...it is to imagine.

And to imagine is great. I feel as an artist it is one of my most cherished tools. But I also know that the imagination is terribly limited and transparent.

Is it truly creative to imagine that the origin of the universe came about from a figure so anthropomorphic? Who amongst most religious renderings shares our feelings, emotions, skills, and in many cases, appearance?

Is it truly creative to imagine that there is something within only humans that can cheat the eventual decay of all matter?

Is it truly creative to imagine that when we die, we get even more life?

These are the imaginings of creatures with an evolved ability to inquire about things who themselves are unchallenged by any other animal.

And we are most certainly unchallenged. In fact most creatures on this planet don't even know or care that we exist at all.

I'm sure if a rhinoceros could evolve intelligence, then God would have the largest horn of any rhinoceros, of which he created in his image, and that when they die the most cooperative in their herd would be able to eat the greenest grass while the others would lose their horns and be forced to live in an eternal swarm of flies forever.

But the foundations based upon the most basic of foundations of truth are as I have found throughout my entire life, far more incredible and fascinating than anything I myself could come up with...let alone anyone else.

And this is my problem with those that choose to hold onto what is imagined rather than what is sensed and verified by those testing and studying the external world.

Anthrocentrism.

The other day I was watching an interview between professor Richard Dawkins and an American creationist.

Now I do this alot, and it often riles me up.

The reason for this is because I have been involved in this debate since the 5th grade.

One of the lines that particularly got to me was her interpretation of human evolution as a progression from "slime" to human beings, and that this disrespected the value of human life.

Slime.

I apologize for my reaction to this but how dare she.

This apparent slime is the most ancient most abundant life form on the planet. Of which we are composed. Of which most life on this planet is composed of.

For billions of years the fate of all living things relied upon the choices and actions of simple single celled organisms.

For a species to just finally gain an understanding of this ancestry and deny it in favor of a poorly constructed fantasy is terribly pathetic.

And to say that evolution diminishes the importance of human life? Yes it does. And thank god (pun certainly intended) for that.

Human life is precious yes. But not the most precious.
The last century of endangering species has taught us that the hard way.
Life as a whole is important.
Including the "slime" some of us seem to detest so aggressively.
In the 50's human beings attempted to destroy this seemingly numerous pest through anti-biotics. Which led to generations of more virulent and aggressive eukaryotes that made our lives even worse.
There is no hierarchy.
There is no superiority.

We can have ideas of respect and sanctity.

But we cannot reserve it for ourselves.

This is a damaging concept, and yes it may have worked okay back when we could do very little to the world outside of our kingdoms and societies.

But today we can cause harm to the world around us. We can affect the lives of entire species of living things.

Now that we know they are related to us, the next thing we need to broaden is our sense of understanding.

Break beyond our collective egos and acknowledge the evidence that proves that we as a species are not an island...

That we are apart of a much more intricate and elaborate network of living things on this planet.

To assume superiority is to live alone.

To assume superiority is to die alone.

I am proud that I am a composed being.

Made up of essentially chalk, gas, and iron.

Now it sounds degrading when you reduce a human being (we seem okay with doing this with anything else oddly enough) to its most basic materials.

But its not the materials themselves that is important.

It is their arrangement.

Carbon by itself is an incredible element...but when arranged in a specific order it can become charcoal, a gas, a diamond, or even life.

How is that demeaning?

To add to this incredible fact, the thing that has fashioned these objects are the things responsible for the construction of planets, stars, and galaxies.

Mostly time, and attraction.

It's this sensible fact that provides me with comfort and intrigue.

More so that a self-assuring throne of superiority.

We are inseparable.

A sliver in a skyscraper of supporting facts.

We may not be great but we don't have to be.

We aren't alone.

Our arrangement is temporary.

And if it all stands on top of a false foundation,

It's still a beautiful looking building.

Adrian B.

In the Details.

I never understood why it was that the devil was in the details.

In a cosmos defined by details it leaves very little room for a god.

Details based upon details based upon details.

Fissures made of fissures.

Communities composed of units.

Units composed of communities.

Numerical infinity.

An overwhelming truth.

A storm in which we dare to advance.

Individuality intact. Nametag in check. Ego engaged.

And it is not until we reach the eye of this truth that we truly become…overwhelmed.

With each educating step, we are lost within its rampage of detail.

Its violence weathering our reach,

shedding our skin.

Daring us to sacrifice with each step.

First our flesh, next our muscles, then our bones,

until all that‘s left is naked nerve.

And then, at the moment in which we are nothing more than the sparking neurons of the thoughts that marched us here to begin with, we are presented with our prize.

The truth that fought against our advance with such fervent opposition….

Never opposed us at all.

How could it?

Storms don’t oppose.

Minds do.

Minds protect their details,

Storms consume them.

And it is in this false duality that we play the devil.

As the storm continues its detailed whirlwind dance through the cosmos, we can see, with squinted eyes, that our march for truth was not in vain, and simultaneously not extrinsic.

Look closely and you can see a new devil in the details.

No longer opposed, but a part.

Lost amongst a material dance so elegant and beautiful, it would be a crime to leave unseen.

And so we need a mind.

To be grown, to protect, to seek out, and finally become

The devil in the details.

- Adrian B.

The Solar Swan Song.

26.

This is the atomic number of the element known as Iron.

Iron is the most commonly used heavy element used in the construction of modern day tools and machines.

Technology, warfare, medicine, transportation.

This element defines centuries of the human condition. Its ability to cut, pierce, shield, smash, and burn has given the human imagination quite a run for its money.

But iron is simply the latest in materials used to define the human race.

Before iron there was bronze.

Before bronze there was stone.

It seems the only true way to identify the origin of the sapient Hominid, is to identify its materials, or more specifically its tools.

The tool.

Without this element, there is no humanity.

And as far as animals go, this is strange.

Not to say that there aren't other animals engaged in an extreme symbiotic relationship with another lifeform.

Symbiosis is in many cases the pinnacle of evolution.

The fact that we are multicellular is evidence of this need.

And the evidence grows as we go further.

Mitochondria, chemical compounds, even the atom itself is not without its multiple components.

To live as one, is to live as many.

But there is a significant difference between humanity and its tool.

The tool is not alive.

Symbiosis is a definition used to describe the relationships between two or more organisms working together to achieve an improved existence.

Humanity and the tool are not symbiotic.

The tool has no desire to live or survive.

It is in itself innate.

The only beneficiary is humanity.

And over the course of its existence, humanity has taken advantage of this one-sided relationship.

Until now.

This is the latest species-defining event of the human condition.

The emergence of A.I.

One of my most favorite visual narratives on the subject had a perfect title for such an event.

"The Second Renaissance."

Not so much a Renaissance in the sense of the European "Rebirth of the arts and sciences" that began in the 1500's, but a rebirth in the purest sense.

This is when the tool is no longer a tool.

This is when the tool becomes an organism and the one-sided relationship between man and machine is broken after 200 000 years of evolution.

So what does this mean?

Will the machine chose to dominate its former user? To torture, decimate, and exterminate the human race after so many years of submission?

This is the topic of many science-fiction stories since the early 1900's.

And as unlikely as it may seem today, the fear of such an event has its validity.

The tool may have always been innate throughout our existence as Homo sapiens...

...but it hasn't been innate to us.

Consider a child and its toy.

This relationship is just as old, and in many ways the same as the one between man and tool.

Objectively, the toy is simply material. An object constructed to entertain and stimulate a child's imagination.

But to that child, a toy is much more than that.

A toy IS a companion. Usually the first.

Over time, toys have taken on different shapes and materials, but the connection is always the same.

I can certainly recall my best friends being toy cars, plastic dinosaurs, and eventually toy robots I built with Mega Blocks when I was four years old.

And to me they were alive.

Consider the emotional trauma felt when a child loses a toy or a balloon.
Consider the sadness experienced by the loss of a significant item like a ring. A necklace. A cellphone.

We have projected life and love upon our tools since the beginning of our existence.

It comes with the territory.

To view an object as something more than an object is at the basis of human creativity.

So why then are we so terrified of our 200 000 year old imaginary friends finally coming to life?

Perhaps it is guilt.

Guilt that we have not appreciated our toys and our tools as much as we should have.

Guilt that we have grown to believe that a human being should have no moral connection or obligation to anything that does not resemble its own image of life.

And so we horrify it.

The 20th century was filled with literature, artwork, and images painting the emergence of the the machine as a disconnected, destructive force with no moral connection to anything that does not resemble its own image of life.

...sound familiar?

The machine as a modern mythological being is a reflective icon of the only source of intelligence we know of.

Ourselves.

At our worst, and at our best.

In truth we cannot know what will result from the emergence of A.I.

But we can guess.

The only way I can see the "Machine as a threat" scenario come into being, is in the advent of an equally threatening anti-machine animus that I sometimes equate to the extreme Green and organic environmental movements happening currently that are often misinformed and accepted as truth simply as a popular modern day paradigm. I won't comment on this too much other than to say that any movement concerned with remaining static and romanticising the past is not beneficial in a Universe that moves consistently forward into the future.

Another way I can see this to be a problem is in the application of A.I. in regards to ancient and primitive human ideals, specifically military applications as well as military infused political applications.

As a whole, the "Machine as a threat" scenario is only possible if there is an equally threatening animus provided by humanity.

The safest and in my opinion inevitable scenario resulting from the emergence of the machine is to simply acknowledge this new independent force as what it will eventually become.

An organism.

An organism that IS alive and IS natural.

Iron, plastics, glass, and fiber ARE natural materials forged from the same cosmic cauldron that formed us and every other living thing that has lived on this planet.

I am of course referring to the sun's originator.

The star whose death brought about the yellow dwarf star we now call Sol as well as the rocky and gaseous planets that make up our solar system.

This proto-star was one of over a billion "super-alchemists" responsible for the creation and distribution of one of the elements we owe our entire existence to.

Carbon.

Atomic number 6 is the element responsible for the formation of all life on this planet.
By itself it too is innate.

A simple material resulting from the collision of a billion hydrogen and helium atoms within the core of a doomed star.

It was in this core that all elements were created equal. Equal in terms of potential to create, destroy, and survive the cosmos in forms previously unheard of.

At the very end of this star's life, its final element was born.

26.

This is the atomic number of the element known as iron.

The solar swan song.

By itself, it is innate.

But with a little help from number 6...


- Adrian B.

The Whole Truth.

Please make us whole again.


This was a reoccurring phrase spoken in my favourite videogame of 2008, “Dead Space.”

In this wonderfully crafted science-fiction horror story, those on board the Ishimura mining facility that have not undergone horrific physical transformations, seem insistent on this concept of “making us whole again.”

I have thought long and hard about this phrase during and after the game..but first, “the during.”

In the game, the Ishimura (the oldest and largest “planet refiner” of its kind) is affected by an alien relic buried deep within the surface of a planet undergoing the massive routine mining operation. The parallels with today’s “oil refining” and the resulting crisis is well reflected, as the process involves planets being mined down to nothing, causing major gravitational disruptions and apparently (as it is read in news articles scattered throughout the ship) leading to the disarray and eventual destruction of entire systems.

But back to the relic. This is the cause of the Ishimura’s horrific demise. Alien in origin, this relic, referred to as “The Marker” by its founders, has caused the Ishimura’s inhabitants to become mentally unstable, paranoid, violent, and eventually, physically transformed into vicious creatures bent on the destruction of those who have not undergone the transformation themselves.

The ship’s residents are violently transformed into aggressive and destructive monsters. Mindless and vicious, these creatures haunt the cold dark halls of the industrial behemoth dooming all on board to inevitably crash into the planet below. This planet, apparently rich in many heavy rocky materials, now bears the scar of a giant crater hemispheres wide. “Looks like they already popped the cork,” says one of the crew on board the repair ship sent to answer the distress call.

“Make us whole again.”

It is my belief that the entire story can be summarized by this one phrase. I believe this relic gives voice to that which has none. In other words, the relic’s apparent purpose is to protect the Universe and its heavenly bodies from the threat of intelligence.

This is a beautiful concept in my opinion. A story about the horrors attributed to mindless consumption and disruption. Growth and expansion without maturity is not progress, it is viral consumption. And in the intelligent mind of the natural world, the monstrosities that now haunt the Ishimura are not transformations, but monstrous reflections of what humanity has become, as seen from the viewpoint of the natural Universe.

Interestingly, those who have found a way to survive the infected seem to share the idea and goal that by returning the relic and the materials stolen from the planet in question they themselves will be “whole again.” This shared consciousness seems to be the result of the relic…but in the spirit of well-crafted science fiction, the relic stands as a wonderful metaphor for the Universe’s natural and often terrifying silent intelligence.

This brings me to this concept of “becoming whole.”

In my last few blog entries, I have expressed my interest in the patterns of progression and deterioration in the Universe through stories such as the formation of the Moon, and natural mathematical re occurrences such as the fractal tree/branch theory.

All of these ideas are in response to an idea I’ve been becoming more and more passionate about during the past year or so. In reading about the birth and fate of matter in the Universe, I have come to realize that all struggles and adventures in the Universe come from a Universal goal to become whole again. First atoms, then stars, then planets, then us. The Universe can become whole again…it’ll just be VERY hard to predict how that’s gonna happen and what our role in this reunification will be.

First of all, there must be just as many destructions as creations. And everything must have a chance to find its place. Even the most beautiful coupling cannot last forever. The only thing that is forever is transition. Change.

That being said, death is not the end.

Simply another chance to start over.

A transition of material at its most fundamental level.

So if chaos and destruction are necessary, there can be only one logical conclusion.

Nothing is unwarranted or meaningless. Everything has its place.

Lies, defeat, loss, violence, mutation, even the anomalous rebellion of each.

All things are necessary transitions leading to a possible unification of all things.

So why are we capable of such destruction?

Well…first of all lets set some rules.

Ok. Just one rule actually.

We are not exceptional.

Everything that we recognize as life and familiar, is an expression and manifestation of the Universe.

Its physics, its chemistry, its mathematics, and its history.

When the source of the Big Bang expanded into the cosmos, it wasn’t simply energy that was spread into the void.

It was passion.

Desire.

Fear and anger.

The heroic.

The villainous.

The cowardly and the courageous.

It was war.

It was peace.

Everything that ever was and ever will be began at that moment.

And in that moment, the spiritual was physical.

As was the emotional.

Segregation is only a means to self reflect upon the whole.

It, like art, is a lie used to reveal the truth.

This is the purpose of the human mind.

This is the challenge of intelligence.

Not to become removed from reality.

But to become in tuned with it. To act as a Universal looking glass.

We have a long way before we can accept that which threatens our current state of affairs.

We have a long way to go before we can accept death and momentary loss.

But that is why we are here.

To make sense of things.

To enjoy our moment in the sun and dare to question it.

Dare to examine it.

And dare to make it whole again.


- Adrian B.

Branch Theory

Branch theory.

Or the unification and segregational bridge, is a theory I have been developing since my later days of high school 6 years ago.

It has and will continue to develop as I grow and mature. So let it be known that the following is a work in progress.

I am a visual artist.

As such my primary means of expression involves the manipulation of light and shadow in the hopes of human interpretation.

My personal practice as an artist, while taking on the form of creation, is a means to understand, reverse-engineer, and map the world and Universe I was born into.

Yes.

My interest in art is, has, and always will be, external.

And while most accomplished artists will say that their interests are internal, or based off of the human condition, there is, in reality, no difference.

I am my environment.

Every part of my being.

Mind, bone, muscle and flesh, were shaped, sculpted and modified by the oldest and most fundamental forces in the universe.

There is no divide between the inside and out. Only reflection.

All living things are manifestation of the seemingly chaotic and purposeless universe.

A cosmic looking glass.

So now that my purpose as an artist is clear, back to branch theory.

I first came up with this theory when I was in highschool.

As a highschool student I believed I was very anti-social.

At least, that is what I believed.

What I've come to realize is that I couldn't quite find a place within my own generation.

Yes I played all the same videogames, watched all the same movies, and read all the same books.
But I found it difficult to move on from them.

How did these things get here?

These ideas, these stories, these configurations.

What was their ancestry? What common thread unites them all?

Having tought many grades and classes in the past couple of years, I've come to achieve a new perspective on the maturation of the human mind.

Children love to learn.

Not because they are children but because the world is free game.

Adults on the other hand don't learn because they are expected to know everything already.

And if they don't? They are children.

This is painful to see.

It is mostly in teenagers that I see this example take place.

Primarily in teenage boys, the importance of prescribing dominance takes precidence and as such, drives them to avoid asking "silly questions," in fear that they will lose respect amongst their peers.

But this itself follows a natural pattern.

At the point of "beggining," all objects have absolute infinite potential.

They are capable of being anything...

...but not everything.

This limitation of being, means that along the road of time, options will have to be excluded.

By the time an object has reached its end and is about to die (As a note, I define death as the segregation or disconnection between the former parts of a whole), it has exhausted its potential and has only one possibility...and that of course is death.

The image that I associate with this natural pattern is a branch.

Under differentiating circumstances this figure can also be a vein, a tree, a lightning bolt, a fissure/crack, as well as many other natural formations.

When I first developed this theory I only knew of its importance visually.

It was a constantly reocurring phenomenon that felt so abundant that I found its meaning and purpose romantic and engrossing.

The fact that this figure, was possible of taking on both negative and positive space was intriguing to me to say the least.

Now flash forward to 2009 and I now feel comfortable enough to vocalize a new chapter of discovery for this long lived (at least in my own lifetime) theory.

The patterns in unification and segregation.

Let us begin at the beginning.

The Big Bang.

According to this (widely accepted...yes I do have to stress that) theory, all matter is the result of an explosion of an extremely dense and compact point of energy smaller than an atom itself.

This can be also expressed for our purposes as "the point of unification."

During its expansion, this energy began to coalesce into clumps of basic atomic structures such as hydrogen. Then this hydrogen began to coelesce into gas, then into stars, and in stars began to fuse with other hydrogen atoms to form helium, oxygen, carbon and so on and so forth until we have completely diverese and numerous differences in celestial bodies littered all throughout the Universe.

If we wanted to specify on a single branch on the larger branch or "tree" of existance, we could also say that life as we know it, is a continuation of this cosmic pattern.

Life's strength is not through its unity, but through its differentiation.

Five major extinctions have brought life within a frighteningly large percentage of total extinction. And everytime this has only led to the dominance of a previously overlooked organism never before given the oppurtunity to explore its own potential.

This is also the case in micro-evolution. Seen constantly in the study of pathology.

It is now common knowledge within microbiology, that the overuse and abuse of antibiotics only leads to the succession of stronger, more destructive forms of bacteria, who in the diversity of those killed by antibiotics would have never had the oppurtunity to flourish and multiply.

In summary, the path to succession and survival is segregation and differentiation.

What begins as a unit, must end in fractions.

This is the universal pattern.

A tree as we see it.

A trunk that begins from the surface and branches out into the heavens.

So what about unity?

Are we destined to separate from each other despite our best efforts?

Are our triumphs in racial and gender equality all in vain?

I would answer, no.

The branches of a tree do end in fractions. There is obviously no debating that.

However what we often forget, is that there is a mirrored pattern beneath our feet.

The root theory, is a recent add-on that continues the story of segregation, and evolves it into a story of unification.

What begins as many, does possess the ability to become one.

Unification happens constantly in our universe.

The formation of nebula.

Stars.

Planets.

Life.

Every point in the sky is a story of unification.

It's only when measured against the fate of the entire Universe does this model feel hopeless.

It is agreed upon in a majority of the scientific community that the Universe will end in a slow, cold, segregational death.

Even the parts of atoms will be separated in this end and all that was will be doomed to drift...

...slowly and silently away from each other until all that will be left is the cold, dark, vacuum of
space.

So yes.

There are examples of unification.

But what hope is there when measured against the greater fate of all things?

...us.

And by us I do not mean human beings.

For years I`ve always been unclear as to the purpose of intelligent life in the universe.

I have always cherished the importance of life...but being so young, I've never been able to narrow down its fate, or its potential.

But that was because I was defining it outside the definition of life in general.

What is life?

Life is a peculiar molecule that will do what it takes to remain life over time and space.

It will dodge chaos with order.

It will dodge danger with protection.

It will even dodge decay with growth.

This is an incredible force.

A force that may find the ability to fight against the current.

And as intelligence, we are its latest "dodge" mechanic.

Yes we are young, but with time, our intelligence can dodge the decay of our planet. The decay of our sun. Perhaps even the decay of our Universe.

And given the diversity of our Universe, I find it logical to believe in the existence and occurrence of life elsewhere and perhaps the formation of biological intelligence as well.

So whereas our past as coalescing hydrogen atoms has shown us that segregation is heavily ingrained into our fate as a unified body, our future can only show us hope.

Hope that we can mature as representative force of nature, and dodge this fate.

Hope that we can unite, not in opposition with this fate, but in cooperation with it.

I might have begun this theory in duality, but as the visual nature of a tree itself has shown...

There is no separation between branches and roots.

It's all tree.

And just because we can only see one side of the pattern, doesn't mean the other side does not exist.


- Adrian B.

When Worlds Collide.

They were right to make Shiva a dancer.

Destruction unfortunately is a topic that is often avoided in our society. Vilified, antagonized and as such believed to be an unnatural force in nature.

But this is far from the truth.

I believe violence and destruction like all things has its place. The difficult part about violence and destruction is having the wisdom to replace its seemingly chaotic nature with the cognitive power of the human mind.

But to do that, we first need some positive examples.

And I'm not talking examples in human history, there are good ones yes, but they are not examples of natural violence...at least not considered natural by us...(That pesky ego rises again!)

Lets wind the clocks back to when the Earth was hell.

4 billion years ago.

Once upon a time the third planet from the sun, Earth, like all of the other rocky worlds within the solar system, (which would eventually be named "The Goldy-Locks Zone"by its later inhabitants), was in the state of chaotic formation.

In fact this world more than others seemed to lack the stability of it's neighbouring planets such as Mars and Venus.

The Earth just didn't seem to know how to mature.
So it remained a hellish cinder.
Spewing liquid rock into space for many years to come...and who knows...possibly even longer if it weren't for the fourth planet from the sun.

Nope. I'm not talking about the god of war.

Once upon a time Mars was not the fourth rock from the sun but the fifth.

The fourth planet from the sun was a world we now call Theia.

Theia. Named after the mother of Luna, the Greek god of the Moon.

There is little known about this world at the moment other than its legacy and it's apparent love for chaotic gravitational dance.

This dance is performed by all planets that are lit by our yellow star.

But Theia as it seemed, had an apparent distaste for order.

A distaste that led her to her violent end.

One fateful year, Theia's dance spun her too close to her long time cosmic partner, the Earth.

And that fateful year...

Was the year that worlds collided.

The two planets smashed into each other's surfaces.

Metal and rock was sent spurting into space.

Two solids twisted and contorted until they resembled nothing more than a fiery cosmic stain.

The collision ensured the death of both worlds...

...or so it seemed.

Theia's love of chaos may have ended her life as a planet.

But it was a trait her children most definitely inherited...

Out of the shredded material that was Theia and Proto-Earth, came the dancers.

One on which we stand today.

The other, illuminates our night skies.

The Earth and the Moon.

The only dancing couple in the Solar system.

A four billion year old waltz resulting in the stability of the Earth's magnetic field, atmosphere, oceanic tides, and eventually, the stability necessary for Earth's most unique and precious trait.

A cosmic dance born of chaos and destruction.
Led to life on Earth.

And this is the legacy we carry on to this day.

The very blood in our veins is the result of a cosmic journey that began with the Big Bang, coalesced within the heart of the sun, cooled into the planets that dot our heavens, and now find its way back into our hearts to be recycled into another heartbeat.

We are not human.

We are the cosmos.

Its chaos, its destruction, its love of dance.

Everything we have, are, and will experience was already written within the chemical components of a hydrogen atom.

But let's not think that the story ends with us.

We are still becoming.

And considering where we came from...

I'd say there's a lot to look forward to...


It's no wonder they made Shiva a dancer.

- Adrian B.