Philosophy | The Permanent Now
The Permanent Now
©2022 by Vernon Miles Kerr and VernonMilesKerr.com Originally published as a rough-draft to Twitter on Feb. 5, 2022.
I just went “All In” with WordPress and allowed it access to my Twitter Account. So, if it worked, you should be seeing a blurb on Twitter, right after I “post.”
More on The Permanent Now
This is a continuation of the train-of-thought in the original post (which follows below.) Maybe, instead of “Philosophy,” as the top heading, I should change it to “Theology,” because that quandary I discussed—the enigma that time presents—keeps pointing me back to the question of a supreme intelligence in the Universe. Not only the existence of one, but the seemingly obvious conclusion: it cares about us, even gives us little nudges occasionally to enrich our short lifetimes on this plane of existence.
If the foregoing is true, then another question arises, why would something “eternal” and all-encompassing care about temporary beings living out a temporary saga, on a temporary planet in, what may even be, a temporary Universe?
It wouldn’t—unless, somehow, human experience is a way of “exercising” newly cloned versions of that supreme intelligence’s self: embryonic bits of “God”? I’m reminded of my previous post, “Planet of War” where I ruminated over the oxymoronic idea that a “God of Love” could create a planet, of continual, bloody horror, down to the most microscopic level of living creatures.
So, if you are a religious person, am I speaking blasphemy yet? No. I am not: not unless you believe that texts, written by humans were dictated word-for-word by God itself. If you do believe that there has been NO error, NO prejudicial editing in your preferred “Holy Book,” then you must also be certain that the sciences of Geology and Archaeology are a scam perpetrated by Satan to discredit that “Holy Book.” And to believe that, you must believe that this Holy Book’s promotion of the idea of a being, on the same eternal plane as God, being capable of Evil, is also true. This amazing brain of ours, left alone and uninfluenced by this written “tradition,” re-coils at such a cognitively dissonant conclusion. There is no “evil” on the God plane, period. The “evil” is all on Earth, the temporary plane, and it serves as part of our “basic training” regime while we’re here.
The Earlier Post:
I was floored this week when a nice lady, whom I respect, added me to her Twitter-list of #Philosophers. Yeah, I philosophize a lot, and my blog has a lot of entries under that category but I have no illusions of being one of those erudite geniuses whom others have styled: “philosophers.”
But I do have a sort-of backwoods, half-assed, semi-educated, #philosophy. And, like all the other “philosophers” who’ve bloviated their opinions of what “life” is all about, I too entertain certain assumptions:
- I don’t care how ridiculous it sounds, I’m convinced there’s a higher-purpose to humanity’s tenure on this planet. Nothing — so chaotic & unpredictable as humanity’s presence on this Earth could be… that only.
2. I’m still not “un-convinced” that there isn’t a supreme intelligence in the Universe, who has something to do with that purpose. I’m still not “convinced,” either. But I lean toward, “yes.”
3. From human-perspective, there is no future yet, there is only the past. And, the “present” only exists as an infinity-thin, moving, 2-dimensional membrane that goes in only one direction—forward, never backward. Whatever is behind the membrane, no longer exists, except as, semi-persistent, artifacts and memories. When neither the artifacts, nor the memories exist—or when they become hopelessly obscured—the past (in effect) no longer exists either. Don’t bother looking for it.
4. Unless the “events” caused by the passing-by of the “membrane”‘ are recorded on some “permanent” medium of now-unknown “substance,” the entire history of Earth and all its inhabitants will eventually have been for naught. Gone. Don’t bother looking for it either.
5. If these “events,” (including our thoughts) are, indeed, backed-up or archived in a permanent medium, then that’s where the “real” past actually resides, along with the “real” present. That’s where we really live — in a kind of permanent “now”— one that, instead of being “infinity-thin” is infinity-vast.