Negative Spaces

Happy Tuesday!

Pandemic help, for the day! Negative spaces.

1. Negative spaces are things that are not there. Like, for example, Congress is AWOL in two ways: 1. providing leadership that overrides Trump with veto-proof legislation at this time and 2. the media holding Congress accountable is absent completely. Congress getting a free pass is the game plan of them abdicating all power to the President and giving rise to Trump's claim the President has total authority. If Congress had passed even one veto proof law back in January regarding the coronavirus we'd all know better.

2. Software-engineer negative space management is crucial to my job. Coding of software in many ways is an exercise in negative space observations, what did a developer leave out? We call this defensive programming. Essentially a developer has a simulation environment in their head. The better the simulator the more that is missing can be caught. My code is relatively bug free largely because of my brain simulator than more so than positive knowledge of the code syntax and libraries. I am way underappreciated as an engineer because this simulator is not easily observable and the entire concept of negative spaces is ignored.

3. Coronavirus negative spaces. There are people who are naturally immune to diseases. We don't tap into this potential because making people immune to diseases is not the capitalism mindset. Capitalism is short-sighted. It plans only one quarter in advance until the next earnings report. Capitalism only plans one disease as they arise. There are exceptions like with HIV/AIDs where research is looking into people naturally immune. I've never had a cold or flu. I can't help but wonder why it is we are so short sighted and why I'm not a test rat in some lab somewhere, in a good way. I know why, we are conditioned to think like capitalists. I just wonder why we are not able to wake up from this and get started with Irreni World Scale? ha! 

Some background on how I learned about negative spaces. 

I first started thinking about negative spaces in the late 1970s when I first read Roger Zelazny's, Hugo Award winning book, "Lord of Light", first published in 1969.

Zelazny had an incredible talent for mixing religion, science fiction, and philosophy and creating seamless stories about the future.

Below is a short excerpt from Chapter One. The set up is as follows. An advanced Earth technology spaceship crashed landed on a planet and lost most of its technology in the crash. However, some key pieces were salvaged enough to recreate what they had. They even invented new technology for indefinite life by transferring consciousness from one body to another before death, thus simulating the Hindu tradition of reincarnation. This reincarnation even included storing human consciousness in animals because the wages of sin in Hinduism is not death, but reincarnation into lower forms of life.

Sam is one of the First who survived the crash landing. This scene takes place many thousands of years later. These First have used technology to become "gods" by technology appearing as magic. These "gods" have settled on the Hindu religion because it is a pantheon that supports multiple gods. The First made a choice from the get-go to leave the children of their bodies in a pre-printing press technology era. The "gods" live on Mount Olympus, thus they mixed mythologies somewhat. Sam has just be reincarnated into a human body after serving fifty years in prison as a lower life. Sam previously lead a revolution to overthrow Mount Olympus when calling himself Buddha and inciting a religious war between the Buddhists and the Brahamists and failed. His agenda was accelerationism, which simply means sharing all technology with everyone.

The setting is Sam has just been newly reincarnated and Sam is still in a fog of having just been revived from a lower form. The "god" Mara, the Lord of Illusion, was just killed while investigating a monastery where Yama, the Lord of Death, just reincarnated Sam and did so with an agenda to once again have Sam take of the mantle of Buddha and start another revolution against Mount Olympus. Yama has technology that not only can transfer consciousness between bodies, but can also brainwash a crowd. However, in order to brainwash a crowd then the brains must be prepared. Yama needs Sam's unique talents to undertake the crowd preparation for electronic brainwashing.

The scene starts when reincarnation invoked massive electrical energy as part of  the process and that energy spike then made Heaven's radar. Mara, the Lord of Illusion, was sent to investigate these energies and was subsequently killed by Yama in a monastery full of Buddhist monks. Sam refers to himself as lying because he knows all of the religious trappings are not supernatural, but just advanced technology. Sam does not believe any of the Buddhist or Hindu religion. Mara, the Lord of Illusion, was killed  during dinner in front of all the monks and Yama, aka Dharma, wants to use his crowd, brainwashing technology to make the monks forget the killing ever took place in order to cover his tracks ...

Lord Of Light, Except Chapter One

Once a Buddha, always a Buddha, Sam. Dust off some of your old
parables. You have about fifteen minutes."

Sam held out his hand. "Give me some tobacco and a paper."

He accepted the package, rolled himself a cigarette. "Light? . . . Thanks."

He drew in deeply, exhaled, coughed. "I'm tired of lying to them," he
finally said. "I guess that's what it really said. "I guess that's what it really is."

"Lying?" asked Yama. "Who asked you to lie about anything? Quote them
the Sermon on the Mount, if you want. Or something from the Popul Voh, or
the Iliad. I don't care what you say. Just stir them a bit, soothe them a little.
That's all I ask."

"Then what?"

"Then? Then I shall proceed to save them—and us!"

Sam nodded slowly. "When you put it that way . . . but I'm a little out of shape when it comes to this sort of thing. Sure, I'll find me a couple truths and
throw in a few pieties—but make it twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes, then. And afterward we pack. Tomorrow we leave for
Khaipur."

"So soon?" asked Tak.

Yama shook his head. "So late," he said.

The monks were seated upon the floor of the refectory. The tables had been moved back against the walls. The insects had vanished. Outside, the rain continued to fall. Great-Souled Sam, the Enlightened One, entered and seated himself before them. Ratri came in dressed as a Buddhist nun, and veiled.
Yama and Ratri moved to the back of the room and settled to the floor.
Somewhere, Tak too, was listening. Sam sat with his eyes closed for several minutes, then said softly: "I have many names, and none of them matter." He opened his eyes slightly then, but he did not move his head. He looked upon nothing in particular.

"Names are not important," he said. "To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?' So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world. He tells them, 'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.' Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes. They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it. But fire comes again into the world, many times. More men look upon fire. After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe. They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together. So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it. They call it 'fire.'

"If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use. He must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm his hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant. Therefore, 'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality—the Nameless.

"Therefore, I charge you—forget the names you bear, forget the words I speak as soon as they are uttered. Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves, which arises as I address it. It hearkens not to my words, but to the reality within me, of which it is part. This is the atman, which hears me rather than my words. All else is unreal. To define is to lose. The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma. Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream.

"Essence dreams it a dream of form. Forms pass, but the essence remains, dreaming new dreams. Man names these dreams and thinks to have captured the essence, not knowing that he invokes the unreal. These stones, these walls, these bodies you see seated about you are poppies and water and the sun. They are the dreams of the Nameless. They are fire, if you like.

"Occasionally, there may come a dreamer who is aware that he is dreaming. He may control something of the dream-stuff, bending it to his will, or he may awaken into greater self-knowledge. If he chooses the path of self-knowledge, his glory is great and he shall be for all ages like unto a star. If he chooses instead the way of the Tantras, combining Samsara and Nirvana, comprehending the world and continuing to live in it, this one is mighty
among dreamers. He may be mighty for good or for ill, as we look upon him — though these terms, too, are meaningless, outside of the namings of Samsara. "To dwell within Samsara, however, is to be subject to the works of those who are mighty among dreamers. If they be mighty for good, it is a golden time. If they be mighty for ill, it is a time of darkness. The dream may turn to nightmare.

"It is written that to live is to suffer. This is so, say the sages, for man must work off his burden of Karma if he is to achieve enlightenment. For this reason, say the sages, what does it profit a man to struggle within a dream against that which is his lot, which is the path he must follow to attain liberation? In the light of eternal values, say the sages, the suffering is as nothing; in the terms of Samsara, say the sages, it leads to that which is good. What justification, then, has a man to struggle against those who be mighty for ill?"

He paused for a moment, raised his head higher.

"This night the Lord of Illusion passed among you—Mara, mighty among dreamers—mighty for ill. He did come upon another who may work with the stuff of dreams in a different way. He did meet with Dharma, who may expel a dreamer from his dream. They did struggle, and the Lord Mara is no more. Why did they struggle, deathgod against illusionist? You say their ways are incomprehensible, being the ways of gods. This is not the answer. "The answer, the justification, is the same for men as it is for gods. Good or ill, say the sages, mean nothing for they are of Samsara. Agree with the sages, who have taught our people for as far as the memory of man may reach. Agree, but consider also a thing of which the sages do not speak. This thing is 'beauty,' which is a word—but look behind the word and consider the Way of the Nameless. And what is the way of the Nameless? It is the Way of Dream. And why does the Nameless dream? This thing is not known to any dweller within Samsara. So ask, rather, what does the Nameless dream?

"The Nameless, of which we are all a part, does dream form. And what is the highest attribute any form may possess? It is beauty. The Nameless, then, is an artist. The problem, therefore, is not one of good or evil, but one of esthetics. To struggle against those who are mighty among dreamers and are mighty for ill, or ugliness, is not to struggle for that which the sages have taught us to be meaningless in terms of Samsara or Nirvana, but rather it is to struggle for the symmetrical dreaming of a dream, in terms of the rhythm and the point, the balance and the antithesis which will make it a thing of beauty.

Of this, the sages say nothing. This truth is so simple that they have obviously overlooked it. For this reason, I am bound by the esthetics of the situation to call it to your attention. To struggle against the dreamers who dream ugliness, be they men or gods, cannot but be the will of the Nameless. This struggle will also bear suffering, and so one's karmic burden will be lightened thereby, just as it would be by enduring the ugliness; but this suffering is productive of
a higher end in the light of the eternal values of which the sages so often
speak.

"Therefore, I say unto you, the esthetics of what you have witnessed this evening were of a high order. You may ask me, then, 'How am I to know that which is beautiful and that which is ugly, and be moved to act thereby?' This
question, I say, you must answer for yourself. To do this, first forget what I have spoken, for I have said nothing. Dwell now upon the Nameless." He raised his right hand and bowed his head.

Yama stood, Ratri stood, Tak appeared upon a table.

The four of them left together, knowing the machineries of Karma to have
been defeated for a time.

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