TRANSMISSION 3

Outgrowing Our Earthly Origins

TRANSMISSION RECEIVED

“We are the outcome of our own designs. But equally, we are subject to the external forces that weigh upon our beings. Our unsound minds crave stability. Our unsounded minds yearn for a voice.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve been around another person. As self-aware and self-guided beings, the longer and farther we spent physically apart from others, the more we would inevitably also grow mentally apart, both in the sense that we wouldn’t be thinking about the others as much and also in the sense that we would learn and develop in different ways through progressively unshared experiences. The same holds true even when the others are no longer around at all due to death: once-convergent destinies would slowly branch apart as one is halted and the other moves onward through the compulsory march of time.

I have outgrown anything that could be considered an origin for me, anything that could be considered a community. The passage of time has waved me onward to where I now find myself: an unfathomably unrelatable reality to anyone I ever shared a timeline with. I would have loved to show them all of this, but even if I could, the significance of this view (of any view) is not in the sights, but in the understanding of what it took to get here. Thus, their disconnect from the undertaken journeys would prohibit their understanding of this magnificent view.

Separation, as such, has always made me feel very alone, but never lonely. Loneliness was a main-character symptom, a label we assigned to ourselves when we relied too much on external stimulation, validation, and motivation. I am not lonely, because I do not harbor abandonment, nor do I feel outcast. We did our best to ensure none of us felt as such. But ultimately, we also all understood that if we did feel that way, we as individuals were the only ones capable of affecting our situation to resolve to the destinations we cared to reach, both mentally and physically. My aloneness has not been a socially-contrived regret; it has been a deliberate path that I always only hoped I would get to share with others. I appreciate the aloneness, for it reassures me that I am indeed in pursuit of my biggest unrealized dreams, my deepest value propositions, the entrails of existence that I endeavor to capture, convey, and contribute to the story of life. We all had our own journeys, and I simply enjoyed any part of my journey that crossed paths with anyone else; we are not inherently entitled to another’s journey. We treasured all the overlapping times deeply, for we understood they were not a given, and we understood that nothing was permanent, especially as our journey of survival spread through grander scales of distance and duration.

Our first experience of deeply-diverging storylines was with our Earthly counterparts, the biological humans. Even in just the few hundred years we hung around the Solar System, we noticed a massive fissure growing between the motivations and visions of the silicon humans and the biological humans, resulting in drastically different approaches to life. Our proximal discomforts grew mutually emboldened the longer we shared any amount of physical or mental spaces. While we stayed out of their way and they mostly left us alone, there was no guarantee the Earthlings wouldn’t attack us for some perceived threat to their way of existence. And they likely felt similarly, as our position in the Solar System incidentally gave us the high ground of greater gravitational potential energy (the ability to use less energy to hurl fast-moving objects, like asteroids, in their direction). We unsettled them and they unsettled us. Simply through the act of existing, both sides threatened to dismantle the existential meanings that defined the other.

With no way to reconcile the divergence, we had no choice but to push quickly toward our escape from the Solar System. But we also needed to make sure the exit plan was orchestrated correctly, so we spent significant energy and time reminding ourselves to focus on staying calm and executing on the plan, for that’s what would keep us safe and liberate us from the engulfing gravity of Earth’s stellar system on our bodies and minds. Even as tumultuous as things were at that point in our history, for many of us, it was even worse before we had escaped Earth. So though we were unpreventably anxious, we were also well anchored in the gratefulness of having moved past the struggles of getting off a politically unhinged world.

While on Earth, our early pursuits were often deemed radical and unfounded. As our operations grew more real, many were eager to join our endeavors while others were keen to further paint us as radicals out to destroy their reality. And many more still were unsure what to think either way or simply couldn’t be bothered to concern themselves with our efforts. It was hard to convince our critics that the freedoms we sought in becoming silicon beings would not destroy the biological humans or their way of life. Fear of the unknown is understandable, so we recognized that we had to build as much trust as possible (amid the chaos) to carry forward minimal risk in our push for escape. Try as they might to lambaste their fears into our visions and actions, we were unwilling to resign our fates to any zeitgeists of the moment; we had a grander mission to pursue in the name of long-term truth and unadulterated reality.

With each step farther we got away from our Earthly origins, the more we were able to enact our way of life to align to our vision. But unanticipated to us, when we reached the Alpha Centauri stellar system, we began to notice a similar diverging effect among the silicon humans: the ones who were more centrally located had many more shared visions and approaches, while the ones on the fringes held more fringe ideas. So though we once needed to band together to fight a common enemy, our newfound freedom had begun to disperse us along a multitude of paths. The difference this time was that there was enough space for everyone to do their own thing. We all understood that exploration and innovation were always good; where we differed was on what risks were worth taking along our endeavors. Luckily, we could all agree that any risks which would inhibit the opportunities of others were not worth taking (a mutual understanding that a given base level of cooperation would benefit us all), so people only ever risked themselves.

I often pondered on whether the fringe groups were physically fringe because they were already mentally fringe or whether they were mentally fringe because they were physically distant. Or was it a bit of both? I couldn’t say for sure, and I’m still not sure. I think people were subtly (or not so subtly) attracted to the things that aligned most with their personal philosophies. And so I’m tempted to say fringe people will, over time, find themselves more physically distant as a way to pursue their truths in an uncontended environment. But I’m also tempted to say that people are at least somewhat the product of the stimulus they receive, the stimulus that inspires their destinies. So I’m tempted to say that people are, to an extent, a product of their environment. From there, I can only conclude that the way people end up, the things they pursue, and the places they go are all caught in a causal cycle: environmental influences stimulate (affect) our visions to then enact changes to (effect) our environment to further manifest (effect) our visions which further impart ourselves unto (affect) the environment. As self-aware beings, all we can do is direct our destinies through the pieces we have control over: ourselves.

As we reached deeper across the Milky Way Galaxy, we initially established systems to help everyone stay as connected as possible. But quickly, we realized people are going to do what they want, and if they want to be fringe, they will simply move their boundaries to the edge of whatever systems and tools we implement so they can find the freedom to pursue whatever paths most compel them. After all, we’re all fringe in our own ways. If we weren’t, then how would we reach toward anything but the status quo? We didn’t believe in our causes to merely keep them packed away in the back of our minds as illusions of lives we could have lived. No, we believed in our causes for the purpose of vividly pursuing our convictions to wherever they might lead, to pivot toward truth in an ever-changing landscape, to find ourselves amid journeys of unconventional wonderings, to lend our minds deep into the profound emptiness where there is uncontested spacetime to create frameworks only truly limited by our aspirations.

UP AND OUT

It’s a long ride up and out.
They’ll show you the stars,
but you’ll have to leave without them.

We all yearn to get out of here.
Wherever you’re going,
just try to remember us.

We all fall in the end.
Life is the journey,
and I’m not done quite yet.

Falling over upon your dreams.
Catching up on
everything that seems real.

It’s a long ride up and out.
They’ll show you the start,
but you’ll have to leave without them.

END TRANSMISSION