Too Close

So go ahead and tell me this isn’t a rockin’ photo. I’m listening. But mostly to learn something about you. Will you speak? What I like and don’t like feels too close, too personal for me to share, therefore I get lost somewhere in the clouds. Does anyone care? Or only those who thought they could use me for something? Here’s what you can use me for, if you want: I’m a space traveler, and the secret of the photo above is the sky is dark, almost as dark as space. Watch and lose yourself…

Space is too far, my mind too close. Elon Musk says he can take us to space without AI. Or maybe now he’s a convert and he’ll graft AI onto our brains so we can control it(or it us?) Interesting idea and bold, as it pits human against AI in the actual processor space of the brain. Do you know how far away space is? Not far yet farther than you can imagine. 100 miles up, an hour-and-a-half drive by car on the freeway. But to get to other stars, maybe tothe other side of the galaxy? That could take more than 50,000 years depending upon your route and if you travelled at the speed of light, which you can’t. My point about far is since we invented radio, light and radio waves haven’t travelled 100 light years, much less 50,000. We’re trapped in a causality bubble that prevents us getting anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. Think about it, we can get into space in less than 5 minutes by rocket but we can’t go anywhere once we get there. So we can basically toodle around the neighborhood and that’s it, unless we evolve into a kind of creature with lot more patience for a long roadtrip…

Nevertheless, there’s something in the neighborhood that’s a bit disturbing, something that lurks and is ready to jump out at any time and raise a ruckus…our own minds. I maybe should just say my own mind, even though I’m sure with all due respect yours is broadly similar. Maybe I could build a rocket to take me up 100 miles. Maybe I could even design a whole emigration plan for explorers to travel down the spiral arm of our galaxy towards the center, then cleverly slingshot out to Andromeda galaxy and beyond, and just put on the brakes any time we find something really interesting. It occurs to me this wouldn’t be absolutely difficult at all, just relatively difficult. And in case you haven’t noticed humans really enjoy challenges that are relatively difficult. So, really the only thing particularly hard about exploring our galaxy and beyond is dealing with our own brains. Because we love to sing about sex and hormone-induced love and to take sides against each other about issues that probably don’t matter. Those issues are pretty much a matter of approach. As deciding whether it’s okay to not make up your bed or to shout at your kids. Do you really want to tell someone else how to approach those things?

So let’s go. Down the spiral arm. You know why? Because by doing so we engage some of our better nature, our pursuit of a goal and our problem-solving selves. Interestingly, a nice ride isn’t really the full story, maybe at best an album of snapshots arranged to make a good story, a good memory. So here’s one mystery of traveling down a spiral arm: spiral arms of galaxies are merely density waves, they don’t exist any more than stock market movements do, or waves in the ocean. These things are real but they don’t exist independent of their media. So a good story, a nice ride, a book of memories even while the memories are being created. Everything affects everything else and we move through a medium of which we’re made. OK, all very metaphysical, but what I notice is even though it’s probably literally impossible to “travel down a spiral arm” of a galaxy (how fast does the density wave move? Probably faster than you can travel along it at 90 degrees to its motion), still, the idea of doing that is worth the pursuit. It’s probably impossible to travel to other galaxies before the universe ends. I mean maybe Andromeda, but most of what’s out there is probably much farther away than we could get to before whatever end this universe is headed towards (big crunch, big freeze, infinite expansion). Again, not the point. The point, I think, is we’re able to set goals. And while pursuing those goals stuff happens. We make a nice scrapbook of memories. Plan and memory. Attention focused on the future and on the past. One question: what about attention focused on the moment?

Uh oh. Too close. Now you’ve caught me where I live. I can tell you a story about my future plans or some cool things I remember doing, but what about right now? I mean, I could be telling you a story, sure, yet I’m sure there’s something most poignant about letting the story unfold. I look up and see the color gradient from black to red on a restaurant sign in this little food court at the edge of the Tenderloin in San Francisco. “Back East.” For a moment I recall both Thailand and the Pacific Theater of the Axis and Allies game. The game is just a series of images of moving pieces around with my son while imagining scenes in history. Thailand, on the other hand, is images that are both real and dream recollections. I’ve had this recurrent dream in which I go to a food court in Thailand with wonderful restaurants and the choice itself is always delicious, knowing these restaurants are all so good. I think that’s not an actually remembered food court, more of a feeling that there was always some delicious food to be found in Thailand. Completely made up.

That was fun. Everyone in this food court seems to jump and remain on edge after someone loudly drops a plastic water glass. So many people walking past outside, many of them homeless. It’s a place at the edge of many experiences. Mine is so limited. I tried to read a description of Elon Musk’s Neurolink and the description was so slow-paced that I gave up. Yet I still want to know more. My attention hovers at a level almost dreamlike where I imagine I’m aware of the company and what it seeks but I don’t dive into the details, unable to utilize the resource available. We’ll see, says the voice in my head. My imagination says if I put one of his chips into my head early it might be dangerous. Still definitely an important prosthetic at some point in the future, certainly before we travel down any spiral arms.