#objective universe

[reksekhet-blog]

Funny to see this link pop up on my Twitter feed - I was just thinking about this last night and finally truly understanding it!

The Objective Universe is matter and energy in constant change.

"Time" exists within Subjective Universes only, in the form of memories & predictions of Objective Universe change.

Even the most apparently inert thing (a rock) is made up of atoms that are in motion, and that rock is also changing but at a rate so slow compared to our human lifespan that it seems to be a constant. It was once molten, and, weathered daily, will one day become parts of soil.

[reksekhet-blog]

Thoughts on Collective Subjective Universes

I became angry at Facebook this morning. People in a group I’m in were talking about how FB often takes down groups and removes posts for st

I became angry at Facebook this morning. People in a group I’m in were talking about how FB often takes down groups and removes posts for stupid reasons while they turn a blind eye to actual abusive and bigoted content. My frustrations with the site had been growing and this was a breaking point. It made me want to find a new social media site and just ignore FB altogether while maybe occasionally checking in for messages from people I only have a connection with through there. But then I of course felt sad about this because I really do want to keep up with what my friends are doing and many of those friends ONLY use Facebook. Moving to another social media platform that they’re not on will of course do nothing to fix that. So I had a conundrum.

I went to work. While at work I chatted with my coworker (a Jehovah’s Witness) my whole shift about Christmas stuff and how it’s annoying that the holiday has become completely inextricable from commercialization, how much I hate the music, etc. Her husband arrived to pick her up and briefly joined in on the conversation. After she had left the sales floor to clock out, he took the opportunity to mention he had been raised Catholic (I told him I also was) and then veered off into anecdotes about how they didn’t really celebrate Christmas in Cuba and he only got to have one American Christmas before his mom – who had been “searching for God” and exploring other denominations – found the JW. He then went on about how much love and peace he remembers feeling when they first entered a Kingdom Hall and how it was this wonderful place of Biblical study blah blah blah. I felt like I was hearing part of his “JW pitch” but completely out of context. I’m sure he uses that when “witnessing”.

Anyway my coworker came back and they left. I started working again by myself and thinking about his SU (subjective universe) and the JW CSU (collective subjective universe). And I thought about what I would say if the conversation ever came up about MY beliefs, about how we live in a multiverse and it is the combination of everyone’s SUs plus the OU (objective universe). But then I really got thinking more on CSUs. And I realized just how many CSUs there are. They aren’t all just religions. They are any “belief systems” that are agreed on by multiple people, including politics and lifestyle.

I suddenly realized that childhood is a period of CSU “colonization” in a person. Our conscious mind “agrees” to a CSU belief and it becomes part of who we are. And I thought about Facebook again and suddenly realized my problem with it above all else – I’d “subscribed” to too many CSUs and it had begun to upset me. My subconscious was nudging me toward minimalism, but not in a material OU way. In a CSU way.

I came home and opened Facebook and started scrolling. Any “pages” or “groups” on my feed, I immediately Unfollowed every single one except for a handful. I had NO IDEA I had been drowning out my friends so much – the people I had originally used FB to keep up with! Now it’s literally just my friends and some Special Effects Makeup/Creatures groups and a few pages of local businesses. So then I refreshed and started scrolling again. Wow! Pretty much 90% actual updates from my friends, yay!

Then I realized something else.

Most of my friends were just… sharing links/images from pages or elsewhere on the internet. There was very little actual original content from them. As much as I’d removed the deluge of non-friend news, I kind of still wasn’t getting the kind of friend updates I had hoped for. I was getting mostly a bunch of people regurgitating stuff from all the pages THEY are following. And I realized with horror that’s exactly what I’d been doing before also.

This experience with Facebook is a metaphor for CSUs. Most people’s consciousness is simply a vehicle for CSUs to infect via agreement, replicate inside via acceptance and incorporation, and attempt to infect others via regurgitation… just like viruses.

I believe that Xeper therefore begins via a form of minimalism where the awareness is willfully used to, one by one, identify the CSUs that were formerly indistinguishable as “parts of us”, reassess them, and in most cases to “Unfollow” them, thereby further distinguishing ourselves, broadening our awareness and strengthening our will. Xeper seems to be a gradual process of separation in this way, as Set is the “alone and apart” neter. The ultimate separation being, of course, from the OU upon death.

I got thinking again about my coworker’s husband’s (most likely unintentional) subtle attempt to tell me how wonderful JW is, and I realized how I’d respond to someone obviously trying to convert me… Once you see how the magic trick is done, you can’t “unsee” it! That is to say once you are able to truly observe (not “believe”) a CSU, you have at that MOMENT become outside of it. Once you are outside of a CSU, getting back into it is a lot like trying to “re-believe” in Santa Claus. This is where most atheists land. But atheists approach this stance as a “disbelieving” stance. They are simply applying the feeling on non-belief they had for every other religion to their own. Hence the common atheist phrase toward monothiests “I simply don’t believe in one more god than the ones you don’t believe in.”

I have always been mindful of using labels. They are useful to communicate concepts but often people simply “become” their labels and that is just another CSU virus. It’s totally possible to be in major agreement with a CSU but to still be aware of it as a CSU. Most people are way beyond that point – the point where your SU is so merged with the CSU and you can no longer see it as a belief but actually something which is an indistinguishable part of your “self”. Hence why people who are completely merged with their religion CSU usually don’t talk about their beliefs as “beliefs” but instead as absolute truth.

A Setian perception, I think, is to be able to entertain these various other CSUs at will. It’s less about belief but rather exploration, curiosity, and understanding – to understand that ALL religions are in a way TRUE as CSUs. To see the CSUs for what they are is to be outside them. Which leads me to think that the ultimate state of Xeper is to be outside of ALL CSUs. Exactly as Set is.

But shouldn’t recognizing and talking about Set mean he’s in our CSU/SU? Well no, what’s actually in our CSU/SU is our concept of Set. Hence the box-eared, dog-like creature of the "Sha" beast. A fantasy creature is our best symbol of a concept that is meant to be the epitome of “unbelonging” and “alien”. Set is That Which Is Not Like Anything Else.

At least, that's my current conclusions. I sincerely hope I am on the right track. A few more books yet to read before I apply to the Temple of Set.

[setemheb]

Sparks: Differentiating Objective and Subjective

(original image from Michael Kloran http://www.kloran.com/ )

As mentioned previously, one of the core distinctions within the Setian Theory of the Universe is that between objective and subjective.  This is not unique to us, as this topic has been a signification feature in Western Philosophy. Never the less it often forms a major point is misunderstanding for non-Setians and new Setians alike.

The distinction can be though of as this:

There exists a consistent, ordered, realm of objects that can be measured, analyzed, and understood, though at present time the extent to which this realm has been fully understood by humanity may only be in its infancy. We term this the objective universe. It can and should be studied via the material sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology. While specialized qualifications are not necessary, some fundamental conceptual knowledge of these sciences should be pursued by anyone seeking to be an Initiate.

In addition to this objective universe there exists for each being that can perceive a subjective universe unique to them. This subjective universe comes from an interaction between the objective universe and the individual being, and as such has a process of deletion, distortion and generalization inherent in its process of perception. As such the subjective universe of a given individual may be highly similar to the objective universe, or radically different than it, but the subjective universe of any individual is not, and cannot be the same as the objective universe.

As a human being, your subjective universe generates via your senses, which are capable of perceiving within limited bandwidth of phenomena. This sensory information then becomes put through a process of interpretation generating what could be thought of as a kind of "Graphical User Interface" or "GUI" that seems to you to be the only universe that exists, i.e. the one you are experiencing.

This GUI's process of generation is influences by mechanisms that are for most people outside of their control. While there are a myriad of processes at play, a few key ones are: Perspective processes, Belief processes, Model processes and Narrative processes. These processes will become the subject for future Sparks posts.

For most people the difference between the subjective and the objective are not something that have worked to learn.  What they see is what they believe. This trait can be exploited in relatively benign ways through Stage Magic, or through more malignant fashions in the realm of confidence schemes, politics, and religion. Learning to differentiate events in the objective universe from your subjective experiences can help make you less susceptible to being mistaken and manipulated.

Exercise

As an outgrowth of General Semantics, a technique known as English-Prime, or E-Prime, was developed.  This approach calls for learning how to write without using conjugations of the verb "to be." In order to do this you must either provide verifiable, measurable notations like a scientist, or you must situate your statements within your subjective universe.  Here are a few examples:

Conventional: "It is raining."

E-Prime: "At the present moment I observe rainfall."

Note:  You may notice that the second statement requires both a time denotation of the observation as well as a reminder that it an "I" is actively perceiving.

Conventional: "Bach is better than any composer that ever were or ever will be."

E-Prime: "For me, Bach seems like the best band of all time."

Note: Here a seemingly universal declaration becomes smaller and more contextualized as a given individual's opinion.

If you already keep a journal consider writing in this manner for the next week.  If you do not keep a journal, take ten minutes a day to write down some event or observation, and see if you can do so in E-Prime.  After a week see how this practice changes your sense of the objective and subjective universes.

For those who are interested in pursuing this method of improving their sense of the objective and subjective, Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology may prove valuable.