Admonishment # 78. On Adopting Rock 'n' Roll Cynicism as a World-View.

There were five bright young persons who found themselves impressed with the social criticisms and rebellion running through rock music, much increasing their pleasure in it. One of them took this entertainment too seriously and let his unproductive life drift forever to the fringes of social significance as, rhythm & tune ever playing within and occasionally seeping out, he persisted in the jaded-dropout mentality toward career and existence in general. Consequently, he never was able to have anything really nice, whereas his four friends who had plugged along like dutiful hypocrite-slaves-to-the-system all achieved respect— importance— relevance— with scads of luxuries & delights and many options in all matters. But long after the inspiring singers of the cool, cynical songs (they who had romped in the most materialistic and wasteful of veins offstage, epitomizing egotism and insincerity) retired to their million-acre ranches, castle estates and Hollywood mansions, this one fellow had nothing but his bitter brilliance for consolation there in his unappealing surroundings. Unable to provide his children with anything special either materially or spiritually, he hardly felt consoled. And in the end, he lost even his single lifelong foundation, the conviction that what set his brain apart was anything approaching said brilliance. —Now Junior, behave yourself!

Admonishment # 1520. On Extreme Knee-Jerk Reactions.

Once upon a time, musician John Lennon of the Beatles remarked that the band was "more popular than Jesus." Why he said that instead of something else is neither here nor there. The saying was reported all over, of course, whipping to frenzy the religious South (especially) against this long-haired entertainment phenomenon— at last exposed for the iniquity it was— that was making screaming zombies of young daughters and sons. Great bonfires of Beatles albums choked cities with noxious soot as, ever impressionable and precipitous, youngsters rushed forth to hurl the objects of their misspent allowances upon the heap before turning to grin into TV cameras and reel away. Years later, the big scare long past and Beatles collectibilia selling for major bucks, one guy's face twists in anguish and he cries to no one, "Why in the hell did I burn my Beatles albums?" Alas, he should have analyzed circumstances more deeply while holding to a standard of restraint. Eventually, he rebuilt his collection on CD.

Admonishment # 486. On Changing Things Through Time-Travel: High Science for a Few
—————————Readers Only.

If it ever works around that you have an opportunity to go back in time, some questions will occur for which I've had answers since I was a youth, as will other questions that still prompt speculation. YOU CANNOT CHANGE WHAT HAS HAPPENED, as a hard rule. "The past" you enter would not be the SAME past that produced the "now" from which you departed, because when that past had happened you weren' t there (at least THIS YOU wasn't), nor were any of the new consequences of your being there. Everything that happens from the moment of your arrival does so in a reality that cannot alter your original, which was occurring a while ago and has gone on to see you disappear and then to see the world keep turning without you.

Here's the deal. First of course you'd vanish from here & now. Of the following conceivable consequences, perhaps only one of them ever could occur (but I don't know which). Your appearance in the alternate timestream/universe could A) mark a divergence, in fact, of this as a NEW timestream, B) land you in an incoherent mess of a quasireality wherein you might instantly disintegrate into bizarre particles, C) deposit you onto the most recent moment (for the past is past and cannot be altered) of a timestream belonging to the same extended quantum family as the one out of which you have bowed, the two streams having already diverged from a common point like arrows sticking out of a single quiver, or D) deliver you to an iteration of reality that might (up until your arrival) be identical to your native one except that this one, having been the later to be spat out of the "black hole of creation," presently corresponds to a point in your native timestream's past. Ignore "B" for the sake of discussion— traveling in time is worth risking disintegration. "A" seems to suppose that your relatively miniscule enactment of WILL can produce energies sufficient to run a whole new universe that did not exist until you caused it to. While it's possible that a bit of energy in an initiating universe might translate exponentially, almost infinitely, to an initiated one (especially considering the point below, that 1 might = 2 across universes; about as good as saying 0 = infinity, EVERYTHING then being possible!), we need not run that monkey to have a show. Behind curtain "C" we find a case in which the two divergent universes might be running at the same pace (so you'd not step "back" in time at all) or at different paces (so you might find yourself in a future or a past relative to your native universe). "D" might appear to present the cleanest shot at arriving in a universe exactly like your own but at an earlier point of development. However, given the Uncertainty Principle and quantum probabilities, cumulative event-deviations (IN ALL SCENARIOS) might well have produced a scene bearing little resemblance to yours. Moreover, IN ANY OF THESE CASES, there seems no reason you'd necessarily arrive in the alternate universe at a useful position in space, unless you've got a damn good machine and all the figures have been ironed out. (What good to appear fifty years earlier, but eight billion light-years away in the bowels of nowhere? Experiment right much, sending associates first.)

Should you actually arrive in a roughly familiar reality, you can go ahead and invent the expression "gone postal" and live out your life on the proceeds. (Or "groovy." Or "at the end of the day.") A new "you" might or might not be born, except it wouldn't be YOU— you'd still be old and freaky, and that little guy would just be a dude you'd see hanging out. Would your DNA match his exactly? Perhaps closely. Your awarenesses are going to be distinct, just figure on that, and anything you do to enhance his life were better spent enhancing mine. (AWARENESS might be the universal absolute, the unique unit, nonredundant, nondistributive at a fundamental level, transcendant of hypermathematical physics.) His children will not be your children. He might perish before reaching your present age. HE IS NOT YOU. YOU ARE NOT HE. Now, what you might do, if your double is very near your own age, is to use any special knowledge you bring to optimize an outcome for him, then kill him and take his place and enjoy the fruits. You might do that. Use your machine to send the body to the bowels of nowhere.

—Say what? Since bedazzled youth, I Fondlegod have realized that, somehow, 1 IS equal to 2! And that if it's so (which, I realized, it is)— anything equals anything else, though it certainly appears not to, from most standard angles. Later readings in Eastern religions seemed to affirm, in their schismic way. Hypermathematical proof to come eventually from somebody. [Lately there have been reports of a single particle existing simultaneously in two different places. If you haven't heard this, I'd advise you to begin reading apocalypse-age physics for things needing knowing.] Yet at the same time, 1 does NOT equal 2, and objects & phenomena are distinct as experienced along our particular dimension. (It's the SPECIAL CASE in which 1 does not equal 2.) Now, if OUR 1 equals a 2 that's in a hyperdimensional system, that's no big deal; translating mathematical descriptions from one system to the other works the conversion. A third, higher-order system sitting as witness might be able to see the 1 of ours, the 2 of the second, and the identical functions of those within the respective systems.

If you gather anything from the scattered threads of this discussion, it should be that neither you nor I might really know enough about time travel to be buying tickets.

—————————————————————Fondlegod has opined.