AI has completely destroyed reality.

    At least, that's what I think happened. I'm not sure. Like everyone who isn't a reporter themselves, I have no clue what is or isn't real anymore. I could be getting AI slop pushed at me all day, and I'm not sure I'd even notice the difference so long as it aligned cleanly with what I knew back when our world was real. 

    Like everyone else in my position, I've spent the past few years looking for something to believe in. That something is Infinitelism, the viewpoint that reality is only real so long as we collectively believe that it exists and that our world is only as strong as its weakest believer. Like everyone else who believes they've found the answer to all of life's big questions, I'm amazed that no one sees what I see. It's gotten to the point that I'm shocked more people on the left don't talk about the fact that we need something to believe in. Surely the high sales of books on spirituality would be something of a clue. 

      I've decided to spread the world on Infinitelism. It's time for people to learn about why they're so vulnerable to this new thing that keeps popping up. It's nobody's fault that no one knows what's real and what isn't, and until we accept that we won't be able to move forward. I've been holding off out of fear that I'd attract a rabid cult, but with how quickly things are falling apart I'm not sure that I've got any other choice. 

Something's Wrong

    I knew we needed something to believe in, but I didn't think we needed it this badly.

    I should state right now that I don't believe in psychic powers or auras or whatever the magic believers believe in. Not just because it can't be proven, but because I don't think there's any justification for people who don't really want magic powers to believe in them. I say this because, as an Infinitelist, I think that unless a lot of people believe in something, then it can't be real. But last night, something strange happened. It could have been sleep paralysis, but I swear to god it felt like one of those visions the psychics always talk about. I don't even really remember it, all I know is that it felt like I was in somebody else's mind, and that someone else felt really angry. Then when I woke up, I noticed that my blog had views. 

    For the record, this doesn't normally happen. I'm fully willing to admit that it was probably just a coincidence, but since this is the Infinite we're talking about, I'm not willing to take chances. I'm also dead certain that I shouldn't have felt anything at all. Most of the reason I think the Infinite exists have nothing to do with magic or auras, in fact they have a lot more to do with the fact that nobody likes talking about them. I'm convinced that if things were alright, I wouldn't have felt anything at all. That I did leads me to think that reality isn't in very good shape, and that things might be even worse than I thought they were. 

    All I can say is that to whoever saw my post from Monday, I implore you to find something that you can believe in, something that you know is real. Even if it's just the laws of physics, find it. And if you're as worried about your world falling apart as I am, then try and remember this poem of mine. I wrote it specifically for moments like this. 

Introduction to the Infinite

      I don’t know how to begin talking about this. It feels almost suicidal to even mention that I don’t believe in reality. Well, it’d be more accurate to say that I don’t believe in a reality that’s objective, external, and independent of our beliefs about reality and ourselves. I believe in a world that’s shaping us and being shaped by us, constantly, one that we aren’t independent from and that will never be able to exist independently of us. What I don’t believe in is what I call the Infinite. To me, the Infinite is always there, a thing that all of us know about, but that we do our best to ignore. It is meaningless, shapeless, has no beginning or end, is where our Universe and everything in it came from, and where, ultimately, it will return to. There is nothing more frightening, or overwhelming, than the Infinite, but to understand humanity, and the world that made us, you have to understand it. So I’m going to try and explain what I think I’ve figured out, but bear in mind that I know nothing about the Infinite. No one does. All I can really do is tell you what I imagine when I picture it. 

The Infinite:

    The Infinite is to our Universe what our Universe is to us, incomprehensible, enormous, too much to make sense of. The Infinite is all that is, was, and will be, happening continuously, and happening simultaneously. If you, or I, were to see the Infinite, we would see a place that constantly changes, building and discarding ideas in what seems to be the blink of an eye. But if we could zoom out, see the Infinite in its totality, somehow, we’d see that it doesn’t change at all, for there’s nothing that really could change. Everything that dies is reborn somewhere else instantly, potentially in an infinite number of places, and it’s impossible to quantify what’s within the Infinite, a place where limits don’t exist. There’s no physics, so time doesn’t matter, and disorder and chaos are the norm. There’s no one to please, nothing to hold you back, nothing to say that you’re important or interesting. There’s just something we might describe as now, except now stretches forever, and there’s no way of knowing if you’re experiencing anything at all. So to give meaning, purpose, and truth to themselves, souls create worlds of all shapes and sizes, worlds in which things move, change, and have meaning. 

   Souls are the only things that live in the Infinite. Don’t be fooled into thinking that they’re like the souls that the wise ones once said we carry in our bodies. These souls are born from the Infinite, and in a world without limits, it’s impossible to tell where one soul ends and another begins. The soul that created and governs our Universe lives over and through us, watching us without really seeing or taking note of us. As it’s not bound by limitations, it has no concept of fear, and can’t understand why things like death would be unpleasant, for souls can’t really die. But the soul that created us can’t understand us, it does care about us, in a strange and distant way. It cares, or else it wouldn’t have given us a barrier between us and the Infinite; The Dreamworld. 

The Dreamworld:

    The Dreamworld, like the soul that made it, isn’t bound by limitations. But since it’s created by humans, its limitations come from what we’re capable of imagining, thinking about, and asking for. Within these limitations, it’s still far more versatile than reality, because reality isn’t solely bound by the limitations of a single species confined to one planet, but by the limitations of everything within the Universe that created it. 

     The key thing about the Dreamworld is that it’s not really a single, continuous thing, like our Universe is. It’s a lot of small, disparate worlds that overlap and mingle with one another and, over time, become a unified whole. Whether you imagine it to exist somewhere else, or only in the minds of people, you can’t deny its existence, or the fact that it impacts us far more directly than reality does.  

    Another thing to keep in mind is that the Dreamworld doesn’t just belong to humanity. Everything in our Universe uses it to express their will to the world, and allow it to be shaped into a form they believe in and feel safe living in. That’s important, because any world, even one as massive as the Universe, can only exist if enough people believe in it. If they don’t believe in it, there’s nothing separating us from the Infinite. 

An Opinion

    I have no idea if I'm the only person who feels this way, but I wish there was a religion that didn't sell itself on being the ultimate truth. Maybe it's the person whose first attempt at a major in college was chemical engineering speaking, but I don't think there really is an ultimate truth, just a question we'll never have the answer to. That question being, "How do we find meaning in a world that's inherently meaningless?"

     I don't think there's a definitive answer to this question, nor do I get the sense that there was supposed to be a definitive answer. So I want to find other people who think, as I do, that our goal shouldn't be to find The Answer. Instead, we should be looking for An Answer, one that works for the most people possible. 

     I've spent my entire life trying to learn as much as I could about the world, trying to learn what makes our world real and the Dreamworld I live in fake. At this point, I honestly think there isn't a difference. We just all see a sky that happens to be blue, leaves that are green, and stars in the night sky. I can't prove this one way or the other, and I don't even know if it's true, but I think that the only reason our world is real is because everything in the Universe, from atoms to black holes, is working to make it real. And if that's true, why not try to make a world that's real only because we believe it's real? Do we not live in a world with paper money? 

    I have no idea if the Infinite is real, I just know that I believe it is based on what I've read and seen. I think that's what most people do, believe in something they can't prove but they believe in anyways because they've seen it for themselves. Maybe I'm crazy, but when I see a world that's this broken I can't help but think that it's time for us to look for who we are inside, not the person we're supposed to be. That's the only way to build a world that works for people. 

A moment more

   Our World only exists so long as we believe in it. 

   I have to keep reminding myself of this, otherwise I might just lose my will to live. 

   I have to remember that everyone, living and nonliving alike, has to hold onto reality, has to remember that our world has to be bound by physics. I have to remember that our world is more then mathematics, more then rules, more then the stories we tell ourselves.

    Our world is made by us, shaped by us, created and destroyed by all who are made to live in it. If it can't be shaped, it will die by our hand. Our World will only stay real so long as we can believe that it's there, even when we don't see it. 

    I must believe, I must hold onto the world and believe that no matter how badly we screw up it'll be there, just not in the form we thought it would be. I must remember that to live is to have power, and power means responsibility for our worlds fate. 

   I must remember that the only way people can live in this world is by building their own narratives, worlds in which they reign supreme and everyone else is merely a background character. If our world is to survive, we must be able to chose the life we want to lead. 

    Though I look down and see nothing, I must remember the truth, that the world depends on me giving it meaning. Only by shaping it can I hope to keep it alive, even if it's only for one day more. 

    I must be brave. I must face the truth. I must keep going no matter how much people scream that in the end nothing I do will matter. All around me are those who've fought this battle, are fighting this battle, and will fight this battle some day. I owe them nothing, and they will never know my name, but we fight side by side nonetheless. So let my soul stretch beyond the moment of the here and now, so that I may see what the future holds and face it as myself. Let my voice be strong, let my heart be brave, let my thoughts ring out across the infinite for all to hear. Above all else, let my words shape the world in such a way that it lasts for a moment more, for that is all the victory I can hope for. 

The Illusion of Power

     Am I the only person who has an Illusion of power? Something she does that she pretends impacts the world in a meaningful way, even though there's absolutely no evidence that it does? Given how many people believe in conspiracy theories these days, I expect the answer is almost certainly yes. I know a lot of people are  annoyed by the fact that others will do things that don't change the world in obvious ways, but if growing up in the twenty-first century taught me anything, it's that even the obvious things don't work all the time and not everyone who wants to do them can for whatever reason. As someone with severe Anxiety issues, I can understand the appeal of something that allows you to feel powerful without putting yourself in a situation you're uncomfortable in. 

   Sort of related, but am I the only person who gets annoyed at people who say that making art or talking about a problem isn't an effective way of solving it? Specifically in the case of random people online, at least, I do think that talking and posting about these issues is important, especially if you're not sure that your right. I've been a writer for my entire life, and one thing I've learned is that consuming bad art is just as important as consuming good art. The most important skill you can learn as a creator is how to screw up, because that will tell you what you need to know to do it right the next time. And art, of any sort, matters to people. Why do you think people got so upset about NFTs? It's not because they thought it was a scam, it's because they viewed it as an affront to something important to them, mostly because it was something they'd always believed in, and now it was being reduced to something to only care about because you wanted to make money. 

     Honestly, as despicable as NFTs are, I feel that we, as a society, can learn a lot from them. Specifically, I think we can learn about the importance that the unreal has for people, especially those who can't or don't want to participate in society. The big failing of NFTs is that they got everything they were trying to do wrong. The only thing that kept them alive was pure unquestioning belief, and that's the hardest form of belief to maintain. More importantly, if you're trying to keep an illusion alive, it's the worst kind of belief to have. In order for an illusion to last, it needs to be malleable, and in order for an illusion to be malleable, people need to be able and willing to question it's merits, offer changes, and be sure that those changes can be implemented. 

   I wonder, would we be better off if we came up with an illusion of power that people could actually believe in? I don't want to live in a world where my voice will never be heard.  I don't think anyone does. I think that if we did live in a world where we couldn't be sure we mattered, that world would fall apart, because no one would believe in it's existence. 

My Worries

    I wish we, as a society, were more willing to talk about religion. We talk about the big ones all the time, but what we don't talk about is the issue I, and a lot of other people, have. The issue of there not being a religion that gives me what I want from a religion, nothing that's really meaningful to me at least. 

    It's why I've come up with my own religion, sort of. It's mostly me trying to find a way to work science into religious thought. I don't care what Stephen Hawking said, there's still a place for Gods of any gender in todays world. But I still only have a template. And I'm more than a little worried that people reading this will think that I'm just trying to start a cult. I honestly wouldn't blame them. I've often heard that religions equal cult plus time, and that might be true, but I would much rather just skip the cult phase. I don't want a religion that only exists because people believe in it unquestioningly. What makes our Universe strong is that even if not all of us believe in it's existence, and in this day and age that's a distinct possibility, then it's still exists as a real place. We don't succumb to the Infinite just because a few people decide the Universe can't possibly be real. 

    What a lot of people forget is that what made religions so much stronger in the middle ages and earlier was that you could believe in science and God at the same time. I'm not an expert, but I strongly suspect that scientific advancement, coupled with organized religion's lackluster response to our current crises, is what's killing belief in most religious institutions. I don't think this is a time for some new Jesus to gather people together and show them a new God, I think that it's time for people to learn how to make our own Gods, using everything we've learned in the past three-hundred years. We've had decades of people learning how to create worlds in fantasy, surely someone can figure out a fantasy we would all be willing to live in. 

The Universe

    I don't know how many people will see yesterday's post, and I expect that most who read it felt that I was completely insane. That's a good thing. If people start to believe that the Infinite is real, reality might fall apart, and I don't want to be around when that happens. 

     That being said, if you're like me and worried about what could happen if we stop believing in reality, remember that there's a vast Universe filled with living and non-living entities to help share the burden of keeping our world together. So long as they believe in our world and work to keep it together, we'll be okay. Just like how a society can withstand a few people not believing in it's core tenets, but when the majority lose faith in the narrative that holds a society together, that society is doomed. 

   When I feel like my world is falling apart, I remember the laws of physics, laws that everything in our Universe, no matter how large or small it is, obeys. Even in our divided world, they are something that we can all agree on, because we see it everyday. Our world is bound by physics, what goes up must come down. 

The Infinite

     On Monday a couple of weeks ago, I posted a poem called "The Infinite". It was sort of an outline of my religious beliefs (if you can call something that only you believe a religion). I figured I'd explain it a bit more in depth here. Don't worry if this sounds crazy, since none of this is real. It's just a way of looking at the world that I feel makes sense. 

    To start off, there's a well known argument among philosophical types that posits that we're all living in a simulation. Basically, an advanced civilization could create a simulation that's functionally indistinguishable from reality, and then the people in that reality could do the same thing, and so on and so forth, on and on for all eternity. Since everyone living in each successive simulation would have no idea that they were living in a simulation, it's possible that we're living in a simulation ourselves and just don't know it. 

     I'm not going to argue for or against it. Plenty of people have done both, and I do highly suggest you look it up if you're looking to doubt everything you see for the rest of your life. But reading that theory I got to thinking, if we are living in a simulation, what does the real world look like? Is it filled with people? Weird alien creatures? Are we living in a sentient carbon cloud?

      What if there was nothing at all? 

      I've been a dreamer for as long as I can remember. I daydream all day, everyday. As someone who spends most of her time in a world that she knows isn't real, I'm more aware than most that the line between the real and the unreal is a lot thinner than most people think. 

     But thinking about it, it makes sense to me that not only is our world not as "real" as we might think it is, but that reality itself might be something of a myth. Think about money. It's not real, but because we all use it to buy and sell things everyday, we think of it as real. Value works the same way. Think of the internet. It's not a real, physical thing, but because we all believe in it and, importantly, agree on the rules that it has to follow, it's become real in the eyes of most people on earth. Look at society. There are no laws of physics governing society, just laws that we all agree our real and work to uphold. You could argue that the only reason we have morality is to keep society real. 

     What if our Universe worked the same way?

      What if the reason our laws of physics worked is because of the efforts of everything in the Universe, from dark energy to galaxies, keeping those laws real? What if the thing holding our Universe together is an agreement that the basic laws must be followed, no matter what? 

     I have no proof of this. I don't think that you even can prove this. All I know is that humans and animals, creatures we all agree to have consciousness, grew out of one celled organisms, who in turn grew out of simple chemicals who were just moving where the metaphorical wind took them. When did consciousness develop? There are people who argue that even inanimate objects have some consciousness, so could it have grown out of the ground down rocks that became our ancestors? 

    Importantly, I think that we all know this, at least a little bit, but most of our daily lives are spent trying to make sure we know as little about it as possible. The stars, the planets, our societies, all of it is built to keep us from forgetting that our world isn't real, and that at any point, it could stop being real forever. 

   I don't know. Most of it isn't really scientific. But I can't stop seeing it everywhere I go. Everywhere I look I see people who seem to be questioning reality. More importantly, I see people fighting against the idea that what they see, what they believe might not be real. I honestly think what makes our universe what it is comes from being built on top of a place that isn't, and never will be, real. A place where nothing matters, because everything that could happen has already happened, and is happening all at once. A place where nothing has meaning, for if it's done it will be undone in an instant. A place where physics, time, chaos, everything we know, doesn't exist, and those who exist within it are constantly trying to forget just how lost they are. 

    There are many names for this place. Some call it the void, some call it darkness, others call it emptiness. But those names don't sit well with me. It's not empty, because everything that is, was, and will be exists within it, and everything that happens is happening simultaneously. For me, there is only one name that can contain a place so vast that not even our Universe can comprehend it. 

     The Infinite. 

     

What Gives me Hope

     Times are dark. There's no denying that fact. It's almost impossible to avoid reminders that the world we once knew has come to an end. Is it any wonder so many have fallen to despair?

     I confess, I'm one of those people. I don't believe our old lives are coming back, nor do I think they should. When I was in the past I was happy, because I'd never known any other way of living, and while I knew our world was flawed, I thought that it could still be fixed. But then it fell apart, and when looking at what had come before, I was struck by how sad and lonely I really was. What kept me going in the old world was the promise that things would someday get better, what killed that world was the realization that the promise would never be kept. 

     I don't hope that things will go back to the way they used to be, and I'm deeply dismayed by all the people I see hoping that the old times will return. I understand the impulse. However horrible life was, it was familiar. You knew what to expect, and while it was difficult, if you followed the rules, you could survive. Nobody knows what will come next. We could be in for a utopia, or an even worse dystopia, and no one knows what we'll get. 

    What I do hope for is a world that exists at all. Reality isn't just made out of human thoughts and wishes, or even the wishes of those who live on earth. Reality is made out of the wants, needs, and plans of everything in the Universe, no matter how small, or far away from us, it is. Our universe isn't perfect, not even close. I don't think it was ever made to be perfect. It was made to be a universe that could be changed, a universe where, at any moment, the wants and desires of those who live in it could change it into something almost entirely different from what it started out as. 

     Everything in our Universe is acting according to its own beliefs, how it feels the world is and how it feels the world ought to be. That's what all of us are doing as well. All of us believe in a world, a world we can shape as we please, a world that will be shaped by others to be what they want as well. This is a world where everyone's voices, no matter how quietly they talk, need to be heard. 

    When I think about that, I remember that we are simply the next step in the long path the Universe has taken. We are not inevitable, but we are more able than anything that came before us to shape our world into whatever we want it to be. No matter how much people have tried, they can't make us stay silent. No matter how lost we feel, we will keep believing in a world that belongs to us. 

    When I think of that, I remember why I have hope.