Apart from building my own personal worldview in full view of the public, my life's been really boring recently. I'm not complaining about that, I think we can all agree that in this day and age boring is an absolute blessing, but it makes it hard to find things to write about. 

    I'm writing this post on Friday, on what's a truly gorgeous day for western Washington. I'm planning on going out and celebrating it, as well as what's supposed to be another gorgeous day, that being when this post goes up. 

New World

 Not much has changed.
The roads are still here,
The stores are still open,
So why does nothing seem to be the same? 

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. 

     I want to write more about what I believe, but I don't think it needs to be an everyday thing. Not yet at least. For now, I'm happy knowing that if the world ends, and we fall with it, I'll have done what I can. 

The Internet

 I don't know if it's just me,
But when I look online I see a lot of the past
And not much of a future. 

    It feels weird writing about Infinitelism. That's what I call my life philosophy/personal religion. Its so important to me, but I never talk about it, because talking about it would mean talking about the Infinite, and like everyone else, I'm scared that if I talk about the Infinite, our world won't be real anymore. In light of recent events, I feel like I have to talk about it. If only to talk about the Dreamworld, a topic that I increasingly feel to be of the utmost importance, but it's one that no one wants to mention. The whole reason I wrote a long post about Infinitelism is that I kept being struck by how often I saw people insisting we fight for our politics, but never bringing up what we should do about religion, even though I think people care equally deeply about both. Not only that, but I feel that the systems that govern us and the gods we worship are entwined even if we act as though we've separated church and state. I think that we need to discuss what religion is going to look like in an uncertain future, and if we want to have an honest and nuanced discussion about this, I think we need to look for where reality stops being real. To do that, we need to acknowledge the Infinite, or at least the fact that even if objective, external reality exists, we'll never be able to see it the way that we want to. 

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. 

The Other Side of the Fence

 I didn't know what I wanted.
I didn't know what I needed.
Then I saw it,
The other side of 
The giant wall,
Separating me from the world. 

The people were happy, 
Bonding over their love of life
And each other.
There was sadness, yes,
But nothing like what we have here.

I want to scream,
Why won't they help us.
Why won't they give us
What they have too much of?
I thought they couldn't hear us,
But they complain about
Us banging on their wall.

Won't those worthless rabble stop damaging our property?

There's a star being born
In my heart,
Born from the rage that's consuming me.
It illuminates the path forward,
But is burning everything around it.
All I feel is a desire for justice and 
Revenge.

Whoever,
Or whatever,
Is up where the stars shine bright.
Hear me,
Hear us,
Hear those who will not be heard by man.
Guide us to the place
On the other side of the fence
They built to contain us.

All we want is to have family
And friends once more.
All we want is to feel what we haven't felt in so long,
Most of us don't even know what it is we're missing.
Help us.
Help us to destroy those
Who only want to see us suffer
And die. 

     I always took the internet for granted. I thought that, for as long as there was a computer that could run it, there would be something fun to do, or new things to learn. I never dreamed of a world where the free games were gone, everything was behind a paywall, and social media was rapidly declining. I keep trying to imagine what a newer, better internet will look like, but all I can manage is longing thoughts of the internet we left behind when we "grew up".