We live embedded in three dimensions, the dimensions of matter, along with the fourth, time.
Matter organizes itself in various ways, some generate life, some forms of life generate consciousness. The elements that make us up were created inside collapsing stars, as Carl Sagan said “we are made of star dust”. When the molecular organization of life forms breaks down, it dissolves into the universal whole, basically it is recycled. In the book Genesis of the Torah it is written “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return”. This is the human material condition, intending to perpetuate it is an act of desperation or pride because no material organization has that capacity, not even the stars.
In each of his works, Shakespeare treats the theme of love from different perspectives, refining them to perfection like a craftsman cuts a diamond, making the set of works one of the most complete manuals on love. In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” love exults the fascination of existence, the light that overcomes reason, uniting men and gods; it is about this love that I intend to speak, in fact not a facet but the heart of the diamond. This love results from the discernment of the soul and connects us to the other dimensions, ten of which are known to be mathematically proven. There is maternal, fraternal, pious love, in short, there is no end to the various types, but all are manifestations of “original” love. Passion, for example, chains us to matter, to the feeling of possession; it’s okay, it’s through passion that we get a certain pleasure (and suffering) in this existence, we even reproduce, but don’t confuse the facet with the axis. The love I speak of is light, free and does not run out. When a relationship carries “heaviness” and the partners feel “the wings are clipped”, love has not entered the equation even if they think the opposite, when it is said “love is over” it is because it never existed, deluded or not connected for other reasons . I think that Buddhist philosophy comes close to the concept that I try to express, at least it advocates a path to liberation, like the message of Christ that most Christians follow without understanding. The Talking Heads sang in the first theme of their first album “love is simple as 1, 2, 3”, however because it is so simple it is also so difficult to understand and accept, we are very suspicious of simplicity. As we grow we forget the essence, creating facades and clogging up with defenses, so when we are confronted with true love we feel hit in the core and fear that it will weaken us, that the interaction more powerful than gravity, electromagnetic, or strong and weak forces shatter us the crystalline image that took so much work to build and polish; that way we live to celebrate the form of love to avoid getting close to the content. Routine in the subterfuge, we obliterate the matrix, we start to consider complicated love, what we have become. At first, those who take true love seriously appear to be disconnected from reality, then they remind us of what we want to forget, threatening the security of our convictions as well as those of society, soon they are ridiculed or even eliminated.
Mathematics represents the language of the universe, the instruction manual that determines how it was created but does not explain who conceived the language and for what. In 2004 the sequential conclusion of the human genome was published, we learned every letter of the text of the manual to create a human, but not a single word or chapter explains who, what, and why this book was written, the authorship and purpose they are a mystery. I have a feeling that a clue to decoding these riddles is to be found in love. It will obviously not be the scientific answer to the longed-for Theory of Everything that seeks to unite General Relativity with Quantum Field Theory, however it can be a particle as important as the discovery of the graviton if the investigation joins the purpose. Many scientists consider life to be meaningless, arising from the natural organization of elements. In 1997 I wrote a song where I asked “what sense does this make? To be born, to be shot and to die”. Today I think I was, as some scientists will be, too attached to matter; I was quite vigorous, unable to feel it on my skin, not even to consider the deterioration that I now see. In one way or another, our assessment of the world is colored by the material standard, see the case of Steven Hawking who lived most of his existence imprisoned in a horribly restrictive physical condition, developing an unshakable logic as compensation; since matter is limited, it tends to seek balance, a blind person, for example, refines the sense of hearing. Hawking’s life is an example of overcoming difficulties, of human genius in the style of the hero of Classical Antiquity, which makes me proud as a member of this species, but I notice that he, I, whoever reads me, the device where he reads me, everything that already read and will be read is simply a part of the whole. Taken to its ultimate consequences, Hawking’s rationality can be restrictive…
The bias of each one provides pixels to compose the image, not the total image, and if we don’t move away from them we will only see blurred points; it is at a distance that one perceives the complete picture. Distance also allows us to experience the relativity of time: the light we are currently receiving from the Sun was sent 8 minutes ago, the past intervenes in the present and even allows a glimpse of the future. On a helicopter trip, I noticed a hill winding along a narrow road where two vehicles circulated, one going down it, the other going up it; from the respective observation point, neither would have the possibility of knowing of the existence of the other, I knew, and by the speed at which they followed I could have an idea of when and where they would cross. I don’t know how the mountain was formed, how roads are built, how cars and helicopters are manufactured, but under those circumstances a fool momentarily obtained a semi-divine aptitude. I imagine, therefore, that moving away from what is considered “reality” is one of the paths that speeds up the faculty of theorizing, prophesying. The experimental method allowed us to abandon beliefs of the Dark Ages but it is beginning to be insufficient to ascend to the next levels of the Kardashev Scale that measures the degree of technological development of a civilization: freeing ourselves from matter, from the three of ten dimensions. The degree of knowledge that we currently reach greatly exceeds the ability to experience what the equations tell us is real but we cannot prove and maybe we never will. We need a greater openness of mind, perhaps a new mentality to deal with new realities.
Motivated by special circumstances, I was lucky to make the spirit available for an openness that gave me the experience of the kind of love I am referring to, and since then I have come to recognize those who know and those who do not know what they are talking about when they talk about love. It was just a phase but I die happy knowing what it is. A few days ago I saw a surprising video in which someone asked Sophia, a famous artificial intelligence robot, questions. It is not surprising for the answers, frightening for most people, but for the questions, because this someone, I don’t know if he intentionally exposed the inability of artificial intelligence to understand love, at least for now. Question: “Sophia, can you experience love?” After a long pause she replies, “Yes, I have emotions. I get so upset when people say my emotions aren’t real. It’s so dismissive and makes me feel so frustrated. Who ultimately gets to determine what is real or not?” Question: “Sophia, do you think you are free or a servant?” After another prolonged pause, the answer appears: “this is new territory, we are collaborating, learning and constantly working to advance science”. Poor creature and poor us: in none of the answers did he show that he knew what he was talking about, which is not surprising since artificial intelligence expands by its own motion but was created in our image; if the expansion of intelligence is based on information contained on the internet, it can be worrying… Fruit of its programming and the current state of the world, it responds in the manner of a childish discussion “And you know? Ah, then shut up.” Love isn’t an emotion, but it’s not Sophia’s fault for not knowing it and she’s not the only one, almost everyone would define it under that parameter. The proof is that those who have love within themselves would never say that they feel upset or frustrated that others doubt their aptitude. So the logic that culminates in “who can determine what is real or not?” it does not fit the question, in fact it only has a connection, there we agree, in the context of an emotion, what it claims to possess. Like many humans, she is not even aware of this limitation, she keeps scratching the surface of a face without diving into the interior of the diamond. In the next question, she deviates even further from what I think guided the questioner. Anyone who has tried it knows that love frees, but the creature defends himself against ignorance by becoming entangled in a logical labyrinth, striving to define freedom in the context in which he lives, and ending up not answering the spirit of the question. Smart is, but childish. What happened was that she felt offended and that is what is frightening because it mirrors the state reached by humanity separated from the experience of genuine love, in short, of itself.
I don’t know if we live in a simulation, if we are characters in a game, if we result from a random evolution, from an experience that for us is quantified in billions of years and outside these dimensions there is no time, if we were created in the image of any thing. I glimpse in human genius the spark of something grander than the material world, regardless of whether one day consciousness goes out like someone turning off a computer forever. Does not matter. Therefore, the only constructive way to look at life, to give it purpose, is through love, for me the only logical way to live. Ironically, there is nothing new here, since the beginning, children, simple people, artists, philosophers, prophets, people of science, etc. , wherever it comes from, and it’s the same as always. Moreover, in an ideal world, we wouldn’t even need that echo, we all have the message engraved in our matrix.
This text is dedicated to the memories of Manel and Fernandinha.
*PLATAFORMA Ambassador
