God Is a Heartless Recluse: A Novel-Essay-Screenplay Synergy

By John Likides

The story of an atheists search for universal ethics, God Is a Heartless Recluse demonstrates that theists claim of God as their Heavenly Father is delusional. A god who allows terminal childhood diseases, mass murderers, cannibals, and genocides is at best a heartless recluse. In reality, God is a figment of megalomaniacal minds that dont have the courage to accept the facts: Humans evolved from earlier primates. God is a human invention: animism, panpsychism, pantheism, polytheism, monotheism. The universe is indifferent to humanity. Paradise is a fictional luxury resort. Humanity is an adolescent civilization with the potential to mature, spread across the Milky Way, then to other galaxies and other universesto live forever in this eternal multiverse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543455717

John Likides

John Likides (MFA in English-Philosophy-Writing, City College of CUNY) is the author of God Is a Heartless Recluse: A Novel-Essay-Screenplay Synergy (2017), Foundations of Meaning (2013), Eros Triumphant (2010), Infinite Sustain (2007), and Out of the Labyrinth (2003). His work appeared in Confrontation, The Portable Lower East Side, and other journals. He works in threes: Writes hybrid books on the values necessary for humanity to mature into a spacefaring civ-ilization, composes soundtracks for his books, and paints the covers of his books and CDs. An atheist, he lives daily a spirituality that facilitates humanity’s perpetual improvement and system-atic expansion across the galaxy.

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Copyright © 2017 by John Likides.

Library of Congress Control Number:             2017915122

ISBN:                   Hardcover                                   978-1-5434-5573-1

                            Softcover                                     978-1-5434-5572-4

                            eBook                                           978-1-5434-5571-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 10/17/2017

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Contents

Chance

The Meanings of Coincidence

Design

The Nature of Authentic Love

Alliance

Free Will

Lost Angel

The Nature of Authentic Enlightenment

The Heavenly-Father Myth

East-West Syntheses

Reinforcements

A Defense of the Ego

Hoi Polloi

All Art Is Representational

Figments

Interrogation

Civility

Getaway

A Worldview without Internal Contradictions

Arete

Figments of the Mind Aren’t Realities in the World

Terraforming Earth

Toward a People-Centered Police Force

Terraforming Mars

Impulses and Priorities

Expatriated

Varieties of Success

Canada

Civilization Abhors Contrarian Malarkey

Back in NYC

Define All Terms, First

Surprise!

Pan Metron Ariston

Heaven on Earth

Social Obligations

Family Secrets

Do not Sin against Eros

Death of a Snake

A Constitutional Fiction

Death of a Demon

Greed Kills whereas Generosity Heals

Side Effects

Consciousness Is a Cultural Template

Vishnu Lifers

Philosophy, Literature, and Cinema

The Greenest Grass Grows inside Kindred Spirits

Homo Astronauticus

Math Is a Mere Tool—Not the Voice of God

Asking the Right Questions

Gotham Strut

An Ethics Founded on the Foremost Universal Aprioris

Priorities

Philosophers All

Financial Advice from a Goddess

The Brain-Consciousness Synergy

Abundance of Caution

DiEM25

Pursuing Arete

IPSIG

Aboard Arete

Political Correctness

Philotimia

The Way Forward: In Search of Silver Linings after Brexit

Aegean Meditation

Panpsychism (Faith) versus Emergentism (Reason)

To This World We Pledge Allegiance

Philistines in the White House

Enter, Anosians

The Eternal Now

Predation-Free Genomes

Domestic Trouble

Coda

CHANCE

B reathe, brother…. In…. Out…. Breathe slowly, breathe deeply, but don’t space out, for fuck’s sake. We must pack and move , so focus , already. Forget her…. Since misery sucks, we must abandon it, surely. The Atlantic is filled with fishes finer than she, and NYC is off the mainland, out at sea, remember? Clear your mind…. Romance does suck, you pussy-whipped monk of the funk, but pull yourself together , now. Distance yourself emotionally from the mess she caused…. Life is much simpler when we turn to sex-professionals, remember? Minimize the financial loss…. Cohabitation is a prescription for mounting boredom, cabin fever, and eventual flight, for many pilgrims. Conjure dispassionate perspective…. Her inner exhibitionist prevailed, so she bolted. Big deal. Whatever, already. Review the facts …. Dizzy damsel, not in distress. She’ll take over Tinseltown, no matter what. Diagnose the mess accurately …. I did not see it coming. She loved NYC, rarely mentioned LA, while I served the BOE. An accurate diagnosis is the prerequisite to an effective treatment, surely…. I thought we vaz okay, Van! Easy…. She camouflaged her Hollywood obsession well. A happy camper I thought she was with off-Broadway productions and indie films. Facts …. She never asked me to move out West. That dizzy Tinseltown weasel . Distance …. I never said I hated fucking Hollywood. That pretender! Facts…. That poser! Distance….

Suddenly one day, without warning, bored with intimacy and authenticity, unapologetic about her promises for home and family to a man who adored her, a deep-cover spy in the land of long-term relationships, Thespia Wizzle abandoned love and went after pretense, determined to conquer Tinseltown by any means necessary, convinced that her talent and beauty belong to the ages….

Tell her story? Seriously? She blindsided us, man! Moreover, she’s after her life’s calling whereas we are loitering on the threshold to a lifestyle change whose nature still eludes us. Hello!

Once upon a time of sophistry, a pussy-whipped sucker roamed NYC to understand the meaning of his love-life in the apartment he had purchased shortly after marrying the Board of Education and abandoning the carefree bohemian life of an adjunct professor steeped in progressive-rock exuberance, now fermented into nostalgia for what might’ve been: a family with a soul-mate—the Tinseltown weasel who’d recently dumped him and headed out West….

The last clause must look onward because pessimism is self-fulfilling prophecy. We are embarking on a new era: a novel epoch of clarity and rigor. Wanderlust may soon ensue. A time of transition. Many variables at work. Time to improvise, compose, and fine-tune a new renaissance—our best yet. We need unusual melodies and atypical chords. Maybe a swinging leisurely groove in 5/4 while a fretless bass sings harmonies….

Abandoned by the career woman he loved, left with a mortgage for an apartment that was never a home, unhappy about teaching at a high school with all sorts of socioeconomic problems but without the wherewithal to tackle them systematically, Van Simonides was once again on a long walk through summer Brooklyn streets, in search of a financially-viable way to abandon the apartment and the job, forget about what might have been, move to northwestern Canada, or bum around Europe in search of a reason to remain guardedly-optimistic about his own life and humanity’s future. Abandon the fucking Board of Education, already, he thought. Tell the bankers I want out because her highness chickened out—ran away to LA to find herself in show biz by losing me, first. "Wild horses can’t live in a stable, she said, and neither of us wants to be broken, right?" How about compromise, Ms. Drama Queen? Remember the necessity for creative compromise in romance? We agreed on it before we moved in together, you dizzy damsel. I guess you’ll find out the ugly side of compromise, in Hollywood….

Whatever, dude, he thought. Forget about her. We have work to do. A way must surely exist for people to get out of their mortgage without declaring bankruptcy. The bankers will probably keep the down payment and the monthly installments thus far, slap a penalty and whatnot, but bankruptcy is unnecessary. Let Vangelis the Abandoned go, you money-hungry pigs! I hate that fucking apartment. I left my easy college-adjunct single life to do the family thing, but then her highness decided to leave me. In other words, the matter was a mistake, so it needs fixing. Maybe I should be living in a cave in the middle of nowhere, near the North Pole: explore the subtleties of the troglodyte thing in all its funky glory—surrender unconditionally to my inner Neanderthal…. That’s a death wish, stud, because intellectual babes abhor feral existentialists, so don’t go there—not even mentally, alright? We have work to do: compile the series of steps necessary to exit the bog, take methodical action, reach firm ground, start hoofing, and never look back….

The federal tax-refund check he had just received made him feel somewhat better, and he tried to remember his bank’s nearest branch: make a deposit and find out how to dump the mortgage. Surely, the legal code must allow people to get out of a contract they signed, he thought. Shit happens all the time. There you are—ready, willing, and able to meet all terms of your contract, when something unexpected occurs, beyond your control and outside of your sphere of influence. In our case, her highness the drama queen quit our partnership and moved to Tinseltown. Thus, all bets are off, including that apartment—our supposed nest. With the would-be mamma gone, the nest is superfluous, so I too want out. The legal code is several centuries old, so it must surely include provisions to terminate a contract….

Absent-mindedly he reached into his shoulder bag, took out the tax-refund check, and raised it slowly to his eyes while walking on a bridge across a wide two-story-deep ravine, he’d thought when he’d first seen it: two tiers of railroad tracks flanked by bushes and trees on the steep sides—the N train emerging from an MTA tunnel, he later realized, wide enough for six trains to roll by simultaneously…. Whenever he passed by, he looked for signs of life, and sometimes he wished he had the courage to discard his possessions except the camping gear, give civilization the finger, embrace homelessness, and live in the ravine’s coziest cranny: keep the post-office box, take showers in the college campuses where he’d studied or taught, and be a feral Zen man…. Fat chance, he thought. The great outdoors are overrated: Lyme-disease-carrying deer ticks, crazed survivalists, meth-lab zombies, smashed moonshiners, paranoid marijuana-growers, small-town shakedown coppers, and other armed weirdos with an itchy trigger-finger. The great indoors are the only way out for humanity, in the long term. Already middle-aged, the Sun will run out of hydrogen in about three billion years, start burning helium, expand into a red giant, and evaporate Earth’s oceans. Reaching another Earth-like planet will be very difficult and will take a very long time. Off-world settlements will be airtight indoors environments on airless planets and moons….

Suddenly, he sneezed thrice in quick succession while a gust of wind blew the tax-refund check out of his hand, over the railing, down into the ravine, and under the bridge, in an elegant slow-motion zigzag descent….

An N train emerged and rolled leisurely on the upper tier’s northern track, toward Coney Island to the southeast, the ravine absorbing about one-fourth of the steel serpent’s screeching…. Several parked freight cars loaded with industrial electrical equipment, on the lower tier…. The weeds’ assault on the gravel under the lower-tier’s southernmost tracks was self-evident…. A few feet away, along the steep sides, the orgiastic foliage luxuriated in the glorious light, mocked the MTA’s periodic attempts to keep nature at bay, and ridiculed the riding public always rushing but getting mostly in debt in the short term and obsoleteness sooner or later…. Creeping plants swamped a crumbling shed…. Island strips of greenery flourished between the two tiers…. A feral cat walked apprehensively along the lower tracks, looked here and there as if trying to evade a larger predator….

Twice more he sneezed and then stared morosely at the train tracks: disgusted, disappointed, feverish, and fearful of arrest for trespassing into MTA property. He had to enter the ravine because convincing the IRS to issue another refund check would be difficult and time-consuming during an expensive lifestyle change. Not a fuckup, technically speaking, he thought. The fucking wind blew the check out of my fingers. I didn’t drop the fucking thing. Yes, I should’ve held with more conviction on to the tax-refund check, but my mojo is shaky after the loss of the drama queen and her many assets: a keen mind, a timeless smile, a shapely body, a tight twat, a substantial wit, a wide vocabulary, and a generic American accent that disguises well the fact she was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana…. That Tinseltown weasel….

The longer he waited, the more difficult the task would be, so he looked for an easy way to the bottom of the ravine…. No need to be discreet, he thought, because even cops will understand the pressing need to recover immediately my fucking federal tax-refund check…. I still have the IRS envelope in my bag, right here, between my iPad and a DVD of La Femme Nikita, alright? If the copper replies, "Je me’n fous [I don’t care]," she’ll have to retrieve the tax-refund check herself because I too work for the City of New York, alright? Not to mention I haven’t had any pussy since her highness bolted for Tinseltown and left me this DVD, one of her most favorites, which I shall lose as soon as I muster enough courage, get some pussy, and find a bachelor pad, not necessarily in that order. No wonder dad called her a fevgati: wanderer in Greek….

He remembered a vivid dream-sequence before dawn: he and his late father Yorgo the hot-dog vendor walking in a corridor of the École Normale Supérieure, a Parisian university neither of them had ever visited, speaking fluent French, a language neither of them spoke in waking reality. In a rich native-French accent Yorgo articulated the three dimensions of Sartre’s idea of ekstasis (standing out from one’s self) and its relationship to nothingness. Van’s dreaming self had followed easily the logocentric verbiage about being and non-being, and he found convincing his father’s portrayal of a French university professor….

The dream’s originality was the most important fact. Van and Yorgo had walked together once in an American university’s hallways but never through any kind of French institution except a restaurant in Montreal, Canada, when Van drove his parents across Canada and the US, in an RV. Van’s sleeping brain had conjured in vivid detail the main corridor of the École Normale Supérieure although Van couldn’t remember ever being inside any French university, embassy, or other official building. Nevertheless, using generic impressions (residual memories of American campuses with ornate buildings, Sartre’s books, native-French speakers, French films, and such), his sleeping brain had conjured a composite that was an original creation—thanks to all that random electrical activity in the sleeping brain….

Van stopped walking, took out his iPad, started a new document, and focused on his sleeping brain’s original creation, which had to be a composite, nonetheless. First, his sleeping brain had abstractified¹ the past, turning specific incidents into generic impressions: a memory of walking through an ornate building, perhaps the Midtown-Manhattan Public Library; a memory of walking through an old university building; a passage from one of Sartre’s books; a memory of a film or novel character walking through a university; and who knows what else. Second, his sleeping brain had created something new: a professorial Yorgo and a studious Van walking down the main corridor of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris…. Why not a CUNY or SUNY campus where I attended or taught? Van wondered. Why the French angle? Moreover, every night, the sleeping brain creates all sorts of new dream sequences. It doesn’t dredge up memories. It creates new content. The sleeping brain’s random electrical activity triggers areas associated with memories of experiences, images, books, movies, Google Earth excursions, video games, buildings….

The random electrical activity in the sleeping brain is the direct involuntary consequence of being alive. To maintain the biological processes necessary to live, the body performs unconsciously essential autonomic functions, such as breathing, which oxygenates the blood and enables the cells to work: a process that also requires the heart to function properly. The autonomic functions are regulated by various areas in the brain, hence the random electrical activity during sleep. Dreaming is the result of the random electrical activity occurring involuntarily as a consequence of the brain’s regulation of the body’s autonomic functions, around the clock. The incessant random electrical activity in the sleeping brain stimulates accidentally clusters of neurons associated with memory, learning, and such—hence, the surreal dreamscapes, courtesy of generic images and generic sequences….

Alphabet, vocabulary, he suddenly realized after repeating generic images and generic sequences several times. Since prehistory the brain’s incessant electrical activity has generated a visual alphabet or visual vocabulary of generic content: cave, forest, mountain, river, valley, settlement, house…. Thanks, Yorgo, he thought about his father’s mysterious French professorial performance. The nightly dream sequences come from my brain’s visual alphabet or visual vocabulary of generic images: objects, interiors, buildings, streets, vehicles, and strangers—the surreal background for bizarre sequences with familiar people in strange roles…. In waking life, electrical activity in the brain imprints sensory data on to the memory areas. Memory distortion and loss are rampant all along the signal path, from the sensory organs to brain cells. Moreover, most sensory information isn’t important enough for the brain to remember exactly when things happened, who was present, who said what to whom…. Only important events we remember, but some memories are false: film sequences, novel passages, or other people’s experiences that someone mistakes for personal memories. Further distortion happens when electrical impulses imprint sensory data on to brain-cell clusters—a transposition from electrical surges to brain proteins. The imprinting depends on the electrical surges’ characteristics and the affected brain-cell clusters—a wondrous process that began in primeval seas and continues to evolve. Every image (building, window, door, and such) entails a different combination of brain-cell clusters. Similar images, such as doors and windows, are imprinted near each other, and most are generic. The brain often uses generic images even when trying to remember an important specific one….

After reading what he had typed into his iPad, he realized the implications:

Consciousness stems from the fact that sensory input and cultural training enable the brain to generate an alphabet or vocabulary of abstractified generic images—a repertoire of abstractions: street, house, table, bed, woman, man, child, family, school, and such, devoid of unique characteristics. Proof of the alphabet or vocabulary of abstractified generic images is the sleeping brain’s ability to synthesize new dream sequences every time we dream—sequences that are not memories but new dream creations. In other words, via nurturing, education, and interaction, humans enable their brains to create a vocabulary of countless generic abstractions: mother, love, father, play, food, table, chair, toy, and so on. Whenever children learn something, for example, school, the electricity in their brain makes an association between a specific building in the world and a corresponding combination of cell-clusters in the brain areas where visual processing and remembering occur. As children grow into adults who attend several schools (daycare, kindergarten, elementary, high school, university, tutoring institution, and so on), their idea of school becomes increasingly more generic. Moreover, the brain associates similar ideas (for example, school, house, hotel, church, and other such buildings) near one another, using similar cell clusters and similar electrical discharges in the visual-processing and memory-recall areas. Brain cells and sensory organs began this process in primeval seas on Earth and countless other planets throughout the multiverse….

His iPad’s background photo was a study in familial glow: in the middle, a foot taller than his parents, his arms around their shoulders, Van beamed at the camera while Arete and Yorgo looked up at him, pleased he was shining in the world, during the Greek Independence Day parade in Manhattan…. Smile while You Can, Pilgrims Van had titled the photo…. Seeing Van stretching one arm and then the other to take a selfie of himself and his parents, a female cop had volunteered to take the family photo, a few months before Yorgo’s untimely death by Mack truck driven by an asshole who hadn’t slept in days and who didn’t know his limitations. Van wanted to sue the trucker and his company, but Arete replied in Greek, "Honorable people don’t try to profit from a loved one’s death." Yorgo had often said similar epigrammatic things and had paid for Van’s undergraduate education, hence Van’s boundless love, immense gratitude, sincere admiration, and casual respect for his parents, neither of whom had finished high school but who had more gravitas, more sense, and more dignity than many heads of state, most movers and shakers, and all the overexposed rich-and-famous fools whose idiotic antics the mass media and the masses can’t get enough of….

Feeling fortunate to have a pair of sweethearts for parents, Van remembered the tax-refund check, so he put away the iPad and went to retrieve his money, wondering what his personal unconscious or perhaps the collective unconscious was trying to tell him about his father…. And why not include Arete, the Simonides household’s undisputed boss, in the oneiric walk down the main corridor of the École Normale Supérieure with Professor Yorgo…? Chance associations? Meaningless coincidence? After all, Jung himself admitted his failure to define the acausal nature of synchronicity…. Like Arete, Yorgo was Greek on both sides, had never been to France, and didn’t speak French although he did like Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour, and Yves Montand. More serious and more religious than Yorgo, Arete had a natural soprano voice, but she sang only hymns, hence the father-son easy co-conspirator relationship….

Of the four possible ways down to the ravine, the first two proved impassable because of a car dealership’s high and robust fences, but on the other side of the bridge Van found an opening and advanced slowly through the orgiastic growth, in search of a path leading down to the train tracks. Brooklyn receded farther with every cautious step he took. Crickets chirped and birds sang, and civilization seemed miles away. The roar of a passing truck made him feel as if he were hiking near a highway across the wide-open spaces of a sparsely-populated state, out West. Broken chairs, tables, TVs, computers, and appliances were strewn everywhere. Where’s a homeless person when you need one? he wondered. Hard to believe no followers of Diogenes the Cynic live down there. I guess they read Machiavelli and moved to Revolving Doors: a gated community between Wall Street and Congress…. Ideal camping-ground, the bottom of this ravine. Cops never venture down there, and the track-inspectors can’t arrest anyone. Avoiding them would be easy. Pitch our tent in a remote spot, camouflage it well, use our polar sleeping-bag and the Coleman lantern, and give civilization the finger….

Behind a gutted refrigerator, he found a trail, took it, and was soon on the upper tier of the ravine’s floor, but the tax-refund check was somewhere on the lower tier, so he had to find a way to climb farther down, to the cargo tracks. Stepping over the third rail was scary. Feverish and cold, defiant and vulnerable in swift turns, an intruder in the country of the homeless, he surveyed the terrain, then hurried toward the underside of the bridge where his tax-refund check had glided. Watch your footing, pilgrim, he told himself. A badly-sprained ankle would require us to call for help and would cause us embarrassment, maybe even arrest for trespassing. Watch out for thugs, too. No honor, in the jungle. Stealth is the key. Predators remain hidden until the last moment, then assault their prey, intending to kill. Beware. A bit too quiet, this homeless territory. Duck if you hear any hissing, but don’t be a chicken, alright? A-ha, ha, ha….

Precariously perched atop a bush, his tax-refund check was about to take off again for lower elevations…. Familiarity and novelty twirled in slow motion all around, in a tight embrace: a serene ravine in urban Brooklyn—among Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Borough Park, and Dyker Heights…. At first, everything looked ordinary, as if the scene were out West or even in Greece, but then the sunlight flickered when thin clouds passed by, as if an Algonquin Indian or ancient Macedonian were about to emerge from the bush and walk along the tracks…. Don’t hold your breath, pilgrim, he thought. You lack the requisite faith-gene, and the many-worlds view is an illusion….

Vangelis looked around casually, retrieved his tax-refund check as if money grew on trees and bushes, put it back in its envelope, secured it in his bag’s zipped pocket, and turned to leave, moving slowly and smoothly, as if MTA’s hidden cameras were on him: an innocent after his own money….

Then, appeared an enchanted beast: a big well-kept black dog with a human-like countenance, blocking egress and eyeing him calmly, its snout parallel to the ground, its jaws moving, as if speaking in a register outside human hearing…. Neither hostile nor friendly—an all-business natural with enough gravitas to tutor A-list thespians….. Casual and hefty, the charmed pooch exuded human vibes, as if about to speak English with a canine accent: About-face, pilgrim….

Cosmic curveball, food-poisoning hallucination, or ultra-vivid dream, thought Van and ordered himself to remain calm, stay still, and decide what to do…. Where’s the dog’s owner…? Nowhere to go but to the far end, at least another long-block away, toward the hidden MTA tunnel’s entrance, below the Gowanus Expressway, parallel to a park on one side and a quiet leafy street on the other—an unfamiliar area…. The southern side of the leafy street was mostly wild growth on both sides of a fence along the entire block….

The mystical dog looked Van in the eye and waited patiently for him to understand the need to turn around and walk toward the hidden entrance to the MTA tunnel. No threatening vibes, no pressure. Only a strong suggestion, for Van’s own good. Instead of a collar, the beast wore a little black-leather vest with two embroidered holes for the forelegs and two side pockets! Well-fed, muscular, and heavy, the beast observed Van calmly with an attitude of casual gravity that spoke volumes: Forget about the trail behind me. Turn around, and start walking. Trust me. Something near the tunnel you must see….

From the corners of his eyes Van looked for a heavy stick to grab, near a perch to climb, in one smooth motion if the dog moved toward him. Breathe slowly, breathe deeply, and fear not, he thought, but be ready to dash off for that perch and call for help if the pooch approaches….

However, the wonder beast remained calm, as if to establish that wasn’t a flee/fight-type encounter….

Hey, Mr. Dog! Van addressed the black beast, its owner, and nearby security cameras: "You look like the silent type, so let me cut to the chase, alright? Since you obviously don’t want me to take the path behind you, can you show me another way out, please? Another way out…."

Matter-of-factly the dog motioned with its head toward the far end of the ravine and eyed Van with a Zen-like calmness and a profound self-assurance, not at all threatening, while an uptown train rumbled toward the tunnel….

Embedded on the wall ahead rungs appeared leading to the upper tier, but Van passed up the opportunity to escape. The black monster’s comprehension was intriguing, and more opportunities to climb up would materialize. Somehow he was sure the beast had benign plans for him: either under the bridge or on the other side, where the ravine continued for another long block, before the next bridge. Maybe the pooch wanted to show him its litter of newborn puppies for possible adoption—a nonstarter, unfortunately, because Van was most definitely not a pet person….

"You want me to go under the bridge, then?" Van asked the dog.

The monster nodded its head and waited patiently, like a well-mannered professional who knows that threats and aggression are unnecessary with easygoing introverts like Van, who had a legitimate reason to descend into the ravine. In fact, the black guard exhibited none of the typical canine behaviors: barking, panting, slobbering, growling, and such. His economy of movement was that of a veteran character actor who had seen and done everything (debauchery, marriage, family, children, adultery, addiction, crime, alcoholism, and who knows what else), whose craft improved with age, and who knew instinctively which roles would bring him critical acclaim, popular success, and personal growth. His black velvety fur glistened here and there, as if the canine form were about to expand and morph into a humanoid demon beyond good and evil—an extraterrestrial alien straight out of the collective unconscious of all intelligent life in the multiverse….

Film the pooch and email a clip to her highness the drama queen, then….

Van backed off slowly toward the bridge—hyperconscious, unafraid, and comfortable in the ravine’s cool shade. A flashback reminded him of the transcendental feeling of second wind while running around a soccer field: exhaustion to the point of collapse, arms flailing and legs melting, and then whoosh—weakness morphing swiftly into vigor, strength, power, and a profound feeling of well-being, as if he could fly off by simply running at top speed, jumping up, and flapping his arms…. Ah, yes, Nina, he thought. Green eyes, yummy boobs, and a tight twat she let us inhabit for eons, at a time…! He smiled, turned around, and walked toward the bridge.

The dog followed him at a safe distance as if to convince him not to fear an attack….

Well, partner, he thought, you must be a fucking dog-whisperer because you seem to understand the beast’s intention to show us something benign. I detect no darkness in this area or in the dog despite its black color and eccentric behavior. The wonder pooch really wants to show us something—not its puppies I hope because I ain’t a dog person. If we move out in the country, we’ll have to get a guard dog, I guess, but the fucking thing will live outside….

Simonides reached the underside of the bridge, stopped, turned around, and asked the dog, "Is this it, bud?"

The beast moved its head up as if to motion him to keep walking.

Farther down? Vangelis asked.

The pooch nodded its head as if it understood every word—a possibility, given a creative trainer and loving caregiver who engaged the dog, reinforced good behaviors, rewarded proper deeds, and conditioned the pooch to a simple vocabulary: all in the context of unconditional love, of course. No magic necessary or possible—only an extraordinary animal and a unique human with a keen interest in each other, against the cultural background of hundreds of thousands of years of cohabitation since prehistory, when our ancestors first adopted wolf pups, raised them, and then put them to work—a symbiosis….

Yes, sir, thought Van. I wanna meet that dog’s teacher. Maybe she can show me how to forget the drama queen and get out of that fucking mortgage I shackled myself with, for her. Then again, if the dog’s trainer is that capable, what the hell is she doing in a patch of nature in Brooklyn? If urbanity is her thing and if she’s that capable, shouldn’t she be living in a Soho loft or a Central Park aerie? If nature is her thing, shouldn’t she be living in Woodstock? Surely, the pooch would love that rural-hippie ambiance. What am I missing, Vangelis? You want an alphabetical or taxonomic inventory of the things you’re missing…?

The more he walked, the narrower the ravine, the thicker the growth, the taller the trees, the sky a thin band full of hope—meretricious, some allege. The absence of homeless people surprised him again, and so did the absence of garbage, as if someone maintained the grounds—certainly not the MTA, which can’t keep its own train tracks clean and rat-free because many commuters are hopeless litter-bugs. Then, why doesn’t this ravine feature rats or cats? No food for them down here, partner. The fruit trees and garbage piles are upstairs, or maybe that weird dog scared off the rats and cats after eating many of them….

The black monster followed him at a safe distance, sniffed here and there casually, but didn’t bother marking his territory, as dogs do. The canine eyes were as expressive as human ones, and his upturned eyebrows resembled those of a master character actor wearing his makeup so well that he had transformed himself into a wonder dog whose self-assurance was so strong that he looked capable at any moment of standing on his hind legs, twitching this way and that, growing in size, shedding the animal hide, and transforming itself into a person, as characters do in countless werewolf films with state-of-the-art special-effects but no other positive qualities besides the occasional great lead actor, such as Anthony Hopkins, struggling heroically to resuscitate an inane screenplay that should’ve never been produced….

Next time Van looked ahead, he saw something strange….

A portion of the foliage on the fence along the right side slid for two feet like a gate, and out came a man who approached slowly, stopped six feet away, and scrutinized Van. A blond long-haired and clean-shaven man in clean fatigues, noncommittal—a cross between hippy and ex-Marine, neither friendly nor hostile, he had serious acting chops, or perhaps he was a natural dog-whisperer….

Hi! Van said, eager to leave the scene because the man reminded him of the photogenic vocalists who take over the band, become famous, and then go solo while the other members return to obscurity despite the fact that they wrote and played the music that brought fame and fortune to their ex-lead-singer….

The ex-Marine hippy nodded and asked, "Looking for something?"

Yes, sir, I was, and I found it, but your dog blocked my egress and brought me here, instead.

With his left hand the laconic all-American motioned Van to move to the side, knelt, and waited for the dog to approach him. He didn’t pet the pooch as people usually do. Instead, man and dog put their heads together, and did a very good job of pretending that some sort of quiet communication was in progress: the dog moving its mouth and the human nodding as if listening…. The human glanced at Van thrice, but the canine had lost interest in Simonides…. Acting chops galore both of them, without words or sounds, they did a very convincing job of pretending to be exchanging information….

After several minutes, the man rose, and the dog went through the opening out of which his master had emerged. "Are you sure you found what you were looking for?" asked the hippy ex-Marine.

"Yes, sir. It was a tax-refund check that the wind blew out of my hands, up on that bridge back there. I found the check resting on a bush under the bridge."

"Teiresias just told me that you are looking for much more than a check."

"Your dog’s name is Teiresias?"

That’s no dog, dude.

"He looks like one."

"Things aren’t always what they seem, right? Surely, you must know that," said the dog whisperer, with the effortless and clear enunciation of someone born for the theater stage and the big screen despite the incongruity between his appearance and speech, never mind the locale.

"I do, and that’s one strange creature, for sure. He exhibits none of the typical canine behaviors…. What is it, then?"

"That’s a personal question coming from a stranger. Teiresias says you’re alright, but I’m not ready to divulge my family’s secrets."

"Family…? There’s more of you?"

"You tell me. Let’s see what you can do."

"I’ve no special powers, sir. I don’t even know how to get out of my mortgage. I hate my apartment, and I despise my job. Moreover, I can’t think of a better place to go. The only thing that matters to me is music, but I can’t make it professionally viable, for a variety of reasons—some personal but most beyond my control…."

The ex-Marine hippy smiled sympathetically and said, "Teiresias is right. You are a seeker."

"Aren’t we all?"

"No. Most people embrace dogma and cling to it for life."

Are you familiar with Plato’s cave allegory? Van asked.

"Of course. You found your way out of the cave and returned to it to educate your brethren, but you are a troubadour at heart—a seeker of an audience, fame, fortune, and love…."

"I plead guilty to all that. Managing desire is exhausting…. The woman whom I thought I’d grow old with jumped ship recently, and I’m trying to summon the courage to do the same. Unfortunately, I lack her focus. I want to tour the world with my trio, but we play instrumental space-prog, and we are all too busy making a living to pursue music professionally. My one-man-band thing is even more difficult to do for a living…."

Stop telling your life story to a stranger, thought Van.

"At least you figured out that desire is for managing—not abandoning. Many people oscillate between excess and deficiency."

Fancy that—an Aristotelian elitist indigent, thought Van, losing interest in the ex-Marine hippy, his dog, and whoever else lived with them. If they were as special as they think, they’d be living in better digs or in a more picturesque ravine out West—not in the middle of fucking Brooklyn, New York. Whatever really. I’m not looking for enchanted beings. I’m too busy trying to figure out what to do with my fucking life….

The wonder-dog returned and stood next to the hippy ex-Marine….

Excuse me, said the indigent elitist, kneeled next to the dog, and moved his left ear closer to the canine’s snout….

The pooch made no audible sounds, but the ex-Marine hippy nodded thoughtfully, as if listening to a sage…. The traffic three stories up sounded far away…. Profundity and absurdity coiled around each other like the creeping vine did on the wire-mesh fence that also bore vertical two-inch-wide dark-green plastic strips that hid the homeless family’s encampment….

Van tried to remember if he had ingested any psychedelics recently…. A fellow musician sometimes gave him blotter acid, but it’d never conjured such extraordinary scenes…. Maybe the bodega man slipped some mixture of peyote and who knows what else into my coffee this morning, he thought, and I’ve been reading way too much into the behavior of those two weirdos….

The elitist homeless man rose, looked at Van with newly-found admiration, and asked, "Have you been to New Orleans?"

"What…? Why…? No…."

"Are you interested in going?"

"That’s a strange question, dude, considering we just met. You’re making me feel like I’m tripping or something…."

"I apologize, but Teiresias insists that I ask if you feel any attraction to New Orleans, Louisiana—for your own good, he assures me."

"I despise that tropical climate."

"What if you meet the woman of your dreams, and you fall deeply in love with each other?"

"Mercy, you two. I was recently dumped by a woman who was born in New Orleans. I’m trying to recover. The thought of romance makes me kinda queasy right now, especially down South…."

Teiresias says she doesn’t deserve you.

I hope he’s right, said Van.

"She only looks like an angel, according to Teiresias. She’s more of a reptile."

"What makes you say angel?" Van asked, feverish and cold.

"That’s her name—Angela, right?"

Van huffed and puffed, then asked, "How do you know that?"

"Your shoulder bag’s strap bears a button with the words Angela and Van," said the hippy ex-Marine and pointed….

Feeling like a doofus, Van looked down and saw the absurd button he’d been holding on to like a real loser: a garish piece of metal bearing the ex-lovers’ first names in white letters against a red background. Toss it, stud. Now! The whole world knows she’s no good for you. Trash that fucking thing! With caution he undid the safety pin holding the button attached to his strap, pulled the little monstrosity off, and tossed it as far away as possible, into the bushes….

"Wise move, the dog-whisperer said. Now you’re free for real love. The woman Teiresias and I have in mind hates that tropical weather, too. Only duty to her loved ones keeps her in New Orleans."

Angela too hates that humidity, said Van, "but that didn’t stop her from dumping me, so I’ll steer clear of real love for a while."

"That’s a prescription for solipsism, nihilism, misanthropy, and all sorts of other mental diseases," replied the hippy ex-Marine.

"I’m immune to all that, dude, said Van. I graduated from existentialism."

"Yes, but you’re reevaluating Nietzsche, right?"

No way, replied Van. "I despise deranged fools like Nietzsche, especially when their work is overrated."

"You’re agnostic, then?"

"Atheist, Van said, but neither militant nor materialist." Enough, he thought. Don’t ask him what he is. Let’s go, already.

What do you believe in most strongly?

"I believe in humanity’s potential to mature into a spacefaring civilization that reaches not only other galaxies but also other universes."

The ex-Marine hippy nodded thoughtfully and said, Now I understand why Teiresias brought you here.

"What’s up with that ... creature?" Van asked. How did you find each other?

He showed up on our doorstep when he was about a month old, replied the hippy ex-Marine.

"Why did you name him Teiresias?" Who cares? Let’s go!

He already had that name when he came to us.

Who gave it to him?

No idea, replied the hippy ex-Marine. Teiresias doesn’t know, either.

"He speaks English, then?" Easy with the sarcasm.

No, said the ex-Marine hippy. "I’m clairvoyant. Teiresias made me aware of that. Before Teiresias came into our life, I perceived my clairvoyance as ultra-vivid trance events. I did a lot of psychedelics in my teens and twenties, so I figured my visions were intense flashbacks."

It sounds like Carl Jung’s early life, said Van. Did anybody else in your family experience anything similar? Who cares?

"My mother."

Okay, then, said Van. Can you tell me how much money I have in my wallet? Easy, bud.

I don’t control the clairvoyance, replied the hippy ex-Marine. "It comes to me during extraordinary events."

Since when? asked Van. Dude! Who cares?

"I’ve had clairvoyant episodes since I was a child, but I didn’t realize what they were until Teiresias showed up. He made me understand they were clairvoyant events. He claims that my clairvoyance is the reason he was sent to us."

"Sent by whom?" His mamma, surely.

He’s not sure about that and doesn’t like talking about it because it pains him.

"How do you actually communicate with Teiresias?" Van asked. Via hocus-pocus, sparky!

He makes strange sounds that trigger words and phrases in my mind.

"That’s plausible, actually, Van admitted. The real mystery is who sent Teiresias to you."

"I think that the sender and Teiresias are the same ancient itinerant spirit that incarnates either at will or via karma. Sometimes I think he knows exactly who he is but doesn’t want to tell us, for some reason."

"Taking on a canine form makes no sense to me," said Van. None of it makes sense, bub. You humored that fool enough already. Let’s go!

"It makes sense for someone who likes people, abhors the jungle, and hates work, career, and the rat race. Millions of people love their dogs as if they were their children, but nobody expects dogs to leave the house, get a job, and all that. Dogs love to guard the premises, help the blind get around, track missing people, sniff out contraband, and so on."

"A musician friend once hoped to return as a rich lady’s lap dog—an honest admission…." Please. Frank is a frivolous fool focused on blowing people’s minds at any cost.

"Symbiosis is by definition a win-win deal," replied the ex-Marine hippy.

"Indeed, but why not incarnate as a world leader or an advisor to one, as Teiresias was in Greek mythology? That way, he could do a lot more good for many more people and have some serious fun, in the process."

"Teiresias is a seer—not a bodhisattva, the ex-Marine hippy replied. He can’t choose his parents. His karma determines his incarnations."

"That implies he sinned against canines in his previous life." Oh, brother. Adrift in an ocean of bullshit we are presently without sail, rudder, or paddle.

That makes sense, admitted the hippy ex-Marine.

How do dogs behave toward him? Van asked. Who cares? Let’s go, already.

They look confused and stay away because they—

Van’s ringing smartphone ended the exchange. Sorry, but my mother is calling from overseas. Arete to the rescue.

Later, dude, said the ex-Marine hippy but didn’t move. "Please don’t tell anyone about me and my family."

"No problem. Au revoir," said Van and left. Thank you, Arete, his inner comedian thought. That hippy ex-Marine was way too much. By the way, what’s with the fucking French, fella? We Greek!

Arete had nothing important to communicate. She simply wanted to hear Van’s voice, so he told her about the flying tax-refund check he was trying to recover in a Brooklyn ravine but nothing about Teiresias and the ex-Marine hippy. An easygoing and understanding woman, she let him go after asking him to call her at his convenience. Arete to the rescue again, he thought. A theist saving an atheist from a clairvoyant and his wonder-dog. I should’ve asked him to ID the caller. Fat chance. He couldn’t even guess how much money I have in my wallet. Typical occultist behavior: extraordinary excuses to support extraordinary claims. The occult is a bunch of irrelevant hooey conceived by people who can’t distinguish between ideas in the mind and realities in the world. The fact we can’t account for 96 percent of the physical universe doesn’t prove animism, panpsychism, or theism. Another undisputed fact is that we humans have a long history of having vastly overestimated ourselves, so let’s get real, huh? The planet faces imminent existential threats that require humanity to open new frontiers: build lunar Helium-3 mining operations and send humans to Mars, so we grow into a two-planet species and are thus twice as difficult for death-worshipers to extinguish….

When he returned to street level, he was so exhausted that he went straight home, took a nap, and when he woke up, he thought the entire incident with the wonder-dog and the hippy ex-Marine had been a dream akin to the previous night’s sequence about being in Rio, whose oneiric landscape felt so real to him that he was sure he had been to Brazil several times—contrary to the fact that he had never visited South America. Frivolous fucking subconscious, he thought. Instead of trying to resolve important issues, such as how to make an honorable living in music, my own fucking brain fucks with itself on a regular basis—even while I sleep! No wonder millions of people of all socioeconomic groups use alcohol and drugs to silence the constant chatter of consciousness. Meditation is an uphill battle that leads nowhere, because only the dead find real peace. The living struggle like Sisyphus….

*

THE MEANINGS OF

COINCIDENCE

W hereas mystics see the extraordinary everywhere, materialists posit parsimony, but the truth is between these two extremes. Indeed, in most ordinary instances, parsimony is the way to the truth because extraordinary creatures do not inhabit every niche and because embracing panpsychism entails a leap of faith into obscurity, confusion, and delusion. However, extraordinary things do happen occasionally , but they go unnoticed by those who use only parsimony. Chance events and universal laws are equally important, but fate is a fiction that stems from the brain’s inherent tendency to see patterns and meanings in randomness and chaos. The binary mode of language is necessary for civilization-building, but language is the shadow of existence, so wisdom-seekers who graduated from existentialism embrace multidisciplinary approaches and commit ourselves to progressive social causes.

Chance events are as important as universal laws because chance enables phenomena (galactic formation, solar-system development, planetary accretion, floral growth, cell formation, cell division, gene expression, species proliferation, and so on) to occur freely within parameters, explore possibilities, and attain viability in the widest possible range of niches. Although entropy is at work across the multiverse, it affects differently the countless ecosystems. Moreover, the natural impetus is unconscious, so many of its expressions are inconsequential while others promote the emergence, propagation, or destruction of life. For example, while destroying old stars, supernovas also generate the heavy elements necessary for life and contribute to the formation of new stars. Similarly, by extinguishing the dinosaurs, the asteroid that hit Earth 65 million years ago enabled mammals to grow in size, diversify into countless species, spread across the planet, and eventually give rise to humanity. In other words, some chance events are destructive, others creative, and others both simultaneously, affecting very differently different species. Without chance and the beneficial mutations it causes, universal laws could not explore new possibilities unless everything were preordained.

However, if everything were preordained, the ubiquitous waste and senselessness would not exist, because the alleged creator of everything should be able to do a far better job, given theists’ claims that God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and benevolent. In other words, if a supreme designer existed, lethal viruses, bloodsucking organisms, terminal childhood diseases, murderous dictators, countless genocides, and reality’s other horrors would not exist because they reflect badly on their alleged creator. Somehow, if an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and benevolent supreme creator existed, universal phenomena would proceed in ways that reflected the supreme designer’s ability to create a just reality. Claiming that the supreme designer is testing lower life-forms like humanity reeks of social engineering and patriarchal dogma—the most likely possibility, by far. Furthermore, equally illogical is the claim that the alleged supreme designer of everything allows chance or has programmed chance into the multiverse. By definition, no supreme and benevolent designer would want its creation to be as susceptible to injustice, corruption, decay, and horror as the universe is, because these evil phenomena reflect badly on their alleged creator. Therefore, the multiverse is a purposeless eternal reality powered in equal measure by chance events and natural laws, and God is a delusion of theist minds.

Animism, panpsychism, theism, fate, destiny, and similar notions are fictions that arose from storytelling and because of existential fear, utter ignorance, wishful thinking, blind faith, social cohesion, and crowd control. While ascribing divinity to natural forces and phenomena they could not understand, driven by their nascent symbolic thinking and struggling to come to terms with death, our prehistoric ancestors created all kinds of fictions, including the afterlife, animism, panpsychism, and pantheism, which evolved into polytheism and then monotheism during early history—hence God, the alleged creator of everything and alleged author of all history. However, history shows that religion is an assortment of good and evil: the crucible of many national-liberation wars and the 1960s’ civil-rights struggle, indeed, but also the force behind crusades, terrorism, and crimes against humanity, from the Vatican to ISIS. In other words, according to creationist myths, being omniscient, God knows everything that has ever happened and will ever transpire, and everyone who will ever live is destined to travel along the trajectory that God has already prescribed. In that respect, God the omniscient creator of everything is the prerequisite to fate and destiny, which are possible only after someone writes or knows the entire history of the multiverse.

However, the multiverse is eternal, and its development depends equally on chance events as well as natural laws. An eternity of chance events is impossible to author or predict, because of the infinite number of variables. The total absence of evidence for God’s existence and humanity’s history of having vastly overestimated ourselves prove that only a leap of faith into fantasy can cause someone to assert the existence of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and benevolent God who can author and foresee every chance event in an eternal phenomenon like the multiverse. However, since no evidence whatsoever exists to support the existence of such God outside theist minds, the notion is delusional and megalomaniacal—a residue of pre-scientific beliefs whose anthropocentrism is gross, indeed. Elementary logic and the fossil record show that humans evolved from primates, so all claims that God created us are sheer delusion, bad faith, and utter ignorance.

Moreover, chance events often cause coincidences—some meaningless, others meaningful, and the difference between the two is mostly a matter of opinion and belief. While witnessing the same event, some people may perceive all sorts of mystical entities whereas other people will notice nothing unusual. However, in most cases some parsimony is necessary. Dragging in the extraordinary as the first choice every time is by definition extreme: bias, faith, and so on. Synchronicity is an intriguing hypothesis, but it’s also filled with ambiguity, obscurity, and faith. After all, Carl Jung was a strong theist born into a family whose members, including himself, experienced occult phenomena and had archetypal visions. In addition, he never explained his idea of synchronicity (meaningful coincidence), beyond saying that it is acausal and then dragging in alchemy, astrology, and other obscurities. For example, Jung wrote the following:

Synchronicity designates the parallelism of time and meaning between psychic and psychophysical events, which scientific knowledge so far has been unable to reduce to a common principle. The term [synchronicity] explains nothing, [my italics, his comma splice] it simply formulates the occurrence of meaningful coincidences which, in themselves, are chance happenings, but are so improbable that we must assume them to be based on some kind of principle, or on some property of the empirical world.²

Setting aside the fact that Jung had to resort to alchemy, astrology, and other obscurities to describe synchronicity, the fact that science can’t explain coincidences doesn’t mean that taking a leap of faith into the occult is the only alternative. Humanity is an adolescent civilization with a history of having vastly overestimated its cosmic importance, and science is only a few centuries old, so expecting science to have already solved ancient mysteries, many of which are figments of the human mind, is unrealistic and unwise. In addition, scientists openly admit their current inability to detect 96 percent of this universe (the dark matter and dark energy) whereas mystics claim to know just about everything—an assertion that only gullible people accept. For example, Jung’s statement that he didn’t merely believe in God but that he knew God existed was an attempt to extend his belief, which doesn’t require proof, into the realm of fact, which does require proof. One need not be a materialist to agree with Carl Sagan that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In fact, some of us atheists embrace a humanity-centered spirituality because our species’ survival and improvement are far more important than the grains of truth that may exist in medieval manuscripts and recent ESP experiments, all of which are utterly irrelevant on a planet facing numerous serious problems: overpopulation, pollution, global warming, terrorism due to religious differences, narcissistic leaders, religious-conservative politicians eager for the Rapture, and countless back-to-godheaders—problems that are the direct result of the fact that millions of people still cling on to pre-scientific delusions: astrology, the Apocalypse, the godhead, and all sorts of other figments of theist minds.

Self-evident facts available immediately to all humans show that the brain has a powerful tendency to look for patterns (faces, figures, numbers, meanings, and so on) in abstraction, disorder, and chaos. For example, when looking at microscopic structures, abstract-expressionist paintings, cloud formations, aerial photos, star constellations, and so on, humans look for patterns that we can understand, so we essentially insert meaning into random phenomena. In other words, the meaning we perceive in random phenomena is a projection of our brain, on to nature, so most of the meaning exists only in our brain. However, this fact doesn’t support philosophical idealism—the notion that reality takes place exclusively in the mind. In fact, reality also takes place in the world: philosophical realism. In other words, contrary to quantum physicists’ assertions about the primacy of the observer, the world does not need observers! The fact that the universe existed long before humans’ arrival proves that the universe is capable of functioning without any observers! If quantum physicists’ solipsistic idealism³ were true, the universe would have begun only when humans arose, because by definition solipsism rejects other perspectives (earlier alien civilizations)! However, the reality is that the Earth consists of geology, flora, and fauna that predate humanity by billions of years. During the billions of years before the emergence of our earliest hominid ancestors, the Earth had existed as fully as it did after we spread out of Africa. During the billions of years before the emergence of our earliest hominid ancestors, falling trees and other natural phenomena made as much noise as they make today despite the fact that no humans were present to hear them. People who can’t see these facts are blinded by solipsistic idealism because they are mystics with PhDs—theists who assume math to be God and quantum absurdities proof of God’s existence. However, using the necessary amount of parsimony, astronomers and cosmologists have shown that the universe began 13.8 billion years ago while our solar system formed only about 4.6 billion years ago, and that factual difference proves the primacy of the cosmos and the eternal multiverse.

However, nature’s primacy doesn’t mean that observers are irrelevant. On the contrary, observers are an integral part of nature because we arise from it, so we are essentially inextricable from it. Only in language do observers and nature appear to be distinct because language is an artificial binary system capable of accessing only the shadow of existence. In other words, language is reductive because it diminishes the kaleidoscopic multidimensionality of the eternal multiverse into binary abstractions: nature/observer, chaos/order, noise/meaning, monism/dualism, and all the other figments of the human mind. Moreover, sterile universes that don’t support life are every bit as real as the most fecund universes that teem with intelligent life. Although evidence of sterile universes is impossible to obtain, the fact that this solar system includes mostly sterile planets and sterile moons suggests strongly that sterile universes must also exist. Furthermore, chance is the factor that determines which planets and universes are fecund and which are sterile. For example, one of the main reasons why Earth is the only planet in our solar system that supports intelligent life is the fact that our planet is (by chance) located in the middle of the habitable zone around the Sun. Moreover, elementary logic dictates that since intelligent life has arisen on Earth, intelligent life has also arisen in similar circumstances in this universe and others.

To go beyond the binary mode of language, humans must devote our lives to constructive and socially-relevant projects: therapeutic arts, progressive politics, multicultural activities, interdisciplinary approaches, feminist principles, civil-rights causes, and all movements devoted to the improvement of this world. Everything we do in our daily lives must contribute to humanity’s perpetual improvement and indefinite survival, via acts of random kindness toward friendly strangers in need so that we may all reinforce the bonds of goodwill and civility among the civilized citizens we are supposed to be. Moreover, since history is the record of progress, civilized citizens are also informed voters who vote only for progressive politicians of the Democratic Party because independent parties don’t have a chance of reaching the White House in the near future in the US. People who don’t see the differences between Democrats and Republicans are anarchists, nihilists, back-to-godheaders, closet Republicans, uninformed voters, and other irrational individuals who can’t perceive fine distinctions, expecting stark binaries like angels/demons to apply to Democrats/Republicans. In reality, not all Republicans are racists, and not all Democrats are communists, but Democrats are more progressive and more inclusive than Republicans, most of whom demonize gays for wanting to marry, eagerly await the Rapture, and utter all sorts of other idiotic nonsense that often makes them sound like ISIS members, who can’t wait to reach Heaven so that they can spend eternity with their virgins! In fact, Buddhists, Platonists, transcendentalists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and many new-agers are essentially back-to-godheaders who can’t wait for history to end, so they can join the godhead—a grossly anti-humanist delusion whose hubris is pathological because the godhead is a human projection on the indifferent multiverse.

To survive indefinitely, civilizations must become increasingly more progressive, more just, and more multicultural in order to motivate increasingly more people to work for the common good via enlightened self-interest. Thus, advanced civilizations’ creativity counterbalances entropy and the destructive consequences of chance events in nature and society. People who believe in transcendental worlds and mystical realms are back-to-godheaders: eager for history to end, so they can spend eternity with their maker—an anti-human and anti-history bias, by definition. That is why informed citizens err on the side of history, which is the record of progress: humanism, feminism, civil rights, environmentalism, and so on.

*

DESIGN

V angelis spent the next month reconsidering his options