From: *By the Late John Brockman*

[Guest guest]

Man is dead.

 

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The choice is between the present and the past. The

choice is between choice and no choice. There is no

choice.

 

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Man is dead, and all the categories that created

and characterized human existence must be

reconsidered. The key to elimination of words?

Ownership. Replace all words pertaining to

ownership with words concerning functions,

operations. What did man own? Consciousness,

feelings, emotions, mind, egos, spirit, soul, pain,

etc., words resulting from centuries of belief, and

no longer useful.

 

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Consciousness does not exist; indeed, there is no

reason to believe that it ever did exist. Not

conscious, not unconscious. If consciousness does

not exist, there can hardly be a state of

unconsciousness.

 

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Man is an abstraction. Human abstractions are based

on the past, on behavior, not on operant

considerations of what is happening. Considerations

of the present? Patterns. Transaction. Activity.

Doing. Considerations of the past? Behavior.

Environment. Man.

 

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The abstractions of man characterize phenomena

without regard to the operant activities of the

phenomena. It is a limited system of

classification.

 

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How to deal with what is happening? Search for

rhythms and patterns. Man is dead. The analysis

moves from the study of fixed entities that are

capable of ownership to the transaction of the

species with environmental forces. Look to the

transaction. The world about us is accessible only

through a nervous system, and our information

concerning it is confined to what limited

information the nervous system can transmit. The

brain receives information and acts on it by

telling the effectors what to do. The loop is

completed as the performance of the effectors

provides new information for the brain. It is a new

feedback loop, a nonlinear relationship between

output and input.

 

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Man always dealt with what had already happened,

believing that it occurred in the present instant.

What he thought was happening coincides

approximately between steps two and three of the

loop. Man was aware only of the past, and never

aware of the activities of his brain, where there

are order and arrangement, but there is no

experience of the creation of that order.

Experience gives us no clue as to the means by

which it is organized. If the organization were

produced by a slide rule or a digital computer,

consciousness would give no indication of that fact

nor any basis for denying it. If the brain is

capable of producing such organization, then it may

be considered the organizer.

 

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To understand these notions, it is necessary to

explore the concept of the interval. The interval

refers to the moment of the creation of the order

of the brain's activity. The activity of which man

was never aware, the inaccessible present, the

direct experience of the brain. The rest of time

emerges only in signals relayed to us at this

instant by innumerable stages and unexpected

bearers. The nature of a signal is that its message

is neither here nor now, but there and then. If it

is a signal, it is a past action, no longer

embraced by the 'now' of present being. The

perception of a signal happens 'now,' but its

impulse happened then. In any event, the present

instant is the plane upon which the signals of all

being are projected. This instant, the interval,

constitutes all that is directly experienced. It

was for man the abstraction, his Achilles' heel.

 

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In this evolutionary stage, a stage beyond space

and time, the interval is closed forever, and man

ceases to exist.

 

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Man ordered his experience in terms of

psychological considerations of the nonexistent

mind. But the ordering of experience is always on

the here-and-now level. The interpretation of the

ordering is always at the there-and-then level. Be

aware that the brain's operation is a continuing

activity of ordering in the here-and-now. There was

always ordering in the here-and-now while man

deluded himself with considerations there-and-then,

considerations of a world that didn't exist. A

world that never had existed. The world of the

past. A fractional instant, and yet the past.

Because of that interval man was able to exist.

Man, a relic of the instantaneous past. Man, an

instant too old to exist. Things not existent

should be of no interest to us. All those things

rendered unto man are based on a system that deals

with illusion. The interpretation of the ordering

of the brain takes place while new ordering is

continually happening. It is almost as though there

were two parallel planes.

 

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Almost. We might even assume there was a choice

between living in one plane or another. Actually,

there is no choice. There is no choice. There is

only the ordering and arrangement, the here-and-

now. Some of us, most of us, cannot recognize this

level and continue by blindness, by inertia, by

pretension, the delusion that we are men. It's a

mistake. Man is dead. Man never existed at all. Our

awareness as experience is past experience.

Dreaming.

 

 

 

 

*By the Late John Brockman*, pp. 1-15

See the entire text online at:

http://www.edge.org/btljb/jb001.html

 

 

Bill