Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Ka-boom!

I recently called my buddy Doug (https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/), which surprised him because I don't have a phone. As Doug knows, this is because I'm a telepath, the real kind, retired from playing nightclubs and cruise ships, where I pretended to be fake. These days I inhabit a one room shack in the Mojave desert north of L.A., where I get my fill of human communication out of the air and have no need for additional verbiage via technology.

Nevertheless, I called Doug on a pay phone.

“Hey man, I need help processing some things,” I started with.

"Harry? Why aren't you telepathing me, if that's a verb?"

“I need you to help me think in human language. Normally, as you know, I find it an overly causal, rather pushy means of expression, but for once I want to control things.”

"This must be serious!"

"We're all in the same boat," I sighed, "...the same sinking boat."

I am pessimistic by self-definition, though I often strive to burnish an appearance of optimism with incomplete expressions like, "The glass is half full" (of shit).

I explained to Doug, for the umpteenth time, “I believe that human consciousness is a construct, one of whose purposes is to individualize us, so that we believe we are independent actors, ‘people,’ if you will. When I telepathically travel outside of human language, I see further possibilities. Once I experienced being a porpoise with half its brain asleep; another time I was Zephyr- the spirit of the West Wind."

"But lately," I continued (though I wasn't sure Doug was listening), "I've been alarmed by what I pick up from media and real time humans and animals who pass my way. Now I see 'us,' my term for atoms and molecules of all sorts, including our own, as increasingly unstable, fissionable material."

“In other words: Ka-Boom!” I spouted, in what I hoped was a decisive summing-up.

I told Doug that I want to function like the city of Los Angeles' phone app that alerts users to imminent earthquakes. But I want to alert people to mindquakes, which are at least as dangerous as the geologic kind. Once the distinctive shaking starts, it will gradually accelerate, either concluding in destruction, or slowing down, dissolving, and giving us another chance. We should have some say in this.


"The instability we face," I went on, "though it appears localized in time, emerged eons ago, after hundreds of millions of years of single-celled life grazing and meditating on the ocean floor. One day their unending joy offended God, who proclaimed, 'For their sins, let them eat each other.'"

When will the age of predation end? I asked Doug to contrast two hypothetical versions of this end, one, the popular concept of "The Big One," the other, that of Christian apocalyptic thinking as expressed in Revelation, the final book of the Bible.

The Big One is a modern concept of secular events, like atomic wars or massive earthquakes. The other, Revelation, is a mystic vision of a God-mediated termination of our world.

Though widely popular with early Christians, Revelation at first met resistance from Church authorities, who were perhaps wary of its explicit message. Revelation was rejected for inclusion in the canon by the Council of Laodicea in 363 AD. The Synod of Hippo, in 393 AD, was poised to reject it again but had second thoughts when it realized that Christians were going to read Revelation whether it was canonical or not. After all, it provided human life with a purpose: To die.

The Big One does not entail an afterlife, and Revelation is vague on evidence for one. As I argued to Doug, I think we’d be better off, instead of figuring out how to end it all, seeking decent ways to survive it.

Doug said he agrees about survival, but hopes it doesn’t entail too many Revealed Big Ones. All in all, we were in agreement.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Older Post Home
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)