Confrontations With Infinity

A self-psychoanalysis based on reoccurring childhood dreams and nightmares, and its consequences for my conception of the destiny of Humanity

I vividly recall my two earliest dreams. Both were confrontations with the infinite in different ways.

The first dream came to me very young, shortly after learning to walk, or perhaps even before learning to walk. In this dream I would stare out over a vast horizon of forests and streams and meadows. At a distance far enough that it would take at least multiple days to reach on foot, were enormous mountains. The forest contained mysteries, as did the mountains, but the greatest mystery of all lay beyond the mountains. From their vantage point, I would be able to see the path I'd taken, the paths I could've taken, and all possible future paths for my journeyings beyond the horizon. Each horizon conquered would not be an end, but another beginning. One horizon down, endless more to see, and this comforted me, that there would always be something new, something I'd never seen. Something no one had ever seen. Something I'd be the first to see.

I recall occasionally running into people in these dreams and being profoundly disappointed that I hadn't discovered something first. These encounters with people typically happened on trails I'd stumble upon. They would serve as reminders that nothing new can be discovered on a trail, and I'd promptly change course to take myself as far from the beaten path as possible, back into the mystery of the unexplored forest.

I would sometimes awaken from these dreams lost in my own neighborhood. I was a sleep-walker. A sleep-explorer, much to the dismay of my parents, who went to great lengths to make my nap-time adventures as difficult as possible. But I was possessed by a moonlit wanderlust.

This dream evolved down multiple branching paths as I grew older. In a similar dream I would seek out pits, caverns, and canyons to hurl myself into with an intuited confidence that I'd be fine. The deeper and darker the better. I enjoyed the thrill of the fall, but also the possibility of discovery at the bottom. Another evolution of the wanderlust dream took on a more artificial, even technological, character. In this version of the dream I'd explore the halls of some seemingly abandoned facility. Around this time my dad would take me to see construction sites. Half finished homes, devoid of people. Liminal spaces. I'd also begun to integrate this subconscious wanderlust into my waking aspirations. I pictured myself someday aboard my own starship exploring the Universe. Ideally, this starship was big enough to get lost inside of, and would be manned by a crew of one; myself. I also loved mazes, and would spend hours designing my own.

Alone.

Loneliness was a critical aspect of these dreams and aspirations. But it wasn't a melancholic loneliness. It was the loneliness required for true self-development, after which I imagined myself returning home with endless stories of my adventures and accomplishments, as well as the fruits of those adventures and accomplishments.

I believe this is what some have referred to as the hero's journey; a subconscious impulse within every young man to leave the nest and to not return until he considers himself an equal to his father; a coming of age quest. It's very clear to me that whatever it is, it continues to be a significant subconscious driver of my behavior. I am notoriously difficult to contact over social media by friends and family alike when I feel unaccomplished or stagnant. Sometimes I have to disappear for a while and fix whatever's wrong, or build something new on my own. By contrast, once the lonely work has been done and the wrongs have been set right or the project has been completed, or at least has had enough work put into it that I've begun to feel proud again, I'm much easier to contact and will seek out social interaction for the purpose of sharing the newly acquired high with others.

If there is such a thing as a "hero's journey" impulse in young men, it has intensified my experience and the impact of this first confrontation with the infinite that manifested as wanderlust; a lust for both the exploration of infinite physical space, but also of the infinite potential of Human creative potential, especially architectural and technological creative potential. Creation was as much an aspect of this wanderlust as was literal exploration, as my mind began to uncover what it was only just beginning to grasp at in those first sleep-walking dreams.

And so my first confrontation with the concept of infinity was romantic; free of both pain and tediom, and full of intoxicating awe and beauty. The idea of being able to point to any mountain or star and simply travel there to see what was to be seen, over and over again. It was all I desired. And when you're a child and anything is possible, it was my destiny. The lyrics of "If You Could Hie to Kolob" come immediately to mind; a hymn of the Mormon faith I was raised in, which became something of an anthem for me in my later teens:

If you could hie to Kolob

in the twinkling of an eye

and then continue onward

with that same speed to fly

Do you think that you could ever

through all eternity

find out the generation

where Gods began to be?

Or see the grand beginning

where space did not extend

or view the last creation

where gods and matter end?

Me thinks the spirit whispers

"No man has found pure space

nor seen the outside curtains

where nothing has a place".

The works of God continue

and worlds and lives abound.

Improvement and progression

have one eternal round.

There is no end to matter.

There is no end to space.

There is no end to spirit.

There is no end to race.

There is no end to glory.

There is no end to love.

There is no end to being.

There is no death above.

My second dream, and second confrontation with the infinite, was not nearly as pleasant.

"COUNT THEM."

Count them? Count what? Where am I? Who is speaking? I look all around me. It is impossible by sight alone to judge the scale of what I stand atop. It is a monolithic, grey surface that continues off to either side and behind myself further than my eyes can see. In front of me is empty space. I'm on the edge of a cliff of impossible size.

I'm suddenly aware of scale. The object I stand atop is a pillar. The pillar is a solid block measuring the width and breadth of the Milky Way, itself, perhaps larger. If the pillar has a base, it's impossible to see peering off the edge. It must extend as far as the Universe, itself, in that direction.

"COUNT THEM", the voice calls again. It's a deep booming voice. It speaks quickly, as though rushed, but is unemotional, uncaring. If a law of physics could speak, this is what it would sound like.

Rising from out of the abyss is a second impossible large monolith. At the scale of these objects, it's impossible to tell how many lightyears from me this second object is, and it feels as though it's close enough to reach out and touch. It's impossible for my brain to grapple with the scales I'm witnessing. It is the second monolith, itself, that speaks to me.

"THEY ALL MUST BE ACCOUNTED FOR BEFORE THE END."

Now I'm standing in a field. Every atom in the Universe is laid out before me on a flat plane and I have one instruction: count them. My sense of time immediately dissolves in the absence of any points of reference. In the face of such an incomprehensible tedious task, what does an hour mean? A year? A trillion years? What if I lose count? If I get bored maybe I can just sit and rest for a million years. Or has it be ten minutes? What difference does it make?

I'd awake from these nightmares with a thrown off sense of scale that would last for many minutes. I'd wander the house either far too big or way too small; footsteps measuring only inches in reality felt like miles in my head. The sensory hallucinations of a seven-year-old's brain with a 102 degree fever.

There was nothing intellectual or philosophical about these experiences. They were simply that; experiences as only a child of that age could have. But for one to experience, something real must be being experienced. How can a child intellectualize the concept of infinity and the beauty and horror that accompanies it?

There are two possibilities for the source of these experiences, both equally terrifying. Either they come from within my own mind, or they come from outside my mind. To have come from within, there must be something baked into the Human sub-conscious, present from birth, itself, an understanding of some truth about the nature of the Cosmos, attempting to grapple with infinity, eternity, and capable of having existential crises. To have come from without, then there must be some intelligence capable of communicating through dreams, and which has no qualms with giving children existential crises, consequences for their personal lives be damned.

And it has had consequences for my personal life. As my first and only reoccurring dreams at such a young age, and given their experiential intensity and depth of meaning to me, they speak to something fundamental in my psychology, and as a consequence, have shaped the way I see the world, understand my role, and behave on a daily basis.

In adulthood, everything is overanalyze and intellectualized. Basic truths about who we are and why we're here are paved over by religions and ideologies invented by others. It would've been in line with my childhood experiences and intuited worldview to remain in the Libertarianism from which I began my political and philosophical thinking. An OG American through-and-through, descended from the voyagers on the Mayflower, and counting among the relatives of my ancestors American Heroes who've attained legendary status like Davy Crocket, "Give me liberty or give me death" is branded on my very soul. Somewhere along the way I allowed others to convince me that Humanity was not to be trusted with its own freedom, and even to sacrifice my own freedom was a virtuous act that would be rewarded with spiritual enlightenment or salvation. For too long I labeled myself a traditionalist, and even worse, a perennialist, believing that perfection had already been achieved by some pre-diluvian feudal caste system, and that the history of Humanity since had been one of decline away from this, what can only be described as enslaved, state.

But the very existence of time, itself, reveals that the Cosmos, and Humanity, are meant to change; to evolve. The existence of free will, itself, reveals that Humanity has no pre-determined purpose beyond that which we choose for ourselves. We create our own purpose, and as a result, birth our own societies, alter our own environments, and create our own techne to serve our chosen purpose, which are meant to change over time. We are creators, and to accept that fact and fully embody it would open up the possibility to us to create wonders.

As a Libertarian, I found myself at war with a global, technocratic plot to reestablish a feudal order from which there would be no means of escape. As a traditionalist, I found myself at war with the same entities because they were atheistic in personal philosophy, or so I thought before reading their works, The global technocratic feudal order and the perennialist call of "return to tradition" are one and the same. One need only read the writings of the founders of the United Nations like Julian Huxley alongside preeminent Jesuit and perennialist thinkers of the early twentieth century (who literally reference each other) to come to the conclusion that these factions are working in lockstep. The modus operandi of these enemies of Human freedom and free will appears to be to engineer a psychological immune response in the population to overly-materialist industrial modernism that will result in nothing less than the reemergence of a more religious form of fascism that will act as the enforcing apparatus of a program of deindustrialization and societal restructuring on a global scale that will ecumenically blend the ideas of New Age spirituality, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism to bring us back to something analogous to the feudal caste system of Dark Ages Europe, from which there will be no hope of rising out of as a consequence of our new elite having been technologically empowered by the fruits of post-Renaissance technological innovation, which will never be allowed to happen again for the benefit of the individual. And the people will demand this program be carried out. One need only look to the present political situation in the United States today, and the cultural trends of the youngest generations, to see that this program is progressing as planned. Christian fascism and anti-industrial luddism are the new sexy ideas the next cultural revolution.

The program is to be carried out before one of two apocalypses take place. One; population growth and resource depletion causes the collapse of society or, increasingly more likely, two; an uncontrolled technological singularity places never before seen power in the hands of the individual, also causing the collapse of society.

It becomes clearer with each passing day that our paths are also twofold; either the entire Human race is permanently enslaved or we pass through the next evolutionary filter; the technological singularity. Make no mistake, the singularity is just that; a filter through which many, and perhaps even most, will not pass! Technological power is a test of character; a sword of Damocles which the unwise and undisciplined among us will be unable to handle. Mutually assured destruction will be what causes all who would use this power to destroy to perish, while those who would use this power to fulfill the Human-metapurpose to assume fully their roles as explorers and creators will live. I predict with certainty that it will be that very same mass of willfully ignorant people who would demand perennialist slavery who will perish in these apocalyptic conditions, and if they're allowed to, they will bring everyone else down with them, bringing not just Human freedom, but the entire Human story to a close.

But what comes after, should they fail, will be a Humanity that is finally free to explore those horizons and create those wonders we've always dreamt of. A Humanity that will be free from the infinite, unchanging tedium of an eternal, sterile, perfect order under the dictates of monolithic overlords that we've witnessed in our nightmares.

They will be free creators; artists, engineers, architects, and explorers. They will be liberating warriors, whose crusade against tyranny will rage across the Cosmos in the name of all free-will endowed brings for all time. They will be happy as a child at play, and will succumb to no fear, and know no end to wonder until the very end of the Universe.

And branded on their souls will be that axiom which echoes through the Cosmos and across all time in the hearts of every sentient free agent, "Give me liberty or give me death".