Consider the theory that the universe is an engine for the production and conservation of novelty. The life forms that evolved on earth are a natural consequence of inevitable “newness”, the ongoing consequence of a nearly infinitely vast and complex universe of information, and that newnesses occur naturally, necessarily, in ebbs and flows around all of existence.
That “existence” could also be called something seemingly mundane, but is in fact the deepest and most important presence there could ever be: information.
Information is all there is, and all information is code. We interact with our environments by manipulating code that describes it. When we say we “process information” in our minds, we’re speaking very accurately: our brains process code that we receive from our various inputs. We interact with ourselves through the same code, our inner monologues, structured into what we call “language” but is in reality just the symbols and signifiers that we use to help us assemble and interact with The Code that we are. Our language is a mere efficiency gain.
Culture is like our operating system. To an entity, its operating systems is everything there is. A windows computer can’t imagine being a Mac. It can see the Mac, and it can know the two are different, but the root structure of the operating systems differ so markedly, to explain to one how it is to be the other would be meaningless. What would happen is that as soon as one started to describe itself to the other, the receiver would immediately interpret whatever is said in terms that make sense to its own operating system, and instantly the chance of understanding the other, or even imagining it, is impossible.
The operating system affects every single function of process, and in our terms, process is thought, and is our reality. Our culture controls, restricts and scaffolds our processes, our thoughts, our thinking, and limits our interacting with The Code because of how our root system controls our inputs, and what it allows us to read, and what it allows us to process at all. Mac OS can’t process a single line of Windows XP. Windows XP might recognize aspects of The Code that are valuable, might enable the running of incredibly valuable and useful programs that were written by Windows XP for Windows XP, but to the Mac, not only can it not run those programs, it can’t even fathom what an information architecture different from its own would be like. The Mac can’t imagine or even begin to process the universe contained within that other, different operating system, they literally have different realities and the two do not converge.
Such as there are many operating systems, there are many cultures containing and housing human processes. Some are better for interacting with The Code than others. Some are so self-contained that the processors–people–spend their entire sentient existence interacting with simple little programs, and are completely unaware of the possibility of The Code, of reality. ‘Murica culture is this way, as are many others. The juvenile programs that run on that OS are ultimately meaningless to The Code.
But changing operating systems is really hard. Recognizing that such a thing exists, and that such a thing is your primary limitation of consciousness…
this opens the possibility of some kind of progress, at least.
Wednesday is halfway over. Let’s go punch a heavy bag for the rest of the day.
