A meeting of minds

...they received a letter inviting them with other philosophers of repute to a conference. The letter reads:

You are cordially invited to a conference that is to be held so that you can make account of your lifes work in the field of Metaphysics and Epissstiology.

The guest list included
Buddha
Einstien
Plato
Aristootle
Socrates
Freud
and whats is name......

This conference is to be chaired by a mystery guest whom you are all familiar with.

Vortox was really pissed when he saw that he wasn't invited so he decided to sneak in and wreck the proceedings.


The big day finally arrived and all guest past present and future began to arrive.

As they took their respective seats..........
 
... they saw that there were little paper ships, one on each seat. What could that mean? Who made them? Who put them there?

The mystery guest who was to lead the conference?
Votorx and his numerous clones (by now he figured out how to do them)?

Those paper ships mightily confused their philosophizing brains.
"Can there be something just like that? Must everything have its meaning? Does everything have its meaning?" -- These and other questions alike were buzzing through their heads with the speed of one half of a pensioner.

Only Buddha was rather joyfully and gleefully playing with the paper ship he found on his seat.

The other philosophers thought: "This must be a set-up. Why would that dorky fattish guy know what to do with that paper ship?!"

Their pride, old several proud centuries was badly wounded. They could hardly wait for the conference to begin. And so it did. The mystery guest came in on a skateborad, saying "Yo there!"

The philosophers were shocked to see who the mystery guest was -- for it was ...
 
Mel Gibson! Immediately Buddha took the paper ships he was playing with and packed it away into one of his many folds, giggling happily as the ends tickled his fat.

"Yeah Yo. Ya'll might mistaken me but I'm Mel Gibson bitch!," Mr.Gibson yelled from onto of his skateboard.

Is this really Mel Gibson? Am I me? Am I Mel Gibson? These thoughts and others ran through the philosopher's heads. Only one of them was brave enough to speak up.

"Why are you so ghetto?", asked Hobbes.

"I'm practicing in for me new spectac YOU larz. CAlled "Black...an American Struggle, Guess who Im playing!" Mel replied like a 5 year old with a new toy, pulling out a 3 karat gold necklace.

"Martin Luther" Everyone replied in union.

"...How'd you know..."replied Mel, but before his question could be answered there was a loud boom in the back ground. In came Votorx holding a book...

"Muahahaha, you thought you could hold this meeting without me?!?! For this proposterous deed I have brought the Evil of all Evil, the Fear of Death...I have brought....

(Votorx and his numerous clones (by now he figured out how to do them)? LoL that was a cold and low blow)

(Can there be something just like that? Must everything have its meaning? Does everything have its meaning?" -- These and other questions alike were buzzing through their heads with the speed of one half of a pensioner. ROFL!! I don't know why but I just imagined a bunch of really old greying and balding men standing around staring at the ceiling asking the same question over and over again.)
 
"... Richard Simmons!"

The hellish figure bounced into the centre of the room.

"Okay you oldies, I know this is a philosophy conference but I see too much thinking and not enough sweating!"

Even Votorx's eyebrows began to furrow as the obnoxious founder of Jazzercize began to piss everyone off with great excellence.

"Life is nothing without reflection," he thought to himself. "It is not meant to be filled with kinesthetic flipping and flopping and the shrill and irritating voice of Richard Simmons."

His hand covers his face.

"BY ZEUS, WHAT HAVE I DONE!?!"

A thundering voice came from above...

DON'T BLAME ME FOR RICHARD SIMMONS, ASSHOLE. BUT, I WILL TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENS NEXT...
 
..........the mighty Zeus tore down the great Temple of Jerusalem with a single bolt of lightning. Just then GOD roared at Zeus:

"Get out of my scene (and country) u Greek B@st@rd. Go on, back across the Aegean Sea u go"

So Zeus went back to Athens where he consoled and amused himself watching the very first Olympic Games. Also mingling amongst the Gods in the crowds was a dark figure. He was sitting all alone in Row 57 Aisle 9. Athena turned to Zeus, pointing at the young man and said "I didn't know he was going to be attending!". Zeus replied " Come on lets go over and say hello to............
 
Albert, who for the life of him could not figure out why he kept ending up in Greece. He thought that possibly his Time machine was playing up.

Zeus and Athena approached Albert and Zeus politely says to Athena in a way that Albert can hear.

"Athena , my darling, this gentleman has arrived from the year 2004 andhe thinks his little machine is faulty." to which both Zeus and Athena giggled a little as if sharing an in joke at Alberts expense.

"But it must be " ALbert replied. "All the computations are perfect"
"Albert my foolish friend", " just because the Math works out doesn't mean it will in practice" Zeus stated with a wry smile.

Albert started to cry a little and moaned " you mean to tell me that my theories of relativity and time reversal don't work?"

Zeus promptly leant forward and put his hand on the sad mans shoulder and said, "But Albert you have known all along that reality is but a figment of the mind and ....hmmm....well,....hmmmm....Maths and theory are also."

"You aren't here because you worked out time travel , you are here becasue you are in my mind not becasue you are in yours.".
Zeus said, "this is my dream and not yours, you are here because I wanted you here, like it or not!"
A tension built and the world around Zeus, Athena and Albert started to change. Finally the scene cleared and they were all standing on a stage in New York in the 21 century.

"Well" said Albert, " you didn't think that was going to happen did you Zeus?"

Athena looked at Zeus and asked Albert "What have you done?"

Albert smiled and said " You are now in my dream, like it or not".........

The faculty audience were all staring in amazement at the collection of Greek mythology and their teacher standing on stage in the auditorium.

Albert leaned forward and told the class, "My theory of relativity is not only about our so called physical world but also about........
 
........"our spiritual world". "Thats why I have brought these great Gods back with me; to tell u a little about my beliefs. See, I always believed in God and the afterlife and i have tried ever so hard to formulate my theories around that belief. i even tried to change my own theory because it predicted that the universe was expanding and had a beginning! What nonsense! If it had a beginning then maybe God is finite and there was no need for him :bugeye: blaghhh." Einstein continued to share his emotional turmoil with his audience. "Then along came some stupid atheists by the name of Bohr and Heisenberg who tried to show me that the universe was essentially random and with no particular purpose. I just laughed at them. Ridiculous I said. Thats not a 'beautiful' theory".

Just then, one of Einsteins students in the audience declared "But what if u are wrong Sir. What if....ergh...mmm.....there IS no God?" After he had uttered these words, an uncomfortable look came across Einstein face and........
 
a lookof profound sadness crossed his face and a sign of a tear could be seen glistening in the stage light, he drew a breath and said quietly,
"That is what makes Humanity so profound and so ridiculous at the same time, by the fact that we can be wrong and can make mistakes and this is our greatest ability and yet our greatest challenge. To make mistakes means we can learn and the greatest wrong is to call a mistake a mistake"

"My mistake" he declared "if mistake is the right word is that I shared my inspirations with a world that may not have been wise enough to survive it."
" But we did survive it...... more by arse than class" he said with a wry chuckle.
"What if I am wrong?" he asked. " then I am wrong.....but at least I am something right or wrong and certainly not niether"

Another student rose to his feet and asked the other students........
 
..."But isn't this just another manifestation of the intersection of fourth-dimensional timespace consciousness membranes? I mean, without linear interactions of this kind we wouldn't even be able to witness the universe as it is, since the presence of conscious points of view is itself a demonstration of time-nonfixed interactions with the three-dimensional world."

A collective groan went up from the class. wesmorris, the metaphysical assassin, had struck again - with a postulation so agonizing that it would probably take hours for the local time/space continuum to recover.

"After all, when we consider that the point of interaction of any action moves with consideration to the location of a physical being in our visible universe, it seems to me that the interaction would not be possible on a point-to-point basis unless the construction that was performing the action was in some way outside of the constricting space/time straitjacket represented by the material world. It follows from this that..."
 
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Meanwhile, Jark Garran was sitting at his consol reading all these post as part of his duties as an Martian outpost controller. Martian Internet surveillance has been going on for years.
“What The fu*k going on down there” he thought. He reached for his transponder and sent off an “E.B.I.T.A.” (Earth Based Independent Thought Alert) to command, based in star system 134.345.567.a1.

....a postulate postulates and a smile is just a smile and a kiss is just a kiss, and the fundemental things apply........as time goes by...........but then again.........
 
Almost immediately a transponderred hyper space reponse arrived from command.

",,, //.. ... @ 0) .. ...... //..../. //// "

Hmmm Jarak thought as he instigated the appropriate codec.
Message reads " Hi ( with cosmic love and much affection)"

As the message continued to arrive and be translated Jarak wondered what action command wanted him to take. An "E.B.I.T." alert was serious business.

The message continued "Action to be taken:
"Cause Internet instability, computer glitches and blackouts.".
"Ensure mankind's leaders act stupid "

"But most of all attempt to shut down free speach and free will. These will not be tolerated"

Jarak smiled but felt an immense pain in his head when he thought, "I wonder how much command controls my freewill and speach?"

"Ouch" that hurt. Well I got my answer he thought and immediately the pain in his head left leaving him a little giddy.

He went over to the U.W.C.MF ( Universal Will control Mainframe) and punched in the necessary commands.

Hit the Go button and continued to monitor results.

"how long have I been doing this for he wondered. "Hmmm....well we had a EBITA with the Inca Indians and back then with the Greeks....Plato and co."

"That makes for a long time of monitoring"
"Ahh well it's nearly time for my lunch" and after lunch I have the years ...hmmm...let me see....up to and including the year 2010 to deal with.......
"My, how time flys when your having fun" he said to himself.

Albert called out "Class dismissed"

And as the students stood to leave he, Zues and Athena could be seen to slowly vanish in a localised haize of spacial pixels. The haize eventually stettled and the stage was empty.

Some where else in a not to distand time...........
 
... was a young woman, thinking of her beloved. She was sitting at her window, looking to NorthWest, imagining his green country, somewhere far across the sea ...
In her sorrow and despair, she was listening to the songs of a sad bard who sang:

Out of sorrow entire worlds have been build,
out of longing great wonders have been willed ...
But they're only little tears, baby, let them spill
And lay your head upon my shoulder ...



But her beloved wasn't there, so our young woman was left to herself and the sad bard. And she pondered his words:

Out of sorrow entire worlds have been build,
out of longing great wonders have been willed ...


"... how profound, so true," she thought. Being far from the green country was her cruel reality, and it brought her both to her knees and her senses.

What if all those great philosophic and religious systems were invented and made up for these very reasons: sorrow and longing?
It seemed obvious. To lead a society, not that much is needed after all, a simple tiranism will do. But where do all those fancy and elaborated belief systems come from? Why?

As she thus pondered, she heard a knock at her door ...
 
.........It was Charles Darwin. He had just stepped out of that (very much used at this stage) time machine and came to answer her questions. He came to the conclusion that religion is just another evolved trait in higher life forms (i.e. humans). He told himself that those who did not hold on to a belief in the past were actually selected against by nature and those who did hold a belief in the afterlife were happier and passed on their genes. "Indeed," he continued as he stepped off the time machine which he nick-named "The Beagle", it seems that every civilisation I have discovered in the americas and Pacific ALL have this common belief." He thus drew the seemingly obvious statement that this trait was just the same as the traits he found on those finches of the Galapagos. But there was another knock on the door. There was the distinctive sound of another time machine outside..............
 
Another time machine? Is that possible? But as Darwin opened the door, the girl absently noticed a mixture of schock and recognition spread across his aged features...

It was himself! Poor Darwin had not taken into account the fluxuations of time - it followed an evolutionary path of its own, and now it had caught up with him. And time-travel was a contingency nature had not catered for. One of them would be cancelled out, but which one? What decides the survival between two versions of the same life?

In the background the bard sang on, as if a theme for the events that were unfolding. A love song turned sinister by circumstance...

But they're only little tears, baby, let them spill
And lay your head upon my shoulder ...


She was clutching a pendant around her neck as if it was her last grasp on reality. Did things come to this? Somewhere in the back of her mind she had already dismissed a notion that came unbidden, was time circular? - Yet, here before her was a man who had defined the progress of time, only to find himself defined by it, weighed and found wanting. Would it happen to her one day? Maybe we aren't leading society, maybe we're following it!

Darwin and the woman both stood stunned at their own realization - Darwin was facing his eye to eye; she was facing it in the words of the bard: Out of sorrow entire worlds have been build, they were slaves to their sorrow...out of longing great wonders have been willed ... no, victims to it! The wonders they had built were monuments of condemnation - pyramids gathering dust over what was left of their lives and cherished beliefs.

We're all one kiss away from suffering, one kiss away from betraying ourselves...

And yet... there was some hope...
 
... and it was in the form of a blank book that fell from the sky. Apparently, it was God who threw it down, but this doesn't really matter at this point of the story.
What matters is this: There was a post-it pasted to the cover of the book, saying two things:

1. Use it!
2. If you fight with monsters, beware, for you may become a monster too when fighting monsters! (Note for the readers: This is something that German prick Nietzsche said.)

So our young woman didn't know what exactly she should do with that book. Should she use it herself? Should she give it to one of the Darwins?

She finally decided that ...
 
she didn't wish to fight with monsters and with a wink of conscent from Darwin she threw the book into the fire. ( What fire you ask? Yes..... you ask?)

"God speaks to no one...... but only through one"....she remembered her father had said one cold night while she struggled with the thoughts of the infinite all curled up in bed as her father read to her from the work called Alice in Wonder Land....

AS the book burned brightly in the fire an image unfolded in her mind. An image that told the story of her life and the story of all life, how something so grand can come to be from nothing and how nothing is where to find her truth, for it is in nothingness that one comes close to the one.

She closed her eyes and she could see Darwin looking intently at her through her closed eye lids, Time started to disolve and Darwin and her became one as if she and he stepped into each other falling into a oneness of past present and future.

Beware of monsters the note had said and she realised the truth in those words , The monsters of "I" we become or have the potential to be.
"But surely to fight them is to keep them away" she murmured to herself in mind speak. a little voice replied in her mind, the child Darwin,
"To fight them is to play their game
to call them your friend
is to make them you
and not you them."


her poetic mind replied to the child Darwin

"Wisdom inspired from a far distant time
to be or not to be to see or not to see
by the grace we grant ourselves
that others shall want to be me....."


When she opened her eyes she was standing at her fathers grave.
The tomb stone was enscribed with the name Charles Darwin. And she remembered him....remembered him

She felt a tap on her shoulder and as she turned to see who it was.........
 
she should burn it.

It's empty pages would be far more useful for keeping them warm. Coming from God, it must have been meant to fight the chill that had crept into their souls. The chill of recognition - the cold grip of death had taken hold of their lives. It would satisfy the emptiness they felt. It would fill a void that no words could touch.

Looking out the window again, at the dark rolling hills, she could almost see the green country of her beloved, beckoning, tugging at her heart. There was hope.

I have a heart, I have a soul
For the winter I have fire, for the darkness I have coal


She closed her eyes for an instant, and looking up behind her eyelids she muttered breathless thanks for the Gift - so mundane and meaningless it would have been under any other sky, but beneath this one... then she started tearing the book apart, page by page, reverently passing them onto the fire.

But she held on to the cover. Its red, leathery texture described the comfort it had contained, and a warning: beware the monsters - beware of yourself! It sounded so much like the familiar words of the sages that have become almost cliche...

You can't corrupt something without becoming corrupt yourself

But on this cover it had an authority never before realized.

Her wandering thoughts were abruptly ended when one of the Darwins grabbed hold of her arm. The second Darwin grabbed the other arm. They didn't like the rising heat of the fire. It seemed alive when she looked at it...

"We should go! This fire threatens our existence, it threatens yours! Come with me... come with us!"

But who gets to decide her fate? She wants to go to her beloved. One of the Darwins would die, and she didn't know which. They didn't even know which... clutching the empty cover to herself as if for protection, she decided...
 
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